Vancouver Trip Guide
Where to Eat in Vancouver
Where to eat in Vancouver has an unusually honest answer, because three separate guides publish their choices for free and we can point at all of them. The MICHELIN Guide lists 12 One Star restaurants and 15 Bib Gourmands here, Canada's 100 Best ranks four Vancouver kitchens inside its national top 20, and Vancouver Magazine's 37th Restaurant Awards named its 2026 winners in the same year. Every venue on this page comes from one of those three lists or from the venue's own site, with the source and its year printed on the card. What follows is what the city genuinely does better than almost anywhere else in North America, where to find it, and how tax and tipping actually land on the bill. The market, the night market and the neighbourhoods behind the food are on the map and the neighbourhood hub.
Quick answer What the city is good at, who says so, what the bill does
Vancouver has 12 MICHELIN One Star restaurants and 15 Bib Gourmands, and seven of the 12 stars are Japanese or Chinese kitchens, which tells you what the city is actually about. Eat seafood, Cantonese and Japanese here rather than the things you can eat anywhere. A meal is taxed at 5% GST with no PST, alcohol at 15%, and the official tipping range is 12 to 18%.
Key takeaways
- The safest names to book are the four that two lists agree on: AnnaLena, Kissa Tanto, Sumibiyaki Arashi and Published on Main, all Michelin-starred and inside Canada's national top 20.
- Cheap and excellent is a real category here: 15 Bib Gourmands, most of them Vietnamese, Chinese, Indian or Japanese, at the $$ price band.
- For a first day, the Granville Island market tour or the Gastown food walk does the sampling for you; the tours compared shows what each one actually feeds you.
- Money: no PST on restaurant food, 15% on the drinks, 12 to 18% tip on the pre-tax total. The bill, line by line.
What Vancouver Genuinely Does Better Than Elsewhere
Four things, and the evidence for each sits in the published lists rather than in anyone's opinion.
Japanese, at a density no other Canadian city has
Five of the city's 12 MICHELIN One Star restaurants are Japanese: Masayoshi on Fraser Street, Okeya Kyujiro, Sushi Hyun, Sushi Masuda, and the charcoal counter Sumibiyaki Arashi on East Broadway. Two more of the 15 Bib Gourmands are Japanese, including a udon specialist. That is seven Japanese kitchens in a selection of 27 distinguished restaurants, in a city of roughly the population of Boston.
The counters are small, most take a limited number of seats a service, and the starred sushi rooms book out weeks ahead, which is the one reservation on this page worth making before you fly.
Cantonese and Chinese cooking that the guides take seriously
Vancouver Magazine gave its 2026 Restaurant of the Year to Dynasty, a Cantonese seafood restaurant, and framed the award as a warning: as the generation of Hong Kong-trained chefs who built this scene retires, the magazine wrote, "this golden era of Vancouver Cantonese may be slowly ending". MICHELIN's Vancouver stars include iDen and QuanJuDe Beijing Duck House, and its Bib Gourmand list carries Little Bird Dim Sum and Seaport City Seafood. This is the food to prioritise if you have three dinners and want to eat something you cannot get at home.
Vietnamese, cheaply
Four of the 15 Bib Gourmands are Vietnamese: Phnom Penh on East Georgia Street, Anh and Chi on Main, Good Thief and Lunch Lady. Bib Gourmand is MICHELIN's mark for good value rather than fine dining, and all four sit in the $$ band on MICHELIN's own scale. A Bib Gourmand lunch is the cheapest way on this page to eat something a professional inspector thought was worth the trip.
Pacific seafood, in season and close to the boat
The counters at the Granville Island Public Market sell spot prawns, salmon and Dungeness crab from stalls rather than through a menu, and the market is free to walk into: open daily 9 a.m. to 6 p.m., extending to 7 p.m. Thursday to Sunday in the summer window from 4 June to 7 September. It is closed on Mondays in January only, for maintenance, and on 25 and 26 December and 1 January.
Those hours are the market's own, and the island is described in full on its own page.
The Bill: What Is Taxed, and What You Leave
British Columbia taxes restaurant food differently from almost everything else, and the difference is worth knowing before you read a menu price as a final price.
Food for human consumption, including restaurant meals, is exempt from the 7% provincial sales tax, so a plate of food carries 5% GST alone. Alcohol carries a 10% PST plus the 5% GST, which is why the wine changes the shape of a bill more than the food does. Menu prices in British Columbia are quoted before tax.
