I guess the expression is “a month of Sundays“.  But  it would take a month of Fridays for me to do the food in Vancouver justice.  So even though today is a Thursday, I thought I’d give you a little taste, as it were, of the kinds of foods we’ve been enjoying the past two weeks here in Vancouver.

We’re staying the West End part of town.  Back when we lived here (2005-2008), there were at least 80 restaurants within a 5-minute walk of our house, offering different ethnic dishes. If you widened that radius to encompass a few more blocks — an easy 10 minute walk — there were over a 100 restaurants.

The West End in Vancouver was — and is — my favorite place to be to try food from all over the world.

Chris and I really thought that the last 8 years would have seen the area change quite a bit. However, while it’s true that some areas of Vancouver have undergone a renaissance and are now filled with new high-rise, fancy condos and expensive, fancy restaurants, the West End hasn’t undergone such a cataclysmic change in food offerings. To be sure, not all of our favorite restaurants are still around – but that’s the nature of running a restaurant. What has been a pleasant surprise is just how many of our favorites did make it and are still here, 8 years later.

On our first night we zoomed over to a place we really didn’t think would have survived.  It’s a really tiny place called Acacia, run by a couple (Vera and Ziggy) from Bulgaria. They opened up their restaurant during the time we lived here, and Chris was one of their first customers. What a delight to discover that they were still in business — and still making delicious stuff Phylo foods. Note that the 2 photos below are of just half the serving size of each; we were so hungry that we ate half before I remembered to take a photo.

Bulgarian Banitza (Phylo with leeks and bulgarian cheese)

Phylo stuffed with halibut, spinach and shrimp

The couple actually has done well enough to hire staff for the evening shift so they no longer have to work all hours of the day and night. We went back the next morning and had the pleasure of chatting with them both, a nice moment to reconnect with “people-who-we-sort-of-knew” in Vancouver years ago.

Plus, Vera hasn’t lost her touch for making her delicious “Morning Glory” muffins.

A perfect start to the morning: Morning Glory muffin and cappuccino

Sooo good! We’ve been back several times in the past couple of weeks for both more of the Phylo and more of the muffins.

But as good as that is, we haven’t just limited ourselves to Bulgarian food, of course. Tomorrow, in a Food on Friday post that’s actually on Friday, I’ll let you know what our favorite restaurant in Vancouver is and what we ate there.

Stay tuned….