CLOSED: Win Tickets to the VCC Flourish Gala

Join the city’s top chefs—many of whom are Vancouver Community College alumni—to raise money for future students.

David Hawksworth, Scott Jaeger, Clement Chan—these names may be familiar to you now, but that wasn’t always the case. Before they opened some of the city’s hottest restaurants (Hawksworth, The Pear Tree, Torafuku), they were students at Vancouver Community College, the same institution that has been training culinary, fashion, music, medical and other students for more than 50 years.To celebrate the success of their culinary program’s alumni—and to give everyone a taste of what’s to come from the next generation of VCC-trained chefs—the school invites alumni, faculty and students to showcase their skills at the annual Flourish Gala, an evening of food and drink that helps to raise funds for scholarships, bursaries and training materials for current and future VCC students. Money raised from this year’s event will also be used to create a new leadership award that female culinary, baking and hospitality students may apply for. According to VCC, despite the volume of women entering the workforce, many don’t move onto senior positions; the school hopes this new initiative will encourage women to imagine themselves as leaders in the kitchen.This year, 18 former students and faculty (including Hawksworth, Homer St. Cafe’s Tret Jordan, Nextjen Gluten-Free’s Jen Peters and Culinary Vision’s Poyan Danesh) will return to the VCC campus on Wednesday, March 14, to cook up a storm, preparing dishes—prawn and pork dumplings with sea urchin butter, beet terrine with goat cheese and compressed apple, tiger shrimp with cauliflower and bacon vinaigrette—that will be paired with wines from Naramata. In addition to feasting and sipping, guests will also have the opportunity to see work from VCC’s fashion arts, auto restoration and music programs.An event where you can do good and eat good? Sounds like the perfect night to us. So, we’ve teamed up with VCC to give one lucky VanMag reader the chance to win a pair of tickets (valued at $400!) to the VCC Flourish Gala. Enter below—and remember to sign up for our 4x weekly newsletter—for your chance to win. Contest ends March 12.

VCC Flourish Gala

Wednesday, March 14 (7 p.m.)Vancouver Community CollegeBroadway Campus, Building B1120 E 7th Ave., VancouverTickets: Available at Eventbrite (from $200)Pssst! When you use promo code VANMAG, you’ll save $50 on your ticket purchase.