Cold rainy weathers always calls for pho, so I had one of those late afternoon lunches at Pho Century on Kingsway.

This pho restaurant seemed really new, they probably just opened within a few months. And unlike the ‘regular’ pho joints, this place’s decoration is considered a bit on the fancy side.

First time visiting, I stuck with the Special Pho, the one with everything beef including tripe, brisket, tendon, beef balls, and rare steak. And since it was a late lunch, I also ordered a Meatball Sub on the side.

The special pho was pretty decent. The soup looked very clear and it tasted very light and clean. There was a good amount of meat in it, just enough to balance the noodles to beef ratio. The brisket was a little bit dry, because it wasn’t very fatty.

As for the meatball sub, I found it to be quite greasy. The bread was nice and toasty but the pork needed more seasoning for my taste.

I was pretty satisfied after my meal, I would come back when I’m in the area.

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Pho Century Fine Vietnamese
6701 Kingsway
Burnaby, BC V5E

Every time I have Beaver Tails, it’s ether at Grouse Mountain or in Whistler.  It’s one of my favorite grubs after snowboarding, and one of those things I only eat when I go snowboarding because it’s pretty much the only places that has them.

A few weeks ago I found out that they have a Lonsdale Quay location, so I decided to go check it out after a day at Cypress Mountain.

The franchise had the same basic sweet beaver tails including my favorites Chocolate hazelnut and Cinnamon sugar. The chocolate hazelnut is pretty much nutella. The deep fried pastry is consistant with other locations, crispy center, and doughy around the edges.

The savory beaver tails were a bit different here. Instead of having my favorite Pizza beaver tail, they had a BC beaver tail, with smoked salmon, capers and cream cheese.

I always associate beaver tails with snowboarding. Now this Lonsdale Quay location makes it a convenient location to visit during the summer!

Beaver tails in Whistler: Beaver tails in Whistler

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Beaver Tails
123 Carrie Cates Court
North Vancouver, BC V7M

I wanted a fancy-ish place to try in the Philippines, so while walking around Greenbelt, we finally decided on Zuni.

I started with the Beef Carpaccio, and Pappardelle Steak with Truffle Oil for my main. The carpaccio was very different from what I was used to. Sure, there’s still thin slices of beef, but it was topped with some micro greens, fresh button mushrooms, parmesan and dressed with some (truffle?) oil, salt and pepper. I’m used to some kick (mustard or balsamic) to go with it, and nothing provided that. The fresh mushrooms didn’t really go well with it, and it was quite bland overall. Some of my friends were a bit scared to try it because they aren’t used to raw beef here, and usually get their steak medium or well.

The Pappardelle Steak was better. The noodles were a bit softer than I like, but that’s fairly typical for Pappardelle. The steak was cooked to a medium, and was quite tender. The sauce was creamy, but not as rich as I had craved, but the truffle oil did add some extra aroma and earthy flavour. The fresh tomato also cut through the cream sauce, and was a bit of a change, though I’m not sure if I enjoyed the fresh pop of the cherry tomatoes.

My friends ordered the Chicken & Prawn Risotto, Ravioli with Chicken and Shrimp, Wagyu Sirloin, and a salad. The Chicken & Prawn Risotto wasn’t very risotto like at all. The rice wasn’t creamy, and it was actually quite stiff. The rice wasn’t soft and tender like a risotto normally is. The ravioli was also a bit strange, as from what I recall it was just one large ravioli, but was over cooked. My cousin enjoyed her salad which looked very fresh, and had pieces of fresh apple with it. Her husband had the Wagyu steak and he enjoyed it as well.

Overall it was decent but nothing special given the prices and the type of restaurant it is.

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Zuni Restaurant and Wine Bar
Ground Floor Greenbelt 5
Makati, Philippines

http://www.zuni.com.ph

Last week I had a great dinner at Kishimoto Japanese Kitchen on commercial Dr.

The 4 of us shared a bunch of appetizers and sushi rolls. My favorite appetizers of the night were the Toro Tataki and the miso eggplants.

The fatty seared tuna was topped with lots of green onions and garlic flakes. The ponzo sauce was light and made the dish really refreshing. The eggplant was grilled perfectly and glazed with sweet caramelized miso crust. I really liked the fact that they cut out the meaty part of the eggplant and utilized the shell of the eggplant as a bowl. It’s both easy to eat, and pretty at the same time.

Speaking of pretty, we were all so wowed by the presentation of the sushi rolls we ordered. Everything came on a big plate and it was decorated with daikon flowers, daikon lamp, and some edible sticks (don’t really know what it is) that made the plate so fun and 3-D. It was really like a sushi theme park on a plate, because each section of the plate was decorated differently. It was hard not to take a picture of it before you eat.

As for the sushi, they were delicious. I loved the spider roll that was rolled in a thin sheet of daikon. It had the mix of crunchy deep fried soft shell crab and creamy avocado with the refreshness of the daikon, really tasty.

My next favorite was the Mamenoki roll. This vegetarian roll was wrapped in avocado. On the inside, there were edamame, carrots, and cornflakes. It’s my first time having edamame in a roll, and I liked it a lot.

Another special roll I ordered was the Salmon Oshi Sushi. It was salmon battera with cream and jalapeño on the top. Another thin slice of salmon is sandwiched in between the rice. Each piece of the sushi was flavorful enough that you don’t need soy sauce with it!

Finally, we finished off the meal with home made black sesame and yuzu ice creams. Black sesame at a Japanese restaurant is almost always a must for me, and this one didn’t disappoint. I was impressed that it was home made.

It’s really nice to see a sushi restaurant that is fun and creative with their food in Vancouver. Besides from the fresh and tasty food, the plating won a lot of bonus points from us. It’s an instant favorite sushi joint for me for sure.

Note: Closed Mondays. Restaurant is tiny, reservations would be wise. One thing we found really weird was that to get more tea, the waitress takes away our cups instead of bringing a pot of tea to our table. It was a little distracting because it kept us concerned if she was going to return each of our cups to the right person.

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Kishimoto Japanese Kitchen
2054 Commercial Drive
Vancouver, BC V5N
(604) 255-5550

I ordered a Caramel Frappe, and my friend got a Mocha Frappe. They different than Starbucks because they use their own vanilla gelato with the ice blended coffee so theirs is a bit creamier and a bit smoother than at Starbucks. The sweetness was just right for me.

