I've been joking lately with Andrew Morrison at that I am the Subway Jared to his Anthony Bourdain. Which is to say that I'm not much of a food critic. I eat it. It's good. For V.I.A. editorial I generally leave food stuff up to and whose pallets are much more refined than mine and whose knowledge of the local food scene is greatly superior to mine. But when I was invited for lunch at Grain Tasting Bar, literally one block over from the V.I.A. office downtown, I couldn't refuse.
I ate the food. It was good. The ambience was also notably comfortable and now that it's turning into summer they've opened up their big windows along Burrard and let the air and the sunshine in a bit.
The thing I really loved about my visit is that they got me to taste caviar for the first time in my life. Local caviar, no less. is a company that sells caviar from a land-farmed sturgeon derived from the endangered Fraser River White Sturgeon. The caviar is produced by by on the Sunshine Coast who also produce sturgeon meat in a sustainable environment using no hormones or antibiotics. This is the same strain of sturgeon that I brought you on with Tony Nootebos to help conservation efforts of last year. On that trip we caught this ancient fish and tagged it in order to track it and aid in efforts to save the natural stocks. If you keep those ones you go to jail, however Target Marine breeds them in a contained land-based system, allowing you to enjoy this forbidden fruit of the river!
Enjoy Northern Divine on the menu at Grain on Burrard. Visit to learn all about them, and follow on Twitter at .
