Pip: Mary Sheridan has found a way to eat your way through an art exhibition, and honestly, Vancouver was always going to be the city that pulled this off.
Mara: This episode covers the Among the Trees with Emily Carr afternoon tea at Fairmont Hotel Vancouver — the food, the cocktails, and the gallery exhibition behind it all.
Pip: Let's start with what's actually on the menu and why this collaboration landed the way it did.
Vancouver Afternoon Tea Inspired by Emily Carr
Mara: The question here is whether a themed afternoon tea can do more than look good for photos — and this one makes a real case that it can.
Pip: The post sets up the exhibition connection directly, quoting Vancouver Art Gallery curator Richard Hill, who describes the Emily Carr experience as feeling like "your nose is right up against it."
Mara: That's the standard this tea is trying to meet. The immersive angle isn't just decor — Notch8 Restaurant transforms its dining room into a space drawn from Carr's Pacific Northwest forest paintings, with the food doing the same interpretive work.
Pip: The savoury menu alone earns its place: a Woodland Grove mushroom mousse tart with hazelnut crumb, and a Red Cedar preparation with wild Pacific salmon, dill, and caper olive soil. That's not garnish-and-sandwich territory.
Mara: The sweets follow the same logic — Driftwood Shortbread with smoked sea salt caramel, a Forest Floor chocolate financier with matcha moss and chocolate buttercream. Each dish is named and flavored to map back to Carr's landscapes.
Pip: A chocolate cake wearing a mossy hat is either the most Vancouver thing ever or the most Vancouver thing ever.
Mara: The cocktail menu extends it further — cedar-infused spirits and botanical flavors pulled from the forest, which is a different kind of tribute than a printed menu card.
Pip: And the gallery exhibition it connects to is substantial. That Green Ideal: Emily Carr and the Idea of Nature features more than 100 paintings and drawings — the Gallery's largest Carr exhibition in over twenty years.
Mara: The tea runs Thursday through Sunday, May 22 through September 20, 2026, with seatings at eleven, one, and three. Pricing is seventy-five dollars per adult and forty dollars for children twelve and under. The exhibition itself continues until November 8.
Pip: The through-line the post keeps returning to is place — this is a collaboration that could only exist here, about an artist who could only have made work here.
Mara: When the food, the art, and the setting are all pulling in the same direction, the result is something that actually earns the word immersive.
Pip: More of that, Vancouver. We'll be back.
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