We also got a three scoops of gelato – we chose Green Tea, Blueberry Cheesecake, and another flavour I couldn’t remember. I wasn’t a big fan of the green tea ice cream, though I normally don’t like it. The blueberry cheesecake was better, but had a bit of sourness to it. The texture of the gelato wasn’t that smooth, I remembered a bit of graininess in one of the flavours.

This was a pretty popular place with lots of people meeting up with their friends, and also doing some work. Not sure if there was free wifi though.

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Caffe Ti Amo
1st Floor, Greenbelt 5
1228 Makati, Philippines

After another long day of SCUBA Diving, my uncle wanted to visit Shakey’s Pizza Parlor. It’s been a long time since his last visit, but it’s somewhere he and my aunt always went to on dates, so he wanted to come back and reminisce.

The place was really busy, and we were lucky to get a table for 6 fairly quickly. It was also pouring rain outside, so we were lucky to get seated inside. We quickly looked at the menu, and decided on a mixed pizza, chicken wings and some mojos.

The mojos have changed since my uncle’s last visit. Before they were wedges like they are here, but now they were like 1/8″ thick rounds of fried potato. Not as thin as chips for sure, but still crispy with the insides still fluffy. It was good, and I loved the dill sauce that it came with. The wings were fried nicely too, and came with a hot sauce that you could dip in yourself. It was pretty similar to a Frank’s Red Hot Sauce.

So when I said mixed pizza, it’s because it was a pizza with different toppings on each of the 4 quarters. I can’t remember the flavours too much but there was pepperoni, a seafood flavour with shrimp and mushrooms, a mushroom-green pepper-italian sausage one, and another one I can’t remember. Sorry, the names on their website are totally different from what we ordered, and they don’t even list the Boracay location!

The pizza was pretty good, but I wouldn’t say it was anything spectacular. It was like any pizza you would get here, a standard American style pizza. The crust was nice and crisp on the outer edges. The toppings were good, but honestly, nothing special. It wasn’t packed with toppings and had a good amount of cheese. If I were to go back, I’d go back for the mojos and wings more than the pizza.

Another fun thing was that since it was that since it was pouring and very windy outside (basically a storm), main people had to come inside from the patio, and also from the beach across the walk way. After that, all of the power went out so we were left eating in the dark in a restaurant packed with people. Many people had to stay standing. It was quite the experience with the wind blowing the doors and window shutters open and rain coming in, and thunder (I love thunder!). The power outage lasted about 10 minutes, and then everything went back to normal, but people still had to stay inside to eat. Afterwards, on the way back to the hotel, I stayed at the beach and tried to catch lightning with my camera.

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Shakey’s Pizza Parlor
Station 2, Boracay
Philippines

http://www.shakeys.com/

Last week before I went to see the Canucks game, Dee and I grabbed a quick dinner at Verace Pizzeria.

The restaurant is very conveniently located at stadium station, right beside the T&T supermarket. Honestly, I have walked by this pizzeria, and never knew it existed until now.

We both shared a Funghi Pizza and a Caprese salad.

The caprese salad was a traditional said with sliced tomatoes, mozzarella, basil and drizzled with olive oil and balsamic vinegar. It was a nice salad except I wish there was a bit more seasoning on the tomato and the mozzarella.

The funghi had a mix of crimini, portabella, oyster mushrooms, as well as some fresh oregano and olive oil on the top. This pizza had a nice thin, over baked crust which I really liked. The mushrooms were delicious however it didn’t seem like there was a lot of cheese and the extra olive oil made the pizza slightly greasy.

I wish I could’ve tried more pizzas, probably at the next Canucks game I go to since it’s literally 1 minute away from the stadium. It’s good place to get fresh pizzas in gastown.

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Verace Pizzeria Napoletana and Enoteca
189 Keefer Pl
Vancouver, BC V6B6L4

We mainly ordered drinks, but ordered a sample plate of food which include some Sisig Tacos (which I was interested in), Salpicao Kebab, and Honey Sesame Wings. The wings were delicious, but the sisig tacos weren’t really my thing as I think they really did use the pork gizzards that I’m not fond of at all. We already eaten at Holy Cow! so we didn’t get to try much food here.

The drinks they had were truly different, and its a cool idea, but I didn’t enjoy many of them. It’s more of an experience than actual taste I think. I’d rather stick to drinking my usuals, but I’m glad I got to see it and try it for myself. They sound good, but I wasn’t really too hot on the taste of most of the drinks and shots.

It was a good night though, and we had fun with the other tables, and promoters. It wasn’t that busy but there was enough of us on the dance floor (10 or so people – it’s a really small dance floor) and enough alcohol to have a good time. It’s a really chill lounge to have some crazy drinks, and to have a good time. And they had good music.

Thanks to my cousin and friends for a good night out!

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Element Gastrolounge
3rd Floor, Greenbelt 3
1228 Makati, Philippines

We were walking around “D” Mall in Boracay looking for a place to eat and a place to take a picture for my SCUBA license. Andok’s is a popular chain restaurant in the Philippines known for their BBQ. They offer a lot of Filipino favourites like crispy pata, sinigang, longanisa, and even sio pao.

I was with my family, aunts and uncle, so we ordered quite a bit. We ordered the Super Half BBQ Chicken, Chop Suey, Crispy Pata, Pork Sisig, Pork Sinigang and a bunch of Mais Con Yelos.

I have no clue why it was called Super Half BBQ Chicken, because nothing was very super about it. It was quite small for a half chicken, it was BBQ’d, and there isn’t much else to say. Yah it was juicy, but not very meaty because it was so small and was mostly bone. The Pork Sisig was pretty good and came sizzling on a really hot plate like it’s supposed to. I liked how some pieces were a bit crisp, but it was still tender and full of flavour – a bit sour, bit salty, and a bit spicy. I’m glad there wasn’t any chewy bits, and didn’t come with the standard gizzards. My favourite main was the pork sinigang. Sinigang is my favourite dish anyway, but this was really nice. Sour soup broth, and nice fatty pieces of tender pork. I wish it had a bit of heat like my mom makes it, and a bit more vegetables, but overall it was pretty good. My mom definitely makes it better though.

