Browsing “Local Business”

I am so very proud to announce that we’ve signed on with our friends at Fire and Light Media Group to be a media partner on an incredible series of short films they’re producing.

Meet your Urban Farmer will introduce you to urban farmers in the Metro Vancouver area. If you’ve never had the opportunity to meet any of the array of passionate individuals behind the urban farming movement, and the wonderful food they grow for the community, this will be an opportunity you won’t want to miss.

Episodes of Meet Your Urban Farmer will begin appearing here once or twice a month in March of 2012, for a total of about 18. For now check out this trailer and please help us share it far and wide!

Support your local urban farmers and know where your food comes from. …READ THE REST OF THIS ENTRY>>>

Due to crossed email wires my fellow V.I.A. editor Joel Levy and I decided independently to go to the same restaurant to participate in FeastVan…so if you want to know about the food at Cafeteria (which was super delicious and well worth the visit) click through to read his post from earlier in the week.

So instead of scrapping my post all together for fear of underwhelming readers with an all too similar post, I thought that I would write more about FeastVan and what it means to the community it is supporting – and why you should in turn support it for its final few days.

For those of you who don’t know what FeastVan is, here is a crash course:

FeastVan is a two and a half week dining event running from January 20th to February 5th which was created to help introduce diners to the incredible array of restaurants that East Vancouver has to offer.  FeastVan is a chance for foodies, casual eaters and Vancouver visitors alike to enjoy a selection of specially priced three-course meals from some of East Vancouver’s best restaurants.

Okay so this sounds a bit familiar, right?  Vancouver abounds with dining events throughout the year – what makes FeastVan so special?

First of all it focuses on and showcases the incredible and thriving East Side and the restaurants that make it a foodies dream come true.  With most menus ranging between $30-$35 for three courses, even those on a budget can afford to treat themselves all while supporting the Vancouver Inner City Back Pack Food Program .

So how exactly does your dinner help the program?  $1 from every specially priced three-course meal for lunch and/or dinner will go towards the Vancouver Inner-city Back Pack Food Program, and a percentage of the proceeds from every keg of R&B Brewing East Side Bitter will also go towards the program.

Participating Restaurants:

• Au Petit Chavignol
• Cafeteria
• Campagnolo Roma
• The Cascade Room
• Founders Lounge (@ the Cultch)
• Fray
• Habit
• Latitude
• les amis du FROMAGE
• Les Faux Bourgeois
• R&B Brewing Co.
• The Red Wagon
• Two Chef’s and a Table
• The Union Bar
• Vancouver Alpen Club
• The Waldorf

So that leads to the next question – what is Food Insecurity and how does the Vancouver Inner-city Back Pack Food Program help to combat this?

While I am well aware that people go hungry every single day in our city, it wasn’t until I became familiar with FeastVan that I had ever heard the term Food Insecurity.  For some reason this term hit me really hard emotionally – while I know what it is like to go hungry, I have no idea what it is like to suffer on a continual basis with not knowing where …READ THE REST OF THIS ENTRY>>>

Wow! Our friends over at Arc’teryx have gone and done something super awesome:

In the third year of their Birds Nest Project, an army of their employees volunteered to construct 700 of these wind/waterproof capes for the homeless and impoverished in the Lower Mainland.

HERE is a link with all of the info.

Photos courtesy Arc’teryx

Stay tuned for more Random Acts!

Salad of endive, apple, bacon, walnuts, croutons with a gorgonzola dressing

Running until February 5th, Feast Van is a culinary and social venture taking place at 16 of Vancouver’s east side restaurants. Feast Van was started by Joe Chaput, proprietor of Au Petit Chavignol and Les Amis du Fromage, as a way to raise money for the Strathcona Community Center Backpack Food Program. Throughout the 2 weeks of Feast Van, participating restaurants will be donating $1 from every fixed price 3 course meal towards the program. The objective of the program is to help feed children on the weekends when their school feeding programs don’t run. Children from both Seymour and Strathcona Elementary Schools receive backpacks each Friday afternoon. Here is what they receive in the bags.

