How Dine Out Vancouver Is Bringing the World’s Best Chefs to the City

Vancouver has its very own wealth of culinary heavy hitters, so there’s no shortage of restaurants that we can go to find award-winning upscale menus or eateries we might consider unsung heroes—but what if you could enjoy purpose made dishes by award-winning chefs from across the globe, all within the span of a month, without leaving the city?

That’s the question Dine Out Vancouver Festival’s Lucas Pavan wanted to answer when he developed the festival’s World Chef Exchange in 2016. 

“When are you going to have an opportunity in your own city to have two-Michelin-star chefs preparing a meal for you, unless you’re going to fly to [that city] and dine at the restaurant?” says Pavan, who is the manager of membership and culinary programs at Destination Vancouver, which puts on the Dine Out Vancouver Festival each year. These exact pairings, he says, will likely “never happen again.”

Ten years in, the program has picked up steam and lucky for us—Vancouver will get a taste of Bangkok, Seoul, London and Chicago through four different chef collaborations and exchanges at some of the city’s most beloved rooms.

The chef-to-chef pairings are largely decided by the local chefs themselves—with flights and hotels for the visiting chefs covered by sponsors.

“It’s all based on the relationships that chefs have with their people,” Pavan says. “They admire [and ask for] their mentors; people they’ve worked with together in the past in various kitchens around the world; people that have gone to school together or even been roommates. It becomes an extension of their existing relationship, or it forges new relationships, because quite often, a chef will have admiration for another chef in another country, and they’ll just do a cold outreach or they might have dined at that restaurant in another city around the world and forged some kind of simple friendship that was just carried through online.”

Kicking off the series of dinners on January 22 will be Seoul’s chef Taejun Eom from the Michelin-starred Solbam hosted at Five Sails Restaurant in collaboration with Vancouver’s own recent Top Chef Canada runner-up, chef Alex Kim. Now sold out, the two chefs will deliver a seven-course tasting menu—drink pairings et al—that bridges the West Coast sensibilities chef Alex Kim is known for at the Pacific Northwest fine dining venue and chef Taejun Eom’s modern Korean gastronomy.

On January 28, diners can take a trip to London via Botanist, where the UK capital’s two-Michelin-starred Kitchen Table chef James Knappett will join Botanist chef Hector Laguna in a seasonally driven, ingredient-focused six course meal for $225. Drink pairings and gratuities extra.

Another two-star Michelin chef—this time hailing from our neighbours to the south in Chicago—will be mixing things up with another Top Chef Canada alum, Vancouver’s chef Vish Mayekar at Elem. Chef Lucas Trahan, chef de cuisine of Chicago’s Ever, will visit Vancouver to serve up a six-course menu alongside chef Vish.

Capping off the series on February 6 is a reunion between Michelin-recommended Boulevard Kitchen and Oyster Bar chef Roger Ma and Wilfrid Hocquet, executive chef of Bangkok modern bistro Margo. Together, they’ll be serving up a six-course meal using global flavours and techniques, with wine pairings for an additional fee. 

Beyond these stellar, one-time-only menus, Pavan says the magic extends beyond the plate.

“They are sharing stories of how they met, or how they’re sharing their time in the kitchen together for this specific event, and they play off of each other in a way that’s really quite unique and beautiful to watch and experience.”