My favourite part of the meal was the dessert which I actually ate first! All of our food pretty much came out at once, and I couldn’t just let it sit because it would melt, so I ate it all before I even started on the regular food. Most of us ordered the Mais Con Yelo, which is basically the cheaper version of Halo Halo. All it is is shaved ice, evaporated milk, creamed corn and sugar. I love it, and ate so much of this as a kid growing up, and make it occasionally at home during the summer. It’s so refreshing and I love the sweetness. Halo Halo has too much of the Asian type of sweets for me that I’m not very fond of. I like my plainness. Anyways it was really good at this location because it had just the write amount of sweetness for me.

This is also where I first learned why they wrap the rice in paper. There were tons of flies everywhere, and definitely didn’t help make me hungry. It’s all out door, and there were lots of stray cats and dogs around. The tables were also pretty wobbly, so eating there was a bit of a chore, with the heat, constant waving off of the flies, stray animals, and wobbly tables.

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Andok’s
Unit 5 & 6 Blk. 11 Unit 6 “D” Mall “D” Boracay, Balabag, Malay, Aklan
Philippines

http://www.andokscorp.com/

On our second day of boarding, we chose Milestones for lunch. It’s also in the Blackcomb Upper Village right across from Merlin’s. This space is huge, so it shouldn’t be too hard to get a table there even when busy. Our group, now 7, was easily accommodated.

This was a fairly late lunch at 1PM (lifts close at 3), so I wasn’t sure if I was going to go back up the mountain. I decided on ordering two dishes anyway – the new pear and coconut pancakes, and a prime rib beef dip with Caesar Salad. Most of my friends got a mix of different brunch and lunch items like California Shrimp Bennies, and Burgers.

I started eating my coconut and pear pancake first, because well, it came a few seconds before my beef dip. The pancake was really sweet, and came topped with sauteed pears, and a lime mascarpone cream and vanilla syrup on top. I think the coconut was mostly part of the pancake batter itself which was a bit cakier than a regular pancake. It was delicious though, and I loved the sweetness, along with the pear and mascarpone. It may be a little to sweet for some for breakfast, but I love sweetness.

The beef dip was awesome too, and served on a really nice crunchy Ciabatta bread. The meat wasn’t packed in there, but it was a decent amount, and it was nice and flavourful, maybe a little bit dry. The sauce was a bit thicker than just a jus, but it helped moisten up the meat and sandwich. My favourite part of the sandwich was the fried crispy onion strings and the gorgonzola butter. One added a nice sweet crisp (like an onion ring), and the other a little bit of pungency. The Caesar salad was good too as it had lots of roasted garlic on top. Definitely different, but a welcome addition.

The service was pretty good, but my friends coke all of a sudden turned into an ice tea after refill, but other than that, I was happy with the service. Another strange thing is that they were playing soccer instead of the Canucks game on the TVs. Four may seem like a really high score for Milestones, but I really enjoyed my dishes this time around. I guess it really just depends on what you order.

I ended up eating 3/4 of the pancakes and sharing the rest with my friends, and eating half of my sandwich so that I could go up for one more run, even though I was dead tired.

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Milestones
4555 Blackcomb Way
Whistler, BC

(604) 905-5422

milestonesrestaurants.com

Van-Ya is the place my sister have been raving about for the past little while. It is pretty much her favorite place to get nabeyaki udon at the moment. She finally brought me there last week to celebrate Chinese New Year.

Not surprisingly, she ordered the nabeyaki udon, because it’s her must get here. I decided to get their Chirashi don because I wanted a variety of sashimi. We also shared a agedashi tofu and okonomiyaki.

The agedashi tofu had a nice thin crispy layer of batter. It was served with green onion and daikon on top. The tofu was nice, but the sauce was a tad salty to me.

The chirashi don had tuna, salmon, egg, salmon roe, saba, surf clam, shrimp, squid and red snapper. This sounds like a lot of sashimi but I got through them fairly quickly, and found myself wishing there was more sashimi towards the end of finishing the dish. It’s probably because of the cut of their sashimi, quick small and thin. And there was only 1 piece of salmon. I need at least 2 pieces of salmon in my chirashi don.

My sister was so excited for her nabeyaki udon. I did have a small bowl of it, and I did like the broth, because it wasn’t overly salty. It’s a nice warm and comforting bowl of noodles to eat on a cold rainy day, but I didn’t think it was the best nabeyaki udon ever.

The okonomiyaki was a Japanese style pancake. Unlike the usual seafood okonomiyaki I’m used to, Vanya used ground beef instead. It was delicious. It’s also a warm and comforting food to have on a cold day because it came pipping hot.

I left some what unsatisfied with my chirashi don (more fish please!), but this is a nice little joint for the neighbourhood.

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Van-Ya
5615 Harold St
Vancouver, BC V5R

I’ve been to this location about 3 times on the way to and from Whistler. This time we decided to go on the way back home, because our first choice (Naked Lunch) was closed on Sunday. We thought this place would be packed from all the people going home for the weekend, and being brunch time, but surprisingly it wasn’t and we were seated immediately.

I decided on their new Butternut Squash Ravioli, which I was a little iffy of, but I wanted my pasta fix that weekend, and never got it. I added a cup of tomato soup for $2. The tomato soup came with toasted croutons which soaked up the soup nicely. The soup was good but wished it was smoother, and that there weren’t little chunks of other vegetables in there. When I got my ravioli, I was kind of disappointed, because the sauce was really runny. Basically a milk consistency, and not reduced or thickened. I thought it was going to suck a lot. My ravioli was basically swimming int he sauce, actually, drowning, because I couldn’t even see the ravioli at all. The 6 ravioli was plump and stuffed with a good amount of butternut squash, but the pasta sheets was an odd mix of regular and spinach on the top. It was also topped with bacon which added a good saltiness and crispness, roasted squash for extra sweetness, and crunchy pecans. The lemon thyme sauce was a bit sour, but went well with all of the ingredients combined. Still wished it was thicker, but still the dish was better than it looks. The ravioli was cooked well, and the stuffing was plentiful but still airy and sweet. This was definitely different from any other butternut squash ravioli (which usually just comes with brown butter sauce), but still worked.

The food was pretty decent overall, and didn’t hear many complaints.

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White Spot
410 1200 Hunter Place
Squamish, BC

(604) 892-7477

whitespot.com

This past weekend, on my way to sun peaks, my friends and I stopped for food at The Verse after missing the exit to Merritt. This restaurant is attached to Petro Canada, where we also filled up our car.

Since we left Vancouver quite early, we all decided to get breakfast at this diner-ish restaurant. I decided to get their Denver Omelet with 3 eggs, ham, onions, tomato, green peppers and cheddar cheese.