Food each child takes home for the weekend

The idea is to help families maintain consistent and healthy nutrition for underprivileged inner city youth, which in turn helps their performance and overall health. The program currently feeds 300 children through its current structure and is always looking for volunteers and community sponsorships to help out. Feast Van serves to buttress the programs’ effort with both direct contributions and latently by raising awareness.

…READ THE REST OF THIS ENTRY>>>

Call the Pacific North West (or ‘Gnarthwest’) what you want: ‘geographically isolated’ or ‘culturally insular’, Vancouver’s location affords us some unique (and awesome) societal and cultural characteristics.  For decades, Vancouver has promoted and nurtured its Skate / Snow / Surf scenes, creating a modern municipality wherein these trademark lifestyles are constantly manifested.

Despite these ‘subcultures’ being deeply engrained in our city’s identity, the ‘Bros’ and ‘Bro-ettes’ who partake in them are often still perceived in a negative light.  Being charged with clinging to adolescent ideals and fuelling an ambitionless path with parties and substance abuse, the Bros seem to have the odds stacked against them. In terms of legitimizing their pursuits and finding a place in the ‘real world’ to apply them, it is often misconstrued that they showed up to the skate park late… and are pushing mongo.

Ray Gordon’s Throttled exhibit takes us into the world of traditional hod rods and vintage motorcycles through pictures. The 25 colour photos show us Gordon’s favourite spots including drag strips, bike shops, and “secret forts”.

However, this view that the Bros of the world are ill-equipped to tighten up their shoelace belts and button down their plaids when it comes to doing business, is one that the KnowShow confronts head on.  Last week, the bi-annual, Vancouver based KnowShow (in 2010 it was held in Calgary) saw over 300 brands hold down real estate in the convention centre to interact with over 2000 retailers from across the country.  The reps were repping, buyers were buying and bigtime orders were made over Caesars and PBRs that could prove to sink or swim brands through the upcoming seasons.

…READ THE REST OF THIS ENTRY>>>

It’s finally here…17 days of delicious food for amazing prices! Canada’s largest restaurant festival, Dine Out Vancouver is back for it’s tenth year, this time with 231 restaurants offering prix-fix menus for $18, $28 or $38!
You can check out the list of participating restaurants HERE and other events that are happening HERE.

And then check out the photos below to wet your appetite from  some of Glowbal Group’s restaurants: Black & Blue, Society, Glowbal Grill, and Sanafir – where I got to have a little preview of the Dine Out Vancouver action!

BLACK & BLUE: “Bacon ‘n’ Eggs”: thick cut double smoked bacon, fried duck egg, spicy maple syrup, wild arugula
…READ THE REST OF THIS ENTRY>>>

Back in late September I wrote THIS PIECE introducing you to our new neighbours in Chinatown, This Space. The idea for their business is to be totally crowdsourced, asking the neighbours and the rest of the city what they feel their business should be, top to bottom. You all have so far decided that it should be a “local service”, then you voted to refine that to be a “local food store”, then you decided that the name should be “Harvest”. You’re doing good!

The next question the folks at This Space have for you is ““Which graphic designer should brand 243 Union?”, and they’ve produced this video that introduces you to all 6 who are in the running.

I personally voted for Shawn Parkinson, a friend of mine who I often lunch with here in Chinatown. But don’t let that sway you! Watch the video above, check out the links to all of the 6 designers work on the This Space site and then cast your vote on who you think is best suited to design the branding for this local business.

The farewell mini-series that the employees of Videomatica have been producing (Support Your Local Video Store) all of a sudden feels different when I watch it. Up until the release of episode 4 we were touting Videomatica as the “soon-to-be-closed-institution-of-Vancouver video store” but if you remember THIS high five between Grant McDonagh of Zulu Records and Graham Peat of Videomatica then you know they’re about to be roomies. And by “about to be” I mean now! They quietly opened up shop last weekend and are selling videos out of Zulu now, so I think I know where you might want to go for your Christmas shopping.

Nevertheless, the comedy mini-series about a semi-fictional doomed video store must go on! Here is the latest chapter, there are two more on the way.