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..... Also my uncle from BC visited us recently and we took him to have Cape Verdean food for the first time here in Boston, so if that is available in Vancouver I would love to pass along the name of a restaurant or vendor so he could have it closer to home.
Heh. I had to look up Cape Verde to find out what and where it is. A little group of islands stuck out in the Atlantic near Africa. The country has a population of 567,000 and the ethnic demographics are Creole (mulatto) 71%, African 28%, European 1% and the official language is Portuguese.
According to wiki, unofficial estimates by Cape Verdean community leaders and officials put the total Cape Verdean-Canadian population spread out throughout Canada at 4,000. Toronto is listed as having the highest population of Cape Verdeans in one city, approximately 300 - 500, less in Montreal and less again in Vancouver. The population in Toronto has become large enough to create a Caboverdeano Club in Toronto and they support Cape Verdean restaurants there.
So I'm thinking with such a small Cape Verdean population in all of Canada if I wanted to find authentic Cape Verdean food in Vancouver I would probably have to be invited to the home of a resident Cape Verdean who would prepare it themself in their home. Perhaps the Culinaria Restaurant in Vancouver serves some version of Cape Verdean food.
Now if your uncle is looking for good authentic Portuguese food here's a very nice Portuguese restaurant that I'd recommend, Sagre's located in Maple Ridge. Truly excellent food and very kind and attentive hosts.
let's see, i was in Vancouver for 6 month increments for a couple yrs in a row, and these are foods that are very hard to "take advantage of" here in CA:
- British foods & confectionary (that are actually sold in mainstream grocery stores)
- Malaysian, Indonesian, Ethiopian, Euro-style brunch places selling Belgian waffles
- interesting flavored potato chip flavors that certainly suggest Canadians are more open with their food tastes! (and are more like the British and Australians in this regard)
Mind you there's plenty of American foods you cant find up there, on the other hand...but my point is that it was very very easy to access all types of ethnic foodstuff in the mainstream supermarkets than even here in CA (where you often still have to go to specialty ethnic supermarkets), so it suggests to me not only the demographic correlation, but the general acceptance of these items into the mainstream culture...I do not think you can deny that Canadians of all shapes and forms and colors, are very open-minded in many regards, including the openness to ethnic foods....I noticed this same thing in the UK too, where imo the people are far more adventurous and quite a few yrs ahead of the US in openness to all ethnic food besides Mexican or Thai.
I also detest places in most of the US outside the West Coast with the "Chinese" restaurants that also serve Thai, Japanese & Mongolian cuisine under the same roof! That is a joke, and this is something that I didnt see in Canada, somebody correct me if I'm wrong!
Honestly dude, where do you live?
Just off the top of my head, here in Boston/Cambridge which is a very good food city, but definitely not on par with places like NYC, Chicago and SF IMO we can cover all those categories really easily. Just to link one of each, because there isnt a need to search all of them.
Belgian Waffles: Saus - Home
Once again, really easy to find Belgian Waffles in so many places.
British Foods: I spent some time living in Orlando Florida and they have a huge British community that own Real Estate in the area, so the grocery stores as stocked with British food items. The mainstream grocery store I shop at locally in Cambridge has a very nice British food isle, which is right next to the chocolate section where I can get my Aero, Coffee Crisp fix that I missed from Canada.
So I guess I just do not live in the same America as you or maybe you are not exploring your community well enough. I would recommend posting on Chowhound for your local area and I am sure they will help you find what you are looking for.
As far as interesting potato chip flavors, yes there are some cool flavors I recently saw when visiting my family in Toronto recently, especially the PC brands at Loblaws.
The fact you call that adventurous though kind of caught me off guard, as someone that grew up in an ethnic household we eat many parts of the animal that most White Bread Canadians would find revolting, but on the flip side are standard fare in the Southern US and a part of their cuisine. So my definition of open is probably very different from yours.
The Food is as good as the music. It is their unique take on Portuguese, probably a mix of Brazilian and Azorean if I was to categorize it. Alot of stews like in the Azores, but even more heavily seasoned and flavored.
Heh. I had to look up Cape Verde to find out what and where it is. A little group of islands stuck out in the Atlantic near Africa. The country has a population of 567,000 and the ethnic demographics are Creole (mulatto) 71%, African 28%, European 1% and the official language is Portuguese.
According to wiki, unofficial estimates by Cape Verdean community leaders and officials put the total Cape Verdean-Canadian population spread out throughout Canada at 4,000. Toronto is listed as having the highest population of Cape Verdeans in one city, approximately 300 - 500, less in Montreal and less again in Vancouver. The population in Toronto has become large enough to create a Caboverdeano Club in Toronto and they support Cape Verdean restaurants there.
So I'm thinking with such a small Cape Verdean population in all of Canada if I wanted to find authentic Cape Verdean food in Vancouver I would probably have to be invited to the home of a resident Cape Verdean who would prepare it themself in their home. Perhaps the Culinaria Restaurant in Vancouver serves some version of Cape Verdean food.
