Start your Vancouver holiday with coconut buns and jasmine tea in bustling Chinatown. At lunchtime, fill up on rich French onion soup in a Kitsilano bistro or try other European restaurants in Vancouver's beach-side neighbourhood. Try some exotic sliced eel, flavoured with wasabi horseradish at an all-you-can-eat sushi restaurant in Downtown Vancouver.
Spend your dollars on gourmet delicacies in North Vancouver, where many new upmarket Vancouver restaurants have recently opened. If there's a latent hippie within you, you'll like Kitsilano, where yoga-practising locals sip organic smoothies at healthy Vancouver eateries. Sample desserts at a Kerrisdale bakery, or sit down for spicy coconut curries and lemon-grass noodles at a Thai restaurant in Vancouver's Chinatown, where there are hundreds of Asian eateries.
Most Vancouver restaurants and bars pay the minimum wage, so you'll be expected to tip Vancouver's restaurant and bar staff around 15%. It's always wise to book a table at Vancouver restaurants, but bars will generally offer tables for those sitting to eat. Slurping is OK - as long as you're eating noodles at a Japanese or Chinese restaurant. Vancouver bars stop serving drinks at 2am and close at 3am - so drink up!
Take an enchanting stroll through Gastown and choose between the highly sophisticated or trendily gritty bars in Vancouver's oldest district. Get silly on a bouncing dance floor in a Granville Street nightclub, drinking cocktails to cool down. For a low-key Vancouver experience, unwind in a blues bar in Hastings West.
