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11 of Canada’s 50 Best Bars of 2023 are in B.C.

May 19, 2023 No Comments

Some new names and usual suspects, including several here in Vancouver

11 B.C. bars were named in Canada’s 50 Best Bars list 2023. Here they are. Canada’s 100 Best photo

There was a lot of jostling for position and some surprise inclusions in this year’s just-released list of Canada’s 50 Best Bars.

Usual suspects from past lists such as Botanist, The Keefer Bar, and Laowai made the cut yet again, though they’ve been bumped down a few places by bars in Toronto and Montreal. Civil Liberties in Toronto is returning champion and took home the title of Canada’s Best Bar for the second year in a row.

Botanist came in fourth place, and The Keefer Bar was eighth, with Laowai rounding out the top 10.

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Botanist Bar helps put Vancouver on the map

May 5, 2023 No Comments

North America’s 50 Best Bars were revealed on May 4 in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico—a list that included seven Canadian entries, including one bar from B.C. New York’s innovative foodie-cocktail hotspot Double Chicken Please was named North America’s Best Bar.

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A new jungle-themed restaurant and cocktail lounge is opening in Vancouver

April 25, 2023 No Comments

It’s “Vancouver’s first jungle-inspired cocktail lounge.”

The Jungle Room is a new cocktail lounge and restaurant located on Denman Street in Vancouver’s West End. The official opening date is April 28, 2023. @jnglroom/Instagram

Keen-eyed Vancouverites have been watching the West End space at 961 Denman St since late 2021, when signs went up for a “health bar and cocktail lounge” called The Jungle Room moving in where the Dover Arms pub stood for many a year.

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A massive artisan spirits festival returns to Vancouver with 40 distilleries

April 21, 2023 No Comments

BC Distilled is back.

After three years, BC Distilled is returning to Vancouver. BC Distilled photo

After three years of cancelled and modified events, BC Distilled, the massive artisanal spirits festival, is returning to Vancouver.

Forty distilleries and hundreds of locally produced spirits, several of which are new additions to the festival, will take over two rooms at the Croatian Cultural Centre on Commercial Drive this May.

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Clive’s Classic Lounge named world’s best whisky hotel bar

April 3, 2023 No Comments

Dreaming of a dram? Then you may want to hop a ferry over to Victoria, where Clive’s Classic Lounge has just been named Whisky Hotel Bar of the Year in the prestigious Icons of Whisky Awards, presented by U.K.-based Whisky magazine.

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North America’s 50 Best Bars names Botanist Bar the continent’s most hospitable

April 3, 2023 No Comments

Botanist Bar’s creative beverage director Grant Sceney and bar manager Jeff Savage reflect on their Michter’s Art of Hospitality Award. Supplied photo

We already knew it, but now so does the rest of the world. In a first for Vancouver and for Canada, Botanist Bar at the Fairmont Pacific Rim Hotel has won the Michter’s Art of Hospitality Award, given by North America’s 50 Best Bars.

This prestigious award recognizes the single-best hospitality experience across the U.S., Canada, Mexico and the Caribbean.

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World Class Canada crowns its 2023 winner

March 14, 2023 No Comments

Jacob Martin wins the 10th annual contest on the closing night of Vancouver Cocktail Week 2023

Jacob Martin is hoisted on James Grant’s (left) and Jeff Savage’s (right) shoulders after winning the World Class Canada Bartender of the Year on March 11, 2023. Joanne Sasvari photo

Canada’s Best Bartender of 2023 is also a certified cheese professional with a refined palate and remarkable sensory appreciation. Congratulations to Ontario’s Jacob Martin, who won World Class Canada’s big prize at the closing gala of Vancouver Cocktail Week on Saturday night.

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Canadian Craft Whisky Comes of Age at the 2023 Canadian Artisan Spirit Competition

February 15, 2023 No Comments

For the first time in the competition’s six-year history, a whisky wins the Canadian Artisan Spirit of the Year.

Fort Beauséjour Peated Single Malt Whisky is the 2023 Canadian Artisan Spirit of the Year. Photo courtesy of CASC

Fort Beauséjour Peated Single Malt Whisky from Distillerie Fils de Roy in Petit-Paquetville, on New Brunswick’s Acadian coast, achieved the highest score of any spirit entered in the Canadian Artisan Spirit Competition (CASC) this year. It is the the 2023 Canadian Artisan Spirit of the Year and the first Canadian Whisky to win the award. “We’re thrilled that our eastern artisan distilleries are receiving some well-deserved praise,” CASC founder Alex Hamer said in a news release.

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On Point

January 23, 2023 No Comments

B.C.’s Shelter Point Distillery becomes the first Canadian bottling by the prestigious Scotch Malt Whisky Society.

152.1, also known as “Vibrant and Vigorous,” is the first SMWS bottling from a Canadian distillery. SMWS photo

During the Victoria Whisky Festival on January 20, the Canadian chapter of Scotland’s Scotch Malt Whisky Society (SMWS) unveiled a new bottling, 152.1, also known by the name Vibrant and Vigorous. The “.1” identifies the first-ever bottling from a new-to-SMWS distillery, and the Society identifies whiskies only by number and their often-fanciful house names, because each whisky is a single cask bottled at house strength, and may be a unicorn that doesn’t align with the distillery’s house style.

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A secret bar is opening behind a Chinatown ‘betting shop’

January 21, 2023 No Comments

There’s a new speakeasy in town!

The team behind Laowai is opening another hidden bar in Chinatown, Bagheera. Supplied photo

Getting inside Vancouver’s newest bar involves placing a wager on “King Louie.”

The team behind the hidden Chinatown bar Laowai is opening another underground watering hole, this time inside the (faux) Happy Valley Turf Club off-track betting shop (518 Main St).

Bagheera is an homage to India and the cultural crossroads of Three Kingdoms Hospitality co-founders Lewis Hart and Brij Rathi. While Laowai is modelled after Prohibition-era Shanghai, Bagheera is named for the black panther in Rudyard Kipling’s The Jungle Book and was inspired by India at the turn of the 20th century.