The omelet was quite delicious. The egg was fluffy, the ingredients were fresh and not too oily. The best thing on the plate was definitely the grilled mash. Instead of the regular hash browns, they took mash potato and fried it on the grill so it would have a tasty and crispy outer later with creamy potato on the inside. First time having grilled mash and I loved it. I wish more breakfast joints would do this!

My friends other other breakfast choices like the Meat lover, The big, and The bigger. I like their breakfast names. These are all pretty much the same depending on if you want more meat, or…more meat.

One of us got their daily special, the Beef Dip. Unfortunately he didn’t get the satisfaction out of his meal like the rest of us did. He said the beef was a bit dry, but I think it’s because he was the only one that didn’t get the grill mash that the whole table was raving about.

I felt a bit sketchy about this place when I walked in, but I’m kind of glad we missed the exit to Merritt because we really enjoyed our breakfast here. Grill mash, it’s the way to go with eggs and breakfast meats.

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The Verse Family Restaurant
1885 W Trans Canada Hwy
Kamloops, BC V1S

After a morning of boarding, we decided to have lunch at Merlin’s Bar and Grill in the Upper Village at Blackcomb. We had 6 people in our party, so our waitress put 2 tables together and 6 chairs around it. It was really cramped, so we were about to add another table and a chair or two, but our waitress angrily yelled us saying I thought you only had 6. The place was pretty dead and we wanted extra space for our helmets, and gloves as there was no where else to put it except for the floor.

Anyways, I looked at the menu and the chimichurri steak sandwich immediately stood out for me, so I ordered that. My other friends ordered some chilli, honey garlic wings, mushroom burgers, and more.

My steak sandwich sounded like it was going to be really good – Steak sandwich with chimichurri, arugula, and tomatoes. What I got was close, but missing what I wanted the most of, some fresh chimichurri on top or on the side. It was just marinated in it, and then cooked. I really wanted that fresh chimichurri to add extra flavour and fresh herbs and garlic. The steak was only like 1/4 inch thick, and the chimichurri was cooked on to it, but didn’t get much flavour. It was also cooked well done because it was so thin. The arugula was nice in adding some peppery flavour, and the bread was nice. But still very disappointing.

The chicken wings were delicious though, they were large and plump, crisp skin, and had awesome flavour. These were awesome! The mushroom burger patties and toppings were good, but the bread was stale. My friend loved his chilli there.

Overall I didn’t really like our service, and did not enjoy my sandwich. Other things were good though, so it seems pretty hit or miss.

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Merlins Bar & Grill
4553 Blackcomb Way RR 4
Whistler, BC

(604) 938-7700

After a day of boarding in Whistler, we looked for a place to eat in Squamish on the way home. I had 2-3 other choices that day but for some reason they were closed on that Tuesday because they were closed on Tuesdays, or it was past lunch, or some sort of medical issue. We finally decided on Naked Lunch.

Naked Lunch specializes in sandwiches, so all three of us chose from their grilled sandwiches. You can get a sandwich only for about $7.25, or a sandwich and side (salad, soup, or fries) for $10.25. I ordered the grilled cheddar and bacon with the soup of the day, while my friends ordered grilled ham and cheese with soup, and beef and provolone with fries.

I’ll admit my sandwich was really good. It was a nicely grilled whole wheat bread with crisp bacon, gooey cheddar, and a nice horseradish mayo. It was delicious, and I want to make it at home all the time. They don’t skimp out on ingredients, and they were packed well with bacon and cheddar. It was warm, and the bread was crunchy. The horseradish mayo added another layer of flavour which I love. The soup of the day was beef and barley soup. Sadly, this looked so much like a canned soup. The beef was cut into perfect cubes, and kind of tough. It was also served just luke warm, so it didn’t help warm me up.

I was also able to try the beef and provolone and that was delicious as well. The beef was very soft and tender, but it wasn’t shaved or super thin. The horseradish mayo even went better with this. I’m not sure which of the sandwiches I prefer, they were different, and both very good. The fries were more like wedges, but they were nicely crisp and fluffy inside.

I would’ve given them a 4 if the soup was better and served hot. It did seem a bit expensive too, though it seemed like they used high quality ingredients for their sandwiches. Their special is a schnitzel sandwich which I want to try next time.

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Naked Lunch
1307 Pemberton Ave
Squamish, BC

(604) 892-5552

http://nakedlunch.ca 

My friend has been talking about this Taiwanese restaurant in Richmond with awesome popcorn chicken that his friends brought him to. Last week it was my turn to try it out. They were hyping it up a lot!

I obviously ordered the Popcorn Chicken, but also ordered a Beef Roll. Our group of 5 actually also got even more popcorn chicken. I think 4 in total, along with a Chicken Cutlet, and a Sweet and Sour version of the popcorn chicken. Yup, it must be that good right? The other dish we ordered was the Taiwanese Sausage. The cooks in the back were shocked that we had 4 orders of popcorn chicken (2 with rice, 2 without), I guess I would be too.

My popcorn chicken meal was also served with rice, and 3 side dishes – tofu, chop suey, and green beans. I’ll admit the popcorn chicken is good! The amount of chicken is quite a lot. This isn’t like some places where it’s all batter, or just slivers of chicken. These are nice big juicy chunks. The breading was very flavourful, and crisp. However, I think there was some MSG in there, as near the end of my meal, I was getting very sick of it, and very thirsty. I don’t know how my friend ordered chicken cutlet plus an order of popcorn chicken. It was basically the same thing, just cut differently. He was struggling after finishing just his cutlet. I think it’s good in moderation, and I’d gladly order it again here. Of the sides, I enjoyed the tofu the most. It was fried tofu packed with lots of flavour. The chop suey was good too, but I think they have some small pieces of squid in there. The beef roll was nice too. Fairly crisp roll, and  a bit flakey. They used a bit of a thicker cut of beef than I’m used to seeing, but still was tender. The Taiwanese Sausage was really good too.

My meal also came with a yummy custard pudding that Beipas usually brings back for our friends from Taiwan, and it was just as good if not better.

To order you have to look at the menu, then mark down your order on a piece of paper to order. That’s where the prices are on that sheet I think because they definitely were not on the menu. It wasn’t too expensive, as I think my popcorn chicken combo was $8.50. Also note, it’s Cash Only!

