EAT! Vancouver Food + Cooking Festival

This past weekend I was lucky enough to attend EAT! Vancouver food and cooking festival with my good friend Lena which took place at the new Vancouver Convention Centre. We had a fabulous day sampling from a smorgasbord of food and drink from local food and beverage companies and restaurants.

The two main highlights we saw were 1. a cooking demonstration by Dale MacKay from Top Chef Canada and 2. getting into a cocktail workshop for free by the Amy Elliott "mobile craft cocktail entertainment group".  I would describe this last group as basically a bunch of young, good looking guys dressed to kill making classic cocktails and cracking witty jokes. These guys would be great if I ever need to organize a stagette, note to self.

All in all we had a great time, and got a good buzz on at 11am thanks to the Amy Elliott guys but I have to say that I was fairly disappointed with the lack of "green thinking" that went into this event. Everywhere I looked I saw an overwhelming amount of packaging being discarded. The worse was when I saw one vender putting 1 chip each into a plastic cup, YIKES! In all fairness I did see some companies using bamboo and a few other more sustainable packaging options and kudos to them but still, I hope to see next years event a little greener.

Chef Dale MacKay cooking things up

Smokin Hot Drinks

Getting a buzz on at 11am is always a great way to start a weekend

Amy Elliott boys and no, its not Movember, just growing it for the Canucks

Me (left) and Lena (right) in front of Douglas Coupland's Digital Orca sculpture

Yummy lattes but not a fan of all the packaging