Love & Hate - My Top 10 Vancouver Food Trends

Grain of salt required, please. This rant is coming from a wine nerd and chef that finds it a little too easy to get a touch of the rage.  I was raised in the West End, so I've watched Vancouver's food culture blossom like an atom bomb.  Here they are...Vancity food trends that put a bee in my bonnet or a zip in my sip...

1. The Continuous Gastown Food Explosion! - Lukewarm - It's great, but lets clean up Commercial Drive before we put ANOTHER tiny, hipster eatery into Gastown please.  Commercial Drive should be like Gastown, shouldn't it? It's got the best groceries and delis in town, why not the best selection of restaurants?  It baffles me.
2. Glutards - I only hate the pretend ones - It's unbelievably annoying to cook for fake gluten intolerant guests.  You take half your bloody day to make a separate lasagna with rice noodles or whatever.  Anddd... they eat the tasty real noodle version and leaving a tiny portion for the rest of us normal folk.  Sigh.
3. Paleo Diet - Hate it! -Eat like a caveman, hmmm.  No processed foods, grains, dairy or fun!  Just eat meat all the time, cause that's super healthy and great for the environment.
4. $17 tiny pizzas - Starting to hate it - Nicli, Nook, Campagnolo, Barbarella, Farina, you're all making very tasty pies, but you're starting to inch your prices up a titch too much.  A sliver of dough with a smattering of tomato sauce and 9 artfully placed pieces of bacon and arugala is not worth $17 bucks.  You're making a killing, so maybe I'm jealous.
5. Steak Frites - Hate it - It's boring.  We think of it as 'fancy food', ridiculous! Just because it's written in French doesn't mean I should pay $25 bucks for steak and chips.
6. The death of fine dining - Hate it! - Take off your running shoes everyone! Come on Vancouver, sometimes it's nice just to get gussied up, go out and be served like a king?  With the exit of Lumiere and many others, it's sad to see all of our new restaurants in the bistro category. 
7. Asian Fusion - Still love it! - Bao Bei, Fat Dragon, Wild Rice - This cuisine IS Vancouver, we need more of it!  Barbecue pork, potstickers, dim sum, more, more!
8. Man-Food - Starting to hate it - Meat & Bread style eateries.  Have you ever noticed how a ton of our new restaurants/butcher sandwich shops are throwing the salad out the window in favour of a thick slab of braised pork ass?  Bring the salad back, someone, quick before my heart stops.
9. Hot & Sticky foods - Lukewarm - Pomegranate, dates, figs - Meh - Dates stuffed with goat cheese, um.. I can't taste the cheese anymore, my filling is screaming at me. Pomagranates, tasty but yesterday's news, super not local. Figs, still love em, the green ones are local even.  Bake them slowly with a dash of a good balsamic and then serve them with Tiger Blue, BC cheese. 
10. The Death of Sweet Wine - Hate it! - As much as Salt Tasting Room tries to promote it's sherry selection, it's still not catching on.  Joey's wine bar for example, has not one even off-dry wine on offer.  A good German riesling like Balthasar Ries would be fine.  JUST ONE!  Why do we hate anything that's even slightly sweet?  Brainwashing and memories of Blue Nun, I guess.