The popcorn chicken did live up to the hype and I do recommend ordering it, but try to limit yourself and not go overboard like we did. We had a bit of a headache an hour or so after our meal, but we still crave for that chicken!

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Tri-Ty Cafe
130-8100 Ackroyd Road
Richmond, BC

(604) 231-8997

This restaurant is a charming breakfast place located in the downtown area in Salem, Oregon USA. Our group arrived late afternoon hoping to grab a hearty breakfast before we hit up another leg of our road trip to Portland. I was told that this place was a popular place in general but I’d been hoping that since we arrived late (around 1pm), we would have missed the early breakfast/brunch crowd. There was no indoor waiting space so we had to wait outside on the cold New Year’s Eve day. There were a few groups ahead of us and the only place to wait was on some cold benches outside, some of the other diners waiting to be called resorted to waiting inside their car. I think one party actually may have missed their name because our table for 3 was originally for the larger group before us that didn’t answer the host’s call. On a mild to warm day, I would say this is not a problem but clearly the cold was too much for some and was cause for some stress as a group waiting in their car separate from the table that we took had missed their names being called or they were forgotten altogether.

Chilling wait aside, upon walking inside, the staff was friendly and the overall vibe of the restaurant I found was laid back and comfortable. The brightly decorated space was inviting and we were seated in a corner table that had ample space for us so we were able to chat without having anyone within earshot of our conversation. The menu is rather large, but I was able to choose my dish rather quickly. I’d picked the Prime Rib Omelette with a side of biscuits and gravy to go along with the Mimosa we had ordered in celebration of our friend Amanda’s birthday. The prime rib in my tasted really good and went well with the onions, mushrooms jack cheese and spinach in the dish. I was surprised by the fact that the eggs were not overwhelmed by the large meat chunks which put my fear of crazy meat laden omelettes to rest because I tend to feel terrible after eating one of those. Thankfully this wasn’t the case and I especially liked the gravy on my biscuits.

Mikeypage10 ordered The Busick omelette which was your choice of bacon, sausage or chicken served with sauteed onion, mushrooms, spinach and cheddar cheese. I tried it as well and while he and I both thought it was good, we both it felt that there was too much bacon in the dish which ended up overshadowing the rest of the ingredients in the dish. Amanda ordered the Garden Baked Eggs which is listed in the menu under the Unique Breakfast section. This was originally recommended to me but I’d decided against it because I wanted something with some meat in it this morning. I didn’t hear any complaints from her end of the table, so I will only assume it was delicious as always.

One thing to note, is that Mikeypage10′s order was actually brought to us late due to our waitress who brought us the wrong dish but the correction was made after we flagged her down and told her the problem. She was apologetic which was appreciated and promptly corrected the issue and got the right dish to us quickly. Maybe I’ve been eating at “no frills” Chinese diner type restaurants too often but it was incredibly nice to not be blamed or charged extra for a mistake that wasn’t our fault.

Overall I’d give this place a 4/5 stars for the type of place that it is. Fast, friendly service with a bright, comfortable feel is always a plus in my books. Portion sizes are large so come hungry but be prepared to wait. I’d have given this place a 5 but there was no indoor waiting area on the cold winter day. The fact that those of us banished to wait outside before our name was called (if ever) ran the risk of missing our name if we had decided to wait in the warmth of our car and there was not much effort to find the table being called. I’d have liked to see the host taking down a cell phone number to call considering the conditions outside. Personally, I’d be pretty peeved to wait 20-30 mins in the cold only to have our table be given up as easily as it was to us.. not that I would have brought up that complaint that day because… well.. it was freakin’ cold outside and we wanted to get inside where our blood could thaw.

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Busick Court
250 Court St
Salem, OR USA

http://www.busickcourt.com

Not my second, third, or even fourth visit, I arrived at Andaluz starving and eager to fill up on generous portions of high quality food at this Spanish tapas bar located in downtown Salem, Oregon. I dragged 7 of my friends along and was delighted to find that chef/owner David Rosales had noticed me mention our outing on twitter earlier in the day and had notified his staff to ready a table for us (what a way to start the night!).

First round: Spanish Coffee with a combo cocoa powder and sugar rim. Coffee drinks with booze are some of my favorites, I’m always pleased when a high quality coffee is used, Andaluz uses Tico’s and it shows. The balance between ingredients makes a very smooth and deceptively potent drink.

After a few sips of our delicious coffees, my favorite regular on the menu arrived at our table: chicken, ham, and parmesan croquettes (a deal at 5 for $5). The word croquette is derived from the French word croquer which means “to crunch”–and these certainly did! The exterior is a perfectly fried medium brown which crunches nicely when bitten into without being hard. The inside is a decadent, creamy, piping hot filling. I stuffed my face with 2.5 of these in under 5 minutes.

When the rest of my group arrived, we began ordering in earnest. The patatas bravas, seasoned fried potatoes with aioli and salsa brava, arrived along with a plate of manchego cheese slices topped with quince preserves. The potatoes were perfectly fried and crispy, tossed with a delicious seasoning I am unfamiliar with. I was also unfamiliar with the fruit quince, the preserves turned out to be a great combination of sweet and tart, a perfect complement to a slightly salty manchego cheese.

The last of my favorite dishes was the grilled cheese sandwich with duck chorizo and Mahon cheese. Grilled cheese is quite possibly one of the most perfect foods in the world. Add rich duck chorizo and a fancy Spanish cheese and glory has arrived. This sandwich arrives cut in quarters and piled one on top of the other: a grilled cheese tower. A quality bakery bread is the foundation of the sandwich, grilled with a satisfying crust on the outside. One of my concerns when ordering this sandwich is that the duck and cheese would be very rich and greasy together–this wasn’t the case at all. The duck chorizo was minimally oily and balanced surprisingly well by the slight tangy, and I think citrus flavor of the cheese. Can cheese be citrus flavored? I’m pretty sure this was. Even though I was nearing the end of the meal and full beyond belief, I was reluctant to share any of this sandwich with my friends.

For the sake of brevity, here are a few other dishes and drinks we ordered and also enjoyed: sherry lemonade, romaine Caesar salad, sauteed mushrooms, chickpea soup, salt cod fritters, and albondigas. Over the past few years I have sampled most of the menu and have never been disappointed. A handful of my favorite dishes are staples on the menu, the rest rotate seasonally or as the chef chooses. It’s a lot of fun to scan the menu each visit to spot the new additions.

