EAT! Vancouver 2013: Food and Cooking Festival

Eat Vancouver is back for its’ 11th year. It’s a food and cooking festival that brings together food lovers in Vancouver with some amazing exhibitors. It’s held at BC Place on May 24th – 26th. Entrance is $14 (online ticket) and $16 at the door. Buy the ticket online if you want to save $2.

Here are some old write ups about the past 2 EAT! Vancouver festivals that I’ve been to:

• EAT! Vancouver 2012
• EAT! Vancouver 2011

Even way before starting this blog, I remember coming here in my University days. It has evolved over the years to have different activities for everyone.

This year there are about 250 exhibitors. Lots of sample to taste and some booths charge $1 – $5 for special types of samples. You either pay cash or in the form of tickets that you can purchase.

Urban Fare has a large booth sampling various items like quinoa salad. They were giving out coupons for free coffee at their stores too. Their booth is like a mini-store, so you can purchase anything here. They have a variety of pasta, salads and fruit.

You can even purchase items that they have displayed on the shelves. Look carefully at this picture, you’ll find some very odd sounding cereal.

Near the Urban Fare booth, they were also giving out samples of Cloud 9 Gluten free baked goods.

Coconut Bliss was giving out ice cream samples. Surprisingly good! I can’t believe it’s dairy-free, soy-free, gluten-free and non-GMO. Their ice cream is usually a bit expensive, but it’s good you can take some $1 off coupons to use for later.

Kitchening & Co. was there selling their delicious macarons and cookies. They are the only macaron booth here. The creator Carly wasn’t there when I went, @wongers and @apwong was there representing.

No samples at this booth, but you definitely should grab some of their macarons and cookies. They are softer in texture but has a lot of flavour and depth.

Snackbox was promoting their subscription-based snack box service filled with organic and gluten-free snacks. I’ve done reviews on some of their snack boxes before and they are definitely worth the money. They aren’t selling them at the event, but you can sure win one.

Rain City Soups was giving out samples of the ginger carrot soup. It wasn’t my favorite soup that they had but their other soups are pretty awesome.

A Good Portion was sampling their variety of pistachio nuts. I love pistachios and what I enjoyed about these is that it’s not too salty.

Hopcott Premium Meats was sampling their sausages and jerky.

Bosa Food always has a large variety of samples like risotto, cheese, crackers, and sauces. It’s one of the popular booths.

So many beverage samples!

You know when you get thirsty from all the food samples, you come to these booths to get a refreshment.

Peanut Butter & Co. has crazy peanut butter flavours. I dare you to try the spicy one.

There’s so many booths at EAT! Vancouver. There’s no way I would be able to visit everyone and tell you where has the best samples of food, but there’s a large variety. There’s also a handful of booths that aren’t even food related… like jewelry, car services, and phone services.

Free Cheese Seminars

Besides eating all the samples, they have cheese seminars. You should line up early so you are guaranteed a spot. It is usually filled by the time the seminar begins. It’s presented by the Dairy Farmers of Canada, so you’ll probably learn everything you need to know about cheese.

Schedule:

Saturday May 25th
12:00pm, 1:30pm, 3:00pm, 4:30pm, 6:00pm, 7:30pm

Sunday May 26th
11:00am, 12:30pm, 2:00pm, 3:30pm

Culinary Classes

Culinary Classes are $28 each and you have to buy tickets in advance online. Most of the spots are sold out, but its pretty cool that you can learn how to sharpen knives, bake cakes, learn about brunch, gluten-free baking, and other stuff.

Demonstrations

Some booths had demonstrations of their own. They must have learned something interesting.

Food Network Celebrity Stage

This was my favorite area. You can see a few of the Food Network Celebrities take the stage and do some demonstrations.

The Celebrity Chefs that will be there are:

• Rob Feenie
• Chick Hughs
• Bal Arnsen (Spice Goddess)
• Anna Olson

Celebrity Chef Throwdown

Celebrity Chef Throwdown was pitted 3 amazing chefs together to cook an entree in 20 minutes using a secret ingredient.

Competitors:

• Rob Feenie – Executive Chef, Cactus Restaurants Ltd.
• Anna Olson – Host of Food Network Canada’s Bake with Anna Olson
• Trevor Bird – Chef/Owner of Fable Kitchen & Runner Up on Top Chef Canada Season 2

Erin Cebula of Entertainment Tonight Canada hosted the event and chose the secret ingredient to be Ninja Ginger Beer from Granville Island Brewing.

After a fierce 20 minute battle, the judges – The Spice Goddess and Erin declared Rob Feenie the winner.

I thought it was pretty cool seeing them in real life. It’s always one of my highlights of Eat Vancouver is to see them. I watch a lot of Food Network when I’m bored.

Bites of Vancouver

Beside the Food Network Celebrity stage is a section called Bites of Vancouver that features 16 different local restaurants.

The list of restaurants are:

• BeaverTails  Pastry
• Bella Gelateria
• Cafe Kathmandu
• Dunn’s Famous Restaurant
• Ebo Restaurant
• Establishment Lounge
• Frankies Italian Kitchen & Bar
• Glowbal Restaurant Group
• Gramercy Grill
• Jamaican Pizza Jerk
• New India Buffet
• Noodle Box
• Secret Location
• Spice Up Indian Cuisine
• Siddhartha’s Indian Kitchen
• Tacofino

You will need to purchase a sheet of tasting tickets 20 for $10 or 10 for $5. Some items can use up a lot of tickets, so make sure to browse the booths before you buy your tickets. You might need more or less depending on what you want to eat.

Siddhartha of Siddhartha’s Kitchen was there serving up Butter Chicken and their spinach paneer.

If you’ve read my reviews before, you know I love their spinach paneer. You must get that if you’re here.

Tacofino was serving up some beef tartare tacos and Chilled Avocado soup.

I got the chilled avocado soup and it was pretty darn tasty. The presentation was good too. The downside is that it was for 8 tickets. It gobbled up a large chunk of my tickets.

The Glowbal group was serving up large meatballs and mini New England Clam Chowder. It was really cute, so I couldn’t resist.

It tasted ok and I wasn’t disappointed.

The verdict, if you’ve been here a few times before, you may not enjoy it as much as some other years. There’s a lot of repeat vendors, so you may not be as enthused as you would have been before.

If you’ve never been to EAT! Vancouver and you love food, it is definitely an event for you. Plus, it’s awesome to see the Food Network Celebrities there.

Website: http://eat-vancouver.com/