Salmon, bannock, and culinary heritage

Few things embody a place as powerfully as its food. Ingredients offer insights into its terrain, flora, and fauna, while cooking traditions carry stories of its people and their histories. Yet, the city of Vancouver doesn't boast a thriving culinary scene that showcases its original inhabitants. Salmon n' Bannock, a modern Indigenous bistro, is the only restaurant in the city that offers a dedicated Indigenous dining experience.

Cook’s eclectic palate comes from over four decades of globetrotting as a flight attendant, during which time she has lived in cities all over the world. At Salmon n’ Bannock, her culinary philosophy is,

Whether it’s seasonal vegetables, bison, elk, game sausage, sablefish, sockeye, or coho salmon, the team is committed to procuring produce and ingredients from distributors who share their values.

When sourcing ingredients, their first choice is always Indigenous suppliers, followed by local sources, then Canadian, and finally Turtle Island— a term some Indigenous peoples use to refer to North America. “You can taste the quality, even if the dish is super simple,” Cook says. 

Cook enjoys keeping the menu fresh by introducing specials, features, and seasonal offerings. “At the end of the day, the menu is a piece of paper. We can rip it up and write a new one,” she says.

However, she recognizes that many elements must stay consistent, as customers often crave the signature dishes from the menu. “The heart of it needs to stay the same.” A favorite among both customers and team is the "fiss n’ rice," which features a six-ounce fillet of wild sockeye salmon on a bed of Ojibway wild rice with a brown butter sauce and served with seasonal vegetables.

“I’ve lived all over the world, I’ve met so many cultures. I realised that the one thing that everybody has in common is food. Food brings people together.” says Cook. “You can sit around a dinner table anywhere you go, and learn about people’s cultures. And Indigenous is no different.”