Sopa de Lima at Granville Island, and the One Ingredient Laura Changed 🥣🍋🫑
I met Laura and her son at the Riley Park farmers market. That is still where a lot of people run into them, because they are regulars on the market circuit around the city. But they also have a spot inside the Granville Island Public Market, at the Flavours of Hope Cafe, right at the main entrance across from JJ Bean, open every day from 9 AM to 6 PM.
Their business is Sabor a Yucatán. It is family-owned, and it is specifically Yucatecan, which is worth saying out loud, because Yucatecan food is its own world 🤤 The dishes they built the business around are frijoles (no lard!) and cochinita pibil , recipes passed down through generations of their family. In their own words, the goal is an experience that evokes the warmth and comfort of a home-cooked meal.
I had the sopa de lima and the horchata when I visited, and the first item I bought was the cochinita pibil taco kit from Riley Park (heaven sent).
The 🥣 soup
Bright, warm, light, and genuinely flavourful all at the same time, which is a hard combination to land. It is comforting without being heavy, so you finish the bowl feeling good instead of sleepy.
Eat it with corn chips. I do not consider this optional. The chips go soft at the edges in the broth and it is the whole point!
It is also, in practical terms, a very efficient bowl of food. A real pile of vegetables and a solid serving of protein, all in one thing, all manageable with one hand. That is exactly the format a parent needs.
Laura 🫶
Laura told me that in the Yucatán, sopa de lima is traditionally made with turkey. She makes hers with chicken, because chicken is what is customary here in Canada.
I have not stopped thinking about that.
Her palate is precise and deeply trained. She knows exactly what the original is supposed to taste like. She made the change anyway, because the version she serves here has to actually work here, with what people know and what is on the shelf. It is a small technical detail and an enormous idea at the same time.
When you move into a new culture you are making that call constantly. What do I keep exactly as it was, and what do I adjust so it can live in this place? There is no formula. You have to trust yourself to know the difference, and you have to trust that adapting something is not the same as losing it.
She kept the soul of the soup and let one ingredient meet her where she lives now. The result is not a watered-down version of anything. It is the dish, here.
And underneath all of it she was doing the thing every great mom does, which is making something amazing and putting it in front of people.
The horchata 🌺
The base tastes traditional and it is extremely easy to love. What got me is that hers is made with jamaica, so you get hibiscus alongside the horchata. That brings a tartness that cuts the sweetness, and I will take tart over sugary every single time!
They sell horchata (made with jamaica) at the Granville Island counter, so you can go in either direction depending on your mood.
The freezer case!!!!!!!!!!!!
This is the part I most want parents to hear.
They sell ready-made frozen meals. The sopa de lima comes both fresh and frozen. They carry other frozen products as well, and they have bolis, which are Mexican frozen treats in a tube and the ideal thing to hand a kid on a warm afternoon on the island.
So here is the actual move. You go to Granville Island, you eat something good, and then you buy dinner for a night next week and take it home to the freezer.
That is a real meal, made by a real family, sitting in your freezer for the evening when everything falls apart and nobody has the energy to cook. It is worth more than almost anything else you can freeze and prepare at home! Take and bake style (but you don't bake soup lol).
Go find them!
Sabor a Yucatán
Flavours of Hope Cafe, Granville Island Public Market
Main entrance, across from JJ Bean
Open daily, 9 AM to 6 PM
Also at farmers markets around the city, including Riley Park
On the menu: sopa de lima (fresh and frozen), horchata and jamaica, bolis and frozen treats, and frozen products to take home.
Farmers markets this month, all 10 AM to 2 PM:
- Saturday, September 5, Riley Park
- Sunday, September 6, Mount Pleasant
- Saturday, September 19, Riley Park
- Sunday, September 20, Kitsilano
- Sunday, September 20, Mount Pleasant
Two logistics notes. The public market is stroller accessible, but it gets tight through the middle of the day on weekends, so go earlier if you want to walk through it. This truly shouldn’t be an issue for getting to Flavours of Hope though as the seating is right next to the entrance :)
OH! And bring a cooler bag if you are taking frozen things home, because the walk back to the car on Granville Island is never as short as you think it will be.