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How 3 Vancouver Restaurants Champion Local Ingredients

"Seasonality rules here, with menus written around microclimates and microseasons and often changing four or five items each week based on what farmers have available. Led by Chef Gus Stieffenhofer-Brandson, this One MICHELIN Star kitchen sources over 90% of its ingredients locally—fish like salmon, sablefish, lingcod, halibut, and rockfish; shellfish including prawns, oysters, clams, and mussels; meats such as duck from the Fraser Valley, beef from Cache Creek, and lamb from Alberta; plus herbs, flowers, tomatoes, shallots, wheat, and cucumber. Foraged mushrooms—chanterelles, porcini, matsutake, pine mushrooms—feature prominently, and when chanterelles are in season they might appear across five dishes, exemplified by a pasta laced with peak corn, zucchini, tomatoes, and chanterelles. Preservation anchors the colder months via a deep pantry of ferments so ingredients like strawberries can reappear in January, and zero-waste thinking shines in a lightly cooked side-stripe prawn with a cucumber–apple–horseradish broth made from juiced trim, and squash glazed with miso made from its own seeds. The ethos is to let farmers lead and support them in every way, with an eye toward eventually tending a farm of their own." - Michael He