Foodie Tour, Food Cart Edition

For my birthday J got us passes for a Foodie Tour, food cart edition. Foodie tour was created by Michelle Ng to showcase some of the best food Vancouver has to offer. Her love of food and passion to share her food experiences brought this concept to food lovers, while local restaurants are able to showcase their most famous dish. The food cart edition is one of the two tours she has to offer at this time.  If you watch the foodnetwork as much as I do then you’ll know that food carts have taken off all over North America. Vancouver unfortunately had some pretty archaic bylaws around street food. So up until about 2 years ago all you would be able to find were regular old hotdog stands. Last year the city approved 17 food carts to operate in the downtown core in a controversial lottery pool. Since then there has been many more added to the list. Each year the city will approve more, making our lunch options much more diverse.

Foodie Tour showcases some of the top food carts Vancouver has to offer. For roughly $50.00 you can travel around downtown by foot hearing all about how the food carts started, stories behind the chefs, and sample an assortment of what they have to offer. You get to eat a half portion of 5 different carts in the span of 3 about hours.

Our first stop was Japadog. This is one of the original “foodie” carts in Vancouver that offers something a little more than your average hotdog.  In 2006, before Vancouver even had an inkling that there was a food cart trend on the horizon, Noriki Tamura moved to Vancouver to open a crape stand. Unfortunately, his dreams were cut short due to our limiting laws and he would never see success through the crepe industry. Instead he decided to pursue his dream with the hotdog but with a twist. He introduced Vancouver to a new breed of hotdog that would fuse the traditional hotdog stand with Japanese food.  On the tour we got to try the original terimayo dog which is 100% beef hotdog topped with Japanese mayo, teriyaki sauce, onion and thinly sliced Nori flakes.

I am really glad Japadog was on the tour because I am not sure I would have gotten this on my own. I thought japadog was a trend because it was “new” but my naivety was quickly replaced with  awe after first bite. It was the ultimate pairing between a boring North American hot dog and Japanese Sushi. The hot dog wasn’t lost in flavour at all and then you got the yummy bits of Nori that made you almost feel you were eating sushi. I really liked this and would definitely return for another.

Our second stop was the Finest at Sea cart. This is like the little sister of the Finest at Sea restaurant on Arbutas street.  Our guide let us know that her favourite items on this menu would be the Dungeness crab cocktail and the halibut roll. We all got to try the halibut roll and also their green tea ginger and lime lemonade.

The first thing I did when I saw this was smell it and even though I just ate a half of a japadog 10 min earlier my mouth immediately start to salivate. This was a grilled chunk of curried halibut, eggplant, crispy coleslaw wrapped in warmed naan bread.  There was a lot of turmeric in this wrap, which made the colour a vibrant shade of yellow, so if you don’t prefer turmeric this may not be your thing. I, on the other hand, really enjoyed this. The flavour was as vibrant as the colour and the crunch and zing of the coleslaw really made everything come together.

Their green tea ginger and lime lemonade was also really refreshing. It had the reminiscent of Starbucks shaken green tea lemonade but I found this one to be much lighter in flavour. I have always enjoyed Starbucks version but it was also a little too sweet and too tart so I have now found the perfect alternative.

Next up was Kaboom Box. This is a bright red food cart covered in signatures, thank yous and tags from people who have enjoyed the food. They have a smoker right in their cart that makes their famous salmon sandwich come alive. This cart is run by some super fun outgoing people who love the food as much as their jobs. We sampled their Smoked Salmon sandwich, which, as I mentioned, is smoked right on the cart. Served on a fresh whole wheat bun with a touch of spicy mayo and their house made maple and mustard slaw.

Originally I thought that the halibut wrap was my favourite but now that I am home I am not so sure. I really can’t stop thinking about this salmon sandwich. The salmon was moist, which is key to a good salmon sandwich, and the mayo had the perfect amount of kick without being overly spicy. Kaboom box made a simple sandwich extraordinary.

Now that my stomach was starting to feel full we headed down to Nu Greek food cart which is another little sister cart, this time from Nu restaurant on Granville. I absolutely love Greek food so I was pretty excited about this particular cart. We got to try their lamb souvlaki pita which was grilled lamb with tzatziki sauce (grandma recipe), tomatoes, red onion on their house made pita bread.

Right at first bite I knew this pita was a winner. This had the perfect texture throughout, not too messy, chewy, smoky and tangy. I would even like to think that the tzatziki isn’t so garlicky that you could have this for lunch and go back to work without feeling like you need a pound of breath mints. The lamb was still moist and flavourful with a nice charring that added some smokiness to the pita as well.

We ended our tour with dessert at Bella Gelato which is one of the number one Gelato shops in BC. Bella Gelato is one of the only shops to use classic Italian equipment and the focus to use the highest quality ingredients. James, the owner and creator of Bella Gelato, studied in Italy to learn the true art of gelato making. Unfortunately as we walked up to Bella Gelato the cart was missing. James informed us it was moved to Holt Renfew and will probably stay there as people seem to love it. Even though it was a cart tour we entered the shop to taste what they had to offer.

While you’re there you can watch the gelato being made which increases the novelty of visiting the shop. They produce 300 flavours but will feature 18 of those flavours on any given day and 6 sorbets. My first sample was the chocolate bacon. I couldn’t resist sampling this flavour which was remarkably good. It was more of a cookies and cream with a hint of bacon. In the end I ordered the Lavender and was really happy with this flavour. It was ultra light, flowery and sweet. J ordered the salted caramel and I was eating his just as fast as eating my own. A richer flavour with a very even sweet to salty taste.

The foodietour was now at an end and I was a little sad, although I don’t think I could have eaten another morsel of food but I was having so much fun eating and talking. The tour was a great experience, especially if you want to try out food carts and can’t decide on where to start. Foodietour also does a Granville restaurant tour as well which would as much fun if not more. Thanks Michelle for coming up with such a great concept. I am sure you’ll see me on another one!