How to Eat like You’ve Just Won the Lottery in Vancouver

If there’s one thing Vancouver knows, it’s food. From the West End to Point Grey to Hastings-Fairview, you can’t walk 100 feet in this city without passing a world class restaurant. Unfortunately, our days can’t be all be filled with steak tartar and caviar — most of us have to indulge sparingly. But if you could dine out for breakfast, lunch, dinner and everything in between, there’s a heck of a lot of amazing food out there.BCLC’s new national lottery game, DAILY GRAND, is your chance to win $1,000 a day to spend for the rest of your life. Meaning if you won, you could enjoy everything Vancouver is serving up. To help you dream big, here’s our guide for eating and drinking your way through the most decadent dishes Vancouver has to offer.

Morning Coffee: Doi Chaang Coffee at Bean Brothers Cafe

Forget your regular morning $7 skim quad-shot latte. Kerrisdale’s Bean Brothers Cafe brews Doi Chaang Coffee’s Wild Civet coffee, which is cultivated by a producer with very particular tastes. Wild civets are Indonesian cat-like creatures that pick and digest coffee beans at their peak, ensuring top quality crops. Once the beans have been (ahem) processed, they’re gathered, cleansed, and brewed. As off-putting as the nickname “cat poo coffee” sounds, the digestive system of the cats improves the flavour and results in the best coffee around.It’ll cost you: $30 (plus tax and tip)

Brunch: The Tackle Box at Yew Seafood + Bar

In the Pacific Northwest, we like to eat seafood as early in the day as possible. With your new food budget, you can go straight to the best seafood brunch spot around: Yew Seafood + Bar. Among the treasure trove that is their brunch menu are B.C. spot prawn Caesars, Dungeness crab in a jar with buttered brioche and tomato jam, and a lobster frittata. But the shiny gem is “The Tackle Box,” a selection of every variety of delicious seafood you could want. Big spenders go for the choice of seven items, choosing from manilla and savoury clam salad, marinated Viking Bay mussels, raw albacore tuna, steamed lobster, scallops, steamed Dungeness crab, side stripe shrimp, and a selection of oysters. You’re welcome.It’ll cost you: $99 (plus tax and tip)

Midday Meal: Three Course Lunch at West

Finding outrageously decadent lunch options can be tricky—if you don’t live in Vancouver. Luckily, you do, and West has a three-course lunch menu just waiting to elevate your midday meal. The $35 lunch menu includes olive oil poached halibut with charred avocado and brioche, lamb merguez meatballs with heirloom beans and black olives, and a ginger beer toffee cake with lemongrass poached pears and lemon saffron confit to cap your meal. Add a signature drink and you’ll be ready to tackle your afternoon to-do list.It’ll cost you: $45 (plus tax and tip)

Happy Hour: Meat & Cheese Plank at Chill Winston

Chill Winston is known for Gastown’s biggest and brightest patio and is also home to one of the greatest meat and cheese boards in the city. Before treating yourself to a decadent dinner, spend happy hour unwinding with a charcuterie plate so big they advertise it as a “plank.” The plank comes with house-made terrine, chicken liver pate, a selection of Spanish charcuterie and artisan cheeses, with accompanying house mustards and pickles. Oh, and bread to sop it all up, of course. You’ll probably want to split it with a friend.It’ll cost you: $35 (plus tax and tip)

Dinner: Chef’s Tasting Menu at Le Crocodile

Prep your best “compliments to the chef” before visiting Le Crocodile for their Chef’s Tasting Menu. The five-course menu features wild mushroom ravioli appetizer, grilled asparagus salad and seafood salad, a main course of duck leg confit and halibut with saffron sauce. The night finally finishes with grapefruit sorbet and rum baba with house-made vanilla ice cream. Spring for the foie gras too, obviously. For a weeknight dinner, it’ll do.It’ll cost you: $100 (plus tax and tip)

Nightcap: Seafood Tower at Blue Water Café

Consistently dubbed the city’s best seafood restaurant by pretty much everyone, Blue Water Cafe + Raw Bar is the place to go for the finest tastes of the West Coast waters. While their entree plates are beautifully constructed and delicious, Blue Water’s stunning signature seafood tower has all the oceanic morsel you didn’t realize you needed to try. Served for the table, the Blue Water Cafe Tower features two icy tiers of oysters, prawns, seared red tuna, salmon tartare, jellyfish, scallop ceviche, clams, and mussels, plus elevated fare with their spicy tuna roll, fresh crab meat roll, and tuna goma-ae. Oh, and a one-pound chilled lobster, just ’cause. Leave only after trying every single savoury tower item.It’ll cost you: $159 (plus tax and tip)If you happened to have just stumbled into some extra cash to spend on eating and drinking well, Vancouver is an excellent place to be. Take those DAILY GRAND winnings, or whatever rainy day savings stash you’re currently hoarding, and put them to work with these extravagant dishes around the city. Trust us, they’re well worth it.BCLC offers socially responsible gambling entertainment while generating income to benefit all British Columbians. Remember, play for fun, not to make money. 19+ to play. For more information, visit GameSense.ca.