Being the foodie that I am, of course I would be going to the EAT! Vancouver Food + Cooking Festival.

I have other stuff to blog about, but I thought I might as well get this up first for those who are going on Saturday (11-9pm) or Sunday (11-5pm).

Spent the WHOLE day there today from 4-9pm. My feet hurt! Make sure you buy your tickets online and save $3 from the $15 price.

Once you enter, you’ll want to buy some Bite/Taste tickets, they’ll came in handy later.

“Restaurants, wineries and breweries participating will charge a low price for their food and beverages (Maximum price is $4). Payment for these products is made by way of ‘Bite/Taste Tickets‘ visitor may purchase from our ‘Bite/Taste Ticket’ Booth located by the entrance of the show. Although many exhibitors offer free samples or tastes of their products, in order to obtain larger portions, again the Bite/Taste tickets may be required. Tickets are 50 cents each and are sold in a sheet of 20 for $10 or a half sheet for $5.“

There are plenty of free samples from the various booths, ranging from miso soup, smoked salmon, or even butter chicken.  These restaurants are participating, and offere appetizer sized portions, and you should make your choice wisely lest you don’t have enough tickets to spend.

• Ashiana Tandoori
• Cassis Bistro
• Shark Club Bar & Grill
• New India Buffet
• Goldilocks Bakery
• Mama Mia’s Gelato
• Jamaican Jerk Cuisine
• Atithi Restaurant
• Dona Cata Mexican Restaurant
• Maurya Restaurant
• Schokolade Cafe
• Sweet Chili Cafe
• Big Al’s Soul Food
• Zin, Restaurant & Lounge

Since there’s a lot of booths…we did a loop and made sure we got to everything. One of the first areas was the pet area, where you can pick up some free samples for your cat or dog!

There’s a lot of pictures coming up, so you’ll want to click to see the rest of this entry!

The next two pictures probably look familiar to my Granville Island post..it’s cause it’s the same company, Olea Europaea! Christina, the president of the company even recognized us (Kevin and I).

Okay dang.. you know what I realized? A lot of the samples I didn’t take pictures of (because they were small, or wasn’t easy to, or I just plain forgot, I was hungry!) so you’ll have to just…go and see. Trust me, for the price, you could even get full on the FREE samples.

Boylan Bottle Co is on hand to give out free samples of their drinks. Their root beer was sweet, a lot different than the Barq’s I’m used to drinking. I like the bite! The ginger ale was good though, you could really taste the ginger, as they use it to flavor it.

Cured pork leg from Gelderman Farms.

Just to prove that it’s really a leg.

So fatty, but quite good.

You can get 3 meatballs and 1/2 a pita bread for 6 tickets ($3). That’s $1 per meatball…yikes. What booth this was I forgot.

I thought this was some witty marketing by Dead Frog. Another glass for $0.01! You can try their beer, a small beer glass can be acquired at the entrance of the Grapes & Hops area with a 2ticket refundable deposit. I thought their beer was a little….weak.

Pick up some Alaskan King Crab legs at the Aquastar booth for 6 tickets ($3).

Or you can get some curry prawns/coconut prawns for 4 tickets ($2).

You can also take a break and catch some shows at the four different stages, Food Network Celebrity, International Culinary, Grapes & Hops, or CityTV’s Master Chef Competition. Vancouver’s own Rob Feenie was there today, but I didn’t catch the entire show. The picture is just to prove I actually saw him.

Doesn’t this look so cute and yummy? It’s not mine, I just asked the lady who ordered it if I could take a picture of it.

It’s Nasi Tumpeng, and you can get it from the Indonesian booth. I don’t think they’re an actual restaurant, as the table had tourism brochures and stuff.

A really big cone of rice…mmm rice.

If you like coffee…and if you like avocados.. I suggest you also pick up this drink for 4tickets ($2). Iced coffee and avocado! Mm….might sound so strange, but it’s actually a very good combination. I had two, and the girl who gave me it was cute…could be the reason why I spent some time around that booth.

It was a great event, I didn’t spend too much, just 18 bucks! [$12 (entry ticket) + $6 (12 bite/taste tickets)] and I got to sample a lot of things for free.

Next entry will be up soon, once my card reader decides to work. For now, you can see the rest of the pictures from the event in my flickr set here.