The rates below are the Province's own, from its food and beverage and PST pages, read in Q3 2026.
| On the bill | Tax | What that means | On a CA$100 line |
|---|---|---|---|
| Restaurant food | 5% GST only | PST does not apply to meals, prepared food or groceries | CA$105 |
| Beer, wine, spirits, cocktails | 15% (10% PST + 5% GST) | Charged on drinks with more than 1% alcohol, in a restaurant or a shop | CA$115 |
| General shopping | 12% (7% PST + 5% GST) | The rate on almost everything else you will buy here | CA$112 |
| A mandatory service charge | No PST | The Province states PST is not charged on mandatory gratuities | CA$100 |
| A voluntary tip | Not stated | No provincial page rules on voluntary tips; in practice they sit on the pre-tax subtotal | CA$112 to CA$118 total on a CA$100 meal |
On tipping, there is exactly one citable Canadian source and it is the city's own tourism body. Destination Vancouver publishes the range on its travel-tips page: "it's common for guests to tip 12-18% as a token of gratuity" in restaurants, bars and salons. No government of Canada or government of British Columbia page publishes a percentage at all, because tipping is not regulated.
If a payment terminal offers you 18, 20 and 25%, those are the machine's suggestions, not the city's convention, and you can type your own number.
Two practical notes. Card acceptance is close to universal: Destination Vancouver's own wording is that most places take Visa, Mastercard and other major cards, though "it's still handy to carry some cash". No official page publishes a list of cash-only venues, and no official page addresses whether foreign debit cards work on Interac, so we will not claim either way.
And drinking water is free everywhere: the city runs 278 public drinking fountains, about 41 of them year-round, and the water is covered on the tap water page.
Fifteen Places, and Who Says So
Every venue below appears in the MICHELIN Guide Vancouver, in Canada's 100 Best Restaurants 2026, or in the Vancouver Magazine Restaurant Awards 2026. That is the whole rule on this site: a restaurant gets named here only if a published guide names it first, and the card prints which one and in what year. MICHELIN prints no address and no neighbourhood on its Vancouver listings, so the street addresses below were resolved from OpenStreetMap and each card opens in Google Maps so you can check the walk before you book.
-
AnnaLena
MICHELIN price band $$$$The only Vancouver restaurant to appear at the top of both lists we can cite: a MICHELIN One Star for contemporary cooking, and 12th in Canada's 100 Best 2026, the highest-ranked Vancouver kitchen we were able to read on that page. It sits in Kitsilano rather than downtown, which is a 10-minute cab or a bus from most of the areas on the where-to-stay page.
- Address
- 1809 West 1st Avenue, Kitsilano
-
Kissa Tanto
MICHELIN price band $$$$Japanese-Italian, One Star, and 15th in Canada's 100 Best 2026. It is on East Pender Street in Chinatown, on the floor above street level, which is worth knowing because the door is easy to walk past.
- Address
- 263 East Pender Street, Chinatown
-
Sumibiyaki Arashi
MICHELIN price band $$$$A 14-seat charcoal counter on East Broadway in Mount Pleasant, new to the star list in 2025 and 17th in Canada's 100 Best 2026. It is the only one of the 12 starred restaurants whose neighbourhood MICHELIN actually states, in its ceremony write-up.
- Address
- 363 East Broadway, Mount Pleasant
-
Published on Main
MICHELIN price band $$$One Star, 20th in Canada's 100 Best 2026, and the cheapest of the four double-listed names at MICHELIN's $$$ band rather than $$$$. On Main Street south of the brewery strip, so it pairs with an evening in Mount Pleasant rather than a downtown one.
- Address
- 3593 Main Street, Riley Park
-
Masayoshi
MICHELIN price band $$$$One Star, Japanese, on Fraser Street well south of the tourist grid. Of the five starred Japanese rooms in the city this is the one furthest from downtown, which is usually the difference between a table this week and a table next month.
- Address
- 4376 Fraser Street, Kensington-Cedar Cottage
-
St. Lawrence
MICHELIN price band $$$$One Star, French, and the only French restaurant on Vancouver's star list. It is on Powell Street east of Gastown, which is a short walk from the Water Street cobbles and a very different street.
- Address
- 269 Powell Street
-
iDen and QuanJuDe Beijing Duck House
MICHELIN price band $$$$One Star, Chinese, and the starred restaurant to book if you want Peking duck rather than Cantonese seafood. MICHELIN publishes no address for it, so search the name rather than a street.
-
Okeya Kyujiro
MICHELIN price band $$$$One Star, Japanese, a tasting-counter format. Together with Sushi Hyun and Sushi Masuda it makes up the group of starred sushi rooms that book furthest ahead in the city, so treat it as a date you fix before the flights.
