Fanny Bay Oyster Bar and Shellfish Market; Photo: Leila Kwok
The establishments featured in the 2024 MICHELIN Guide Vancouver— revealed on October 3—evidence the diversity of the city’s restaurant scene, as well as a shared investment in sustainability.
Vancouver restaurants have a long history related to sustainability and supporting a vibrant local food system. Earlier restaurants that prioritized local sourcing include the now closed Bishop’s, Raincity Grill, Aurora Bistro, and C Restaurant, all of which cultivated talent who continue to shape the city’s culinary landscape today. The Ocean Wise Seafood program, which began in 2005 through a partnership with chef Rob Clark and the Vancouver Aquarium, encouraged local restaurants to source sustainably and to identify sustainable dishes on menus for diners. The program was a huge success and has grown to become a national one. Other organizations like the Green Table Network are further examples of Vancouver’s eco-focus.
Below are three pillars of the Vancouver restaurant industry’s sustainability initiatives, which are found in the many establishments featured in the 2024 MICHELIN Guide Vancouver.
Locavore Ethos
Fable Kitchen’s roof garden; Photo: Fable Kitchen
Vancouver restaurants have increasingly shifted their sourcing to local producers and harvesters. This commitment is due to a number of factors, including the quality of fresh seasonal produce; a promotion of local food security; a desire to support the local economy; and a reduction in how far ingredients have to travel to a given kitchen. In addition, menus and wine lists often contain products from farms that have adopted organic, sustainable agricultural practices.
While many MICHELIN establishments form strong relationships with local farms, some restaurants are particularly well known for their locavore ethos. For example, the restaurant family, which includes MICHELIN-starred Burdock & Co and the recommended Bar Gobo, has been a leader in the community. Chef/owner Andrea Carlson is deeply passionate about the Pacific Northwest, especially its “growers, farmers and foragers” and adopts “a way of cooking that trusts the raw material to shine.” Hence, Burdock & Co’s Moon Menu Series makes local ingredients the star, including sustainable sablefish, radicchio, celeriac, and plums.
MICHELIN-starred Published on Main, helmed by executive chef Gus Stieffenhofer-Brandson, has close ties with local producers, taking the bounty of a given season and showcasing it on their menu as well as finding creative ways (e.g., canning, fermenting) to extend their usage. Stieffenhofer-Brandson ethically forages for ingredients, showing an on-the-ground intimacy with what is local and seasonal. The wine list illustrates a similar philosophy, nominated for “Best International Sustainable Wine List” by Star Wine List. Meanwhile, over at MICHELIN-starred AnnaLena, chef Mike Robbins offers a tasting menu that allows the kitchen to spotlight local seasonal ingredients at their peak, like Sungold tomatoes, hakurei turnips, and sweet corn.
Other MICHELIN restaurants that are known for their local sourcing include recommended Botanist (Fairmont Pacific Rim), which, as its name suggests, celebrates the flora of this location in both food and drink. Executive chef Hector Laguna selects farms that use organic agricultural methods, and incorporates local ingredients in West Coast-style dishes, in addition to ones that reflect his Mexican heritage (e.g., sweet local corn with Burgundy truffles, jalapeño, epazote, cotija cheese, and salsa macha). Other MICHELIN restaurants like Farmer’s Apprentice (Bib Gourmand) and vegetarian/vegan The Acorn (recommended) also are rooted in local ingredients, continually changing their menus to reflect seasonal availability. The Acorn, for example, features a daily “Harvest” dish that incorporates the best and freshest of farmed and foraged ingredients.
And it doesn’t get more local than Fable Kitchen (Bib Gourmand), which has a garden on their rooftop during the summer. There, they grow herbs and tomatoes that they use in restaurant dishes. These ingredients are in addition to the produce they source from local suppliers who practice sustainability.
Sustainable Seafood
When the Ocean Wise seafood program first came into being, sustainability was still a novel concept for some restaurants and diners. However, nearly two decades later, the health of nearby (and more distant) waters is paramount to chefs around the city. Consult the Ocean Wise map of their partners to find restaurants that source sustainable seafood. This partner list includes restaurants from a range of culinary cultures, including Miku (Japanese, MICHELIN-recommended), Elisa (steakhouse, recommended), and Vij’s (Indian, Bib Gourmand).
