Lunch in Vancouver

As I mentioned yesterday, I spent all Wednesday in transit making our way from New York City to Prince Rupert in northern British Columbia (Canada).

Along the way, we had a 7 hour layover in Vancouver Airport (YVR), so we decided to spend most of it in beautiful downtown Vancouver instead of the mediocre Air Canada airport lounge.

Getting from the airport to the city center was remarkably easy. We could have taken a taxi (about $35-40 one way), but we had checked my car seat all the way through to Prince Rupert. Besides, adding $75-80 in cab fare to your lunch makes it one very expensive meal!

But luckily, Canada is very green and social-minded, so the Airport had a shuttle SkyTrain that took you to the Vancouver Waterfront in about 30 minutes for C$8.75 (or about $9 USD) per person each way.

However, because Canadians are such amazingly friendly & helpful people, a few of them gave us a tip before we bought SkyTrain tickets.

Apparently, if you head down to the 1st floor (Gates are 3rd floor and Baggage Claim/Exit is on the 2nd floor), you'll find a 7-11. Inside, you can purchase a SkyTrain Day Pass for only $9.75/person that will let you ride the metro all day for as much as you want.

So instead of spending ~$80 for a roundtrip taxi ride or $36 for a roundtrip SkyTrain shuttle, we bought 2 Day Passes for less than $20 total. You know how my parents love  to save money! Having such a cheap way of going into Vancouver for lunch made eating overpriced restaurant sandwiches that much more attractive.

But when we arrived to the station, we found that the gates didn't have anywhere to swipe the passes. In fact, the gates were wide open allowing anyone to just walk through. Maybe they were all broken, but more than likely I suspected that these Canadians had some sort of Honor Code thing going on.

But we were told that you had to (A) validate your Day Pass at one of the machines so the "24 hr clock would start" and (B) hang onto our Day Pass while on the train in case the police started checking you while on board.

So after getting off at Waterfront station, we started to walk around aimlessly looking for what my father would call a "local Vancouver favorite" place to eat. Unfortunately, our Verizon international roaming data package was expensive enough to limit my father's blackberry usage so we were a bit lost.

Again, the friendly Canadians come to the rescue. As soon as we opened our map, we had no less than 2 older gentlemen rush up to my father to see how they could offer help. That's exactly what happens in our home city, right New Yorkers?

The first elderly man shoo'ed away the 2nd elderly man. The stranger was nice enough, but his good intentions overshadowed his ability to give us a solid recommendation. Despite my father clearly looking Asian, the man suggested we go for Asian food, claiming Vancouver food was very Asian-centric.

My father hung his head a little in disappointment, because he was hoping Vancouver had it's own special food. He loves eating the local food wherever he goes (ribs in Memphis, chili in Cincinnati, gumbo in New Orleans, TexMex in Texas, lobster in Maine), but doesn't care for generic food that he can easily find in NYC. After hearing the gentlemen rattle off some Chinese/Sushi/Thai options, my father thanked him and started walking towards the water.

After taking a few photos, we turned around and head back to the busy street we walked up when low and behold, the grandfatherly gentleman saw us and smiled. He said he was happy to run into us again, because he remembered a "very Vancouver" restaurant called Cactus Club Cafe. He raved about the salmon dish (even though salmon harvest isn't for another month or so).

We were getting hungry, so we decided to go to Cactus Club Cafe. The man said there was one near the Vancouver Convention Center by the water (D on the map below). My parents thanked him and started heading in that general vicinity, but then my father opened up his Google Maps on his Blackberry and found another location in the other direction (A on the map).


I didn't have anything, but my parents said the food was indeed pretty good. Overall, it reminded me of a Houston's (aka Hillstone for my NYC friends). My father had the Soy Dijon Ocean Wise Salmon and my mother had a BBQ Duck Clubhouse Sandwich & fries. The salmon tasted quite fresh, and the pieces just fell off your fork. The tangy sauce really complimented the fish and made for quite a flavorful taste. My mother's savory duck sandwich was excellent as well. It was so tasty that my father tried a bite even though the bread had raisins in it (one of his ultimate food enemies).

As we left, I started to think about why my father made us go to the Cactus Club Cafe on Burrard St instead of at the Convention Center. He didn't really explain why, but I surmised that it was to avoid having the now creepy old man know where we'd be eating.