At Burdock & Co, sustainability is not a trend—it’s a way of being. Since opening in 2013, Chef Andrea Carlson has built her restaurant around deep-rooted relationships with small-scale farmers, wild foragers and food artisans who share her reverence for the land.
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Each tasting menu is guided by the moon, changing six times a year to reflect micro-seasonal shifts, planting cycles, and ingredients available in the moment. The full moon has long marked transitions in the natural world, signalling when to sow, forage, and harvest. At Burdock, it marks the beginning of a new chapter.
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Chef Andrea Carlson works closely with regenerative producers like The Garden’s Jane Squier, a visionary horticulturist on Salt Spring Island who cultivates rare citrus and subtropical fruits using rainwater catchment, solar power, and on-farm biogas. On the Sunshine Coast, forager Alexander McNaughton harvests Douglas fir resin, reindeer lichen, and cottonwood buds with care, always attuned to what the forest can give without being harmed. When Carlson asked for fir resin, he hesitated—no chef had before. Traditionally used as a healing salve, the aromatic sap becomes, in her hands, a glaze that smells like the forest after the rain.

Burdock’s kitchen follows a full-circle ethos: yuzu zest is infused into limoncello or fermented into a citrus kosho that reappears months later on the fall radicchio menu. Potato skins are simmered into sauces. Magnolia flowers become kimchi. Ingredients are shared with sister restaurants—Harvest Community Foods and Bar Gobo—ensuring nothing goes to waste.

The intimate, 32-seat room is a tiny gem of rustic minimalism that mirrors these values. Weathered barn boards and beetle-salvaged pine ground the room in reclaimed warmth. Water is conserved through low-flow fixtures. Ceramics are handmade by local artists. Every element tells a story of place.

Most recently, Burdock has taken its relationship with nature one step further. At Taste Sound, a quarterly sensory dinner series, guests don headphones and listen to the bioelectric activity of plants, experiencing the subtle energy of their food in real time. The goal is to bring the natural world into the dining room and create new connections with the life forces that nourish us.
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Staff are treated with equal respect. Four-day work weeks, extended benefits and professional development support have kept turnover remarkably low.

Carlson’s leadership extends far beyond the kitchen—she serves on the board of Sole Food Street Farms, a social enterprise that provides meaningful agricultural work to people facing barriers. She is a proud member of Slow Food Canada and Oceanwise. She is an ambassador for Community Food Centres Canada and West Coast Seeds, and a founding member of Growing Chefs. Long before composting was common, she became the City of Vancouver’s first Food Composting Ambassador. 
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Burdock & Co. is not just a restaurant. It is a community of care, where every decision, from sourcing and plating to sound, tells a story of the land and the people who steward it.