Slice into wood-fired pizza and farm salad at Vancouver’s Nonavo 

Nonavo, opened last August in the laid-back heart of downtown Vancouver, dives into many of today’s pizza obsessions: local flour, wild yeast, handmade dough in limited batches, a blingy wood-fired oven in full view. It comes together in quick-fired 12-inch pies, pepperoni to sausage, with a few wild cards like arugula pesto crowned with sunflower seed ricotta and lemon olive oil. It might not be a drive-from-Portland destination, but it’s a sweet place with tasty farm-fresh salads—well worth a visit if you’re in the hood. 

Slurp Sichuan egg noodles at Wares 

Wares, the condensed reincarnation of NE Fremont’s Smallwares, is officially open and cranking out orders of fish-saucy fried kale and candied bacon at its new NE Sandy location. The short, newish menu is still finding its footing, but we’re into the surprisingly mild Sichuan noodles, tumbled with ginger-flecked sausage and sweet grilled pineapple. It’s a neat rendition of the restaurant’s old Sichuan Sausage and Pineapple Skewer recipe, which you can find right here. 

Tackle the fried chicken at Basilisk 

While you’re visiting the Zipper micro-restaurant, head next door to Basilisk, a much-improved fried chicken spot that used to be Vietnamese grab-'n’-go Rua. The fried chicken here is dynamite (both in sandwich form and as a plate), with a heavy-battered, crackle-crisp crust that yields to tender dark meat. It’s a little greasy, but totally worth it in a KFC bucket kind of way. In moderation, we can even get behind the dirty Dan Dan fries, sticky with peanut-chile oil and blanketed in cilantro. But Kool-Aid soft-serve, coming soon, might be jumping the shark.

Throw down for prix fixe brunch at Suzette Crêperie

Remember Suzette? It was a super-cute Alberta food cart run by former Chez Panisse pastry chef Jehnee Rains before it moved to SE Belmont in 2012 and became a neighborhood staple. It’s still trucking along (in a slightly sticky, musty fashion) and serving up some damn fine crêpes. Weekend brunch is an especially good deal: $14 gets you the choice of an egg-topped crêpe (we like the herb-roasted pork loin with Gruyère), a custardy almond and brown butter teacake, and an orange blossom mimosa.