When the weather outside gets frightful, Vancouverites celebrate with food festivals! We’ve got hot chocolate, food trucks, and for the second year, the Vancouver Soup Festival presented by Vancouver Foodster.
Vancouver Soup Festival
Until February 2, 2020 participating restaurants will feature different soups each week and you are invited to visit, order, savour, and then VOTE for your People’s Choice favouritesfrom each week’s offerings.
Vancouver Foodster will have 3 sets of winners each week. You can pick your favourites based on originality, creativity, uniqueness, traditional, non-traditional, price, value and most importantly taste. Vegan, gluten free, noodles or none, spicy or creamy – have fun trying them all!
Participants
The Chopped Leaf (488 Robson St) Week 1: Mexicali (a hearty soup made with tomatoes, black beans, onions, banana peppers, jalapeno peppers, garlic & spices) Week 2: Tuscan Kale (a vegetable medley made with tomatoes, onion, celery, carrots, kale, lemon juice & spices) Week 3: Spicy Creamy Tomato (a smooth and savoury base kicks a classic tomato flavour up a notch.
Mi Casa Mexicana (2015 Burrard St) Week 1: Birria de Res (from the Jalisco region of Mexico this soup features beef stew, cilantro, onion, lime, corn tortillas and salsa roja) Week 2: Mole de Olla (from the Mexico City region this soup features beef, zucchini, green beans, corn, cilantro, onion, lime, corn tortillas and salsa roja) Week 3: Pozole Rojo (from the Mexico City region this soup features corn hominy, chicken/pork broth, onion, lettuce, radish, oregano, lime. Served with tostadas, sour cream, and spicy salsa pozolera)
Follow @VanFoodster on Twitter for the latest flavours and voting info.
Where: The Annex (823 Seymour St, Vancouver) When: January 29 to February 2, 2020 various times (3 shows January 31st) Tickets: Available online now starting at $39
The Fever – Photo by Waleed Shah
How much can we trust other people? How do we form our conceptions of them? What does it take for us to work together? The Fever takes issues like these and makes them the stuff of riveting theatre. It all begins with the character of Marianne, who has just held a party; from there, the performance builds into a study of community, caring and mutual reliance. Along the way, limits will be tested and bonds will form.
In these times of cultural fragmentation and heavy discord, art about the ways we work with—and against—each other has a special relevance, a special value. Don’t expect anything didactic from this piece, however; it doesn’t so much promote unity as enact it on the spot. That’s about as much as can be said without spoiling the many surprises in store…
The PuSh International Performing Arts Festival runs January 21 to February 9, 2020. Follow along on Facebook and Twitter for more info.
Date Night Giveaway
I have a pair of tickets to give away to The Fever along with a $75 gift certificate for dinner at Cibo Trattoria!
Cibo Trattoria serves up authentic Italian cuisine prepared in a traditional manner with ethically sourced, seasonal and local ingredients and showcases rustic elegance on each plate.
[clickToTweet tweet=”RT to enter to win a @pushfestival date night giveaway with tickets to @600hwm THE FEVER and $75 for @cibotrattoria http://ow.ly/uBca30qa2Zn” quote=” Click to enter via Twitter” theme=”style6″]
The winner will be able to choose their performance date/time. I will draw one winner at random from all entries at 12:00pm on Thursday, January 23, 2020. UPDATE The winner is Andrea!
The Vancouver Chinatown Spring Festival is celebrating the 47th Vancouver Chinese New Year Parade, which will ring in the Year of the Rat on a Chinese Lunar Calendar. The parade festivities will feature lion dances, cultural dance troupes, marching bands, martial arts performances and much more.
When: Sunday, January 26, 2020 at 11:00am Parade Route: The 1.3-km long route starts at the Millennium Gate on Pender St (between Shanghai Alley and Taylor St), proceeds east along Pender St, turns south onto Gore St, turns west onto Keefer St and then disperses on Keefer at Abbott.
The parade will feature over 70 entries, bringing in over 3,000 participants from various community and cultural groups. The multicultural dance troupes represent the diverse segments of our Canadian cultural heritage such as the Vancouver Police Department Motorcycle Drill Team, marching bands and various community groups. The parade draws over 100,000 spectators along the route each year!
Post-Parade Lion Dances
As a Chinese New Year tradition to promote good fortune for the year, some lions will be visiting the shops and businesses in Chinatown. The lions will perform a celebratory dance at each participating shop to bring good luck and prosperity (2:00pm to 4:00pm).
