Barbecue might not be the sort of cuisine you would expect to come out of Vancouver but the fact is, from Korea to Carolina, it is actually very well-represented in the city. One of the first places I heard of that prepared brisket and pulled pork in town years ago was Memphis Blues — which is finger-licking, fill your belly good.
Image courtesy of Memphis Blues Barbecue House
It’s known for its Southern style barbecue and massive portions like the Elvis Platter which includes ribs, sliced beef brisket, pulled pork, barbecue chicken, rib ends, and smoked sausage — Meatatarians rejoice! They also have catfish, oyster po’boys, BBQ nachos, BBQ poutine, smoked chicken, and a variety of salads.
Memphis Blues has expanded from locations on West Broadway (near Granville) and on Commercial Drive, to several neighbourhood restaurants including two in Surrey, one in Kelowna, and soon Robson Street downtown. You can also find them in Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba.
In July, Memphis Blues will be partnering with Okanagan Crush Pad Winery in Summerland for a BBQ on the outdoor patio that includes a tasting Haywire, Bartier Scholefield and Bartier Bros wines. If you can’t make it out to one of the restaurants or a special event, you can also pick up their sauces at a variety of local super markets like Nesters and Donald’s.
The Hillcrest Village location, on the border of Surrey and Langley along Fraser Highway, has graciously offered up a $50 gift card so that one of my readers can enjoy smokey, sticky, juicy barbecue with some friends and family. Here’s how you can enter to win:
- Leave a comment with your favourite menu item (or item you would like to try) (1 entry)
- Post the following on Twitter (1 entry)
Follow Memphis Blues BBQ House on Facebook and Twitter for more information. The $50 gift card is valid only at Hillcrest Memphis Blues, which is located at 302-18690 Fraser Highway in Surrey.
I will draw one winner at random from all entries at 12:00pm next Thursday, June 7, 2012. Update The winner is Meghan!
Vancouverites love their food, whether it comes from a truck, in a cone, wrapped in seaweed, or photographed on a plate. Richard Wolak of Vancouver Foodster has recently launched Food Talks, a new series that will bring foodies, food lovers, chefs, authors, and others together to discuss — you guessed it — food in Vancouver. The impressive line-up for the very first event, happening next week, starts the series off with a bang.
Speakers
Chef Trevor Bird (Twitter: @83TBird) opened his new restaurant Fable Kitchen in Kitsilano in May and also runs his own catering business, Trevor Bird Cooking. He has also still in the running for this season of Top Chef Canada on the Food Network.
Stephanie Yuen (Blog: BeyondChopsticks) is the Author of the Douglas & McIntyre published “East Meets West” Cookbook (released May 2012). She was a food columnist for CBC Radio 1, and she now writes for Edible Canada and What’s On magazine, contributes to the Vancouver Sun and appears frequently on radio and TV. Stephanie also co-founded the Vancouver Chinese Restaurant Awards.
Mike McDermid is the Ocean Wise Manager at the Vancouver Aquarium (Twitter: @Ocean_Wise), a conservation program created to educate and empower consumers about issues surrounding sustainable seafood. Ocean Wise works directly with restaurants and markets to help them make ocean-friendly buying decisions based on the most current scientific information, and provides an easily recognizable eco-logo to mark these products.
Hunter J. Moyes (Twitter: @hunterjmoyes) is currently one of the Chefs and event organizers behind East Vancouver’s Waldorf Hotel and is about to launch a non-profit organization called The Tiffin Project with a group of restaurants in Vancouver who’d like to see if they can try to phase out TO GO packaging in their businesses while raising money to subsidize their purchasing of local ingredients at the same time.
Roberta LaQuaglia (Twitter: @VanMarkets) is the Operations Manager for Vancouver Farmers Markets (VFM), a non-profit society that brings locally produced food to urban consumers through the creation of pop-up plazas of commerce across the city.
Tickets
The event will run from 7:00pm until 9:00pm at W2 Media Cafe (111 West Hastings). Tickets are available online now for $30 or $100 for a 4-person pack.
The evening will include appetizers from W2 Media Cafe, talks from the speakers, a question and answer period, and will wrap up with prize draws and a glass of red or white wine for participants. Food Talks also has a designated charity partner, Growing Chefs, who will receive partial proceeds from each ticket purchased.
The City of Surrey, known previously as the City of Parks, is gaining recognition for a new feature — public art. Under SkyTrain lines, in parks, and around growing urban centres, you can discover Surrey’s public art pieces through their ArtWalk mobile application.
Unfortunately once I turned off my location settings, the app set my location by default and I couldn’t view the entire city’s search results. That, or the rest of the city’s art pieces haven’t yet been entered into the app. Either way, the results I came up with were incomplete and only showed Gateway, Holland Park, and the Civic Centre area.
Online, you can search Surrey’s art listings by neighbourhood to find glass, mosaic, light modal pieces and all of the art located in public spaces. City Centre, Whalley, Fleetwood, Guildford, Newton, Cloverdale, and South Surrey are all listed.
The application was developed in partnership with the Virtual Museum of Canada, an initiative of the Department of Canadian Heritage. ArtWalk is available for free download for iPhone and Android right now. I’m not sure how old it is — I might have jumped the gun on promoting it — but I hope that other locations will soon be available on the map, regardless of current location, for the sake of trip planning.
The Whitecaps Foundation, the charitable arm of Vancouver Whitecaps FC, is hosting a special event at Grouse Mountain on Sunday, June 17, 2012 for Father’s Day.
The day will include lunch, soccer activities with Whitecaps FC players, Skyride views, and the Grouse Grind — if you and Dad are up for the challenge. The Whitecaps women’s team will be on site as well and there will be plenty of photo opportunities and the chance to get autographs.
Sign up for the Grouse Grind will begin at 10:00am, with the group climb starting at 10:30am. Those wishing to take the Skyride up can do so around 11:00am. Lunch and youth soccer activities will be between 11:30am and 1:00pm, with a group soccer event from 1:00pm to 2:00pm up on the ‘Peak of Vancouver’.
There will be a silent auction, benefitting the Whitecaps Foundation, and participants can enjoy everything else that Grouse Mountain has to offer.
Registration for the day is $195 for a family of four (2 adults, 2 youth), $90 per adult or $35 per youth. This includes lunch and all of the day’s activities.
If you are planning on doing the Grouse Grind be sure to prepare yourself for the 2.9km climb and wear suitable footwear.
The Google Street Views vehicle (or bike) can be seen capturing our streets and thoroughfares every now and then, updating its mapping systems. On occasion, the cameras pick up snapshots of daily life and that’s where Street View Funny comes in. They create an archive of some of the rare, odd, or humorous captures created by Google Street Views. This morning, they discovered the Vancouver Canucks in San Jose, hanging out by their bus in a shopping district.
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The scene was captured in May of 2011 so that would have been the time that Vancouver was playing San Jose. This has not been confirmed but fans are able to pick out a few of our players from this view.
Street View Funny has also featured Google Maps Street View archives of crimes in progress, wardrobe malfunctions, animals, and people “saluting” the street car camera in various ways. Each week they feature a Top 5 list but you can also search their most popular finds, sorted by date. Note: Some of the content is not suitable for younger audiences.
The last sighting of the Google Street Views cameras locally was at Langara College as they became a part of the Google Campus Mapping project.
Thanks to @StreetViewFunny for sending me a message about this.