Now if your uncle is looking for good authentic Portuguese food here's a very nice Portuguese restaurant that I'd recommend, Sagre's located in Maple Ridge. Truly excellent food and very kind and attentive hosts.
Thanks Zoisite, I will pass along the Portuguese rec to him and I know for a fact that cities like Toronto and Montreal have excellent Portuguese food, so it doesnt surprise me that Vancouver would be the same.
As far as Cape Verdean is concerned I like to use it as an example because personally I had never tried in until I moved to New England a few years ago. There are an estimated 500,000 people of Cape Verdean descent in the United States with 430,000 of them living in either Massachusetts or Rhode Island (Cape Verdean American - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia)
So when I saw this topic I thought back to myself an Immigrant with an adventurous taste in food that lived in a very diverse city like Toronto and never tasting the food of Cape Verde or even meeting a Cape Verdean person until I moved here. It shows that both Americans and Canadians have quite a bit to teach each other when it comes to food and neither can claim to be more open minded or culturally exposed than the other. Saying that would just be ridiculous.
"We eat lots of ethnic food here in Canada, you guys just eat hamburgers."
"Well good for you, but we eat more than just..."
"Our grocery stores are packed with international products, it's because we have so many foreigners here."
"We have foreigners, in fact there's more foreign born people in the US than there are people in..."
"Why do you complain so much?"
"What are you talking about?"
"When you go overseas, when you can't find a hot dog."
"What..."
"My Uncle lives in Podunk Manitoba and even they got a chinese restaurant. Vancouver's got a Food Festival! It's because we're so ethnic up here."
"Congratulations, but that doesn't mean that we don't also have a wide variety of..."
"Our potato chips are better."
"Wait a second, you're saying you've got better potato chips than us? I mean they were invented here for Moderator: snip - language , I have a hard time believing..."
"Even the Brits and the Aussies got better potato chips than you. If you weren't so closed minded maybe your potato chips would be better."
Last edited by sunshineleith; 01-23-2012 at 04:59 AM..
"We eat lots of ethnic food here in Canada, you guys just eat hamburgers."
"Well good for you, but we eat more than just..."
"Our grocery stores are packed with international products, it's because we have so many foreigners here."
"We have foreigners, in fact there's more foreign born people in the US than there are people in..."
"Why do you complain so much?"
"What are you talking about?"
"When you go overseas, when you can't find a hot dog."
"What..."
"My Uncle lives in Podunk Manitoba and even they got a chinese restaurant. Vancouver's got a Food Festival! It's because we're so ethnic up here."
"Congratulations, but that doesn't mean that we don't also have a wide variety of..."
"Our potato chips are better."
"Wait a second, you're saying you've got better potato chips than us? I mean they were invented here for Moderator: snip - language , I have a hard time believing..."
"Even the Brits and the Aussies got better potato chips than you. If you weren't so closed minded maybe your potato chips would be better."
And we have Poutine too .... lots and lots of different flavours!!! And .... and .... and a Chinese New Year festival with a big parade and Scottish bagpipers in it ... and ... and .... and Natives banging drums!!!!! And soldiers marching!! ... and .... and Russian Ballet Dancers dancing in the rain in the parade throwing fire crackers and fortune cookies at people!!!
I also detest places in most of the US outside the West Coast with the "Chinese" restaurants that also serve Thai, Japanese & Mongolian cuisine under the same roof! That is a joke, and this is something that I didnt see in Canada, somebody correct me if I'm wrong!
There are many restaurants like this across Canada as well.
General comment: the insinuation that somehow food offerings are automatically more diverse and interesting once you cross the border going north is absurd to anyone who is not a hyper-smug Canadian or an American with a weird crush of his neighbours to the north.
There are plenty of grocery stores in towns and small cities in Canada where you might even be hard-pressed to find brie and prosciutto in the cheese and meat sections.
One point though is that because Canada a) takes in more immigrants proportionately to population than the U.S. and b) immigrants to Canada have fewer cities to choose from than in the U.S., there is more of a "drill down" to smaller (generally medium sized) cities when it comes to immigration. So places like Regina, Saskatchewan end up with more immigrants than say Fargo, North Dakota. Ottawa and Calgary are more diverse than Buffalo or Columbus, Ohio. So in that sense, sure maybe in some instances you might have some more dining options from certain communities that have settled in those Canadian cities recently.
But that doesn't mean that dining in Sudbury, Ontario is automatically better than in Austin, Texas.
Geez Louise....why the big competition over who eats more "ethnic" foods. The fact that it's even an argument shows that neither country is as cosmopolitan and "ethnic" as it thinks it is ....if they were truly diverse then "ethnic" would equate to "normal" and there would be no need for boasting about who is more "ethnic" than who. Obviously "ethnic" still equates to exotic and cool in both countries.
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