Dessert. We were stuffed to the gills and then surprised when our friendly server told us that the chef had comped orders of flan and churros con chocolate for our group. Yes, please! I did not sample the flan, but was assured that it was delicious. These churros are the first I’ve had that are crispy on the outside and light and tender on the inside, I’m used to the chewy kind. Amazing! They come with a small cup of thick, dark hot chocolate for dipping. After you finish the churros you will be tempted to grab the handle of the hot chocolate and toss it back. I may have.

I talked a lot about the food in this review. I think one of the reasons that it is so easy to focus entirely on the main point of eating out–the food–is that the service at Andaluz was exceptional as always. I’ve never experienced an empty water glass, finished my plates before being asked if I would like anything else, or an energy any less than friendly. The atmosphere and staff at Andaluz allow you to be comfortable to enjoy the food and your company.

Note: The pics in this post were taken with an iPhone 4 in very low light conditions. They really don’t do the food justice.

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Andaluz
130 High Street SE
Salem, OR 97301
(503) 585-1773

Giant Sashimi!

Samurai Sushi is probably one of the first sushi restaurants that started the giant sushi trend. My friends and I came for dinner because we haven’t been in a while.

On the table we had a full order of Salmon Sashimi, chopped scallop, spicy salmon, negitoro, dynamite and unagi rolls. Those are just my friend’s orders, I had a Chirashi don with a side of tako yaki because it was on special that day.

The Chirashi don was very filling. It had an array of sashimi such as salmon, tuna, saba, red snapper, shrimp, octopus and scallops. Between the seafood and the rice, there were some pickled shitaki mushrooms and some sweet Japanese rice seasoning. This was really nice because not a lot of Japanese restaurants do this.

Giant Sashimi, giant sushi! This is probably one of the best places to get your sashimi cravings fixed, because a full order of a salmon sashimi is pretty much equivalent of half of the salmon itself. And as for the rolls, they will definitely fill a super hungry stomach because not only are they big and tasty, they also contain a lot of rice.

Dinner at Samurai Sushi is always satisfying. I’ve been here numerous times over the past few years, and I’ve never left disappointed.

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Samurai Sushi
1108 Davie St
Vancouver, BC V6E

Vancouver

Late December a good friend of mine came to visit me, and we did some catching up over afternoon tea at Tracy Cakes in White Rock.

This place has a great location, right at the ocean front. It was quite busy when we got there at 1pm, and luckily I made a reservation. For high tea, there were only about 9 teas to choose from, I stuck with the classic earl grey.

Our food came out pretty quickly, the bottom of the tray had egg salad, cucumber, turkey sandwiches and 2 sections of a wrap. There were also sliced pineapples, and cantaloupes.

I started with the egg salad sandwich, and found it to be extremely salty; it was hard to finish it. My friend started with the turkey sandwich and also found it salty. Why so much salt?

The top of the 2 tier trays had the sweets such as scones, mini cupcakes, and cookies. I started with the scones and had them with raspberry jam and their devonshire, this was not the best I’ve had, but it was the best part of the whole tray.

The overall experience wasn’t as good as I had hoped and the bad experience started pretty early. When we first sat down at the table, I could smell the dirty cloth they used to wipe the table, it was not a pleasant smell. The presentation of the food seemed sloppy compared to Secret Garden, and I still can’t get over how salty the egg salad sandwich was.

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TracyCakes
15015 Marine Drive
White Rock, BC V4B

Din Tai Fung is one of my favorite places to get XLBs in Taipei, Taiwan. It has gotten quite popular since the first time I had it in 2005 in Taipei, and now they have a couple branches in North America including one Bellevue near Seattle.

The Bellevue branch has been open for quite some time now, and I finally made it there to get some infamous XLBs.

For starters we got some very expensive cucumbers in chili sauce. These cucumber cubes were almost $5, and an item you can skip. The cucumbers lost their crisp, and they were way too salty. It was definitely a modified version of the (much cheaper) cucumber dish you’d get in Din Tai Fung, Taipei.

We got 3 different kinds of steamed dumplings including XLB, shrimp and pork, and shrimp and pork shao mai.

The Shrimp and Pork Shao Mai was a new item to me. It was XLB filly with a shrimp on top, and it looked better than it tasted. The shrimp didn’t add much flavor.

The shrimp and pork dumping was much better as it was juicy and fresh.

As for the XLB, the item that the restaurant is all about, was quite disappointing to me. For one reason, they came really late into our meal and I was quite full by the time I got to them. As the rest of the dumplings were the first to arrive at our table. They most likely forgot our order. Taste wise, it’s not nearly as magical as the ones I remembered in Taipei. It’s not nearly as magical as the ones we would find locally at Shanghai River.

For the ‘side’ dishes, we got hot and sour soup, daily vegetables, shanghai rice cakes and dan dan noodles.

My favorite was the shanghai rice cakes; pan frie d rice cake in soy sauce with spinach, and bok choy. The rice cakes had the perfect texture, and the vegetables weren’t over cooked.

For dessert we got some black sesame and taro steamed buns. Black sesame dessert is one of my favorites, and the steamed buns were pretty good here, but again, pricy for what you get.

I was quite under whelmed. I know I can’t compare it to Taiwan, but I expected it to at least remind me a bit of it. And with the price tag, there are a lot better options out there for the same kinds of food.

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Din Tai Fung
700 Bellevue Way NE Ste 280
Bellevue, WA 98004

Bellevue

We stayed at the Boracay Regency right in the middle of Station 2. Boracay is an awesome island, and is a popular beach to travel to. One side of the island is just perfect sandy beaches where most of the tourists and people hang out. There’s tons of hotels, restaurants, and markets, and malls to shop at. The other side of the island is more rocky, but supposedly they have awesome wind surfing there. Our first night there was a complete write off. Besides booking my SCUBA Open Water training, a little bit of exploring, swimming in the ocean a bit, and studying, we didn’t do anything. Basically went to bed at 7PM, without any dinner!

The second night, I chose Christina’s for dinner. They seemed to have semi fancy American style selection and it was also part of our hotel. We sat on the patio which had a good view of a singer, as well as of the beach. I’m glad there weren’t any mosquitoes or very  many bugs around.

