Interacting with BC Tourism

"Paint by Numbers" view of Vancouver

The real thing, on the Vancouver waterfront

BC Tourism, which has a $65 million budget for tourism promotion and an inviting web site, HelloBC.com, brought its road show to Seattle this week for an "interactive" afternoon with travel writers. The Thompson Okanagan Tourism Assoiciation, for example, featured chef Dana Ewart of Joy Road Catering to make strawberry-rhubarb tartelettes. (We wrote about Chef Dana last year in a post about the Okanagan wine country.) Tourism Victoria featured its most exciting new product, Victoria Gin, infused with tea from Silk Road Tea. Tourism Richmond had lots of stories about its new food blogger, Lindsay Anderson, who's going to write a post a day for a year about Richmond's vibrant restaurant scene. Tourism Vancouver asked the travel writers to help paint its photogenic harbor. Oops, sorry, harbour. See you soon in Canada!

Top Table's Expanding Waistline

The folks at Vancouver's acclaimed Top Table group (Blue Water Cafe, CinCin and West in town, Araxi in Whistler), have added a chocolate shop and patiserrie called Thierry on Alberni between Burrard and Thurlow.

Thierry Busset at work

Equal parts shop, café and atelier, it’s a collaboration between Top Table's founder, Jack Evrensel, and Thierry Busset, described as "one of the best pastry chefs in the world" by a former colleague, Gordon Ramsay.

A native of the Auvergne region in southern France, Busset studied pastry making at some of the finest pâtisseries and restaurants in Europe: Bernard Sicard and Joseph Pilati in France; and two restaurants rated three stars by Michelin in the UK: Albert Roux's Le Gavroche and Marco Pierre White's restaurant at The Hyde Park Hotel.

Opening early for morning cappuccinos and croissants, Thierry's new cafe is light and airy, with curved walls of palmwood tambour and Thonet bentwood chairs that evoke classic Parisian cafés.

Soups, sandwiches and light meals will be served in the afternoon and evening. 

Says Busset: "We wanted something absolutely unique: the free flowing shop and café, an atelier where you can watch us work, and intensity and excitement in everything we make."

Thierry, 1059 Alberni Street, Vancouver, BC (604) 608-6870