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Dynasty Seafood
Vancouver Magazine's Restaurant of the Year for 2026, and a Cantonese seafood room rather than a fine-dining dining room. The magazine's own citation is elegiac about the generation of Hong Kong-trained chefs who built this cooking in Vancouver, which is a reason to eat here now.
- Address
- 777 West Broadway, Fairview
-
Boulevard
Roger Ma of Boulevard was named Vancouver Magazine's Chef of the Year for 2026. It is on Burrard Street in the downtown core, which makes it the most walkable of the award winners for anyone staying in the downtown areas.
- Address
- 845 Burrard Street, Downtown
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The Acorn
Winner of Vancouver Magazine's second annual Sustainability Award in 2026, for a plant-forward menu and kitchen practices. On Main Street, and the answer to the vegetarian question on this page that is not simply a side order.
- Address
- 3995 Main Street, Riley Park
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Phnom Penh
MICHELIN price band $$Bib Gourmand, Vietnamese, on East Georgia Street between Chinatown and Strathcona. Bib Gourmand is MICHELIN's value mark, so this is a $$ bill in a city where the starred rooms are $$$$.
- Address
- 244 East Georgia Street
-
Vij's
MICHELIN price band $$Bib Gourmand, Indian, on Cambie Street south of False Creek. One of the longest-standing names on the Vancouver list and the one most often reachable without a reservation weeks out.
- Address
- 3106 Cambie Street, Mount Pleasant
-
Anh and Chi
MICHELIN price band $$Bib Gourmand, Vietnamese, on Main Street, and the easiest of the Bib list to combine with an evening around the breweries and Published on Main. Same street, ten minutes apart on foot.
- Address
- 3388 Main Street, Riley Park
-
Sushi Hil
MICHELIN price band $$Bib Gourmand, Japanese, also on Main Street. If the starred sushi counters are booked out, this is the version of the same city strength at a fifth of the price band.
- Address
- 3330 Main Street, Riley Park
This is not a ranking and it is not complete: it is who the three published guides name, read on their own sites in Q3 2026. The full lists are MICHELIN's 12 stars, its 15 Bib Gourmands and Canada's 100 Best. Two caveats we would rather print than hide: Canada's 100 Best only renders ranks 1 to 22 before a button we cannot click, so Vancouver certainly has more entries than the four named here, and MICHELIN's sustainability filter for Vancouver returns the unfiltered list, so no Vancouver Green Star is confirmed.
How to Read the MICHELIN Picture Here
MICHELIN has covered Vancouver since 2022, and the selection live on its site is still the one announced on 2 October 2025: 12 One Star restaurants, no Two Star, no Three Star, and 15 Bib Gourmands, inside a total Vancouver-and-surroundings selection of 75 restaurants. Two of the 12 stars were new that year, Sumibiyaki Arashi and Sushi Hyun. When we checked, no 2026 Vancouver ceremony had been announced, so anything you read describing a "2026 Vancouver Michelin" list is describing the same restaurants under a different heading.
The gap worth understanding is what MICHELIN does not publish. Its Vancouver listing pages print the city, the cuisine and a price band, and nothing else: no neighbourhood, no address, no opening hours. That is why the cards above carry addresses resolved from a mapping database rather than quoted from the guide, and why four of the starred restaurants have no street on their card at all.
If a guide site prints a tidy neighbourhood beside all 12 names, it did the same resolution and did not tell you.
Canada's 100 Best is the useful cross-check. Its 2026 list was voted by 160 judges, weighted by provincial population, each submitting their ten best restaurant experiences of the previous year. Its national number one is in Ontario, not here.
But four Vancouver restaurants sit inside the top 20, and all four also hold a MICHELIN star, which is as close to agreement as two independent panels get. Those four are the names on this page we would book first.
Markets, Night Markets and Eating Outdoors
The Granville Island Public Market is the single best hour of eating in the city for anyone who does not want to book anything. Entry is free, there is no admission charge for the island, and most vendors sell single portions, so grazing costs only what you eat. It opens daily at 9 a.m. and closes at 6 p.m., with a 7 p.m. close Thursday to Sunday between 4 June and 7 September.
It is closed on Mondays in January for annual maintenance, and on 25 December, 26 December and 1 January. Parking is paid from 9 a.m. to 10 p.m., and the widely repeated "free three hours" applies to the boat dock behind the market, not to cars.
The Richmond Night Market is the other one, and it is seasonal: 24 April to 20 September 2026, Fridays, Saturdays and statutory-holiday Sundays from 7 p.m. to midnight, regular Sundays 7 p.m. to 11 p.m., never on a weekday. Admission is $5.07 (CA$7); the Zoom Pass that skips the queue is $29.00 (CA$40); under-7s and over-60s are free. Neither can be bought in advance, only at the gate.
