The Best Things Our Editors Ate in 2025

While our Restaurant Awards judges are out and about devouring the city all year long for our official annual awards, we editors find time to get out there occasionally, too. We covered many of our favourite bites in this year’s 25 Things to Eat package, but there’s more where that came from—these are some of our most memorable meals from 2025.

The Best Things We Ate This Year

Goma Hamachi from Toyokan Plaza, $16

It’s hard for me to divorce a delicious dish from the context it was enjoyed in: was this really the tastiest thing I put in my mouth this year, or was it simply a night out that was so fun that I was tasting not just the chef’s handiwork, but a vibe? I’m sure that the thinly sliced yellowtail tuna, dressed in an aromatic seasame-and-chili sauce, was fresh and flavourful; I’m also sure that I was extremely distracted by the fact that the perfectly kitschy Kitsilano izakaya was themed around the 1960 Tokyo Olympics championship women’s volleyball team. It was sensory overload in the best way. What was more delicious, the melt-in-your-mouth tuna, or the wood-panelling and sporty anime posters? You’ll have to be the judge.—Stacey McLachlan, editor-in-chief

READ MORE: The Best Japanese Restaurants in Vancouver

Lobster Rice from The Fish Man

I’ve yet to have a bad dish at The Fish Man, and with rotating features based on the seasonality of local seafood (hello geoduck!), you’ll never get bored of the menu. With Chef Bo Li at the helm in the kitchen, you know you’re going to be treated to the absolutely freshest seafood with his Sichuan-style cooking. The lobster rice here is a house seafood specialty and a bucket list dish not to be missed. Served with an entire lobster, you can choose between sticky rice, salted egg yolk (my personal favourite) or Hong Kong style, steamed in lotus leaf. Other standout dishes here include the sour cabbage fish pot with pickled fish and zesty sauerkraut with red peppers and Sichuan peppercorns, and don’t sleep on the geoduck clam with bean sprouts.—Darcy Matheson, editor-in-chief, BCBusiness

 

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Premium Soy Crab Bansang from Jinmi, $62

Apparently, we’re all fans of JINMI here at Vanmag, and if I could shout from the rooftops for everyone to try this dish, I would. Korean soy-marinated crab isn’t the easiest sell, but after I tried Jinmi’s version for the first time in 2022 (back when they were running a ghost kitchen out of Black Rice Izakaya), I was converted. Getting to have it in their restaurant this year was something else. It’s rich and deeply flavourful, and I added uni on top to make it extra decadent. It arrived with gamtae, a rare, wild-harvested roasted seaweed I’d never seen before. It’s messy to eat, but so worth it. I’ve been dreaming about it ever since.— Rebekah Ho, digital marketing

Crying Tiger from Zab Bite, $32

The truth is, I’d had my eye on the Crying Tiger beef dish at Zab Bite for a while, but every time I was in the neighbourhood (Fraserhood), there were lineups out the door. I finally got it together one Monday night to score a reservation and enlist a friend who lives close by to try the Thai E-Sarn eatery that clearly everyone-who’s-anyone was already in on. Never mind that I was already knocked off my feet by the beautiful, electrifying Pink Passion cocktail ($16) and the inventive deep-fried crispy pork toast ($13), six tiny individual toasts topped with deep-fried pork and pressed into sesame seeds for extra crunch. My mouth was watering for the Crying Tiger, and when it arrived, perfectly pink in the middle, I was sold. Tender, seasoned grilled beef was splayed across the plate, served with a ramekin of Zab Bite’s signature jaew dipping sauce, finished with toasted rice powder and chili flakes. I can still feel myself, nearly meditative, grabbing melt-in-your-mouth slices of steak and dipping them into that bright, refreshing sauce anytime I think of Fraserhood.— Kristi Alexandra, managing editor

Fruit Parfait from ARC Dining, $69 (included in weekend brunch)

While this might sounds like a hot take (and I mean scalding) for Best Thing I Ate, just hear me out. I’m really not a yogurt bowl person. No matter how hard I try, it’s just never something I’ve had and thought, “Wow, delicious, I want more.” That is, until I tried the fruit parfait from the weekend bottomless brunch at ARC Dining at the Fairmont Waterfront. The bottomless brunch has many noteworthy dishes to try, like the smoked salmon rösti, ooey-gooey skillet or pulled pork benedict. But don’t sleep on the fruit parfait. This unassuming dish isn’t your average yogurt bowl. Yes, there’s crisp house-made granola and flavourful macerated fruit. But it’s the baked yogurt that makes this the *best*. You heard me, baked yogurt. Think cheesecake-like, creamy and thick, like eating dessert for breakfast. And that is something I can always get behind (and order two more servings of). — Sandrine Jacquot, editor, BCLiving

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