Vancouver

An afternoon at the 17th Chinese Restaurant Awards, from the reception to the podium, and why it was my last as a Taste Advisor.

For Hokkien families, Mid-Autumn isn’t only mooncakes and lanterns. It’s six dice, a porcelain bowl, and sixty-three prizes to play for.

Nine chefs, three hand-harvested BC seafoods, and an evening in the Steveston cannery, four blocks from the engine shop my family once helped run.

In Hokkien families the noodle is the birthday cake. Everything else on the plate is negotiable — the noodle is the one thing nobody cuts.

About twenty spirits houses, one convention-centre stage, and a two-in-the-morning conversation about agave with the bartender everyone else in the room had just voted for.