It is one block from Bridgeport station, the same interchange you use for the airport, so it works as a last evening before an early flight.
Eating outdoors has rules that are easy to break by accident. Vancouver's alcohol-in-parks programme is permanent: seven named beaches allow drinking from 15 May to 30 September, 11 a.m. to 9 p.m., for anyone 19 or over, with no glass, plus 31 parks year-round, 16 more in July and August, and 13 designated plazas under the 2026 to 2029 programme. English Bay, Sunset Beach, Third Beach and CRAB Park are all excluded from it.
Cannabis is 19-plus and banned in every Vancouver park and beach and on the seawall, under the Park Board's smoking bylaw.
The Brewery Strip, and Where It Is
Vancouver's craft beer is concentrated rather than scattered: the Brewery Creek stretch of Mount Pleasant, around Main Street and East 7th Avenue, holds a walkable cluster of taprooms, and the craft beer culture and tasting tour works that block with 12 tastings across three breweries and about a kilometre of walking in total. British Columbia's drinking age is 19 and photo identification is checked, including on the tour.
If you would rather do it yourself, every taproom on that walk sells its own flight, so the route costs nothing but the beer. The one thing to plan around is the tax: alcohol is the 15% line on any bill here, in a bar or a bottle shop, against 5% on the food beside it. That is roughly a dollar in eight on a bar tab, and it is added at the till rather than shown on the menu.
The neighbourhood around the breweries is also where the Bib Gourmand names cluster: Anh and Chi, Sushi Hil, The Acorn and Published on Main are all on Main Street within about fifteen minutes of each other on foot. An evening that starts at a taproom on East 7th and ends at a table on Main is the most efficient food evening in the city, and it needs no car. Where to stay near it covers the rooms. Everything else worth pricing before you come is on our Vancouver travel guide.
The Five Guided Food Walks Compared
All five are listed on GetYourGuide, and the prices, ratings and durations below are the platform's own, checked in Q3 2026. The last column is what the same ground costs if you walk it yourself, because on this page that alternative usually exists.
| Tour | Runs | Listed price | What you actually get | Doing it yourself | Book |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Gastown historical walking food tour | 3 hours, 7 venues | $120.36 | Six tastings including two desserts and four alcoholic drinks, live guide in English | Gastown's restaurants take walk-ins and the history is on free plaques; three stops have stairs and only one a lift | Check Availability |
| Granville Island market tour | 2 hours | $118.91 | Tastings at the market vendors themselves, cured meats, cheese, bread and sweets | The market is free to enter and vendors sell single portions, so grazing costs only what you eat | Check Availability |
| Chinatown heritage walk and dim sum | 2 hours 30 minutes | $90.69 | Interiors of heritage buildings, a tea tasting and a sit-down dim sum lunch | The bakeries, the Millennium Gate and the garden park are free; only five reviews so far, so the sample is thin | Check Availability |
| Craft beer culture and tasting tour | 3 hours, 3 breweries | $64.57 | Twelve tastings, a Cicerone-certified guide, a cask ale, about 1 km of walking, 19-plus with ID | Every taproom on Brewery Creek pours its own flight, and the walk between them is free | Check Availability |
| Downtown history and culture walk | 3 hours | $5 | A guided downtown walk in English or Spanish; no food included, gratuities extra | Self-guided downtown routes are published free, but at this price the guide is cheaper than a coffee | Check Availability |
Food is not included on the downtown walk, which is why it is a fifth of the price of the others. Cancellation is free up to 24 hours before on all of them except the market tour, which is non-refundable once bought and needs 10 days notice to move.
Guided Eating, If You Want the Introductions Made
The five cards behind the table above. Prices, ratings and review counts are GetYourGuide's own, checked in Q3 2026; the platform bills in your account's currency.
from $120.36
Top rated Vancouver: Gastown Historical Walking Food Tour
Three hours and seven venues in Gastown with six tastings, two of them desserts, and four alcoholic drinks with non-alcoholic swaps available. Dietary requests need 24 hours notice, and three of the stops involve stairs.
Check Availability
from $118.91
Top rated Vancouver: Granville Island Market Tour with Tastings
Two hours behind the stalls at Granville Island Public Market with cured meats, cheeses, breads and sweets from the vendors themselves. The one catch is the policy: tickets are non-refundable and changes need 10 days notice.
Check Availability
from $90.69
Certified by GetYourGuide Vancouver: Chinatown Heritage Walk and Dim Sum Lunch
Two and a half hours through Chinatown with access to heritage building interiors, a tea tasting at the neighbourhood's oldest tea shop and a dim sum lunch to finish. Only five reviews so far, so the sample is thin.
