With a vast landscape that stretches between picturesque mountains and stunning coastlines, the Vancouver area enjoys a unique culinary landscape shaped by its proximity to nature. Chefs serve delicious dishes driven by seasonal local ingredients, from farm-fresh produce to wild-caught seafood.
Leading the way for sustainable dining in Vancouver are One MICHELIN Star Published on Main, led by Gus Stieffenhofer-Brandson, One MICHELIN Star Burdock & Co led by Andrea Carlson, and The Acorn led by Shira Blustein and Matt Gostelow.
Below, learn from each of them about how they’re pushing for local ingredients in the region.
Published On Main (One Star)
Gus Stieffenhofer-Brandson
Published on Main highlights the best of each season in Vancouver. Having been trained at Three MICHELIN Star and Green Star noma, Chef Gus Stieffenhofer-Brandson uses a sustainable mindset to partner with over a dozen local farmers and even forages mushrooms himself.
His childhood first inspired his passion for local farms. He begins, “I grew up spending the majority of my time out on my grandparents' farm and garden, so those things seemed normal to me. You eat strawberries just when it's strawberry time.”
This sense of seasonality shapes the menu. “We celebrate ingredients as they become available. We're really excited about microclimates, microseasons. There's a time of year where there's corn, beautiful zucchini, tomatoes, chanterelles. And we might have a pasta dish that has all those things in it. When the first strawberries start coming out of the field, they're going on the menu.”
During other seasons, he still commits to local produce by fermenting them. Of his giant pantry of ferments, he says, “it’s this whole holistic approach born out of necessity, but also born out of wanting to have delicious things year-round. If we want to have strawberries in January, we preserve them.”
Often, over 90% of ingredients are sourced locally, including fish (salmon, sablefish, lingcod, halibut, rockfish), shellfish (prawns, oysters, clams, mussels), meats (duck from Fraser Valley, beef from Cache Creek, lamb from Alberta) and produce (herbs, garnish, flowers, tomatoes, shallots, wheat, cucumber).
The chef also personally forages mushrooms for the restaurant. “Mushrooms are a huge part of my identity. Most weekends I'll be out picking chanterelles, porcini, matsutake, pine mushrooms. When it’s chanterelle time, we might have them in five different dishes.”
His favorite zero-waste dish is a side-stripe prawn. “It's lightly cooked and served with a broth of cucumber, apple, and horseradish. All the trim from that gets juiced, and that's used for the dressing. For our squash, we make miso out of the seeds, and we use that to glaze the squash as well.”
Stieffenhofer-Brandson writes menus based on what the farmers have available, and one day aims to have his own farm. “I change four or five menu items every week based on what we're getting from the farms. Letting what the farmers have dictate what you're doing is a lot more practical. We do whatever we can to support the farmers.”
Burdock & Co (One Star)
Andrea Carlson
Chef Andrea Carlson is committed to food security. She begins, “that is what drives us, our motivation. Everything is about sustainability and constantly questioning products coming through. Is it sustainable to the oceans, whales, Indigenous people?”
From the moment guests walk in, nearly everything in the restaurant is sustainable. To furnish the dining area, Carlson uses light fixtures recycled from the 1960s and tables made of upcycled, reclaimed wood from local pine trees that were killed by beetles.
The chef believes the future of sustainable gastronomy is plant-based eating, which she hopes to one day fully implement in Vancouver. “The land-based proteins are never the easiest thing to source. It is phenomenal that Eleven Madison Park was able to maintain its Three MICHELIN Stars and work at that incredibly high level while being plant based.”
Supporting the movement towards plants, Carlson grows in gardens at home and at the restaurant. “The things that get me most excited are botanical elements. On our flower menu, we use magnolias. The green seed of the fennel plant, rather than just the fennel bulb or the fennel frond. More than anything, it is about the plants and the botanical elements.”
Along with botanicals, other vegetables are featured heavily on the different menus. “We just started Radiant Radicchios Under a Frost Moon. All of the courses feature radicchios grown by one of our favorite producers, Glorious Organics. We have a tart made with some local B.C. hazelnuts and a radicchio preserve. We've got a local honey caramel on that, ricotta gelato, and a preserved apple butter. Apples are from a local island.”
Carlson’s focus on local producers allows her to constantly discover new sustainable sources. One of her favorites is someone who grows 43 types of citrus (including Buddha's hand, finger limes, and passion fruit) on Salt Spring Island. “For Canada, that's a first. It's completely unheard of to have citrus here. She's a science-based person who figured out how to do this completely naturally, sustainably.”
As a nod of appreciation to the local Vancouver area farmers, Carlson invites them to eat for free. “They're the ones working the hardest, so we want to do everything that we can to support farmers.”
The Acorn
Shira Blustein and Matt Gostelow
“We opened with the sheer goal of celebrating vegetables. 13 years in, the focus has gone strictly locavore,” begins owner Shira Blustein.
At The Acorn, 99% of what’s served (sometimes even the plate itself) is grown, harvested, or made in Western Canada, giving the team a pulse on what’s in season. Chef Matt Gostelow emphasizes, “We’re really focused on getting whatever we can as close as we can. We visit local farmers all the time to see what's growing.”
Throughout the menu, Gostelow uses local produce as substitutes for ingredients not found in Vancouver, including larch tips for cinnamon flavor, rose hips for tamarind paste, sorrel for citrus, and nasturtium (grown in their own garden) for pepper. Instead of chocolate, he toasts a malt grain from a local brewery.
Even during the cold Vancouver winters, The Acorn abides by its locavore philosophy by preserving, drying, freezing, and canning. “Because we're exclusively local, things get a little tough in the winter. You’re pretty much stuck with root vegetables,” says Blustein. “So, we have a really extensive preservation program. We preserve all of our summer fruits and pack them in syrup, so that in the winter, we can remember peak season summer.”
The team also forages for mushrooms. Gostelow explains, “The first rain after summer, our staff goes out to the mountains and forages for pine mushrooms, chicken of the woods, chanterelles, matsutakes, old porcinis. We have a daily special, thinking of new ways to put those on the dish right away.”
Committed to zero waste, The Acorn believes in using the whole vegetable, such as melon seeds for butterscotch, bruised tomatoes for arrabbiata sauce, and squash guts for homemade miso. Gostelow adds, “we use the melon skins, there's so much flavor in them. The tops of the turnips, you can make those into a beautiful salsa verde chimichurri sauce.” Blustein adds, “We don't toss squash guts into the compost. We use them in any and every possible way.”
Gostelow feels a responsibility to lead the way with what’s possible for cooking. “As a chef and as part of the industry, we got to be leaders and teach our clients. Explain to them how important it is to buy seasonally, locally. We'll highlight different farms and different ways we use the most out of everything. They can go and do that in their home life as well, and food tastes better when it's grown closer.”
Blustein concludes, “supporting local is the most sustainable path forward for everyone.”
Hero image: Katharina Stieffenhofer / Gus foraging
