Around Vancouver in 52 Restaurants: Americas

Photo Credit: ecstaticist.

Well, I’ve made a bit of a dent in my project to review Vancouver restaurants in a world tour kind of format. The Americas are a big place (comprising North America, South America, Central America and for our purposes the Caribbean as well) with a lot of unsettled history and so regional cuisines and dishes are still constantly evolving.

For example, many of the culinary trends we associate with Europe originated in the New World; “consider the list of foods unknown to Europeans until the sixteenth century; tomatoes, coriander, chilies, cocoa, avocados, bananas, beans, pine nuts, pecans, peanuts, squash and tobacco. What the Europeans did bring was significant – rice and wheat, olives, beef, mutton, goat, pork, almonds, cinnamon and nutmeg, raisin and wine grapes, and Seville oranges and limes.”

With Canada being part of the Americas, this should have been a pretty easy category to fill up, but North American food isn’t typically considered ethnic, except possibly with regards to Cajun/Creole and Southwestern cuisines. As for the rest of the Americas, Vancouver is not overrun with South American or even Mexican restaurants, but here is a sampling of the best.

The Americas (and Caribbean):

1. (French) Canadian: Frenchies

2. American: Modern Burger

3. American round2: Memphis Blues

4. Mexico: La Taqueria

5. Mexico round2: Las Tortas

6. El Salvador: El Rinconcito

7. Central America: El Caracol

8. Peru/Colombia: El Inka Latin Deli

9. South America: Cobre

10. Peru: Mochikas Peruvian Cafe

11. Brazil: Samba

12. Jamaican: Jamaican Pizza Jerk

13. Jamaican: Calabash

14. Cuban: Havana

Please also see the Reef, a Tale of 2 Jerks,  and more Havana.