Check Availability
from $64.57
Top rated Vancouver: Craft Beer Culture & Tasting Tour
Three hours in Brewery Creek with 12 tastings across three breweries, led by a Cicerone certified guide and including a cask ale poured the old way. Total walking is about 1 km, and photo ID is checked.
Check Availability
from $5
Vancouver Uncovered: Downtown History & Culture Walk
Three hours on foot through downtown with a local guide covering architecture, street art and how the neighbourhoods fit together. Gratuities are not included and cash is listed among what to bring.
Check AvailabilityPrices, ratings and details are the platform's own, checked in Q3 2026; dollar figures are the listed prices — the platform bills in your account's currency.
Where the Food Is
Three pages that put the eating on a map and in a day.
Granville Island and its market
Hours, the ferries across False Creek, the parking rates and what the market actually sells: Granville Island.
Free to enter, 9 a.m. to 6 p.m.Chinatown and Gastown
The two oldest eating neighbourhoods in the city, side by side: Chinatown and Gastown.
Ten minutes apart on footEvery named place, pinned
The restaurants on this page and the markets around them: the Vancouver map. What a day of eating costs is on the plan hub.
Filter to the food layerWhere to Eat in Vancouver: Questions
What food is Vancouver actually famous for?
Pacific seafood, Cantonese cooking and Japanese counters, and the published lists back that up: seven of the city's 12 MICHELIN One Star restaurants are Japanese or Chinese, and Vancouver Magazine's 2026 Restaurant of the Year is a Cantonese seafood room. What the city does better than elsewhere goes through the four categories with the sources attached.
How much do you tip in a Vancouver restaurant?
Destination Vancouver, the city's official tourism body, publishes 12 to 18%, and it is the only citable Canadian source that publishes a number at all. Card terminals often suggest 18, 20 and 25%; those are the machine's numbers. The bill section sets out what is taxed underneath the tip.
Is there tax on restaurant food in British Columbia?
Only the 5% federal GST. Restaurant meals are exempt from the 7% provincial sales tax, which makes eating out here cheaper relative to shopping than in most of Canada. Alcohol is the exception at 15%, so the drinks move a bill more than the food does. The full rate table is in the bill section.
Which Vancouver restaurants have a Michelin star?
Twelve, all One Star, from the selection announced on 2 October 2025: AnnaLena, Barbara, Burdock and Co, iDen and QuanJuDe Beijing Duck House, Kissa Tanto, Masayoshi, Okeya Kyujiro, Published on Main, St. Lawrence, Sumibiyaki Arashi, Sushi Hyun and Sushi Masuda. There is no Two Star or Three Star restaurant in the city. Eleven of them are on the named list above or in that paragraph, with the price bands.
Where can I eat well in Vancouver without spending a fortune?
The 15 Bib Gourmands, which is MICHELIN's value mark and sits in the $$ band: Phnom Penh, Vij's, Anh and Chi, Sushi Hil, Little Bird Dim Sum, Lunch Lady, Good Thief and eight others. Failing that, the market stalls on Granville Island sell single portions to anyone walking through, at no admission cost.
Is a guided food tour worth it in Vancouver?
It is if you want the introductions made on day one, and it is not if you would rather book a table. The five walks compared prints the DIY alternative beside each one, and on two of them, the market and the breweries, that alternative is genuinely close: both venues are free to enter and sell exactly what the tour tastes.
Do Vancouver restaurants take cards?
Almost all of them. Destination Vancouver's own guidance is that most places take Visa, Mastercard and other major cards, adding only that "it's still handy to carry some cash". No official page publishes a list of cash-only venues, and none addresses foreign debit cards on the Interac network, so we do not claim either way. Budgeting for a day is covered on the plan hub.
Eating in Vancouver on Video
Three eating-your-way-through-the-city films, useful for seeing what the counters and market stalls actually look like before you queue at one.
48 Hours Eating Vancouver's Best Food
Two days of eating across the city, market stalls to sit-down rooms.
Video: Only ScransOnly Eating Vancouver's Most Iconic Local Eats
The dishes locals send visitors to, filmed at the counters that serve them.
Video: chonkyABGEssential and Affordable Eats in Vancouver
The cheap end of the city, which is where the Bib Gourmand names live.
Video: Toronto Our CityVideos load from YouTube only when you press play.
Reviewed Q3 2026 (July–September 2026); next review Q4 2026. Prices, hours and terms are set by the venue or operator and confirmed at checkout.
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