I ruddy love corn. Popcorn, sweetcorn out of a tin, corn on the cob – you name a corny foodstuff and the chances are I’ll be into it. Even if it does leave me picking at my teeth for the rest of the day, it’s worth it for that crunchy, buttery, addictive goodness. Gimme! Anyway, […]

I have always been fascinated by octopus. I remember eating it on family holidays to Spain as a child, usually pickled or coated in oil and at the end of a cocktail stick, pleasingly chewy. I delighted in the texture of the tentacles – their beautiful gruesomeness, tinged with purple. I loved the way they […]

Nowhere does blueberries quite like BC, and at the moment it is the season, so I am loving all the local bakeries with their blueberry pies – bursting at their golden, cross-hatched pastry seams with molten purple sweetness. Because they are in season, and plentiful, they are also very easy to come by: big, heaving […]

So it’s been three weeks since I’ve been living in Vancouver and I thought it was about time I wrote a ruddy blog. Sorry for the delay, but the truth is, I’ve been having something of a summer holiday. The weather, which has now turned – and all the Vancouverites, bless their delicate souls, are […]

From Victoria, we headed up the island’s only highway for just over four hours (with a quick wild swim in Lake Sproat) until we reached Tofino – a small surfer wilderness town with incredible beaches and, as we’d discover, an equally impressive food scene. Tofino has a population of about 2000 (though this swells like […]

I was definitely expecting Vancouver to have a cracking food scene, given its location on the West Coast (some have called it the ‘original’ Portland), all the different cultural influences and the fact it’s a major city. But what I was less prepared for was how good the food would be over on Vancouver Island, […]

A week ago today I was dancing to Daft Punk (and then later, and much more sexily, to Right Said Fred) in the Tiki bar at the Waldorf Hotel in Vancouver, a pint of Aperol Spritz in my hand, my belly full from an incredible meal at Chinese brasserie Bao Bei (more on that soon), […]

When I was about 12, my camcorder was one of my most treasured possessions. I would spend hours with long-suffering friends encouraging them film me as I mimed along to 90s abominations like like Meredith Brooks’ ‘Bitch’, wearing outfits (watch out Teen Vogue) like the above. To put it bluntly, I was a massive show […]