Our food tour with Context Travel was set for 3 pm on a Saturday afternoon in December. Hoping for a sunny day or at least a dry day, our wishes were disregarded as the rain came pouring down.
Making our way to Yaletown, we met our guide, Kimberley, in front of a local coffee shop. The three of us walked to the nearby dock and hopped on a water taxi heading towards Granville Island.
During this short boat ride, we learned how Context Travel came to be. Started by a husband and wife team who spent over two years sailing the Atlantic, it began as a single city, small group tour after they landed in Rome and met a knowledgeable group of professors, native Romans, writers, etc… More than 15 years later it has grown to over 60 cities across 6 continents.
By the time we docked at Granville Island, the rain had settled and we put our umbrellas away. As we stood by the water listening to Kimberley give us the low down on historical facts about the island, she pulled out what would be our first taste of Granville Island, a buttery croissant oozing with decadent almond and chocolate filling from A Bread Affair, another husband and wife venture.
We soon realized that that was a theme with vendors in the Granville public market, there are fifty permanent vendors and 100 daytime vendors, most are family-run businesses, some new, some passed down through generations.
Granville Island was once nothing but two sandbars, seasonally inhabited by Indigenous people who would use the sandbars for fishing and gatherings. Since then it has been filled in with mud dredged from False Creek to make it a proper island, it has been home to 40 industrial companies at its height in the 1930s and has seen those companies manufacture defence equipment during WWII. After the Depression and a less glorious period, the island, which is owned by the federal government, began a transformation that would see it become the community hub it is today, with over 12 million visitors a year translating into 215 million dollars.
Our first stop once inside the public market was Seafood City, started by an ex-TV repairman, this shop is stocked to the rafters with local fish. They have an amazing selection of spring and sockeye salmon in all forms of smoky deliciousness from maple nuggets to smoked dry chilli but one of my personal favourites at this stall was the hand peeled shrimp, tender morsels of sweet treats from the ocean.
Some other interesting foods we tried:
– Bon Macaron‘s traditional French macarons in some pretty innovative flavours such as goat cheese & fig and rose & lychee.
– The Nut Merchant‘s Raspberry Almonds and Lime Sriracha Cashews.
– Vancouver Olive Oil Company‘s Blood Orange Infused Olive Oil and their Coffee-Infused Balsamic Vinegar. They also make a very toothsome White Balsamic made with Gravenstein apples.
– Oyama‘s Orange Confit Salami, Spicy Elk Salami and Bison Pepperoni.
One of the stalls that impressed me the most was Laurelle’s Fine Foods. Opened in 1990 by Laurelle, and her husband Alvin, after she was inspired by European bakeries during her travels. What they created is a homey shop with over 150 homemade items, made on-premises. On offer is a myriad of ready-to-eat meals, savoury rolls, pies and pastries, including some of the best Nanaimo bars I’ve ever tasted and some addictive chicken curry pockets.
Kimberley let us roam around on our own for a bit while she prepared a picnic of items she collected ahead of time. It was a nice break and gave us a chance to chat and have a few laughs.
Two and a half hours later, the tour was over and our stomachs were full. Leaving the public market, Kimberley led us to The Liberty Distillery where she bid us farewell and let us wind down with a delicious cocktail.
A side note about Context Travel, tours are not scripted, each tour is created by the individual guide. This means that you could take the same tour several times with different guides and get a different perspective each time.
Disclosure: Context Travel invited us to take and review one of their tours. We picked the tour, the opinions in this post are our own.
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