Who: The Dr. Peter Centre, Vancouver’s Passions committee, and roughly 227 guests in their best cocktail attire.
What: Passions, the annual culinary fundraising gala pairing the city’s top chefs, restaurants, and bars in support of the Dr. Peter Centre’s Food and Nutrition Program.
The event took place Wed Nov 26th at Performance Works on Granville Island. The goal of the evening is to fund essential food services for people living with HIV/AIDS, mental illness, substance use, and homelessness at the Dr. Peter Centre, which has been doing this work for nearly thirty years.
The first thing that got me was the photo station on the way in. This sounds like a small thing until you’ve been to as many galas as I have and realized how rarely it happens. You get dressed up, you do your hair, you spend actual money on an outfit, and then you spend the whole night talking to people and eating off tiny plates and somehow leave without a single photo of yourself looking like that. Passions solved for it. They stopped you at the door, and it meant something as simple as guaranteeing everyone left with proof they’d made the effort. Brownie points, genuinely.
This year’s lineup leaned hard into the city’s Michelin roster. The VIP hour featured Gus Stieffenhofer-Brandson of Published on Main, Andrea Carlson of Burdock & Co, Allen Ren of iDen & Quan Ju De Beijing Duck House, and Chanthy Yen, Canada’s Top Chef winner, previewing his upcoming restaurant Touk. From there the floor opened to a roster that read like a highlight reel of the city, The Acorn, Anh and Chi, Bar Bravo, Cantina Norte, Chambar, Fiorino, Wildlight Kitchen + Bar, Provence Marinaside, Melo Patisserie, L’Abattoir, Lila, Selene, Sushi Hil, and Zoomak among them, with pours from AMA Raw Bar, Good Thief, June, The Keefer Bar, Copperpenny Distilling Co., Phantom Creek Estates, and Sea Cider rounding out the drinks program.
Fanny Bay Oyster Bar was, as always, a fixture, and I say that with total affection because it would not be a Vancouver gala without them. I went back for seconds and, if I’m being honest with you, thirds. There’s a reason they’ve become a mainstay of the local food scene, they simply do not miss.
My genuine surprise of the night was a tuna crudo on buttery toast that I am still thinking about days later. I did not catch which kitchen it came from in the moment, I was too busy going back for another bite, and I have not yet found it published anywhere alongside a chef credit. If it turns up, I will absolutely come back and update this with the name, because whoever made it deserves the recognition.
The other standout, and this one surprised me, was the welcome pour during VIP hour. A slightly sweeter sparkling wine, poured the second you walked in, and it might have been the single best sip of the entire night. Not what I was expecting to be my highlight walking in, but there it is.
All of it in support of a cause that deserves every bit of the room’s attention. The Dr. Peter Centre has spent nearly three decades applying hard-won lessons from the fight against HIV/AIDS to people now facing complex healthcare needs, homelessness, and entrenched stigma, and Passions has raised more than three million dollars toward that work since it started in 2002 as a small cooking class at Barbara-Jo’s Books to Cooks. This year alone brought in over two hundred thousand dollars for the Food and Nutrition Program, from twenty-six participating restaurants and bars. That is not a small night. That is a room full of people who showed up and gave generously to something that matters.