Given Vancouver’s location on the West Coast and its access to fresh seafood, it’s no surprise that this city has numerous incredible seafood establishments that prioritize sustainability. Boulevard Kitchen and Oyster Bar (MICHELIN-recommended) only sources fresh Ocean Wise certified seafood, such as in their seafood tower that includes albacore tuna tataki, mussel escabeche, and prawns. Meanwhile, Riley’s Fish and Steak (recommended) sources seafood from the Ocean Wise green category.
MICHELIN-recommended Fanny Bay Oyster Bar and Shellfish Market is unique for a couple reasons: firstly, the location is part restaurant/bar, part retail location, where customers can eat as well as purchases fresh, seasonal seafood; secondly, Fanny Bay has an oyster farm in Baynes Sound, which is now part of Taylor Shellfish Farms. The owners of this family of farms believe strongly in regenerative farming practices in order to support the wellbeing of the oceans and the creatures within it.
This belief translates into a menu at the Oyster Bar that puts sustainable seafood at the fore, whether from the Taylor Shellfish Farms—which grow oysters, mussels, geoduck, and clams—or other fisheries. Their farmed oysters, for example, rely purely on natural algae production and contribute to infrastructure that is important for juvenile salmonoids and crustaceans.
Fanny Bay also collaborates with non-profits and researchers that focus on sustainability in projects like an annual Georgia Strait Alliance fundraising dinner, which takes place at the Oyster Bar and raises money to protect the Salish Sea. Overall, Fanny Bay as well as many other restaurants in town believe strongly in preserving the vitality of local waters.
Zero Waste
SUYO‘s Undergrowth cocktail; Photo: SMC Communications
In addition to the sustainability of their produce and their seafood, many Vancouver restaurants aim to be as zero waste as possible—in their cooking as well as other operations. For instance, Fanny Bay donates oyster shells to the Ocean Wise Seaforestation project and to the UBC Faculty of Applied Sciences in their development of sustainable materials (UBC Concrete Toboggan Team). They also reuse their shells in other ways, such as crushing them to make chicken feed and landscaping material as well as incorporating them in gin at Copperpenny Distilling Co.
At the Oyster Bar, they try to use every part of the seafood, including parts that are often discarded. They serve soy marinated sablefish collars with a sweet soy glaze, peppadew puree, and cilantro even though, typically, most diners tend not to eat the collars.
Other restaurants find equally resourceful ways to repurpose unwanted parts. MICHELIN-recommended SUYO (Peruvian) creates cocktails incorporating them. Their Undergrowth cocktail, in addition to Diplomatico rum, Mount Gay rum, and citrus jungle falernum, contains Amazonian tepache. The latter is a fermented drink that they create using leftover tea, in addition to garnishes and prep extras, such as spices, fruit pieces, and tomato tops. $3 from each Undergrowth cocktail sale goes to the Rainforest Trust. Another cocktail of theirs, the Ritual, contains Bruichladdich single malt, salal berries, guava, XILA, sage, cow’s blood, and heart. The cow’s blood in this adventurous cocktail is a resourceful way of using the half pint that is left from butchering a heart. The blood is cooked with single malt scotch, blended, and then sweetened and stabilized before being used in the drink for minerality and umami. A portion ($3) of the sales of the drink also support a good cause, in this case the Downtown Eastside Women’s Centre.
Finally, Riley’s Fish and Steak (recommended), in addition to careful local sourcing (e.g., microgreens from Sky Harvest, a zero emissions company that delivers on bikes) also practices zero waste in their operations. The restaurant is part of the Waterfront Centre, which, in 2022, received the designation of being a Zero Waste Building. Riley’s therefore works to meet Zero Waste in their business, using the building’s Recycle Smart service as a way of tracking all their waste diversion.
In short, Vancouver’s MICHELIN restaurants not only serve high quality food, they also do so in ethical, sustainable ways