The Globe & Mail’s Vancouver food critic, Alexandra Gill, has put together her esteemed selections for the city’s best new restaurants of 2014. Let’s take a look.

Gill, known for her sharply worded old-school reviews of restaurants, has spent another year eating, thinking, and writing about what’s being served up in Vancouver. Not surprisingly, her list spans territory her readers will find familiar, as they are places she covered for the Globe & Mail over the past several months.

It’s not particularly surprising to see picks like Cinara or Ask For Luigi. The inclusion of Boulevard Kitchen and Oyster Bar is curious, however, considering  Gill said it was afflicted with split personality disorder, its design is a “disaster. “It’s trying to be everything to everyone – unsuccessfully,” wrote Gill. If all that is happening at the restaurant and it still made her Top 10, it sounds like it was a rough year for freshmen eateries in Vancouver.

Gill ventures out further afield in Metro Vancouver, with Vikram Vij’s My Shanti in South Surrey, and Chef Tony Seafood Restaurant in Richmond’s Empire Centre.

Taking a bit of liberty with the notion of “new,” Gill includes the perpetually popular Chambar and Cafe Medina, both of which rebooted in new locations in 2014, though have maintained their core menus, with some expansion. Since Gill reviewed both those new locations this year in her column, it’s no wonder they got the pass to join the list.

Globe and Mail 2014 Best New Restaurants: Vancouver Edition by Alexandra Gill  

Featured image: My Shanti (Photo courtesy the Globe & Mail)