Vancouver Chinatown Spring Festival – Cultural Fair
By popular demand, the Cultural Fair will be held on both days over the weekend on January 25th and 26th. Enjoy multicultural performances, special lion dance grand finale, martial arts demonstration and more at the Sun Yat-Sen Plaza (50 East Pender St) each day from 2:00pm to 4:00pm.
All of these events are free for all in the community. For more info, follow #vanspringfestival on Twitter and Instagram.
Clear your vehicles, dust off your skates, and perhaps grab your umbrella. A thaw is coming this weekend and if you’re able to get out and about once the snow clears, here are some events to enjoy. It’s also the last weekend of Lights at Lafarge in Coquitlam – this and more things to do in Vancouver this weekend listed below:
The Cherie Smith JCC Jewish Book Festival will warm up your winter nights with an exciting roster of writers from across Canada, the US, Israel and South Africa.
35th Annual JCC Jewish Book Festival
When: February 8 to 13, 2020 Tickets: Available online now » Where: Most events take place at the Jewish Community Centre of Greater Vancouver(950 West 41st Ave at Oak), as well as in outreach locations in the Lower Mainland.
The six days of the Festival are packed with inspiring and entertaining literary events including unique meet-the-author opportunities, readings and panel discussions, the annual book club event, children’s and youth authors, wellness subjects and two onsite bookstores new and used, open throughout the week.
There is something of interest for every age group and literary taste. Featured 2020 Festival authors will include:
Opening Night Gala with GARY SHTEYNGART, the incredibly funny and incredibly smart master of satire, in conversation with Lisa Christiansen about his biting and timely novel Lake Success; an interdisciplinary Closing Night with JAMIE BERNSTEIN, daughter of revered composer-conductor Leonard Bernstein. Her memoir Famous Father Girl invites us into the family’s private world where, with the help of guest musicians, she will offer us a rare look at her father around the centennial of his birth.
Winner of the 2019 Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature MICHAEL DAVID LUKAS will talk about his fascinating historical fiction novel The Last Watchman of Cairofollowed by the documentary From Cairo to the Cloud by local filmmaker MICHELLE PAYMAR.
Local bestselling author DANIEL KALLA headlining our annual Book Clubs event with his latest novel We All Fall Down, a historical/medical thriller; BC ecologist and professor ALEJANDRO FRID arguing that merging science and Indigenous knowledge may be the only way to avert the imminent climate and biodiversity crises, in his book Changing Tides: An Ecologist‘s Journey to Make Peace with the Anthropocene.
Local historian HEIDI TWOREK with her brilliant new book News from Germany: The Competition to Control World Communications 1900-1945; eminent South African photographer and writer TERRY KURGAN, winner of the 2019 Sunday Times Alan Paton Non-fiction Award presenting her book Everyone is Present: Essays on Photography, Family and Memory, in our first partnership with the Polygon Gallery.
Israeli/Canadian writer GILA GREEN, author of novel in stories White Zion and YA novel No Entry. Local parenting expert ANNE ANDREW with her book What They Don‘t Teach in Prenatal Class; ALEXANDRA FRANKEL bringing forth a whimsical children’s book about diversity and acceptance From Neigh to Zebra. Former Vancouverite ANNA MEHLER PAPERNY with her vibrant, compelling memoir Hello I Want to Die Please Fix Meand many other authors, events and genres.
Follow the Jewish Community Centre on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram for more info about this festival and more.
Win Tickets
Jamie Bernstein photo by Steve J Sherman
I have a pair of tickets to give away to the closing night event with Jamie Bernstein on February 13 at 7:30pm. In this deeply intimate and broadly evocative memoir (Famous Father Girl: A Memoir of Growing Up Bernstein) the eldest daughter of revered composer/conductor Leonard Bernstein offers a rare look at her father around the centennial of his birth. Jamie will be joined by UBC School of Music singers and pianists to bring to life some of her father’s lyrical works, with an overarching social justice theme.
Here’s how you can enter to win:
Leave a comment on this post (1 entry)
Click below to post an entry on Twitter
[clickToTweet tweet=”RT to enter to win tickets to see @jamiebnyc at the @JCCVancouver 35th annual Jewish Book Festival http://ow.ly/IjXQ30q9NFT” quote=” Click to enter via Twitter” theme=”style6″]
I will draw one winner at random from all entries at 12:00pm on Wednesday, January 22, 2020. UPDATE: The winner is Colleen!
