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Jamie Mah is a writer, bartender and sommelier in beautiful Vancouver B.C. Join him as he takes comprehensive deep dives into everything food and culture in the city and around the globe.
Based on 5 episodes we listened to · September 2026
Track & Food connects restaurant culture to labor, poverty, sobriety, and policy through candid conversations grounded in everyday economic pressures.
Jamie Ma uses food as an entry point to the systems and relationships shaping life in Vancouver and beyond. Conversations with authors, restaurant operators, and a poverty researcher move easily from bars and kitchens into labor, public policy, and the cost of keeping a local…
From bar tabs to blueberry wages, Jamie Mah asks you to look behind the price on the menu.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A restaurant-world novel chat about ambition, mentorship, and the risk inside admiration.
Timothy Taylor's new book sits at the center of this Track and Food conversation, and the episode works because it keeps the focus on kitchens as places where ambition, loyalty, and self-invention all get tested at once.
A food-world interview that turns migrant labor into a local human story.
Jamie Ma steers Trackin' Food toward labor, and the episode is strongest when it stops talking in abstractions and gets down to wages, seasonal agriculture, caregiving, and the dependence many Canadian industries have on temporary foreign labor.
A plainspoken conversation about poverty myths, stigma, and why income security keeps coming back.
Track & Food treats poverty less as a private failing than as a set of myths, shame, and the distance between public assumptions and daily life.
A loose bar list episode that turns into a dry January talk about drinking less and higher prices.
Track & Food opens with a top 10 bars list, then settles into a dry January chat that lands on drinking less, higher prices, and how normal sobriety has started to feel.
A grounded look at the pressure points facing BC restaurants.
The piece puts BC restaurants and SEBA loan repayments at the center of a plainspoken argument about survival. It opens with a familiar Vancouver dinner question, then uses that to sketch a city where the food options are strong but the math behind keeping them open is getting…
Bourbon talk, barrel stories, messy good pours.
Bourbon reviews with memory, candor, and community.
Everyday life, thought through together.
Jamie Mah interviews Tracy Smith-Carrier, a professor and poverty researcher, about her article 'Seven Myths That Keep Us From Ending Poverty'.
Track & Food hosts Jamie Ma, James Iranzad and James Langford-Smith open with travel updates, including Iranzad's inability to enter the U.S.
Jamie Ma and James Iranzad of Gooseneck Hospitality record episode 109 of Track & Food the day after Vancouver's fourth Michelin ceremony, while the BCLDB strike empties liquor shelves.
Jamie Ma convenes three BC brewery owners, Adam Henderson (Superflux), Sam Payne (Parkside and Rerun) and Nick Black (Strange Fellows), after Studio Brewing announced a December 22 closure and Callister Brewing a December 31 closure.
Ron McKinlay, who left Toronto's Canoe on Valentine's Day after eight years, says Michelin has become "a business" that can scare away neighbourhood-restaurant customers while adding pressure on staff and bookings.
Host Jamie Ma sits down with Gooseneck Hospitality's James Iranzad, Superbaba and Mish Mish founder Dallah El-Chami, and bar-opening partners Max Curzon-Price and Andrew Kong.
Track & Food Podcast host gathers Amber Bruce (Keefer Bar, June), Alexa Gervais (Labatoir), Andrew Kong (Suyo) and Tara Davies (Chupito) the day of the 2025 Van Meg Awards, hours before Davies won Bartender of the Year.
Jamie Ma examines the Mount Pleasant BIA's proposed expansion along Main Street from 19th Avenue to 29th Avenue, which goes to a council vote on February 27th.
Host Jamie convenes four Vancouver-area operators (James Ironsad, Adam Henderson, Sean Layton and Shira Blustein) for episode 108, opening with a Tyee-style tipflation column and its "ornery" comment section.
Track & Food revisits its December 2023 beer-industry episode, 14 months later, with Adam Henderson of Superflux, Nick Black of Strange Fellows and Sam Payne of Rewind and Parkside.
Jamie Mah interviews author Marcelo Di Cintio about his book 'Precarious: The Lives of Migrant Workers,' which explores the experiences of temporary foreign workers in Canada.
Jamie Mah interviews Vancouver author Timothy Taylor about his new novel, 'The Rise and Fall of Magic Wolf.' Taylor discusses the book's plot, which follows a young chef named Tao from Paris to Vancouver, exploring themes like kitchen culture, gender dynamics, and culinary inspiration.
Host Jamie Mah gathers Vancouver restaurateurs Shira Blustein, Sean Leighton, and James Iranzad to assess the crisis in BC's restaurant industry.
Jamie Mah reunites with James Iranzad and James Langford-Smith to rank BC's top bars, continuing from a previous drunken recording they cut short.
Ahead of the October 5 star announcement, Jamie Ma, James Iranzad, James Langford-Smith and former Joie winemaker Heidi Noble review Michelin's Vancouver list of 75 restaurants (8 stars, 12 Bib Gourmands, the rest recommended).
Episode 110 of Track & Food, recorded in early November 2025, reunites host Jamie Ma with James Ironsad of Gooseneck Hospitality and James Lankford-Smith, who just finished a 60-ton harvest in the Okanagan.
Jamie Ma and Canadian food journalist Corey Mintz open with Ma's three-part CBC series on why restaurant work is rarely seen as a "real job." Mintz argues that tipping, which he says he has studied for 15 years, will not be abolished because restaurateurs fear losing top servers to competitors that still allow tips.
Track & Food Podcast's last episode of 2024 brings back James Iranzad of Gooseneck Hospitality and James Langford-Smith of Pumpkin Moose Juice to rank 15 favourite BC restaurants, including spots outside Vancouver's city limits.
Host Jamie Monn interviews UBC professor Dr.