Bon Voyage Angela

One of my favourite local food writers is leaving Vancouver. Angela Murrills, long the restaurant reviewer for the Georgia Strait, is moving to the south of France with her husband shortly. There was a nice send off for her tonight at Goldfish Pacific Kitchen. There was a surreality to saying goodbye because we’d only ever really chatted over the phone and via email. I’ve read her column every week for several years now and it’s going to be odd not having it as part and parcel of my Thursday morning victual. Bummer.

I’m going to miss her, but I’m holding out hope that she’ll get bored of the Languedoc and submit the occasional piece to the Straight and other publications. “Murrillian dispatches” would be wonderful.

I’m hoping for some missives from the recently retired Jamie Maw, too, but I won’t hold my breath. He’s busy writing a book – poetically entitled “Eating Out Abroad.” (At the very least, I think a return to the forum is in order. I think we’ve all bought enough copies of Van Mag to warrant his consideration.)

Tangentially, Don Genova had better start getting his food writing students at UBC some gigs, because editors are starting to sweat it. There are too many restaurants, markets, and wineries out there and not nearly enough scribes about to get all tappity about them. Surely there are some budding Murrills’ and Maws here with some story ideas…

Thanks for the beers Emily and Tara, and congratulations to David Hawksworth on his landing of a 35 foot spring salmon, and sorry to Salt for having to bail on my shadowing their Neal’s Yard Dairy tasting. Home called, as did – as you can see – a little bit of blogging (and the DVD series I just purchased: Planets. Hours upon hours of fresh sleep await me).