To start we were given some sour dough bread, and served with butter, and pesto! Yup pesto. That’s a bit different, and was decent. For my appetizer I ordered the nachos. When it came out, it was definitely not what I was expecting. It looked pretty stupid actually. Instead of tortilla chips, they literally got taco shells, and broke them in half. Then they put a meat sauce and some cheese on top, and that’s their nachos. Not much spice or seasoning in the meat sauce either. What kind of restaurant would serve this? It got me a bit scared.

For my main, I ordered the Lamb Chops, while my family ordered a fish dish, pizza, and a lasagna. My lamb chop was actually quite good. The meat was easily cut away from the bone, and was very tender and juicy. Not too much of a gamey flavour, and came with a nice mint jelly. The vegetables were very bright and crisp. My dad said his fish was decent, at least he enjoyed it. My mom didn’t like her lasagna because she felt it had a weird after taste, maybe due to one of the cheeses used. It didn’t taste like a typical Italian lasagna. I think there was some Filipino influence in the flavouring, especially with the meat sauce. I didn’t mind it though, and I finished it up the next morning. It was very saucy and it was sitting in a lot of bechamel sauce. The pizza was OK too. Nice thin and crispy crust. It was on the pricier side, as I think my main cost almost $20. And again, wtf is up with those nachos?

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Christina’s at Boracay Regency
Balabag, Boracay, Malay, Aklan
Located at Station 2, in the middle of Boracay’s long stretch of white sand beach
North Beach Wing, level 1

(63) (36) 288 – 6111 – Local 458

http://www.boracayregency.com/diningchristina.php

Last week, the manager of Palki Indian Restaurant on Commercial Drive invited us to their restaurant to taste some of their dishes.  The front of the restaurant is a bit dark, and may be a bit hard to notice (they are planning to update the front facade though). The interior looks really good, maybe because they have a nice purple colour on the walls, similar to our MePlusFood purple.

Anyways, upon entering, we were quickly greeted by our server. Our friend was running a little bit late, so we browsed through the menu, and chatted with our very knowledgable server. He offered us some Mango Lasii, which is a house-made yogurt drink. It was delicious, and definitely recommend ordering it. It was a thinner yogurt, with mango syrup mixed in. It was very refreshing, and will help with the very flavourful and spicy food. We were also given some Papadum to start. It was very crisp, and had a lot of spices mixed in. Very flavourful as well.

For our meal, we had a couple of things that we wanted to try, but also asked our server for some recommendations. For sure, we wanted Paneer Pakora (our favourite!), Garlic Naan, and Channa Masala. The rest we left up to our server to give us some recommendations. We ended up getting a sample platter with Vegetable Pakora, Vegetable Samosas, and Chicken Pakora, Cilantro and Onion Naan, Butter Chicken (because we asked for their most popular dish), Channa Masala and Lamb Rogan Josh. We all asked for all our dishes to be “hot”.

This is definitely the best Paneer Pakora that I’ve had. It was fried in a spicy batter, and also stuffed with a bit of herbs. The batter was crisp, slightly airy, and very flavourful, and the paneer had a nice texture. Dipping it in the green sauce was awesome. If you haven’t had Paneer Pakora, you should definitely try it. Paneer is a type of cheese, that is kind of similar to a tofu texture. It doesn’t have that much flavour on its own, but when paired with the right ingredients (like it is here), it’s awesome! I thought the vegetable pakora was packed with flavours too, and the samosa was pretty good too. Really good with the tamarind sauce. My least favourite of the appetizers was the chicken pakora because I felt it was a bit dry and not as tender.

Our mains came out on metal serving bowls, with a candle underneath to keep it warm. We noticed that Palki used quite a bit of ginger in their dishes. My favourite of the three was the Butter Chicken. Chicken was tender, and the sauce goes really good with the rice, or sopped up with the naan. The Lamb Rogan Josh was my next favourite. I thought this had a bit too much ginger flavour though. The Channa Masala was my least favourite because I’m not a big fan of chick peas. My friend who eats it regularly said it was cooked well though, and he approves it. We asked for our meal to be hot (in terms of spicy). It didn’t hit me right away, but after a few bites then I could feel the heat. At first I was like, this wasn’t so bad, but then it gets to you after some time. It still wasn’t killer spicy, but it does have a nice heat.  The garlic and cilantro and onion naans were good too. Perfect for dipping into the really saucy dishes, but also full of flavour on their own.

For dessert, we had Kheer, and Gulab Jamun. Our favourite was definitely the Gulab Jamun. It was crazy sweet, as it’s kind of like a fried donut sitting in a very sugary syrup. It does help to clear your taste buds from all the spices. Our server said that Indian desserts are usually very sweet because of that reason. Our Indian friend said that the Kheer  (rice pudding) was decent, but one friend didn’t like it at all.

Our main server was awesome, and very accommodating. When he brought out each dish, he explained what it was, and some details on how its prepared. He kept us well informed because most of us don’t really know what goes into the preparation of Indian cuisine. I’m starting to like it more and more now, and need to venture out and try more than just Butter Chicken.

They have another location in North Vancouver which was opened 12 years ago by Bhupinder Mroke. The Commercial Drive location is newer, but still seems pretty popular locally. The North Vancouver location is really close to the Lions Gate hospital on 116 15th St East, North Vancouver.

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Palki Indian Restaurant
1130 Commercial Dr.
Vancouver, BC

(604) 215-1130

http://www.palkirestaurant.com

The cool guys at VANEATS is offering another awesome Dining Pass, and we were able to get a taste of Kindle with Kin at Kin Reso Bar on Robson.

With this $25 dining pass, you’d get a 6 course meal for 2 including:

1. Beef La Lot, rolls grilled minced beef, star anise, black pepper, roasted peanuts & jicama
2. Beef Short Ribs, marinated and barbequed in 17-spices
3. Prawn & Thai Basil Rice Paper Roll, with cucumber, vermicelli, lettuce, crispy shallots & crispy noodle center
4. Seafood Salad, with shrimp, scallop, asparagus, mango, grape tomato, rau ram sauce
5. Chicken Chay Curry, mild spicy yellow curry broth, coconut milk, vegetables & tofu
6. Lemongrass Ginger Creme Brulee, lemongrass, coconut, ginger, pineapple chutney

This was our first visit to Kin Resto Bar, and we had an awesome meal. My favorites from the dining pass menu were Prawn & Thai Basil Rice Paper Roll, Beef Short Ribs and Seafood Salad.

