I went to Vancouver and I was a good foodie.

I ate lots of sushi, including a roll called Pirates of the Caribbean (it was made with kiwi and lemon zest and was incredible). I ate ginger Crème Brulée (holy crap, that was good.) I had a wild samon salad with cashews, dried cranberries and mixed greens (accompanied by a delicious R&B Raven Cream ale.)

My biggest foodie activity, however, was visiting the Granville Island Public Market. The market is housed in an old factory on Granville Island, which isn’t actually an island but a piece of land under a bridge that juts out from the mainland. A former industrial site, the area’s old factories have been converted into bakeries, restaurants and various artisan shops. The biggest of those factories is home to the market.

Going to the market on an empty stomach is dangerous: the diversity of the food here is overwhelming. It is like the St. Lawrence market but with more variety, more places to sit and eat, and more shops whose aim is to actually serve you lunch.

Siegel’s Bagels was our first stop simply because it was the first thing we walked past that we couldn’t resist. Siegel’s makes Montreal-style bagels in a woodfire oven. They also stuff such bagels full of things like spinach, feta, cream cheese or Montreal-smoked meat. We went with the smoked meat, which was basically like a Montreal smoked-meat sandwich inside a bagel. It look like a normal—albeit massive—bagel from the outside, but was packed with meaty and mustardy goodness on the inside.

“It’s all the fat that makes it so good,” my partner explained. Indeed.

Our next significant culinary experience was cheese. We stumbled upon a cheese vendor that specialized in raw varieties exclusively, something I’ve never encountered in Ontario. We ended up buying a raw cheese from Quebec that tops my list of best cheese I’ve eaten all year.

The fruit at Granville is also worth mentioning; there were rows upon rows of fruit throughout the market, including some I had never heard of. Discovering new fruit excites the bejesus out of me, which was why I was delighted to stumble upon goldenberries. If you’ve never heard of goldenberries, I’ll start by telling you that they look exactly exactly as their name suggests. We found them in cartons amongst the strawberries, blueberries and raspberries. At 9.99/lb, they were out of our price range, but we both gave the vendor 25 cents each to sample a berry. They tasted like a forest berry meets a cherry tomato.

Last but not least was the Okanagan Valley Sweet Ambrosia apple; this wins the prize for biggest apple I’ve ever eaten in my entire life. If I had to kill someone with fruit, I would choose this apple to do so. Indeed, B.C. apples seemed generally bigger, which I’m assuming has something to do with the mild climate.

If you love food and are planning a visit to Vancouver soon, make sure you get to the Granville Island Public Market. We saw everything there from vegan chocolate chews to fish to gigantic hamburgers. This really is an adventure in food.

Has anyone else been to Granville Island Public Market? If so, what would you recommend people buy/sample/eat?