EAT! Vancouver is a food and cooking festival held in BC Place on May 30th till June 1st, 2014. Adult admission is $15 and a lot of people wonder if it’s worth it. There are tons of exhibitors around, celebrity chefs and a few seminars to attend. To get the full experience, you should plan a few hours here to make sure you check out the Food Network Celebrity stage and the cheese seminars. Take a look at the schedule online on their website to plan it out.
Here are some old write ups about the past few EAT! Vancouver festivals that I’ve been to:
The Dairy Farmers of Canada host cheese seminars and demonstrations throughout the day. This particular image was for Friday evening, so the times change each day.
The seminars fit about 80 people and are always full by the time it starts. If you have some time to kill, might as well learn a bit and try a bunch of cheeses.
If you don’t have time to do a seminar, you can always stop by their tables of cheese samplers. They have so many cheeses to sample! Blue cheese, ricotta, mozzarella, havarti, etc.
If you are a Food Network fan, you must go to the Celebrity Stage! You might be able to catch Rob Feenie, Chuck Hughes, Lynn Crawford, Vikram Vij and Ned Bell.
On Friday evening, I got a change to see Vikram Vij!
The Bites area is where there are a few restaurants serving up appetizer portions of their signature items. You need to purchase tasting tickets to be able to redeem them for the food.
These restaurants include:
- Basil Pasta Bar
- Beavertails Pastry
- Bella Gelateria
- Café Kathmandu
- Dunn’s Famous Restaurant
- Gramercy Grill
- Jamaican Pizza Jerk
- Max’s Restaurant – Cuisine of the Philippines
- Pacific Bottleworks Company
- The Glowbal Collection
I actually find this list a bit small because in past years, they would have a lot more options.
The area was a bit sparse and disappointing. I was waiting to see what options there were before purchasing tasting tickets, but I decided not to.
The booths were similar to past years, you will find some of the bigger booths offering a large amount of samples. Bosa Foods is always my favourite!
You can sample food and buy some products.
They even make lattes for free.
Urban Fare always has a nice display and this year its a bit larger. There are chocolate samples, caviar, and a few other items.
They also have a corner for exotic fruits to purchase. Square watermelon, mangosteen, etc.
Liberte has a large truck and lots of people were lining up since you get a lot of yogurt.
They let you have one opened package and 4 additional ones to take home!
If you want more yogurt, Oikos has a truck as well.
You choose your flavour of yogurt ad granola toppings of your choice.
Lots of samples to be had at the vendors.
Some places even have discounted products, which is great.
Even Starbucks makes an appearance with their Refreshers.
Overall, this year’s EAT! Vancouver experience was alright. If you have been to ones in the past, you really aren’t missing out on much.
Website: http://www.eat-vancouver.com/