Vancouver’s Best Food Blogs: Degan of SmokySweet.com

While we consider our food tour a great way to explore Vancouver’s restaurant scene, there are plenty of food lovers, experts, and enthusiasts among us. Every Friday, we will feature one of Vancouver’s best food bloggers that has notable taste in food, drink, and culture.

Today’s feature: Degan Walters of SmokySweet.com

Degan Walters of of Smoky Sweet peruse the menu

In her own words: SmokySweet.com is a visually enticing food – and drink! – blog. I do most of the writing and Matt takes most of the photos, although sometimes we change it up. We try to place equal focus on quality writing and quality photographs to create a narrative instead of making sure we get to the newest restaurant before anyone else does. The blog covers whatever culinary bent we happen to be on – dining out, dining in, whisky, cocktails, and occasionally even products we come across.

Follow them on Facebook or Degan on Twitter @luckyfish.

5 Questions for Degan:

If you could encapsulate Vancouver in 1 restaurant dish, what would it be?

Something vaguely Asian and healthy with local ingredients – the sashimi salad at Hapa Izakaya, perhaps. Vancouver is such a wonderful town but it suffers from a bit of an identity complex, I think. The influx of people, ingredients, culture,  foreign investment, etc. make Vancouver feel like it’s bigger than it is – there’s so much of the world in it while still being a small(ish) town. And so we reach a lot and sometimes that results in a really polished dish and sometimes it doesn’t, but that can work to our advantage as well. There are no Michelin guides for Canada and no spots on Restaurant Magazine’s Top 50 list so we can be creative without the pressure.

What BC food or drink product can you not live without?

Ack, there are so many! Cutter Ranch pork, La Frenz Viognier, Oyama’s kazu koppa, Kale & Nori bitters…Matt would say Central City’s IPA. If I had to pick just one though, I’d probably go with Fanny Bay Oysters.

If you could change 1 thing about Vancouver’s food scene, what would it be?

More focus on small, cheap delicious things instead of trying to impress. Or at least get the basics nailed down before trying to do something off the wall.

If you had $5 in your pocket, where would you grab lunch in Vancouver?

Can you even get lunch for $5 in Vancouver? I admit I hardly ever pay close attention to prices of things, so dishes are mostly just categorized as cheap / moderate / expensive / luxury. In the cheap category I’d go for pho or some other kind of noodles, tacos, food trucks, but I know for sure that the entire menu at the Famous Warehouse is $5 so that’s a safe bet.

What would be your last meal before a zombie apocalypse?

I know nothing about zombies. Is there something that they find repellent? Maybe just a big bowl of carbs to power up for all the running!

Stay tuned for more food blogger features on Twitter or Facebook.  Do you have a unique, kick butt food blog or know somebody that does?  Got questions that you’d like us to ask upcoming bloggers?  Let us know by emailing info [at] vancouverfoodtour [dot] com!

Melody Fury is the founder of Vancouver Food Tour. She is an award winning entrepreneur and food writer that specializes in Vancouver restaurants and cocktails.

Connect with her on Twitter @VanFoodTour or on Facebook to see more.