The Vancouver Dining Drinking Game

Who needs a drink? Clip this handy guide for next time you go out, booze should be readily available, and the proprietor should appreciate the uptick in business.

• If your celebrity bar-star is sporting a jaunty pageboy cap, drink.
• If the dork at the next table whips out a Nikon more appropriate to war journalism to snap their dinner, drink. Two drinks if the flash goes off.
• If a wobbly piece of pork belly is on the menu, drink.
• If any part of your meal is presented on a giant spoon you are expected to get into your mouth with one go, drink. Two drinks if the spoon contains some form of raw seafood.
• If you have to navigate a phalanx of black cocktail dress clad dewy recently post pubescent girls to get in the front door, stop eating at Cactus Club, drink somewhere else.
• If you can’t decide between two dishes, and ask the server for their recommendation, and they describe the options as “their favourite”, drink.
• If you order the special, and the servers doesn’t disclose the price, and the bill comes and it was ten bucks more than anything else on the menu, drink elsewhere.
• If the gender signs on the washroom door require you have completed a post doctoral dissertation in cryptography to determine intent, drink.
• If the next table feels their status as “influential food bloggers” entitles them to some part of their meal being comped, drink.
• If the industry veterans running the hot new spot your find yourself in are barely into their thirties, drink.
• If you can name the three previous iterations of the space you are in, drink.
• If they are trying to flog you a bottle of wine for a hundred bucks that’s not in a temperature controlled storage unit, drink (something else).

~KT