I liked the Prawn & Thai basil roll a lot, the crispy noodle was a surprise, but it added a nice texture to the roll.  The Beef Short Ribs had really nice bbq charred flavor and the meat was tender.

The Chicken Chay Curry came in a light coconut milk sauce. There were a lot of ingredients in this curry including brocoli, cauliflower, Vietnamese ham, carrots, tofu, and grilled chicken was served on top.

The seafood salad was the best. The portion size was for more than 2 people in my opinion. It had very nicely cooked scallops and shrimp. The asparagus was grilled. There were nice mangoes that added a sweetness to the salad. The dressing was light and sweet.

Aside from the dining pass, we also ordered other things from the regular menu.  There are a couple things that I absolutely loved and they were the Beef Carpaccio and Taro & Lotus Root Chips.

I am a picky beef carpaccio eater, but this beef carpaccio won me over with its sweet, and citrusy dressing. It was really good with cilantro, onion and garlic toppings. There was a lot of ingredients, but it was very light. This is a must order.

The Taro & Lotus Root Chips came with a spicy cheesy sauce. The chips were freshly fried but not greasy, I’d eat this over potato chips any day.

Knowing this was a Vietnamese restaurant, we just had to try their pho. I think this was the least successful dish of the light, and it’s mostly because we found the broth to be extremely salty and that the broth could be a little hotter.

Besides the pho, I really liked their food. Everything was light, fresh and also very flavorful.  Their lychee mojito is a great drink to go with all the dishes.

As for the dining pass, it’s a sweet deal. $25 is definitely worth all the food.

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Kin Resto Bar
1500 Robson St
Vancouver, BC V6G

Before the Jay-Z and Kanye West Watch the Throne concert on Saturday, we decided to eat at Chill Winston first. We’ve been there a couple times but only for drinks. I’ve been wanting to eat there for a long time though. We started off with drinks, and they have some funky names for drinks. One that stood out was Spooning Jesus.

Someone tweeted the Jack Poutine, so we for sure had to get that. For our mains, I decided on the Elk Sirloin ($20) because I’ve never had elk before, while my friends ordered the Duck! Salad ($15), Pork Belly ($17), and Wabbit Confit ($19). The Elk was a bit different. It was a really thick cut of meat, and cooked to medium rare. At first the Elk was really good, nice and meaty, but there was an after taste that I thought was a little bit gamey, but also tasted hints of liver (which I don’t like). I found myself using as much sweet blueberry sauce and potato as I could with each bite to reduce the effects of the after taste. I don’t know if I’d order elk again. The Wabbit Confit! is a rabbit leg, which was bigger than we expected. It was served with carrots, and pearl onions in a brandy sauce along with bread. My friend said it was a bit over cooked.

The other two mains were delicious though. There were 3 large pieces of pork belly served with brown butter, squash, and roasted mushrooms. Wow was this thing tender. I thought being such a thick piece, that it would have some meat to it that you would have to chew, but there was literally none of that. You put it in your mouth and it just melts away. It was so good. The duck salad was probably even better than that. My friend said it was the best salad she’s ever had, and wanted to have more, and even keep going back for that duck salad. It was that good. I agree. I tried a piece of the duck breast and it was like heaven. It didn’t have your typical duck flavour, it was just so tender and moist, and the dressing went so well with it. It was served with some mixed greens, walnuts and crispy shallots. So good and a must have. The Jack Poutine was a poutine served with a Jack Daniels demi glace. The cheese was really stringy, and the gravy didn’t have that strong of a JD flavour to it. I enjoyed it.

For dessert we ordered a Brown Butter Cheesecake ($8), and also the Chocolate Fondant ($5). I wasn’t very fond of either dessert. The brown butter cheese cake came wrapped in a pineapple sea salt….fruit roll up type thing. I enjoyed the cookie/graham cracker chunks and whip cream on the side more than the actual cheese cake. The pineapple flavour and texture threw me off. I also didn’t enjoy the chocolate fondant which came swimming in a london fog foam. Wasn’t my type of chocolate dish.

This is a good place to hang out and have a few drinks. Their cocktail and beer list is really good. The food is pretty good too. Make sure to get the Pork Belly or the Duck! Salad.

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Chill Winston
3 Alexander St
Vancouver, BC

(604) 288-9575

http://chillwinston.ca

My brother wanted to have lunch one day, and I wasn’t craving any Asian food this time, and haven’t been to Red Robin in a while, so I thought, why not? Their burgers are pretty good.

We had a quick lunch. There were about 3 burgers that I wanted to try, but settled on the Sauteed Shroom Burger. I enjoyed my burger. Just a good ol’ mushroom burger. Nothing really fancy, but really well done. The burger patty was juicy, the mushrooms were crisp, not soggy, and the cheese was nicely melted. Seriously nothing to complain about. I was happy that they didn’t over cook the mushrooms. They had a really nice firm texture that contrasted the burger patty. It wasn’t raw, but perfectly cooked.

My brother ordered two appetizers – the Gooee Cheese Sticks, and the Buzzard Wings. The Wings were really good. Nice crispy skin, and the sauce had the perfect amount of spiciness. The cheese sticks are kind of overpriced though, and we didn’t think the 6 sticks were worth $10. The cheese was peppery and gooey, and the breading was crisp. It was decent tasting, and came with a red pepper jelly which was different, but I think I prefer a standard marinara sauce. It definitely added a different sweetness to the dish. The cheese had a tiny bit of heat to it, and was glad that it wasn’t just like a mozzarella stick.

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Red Robin
4640 Kingsway
Burnaby, BC

(604) 439-7696

http://www.canadarobin.com/ 

I was at Penang Delight Cafe to have dinner with a few friends a couple weeks ago, getting some Malaysian and coconuty food.

This place is right next door to Kimura Japanese Restaurant and both restaurants are super busy all the time, so don’t think you can just walk next door if one doesn’t work out, make a reservation.

We started the dinner with some Roti Canai, and Tofu in Chili sauce. The roti canai’s sauce was very different from the ones I had in Malaysia, I guess different regions make difference sauces. The roti itself was nice so I can’t complain too much. As for the tofu, it was deep fried tofu cubes in sweet chili sauce, I really liked it.

One of the mains I wanted was the Hainan Chicken with Rice Balls, but when we ordered it, the waiter kept insisting that this dish is for kids because of the rice balls. It took me about 4 tries to convince him that this is what I really wanted. Why can’t adults have rice balls? Anyway, The chicken was very nice and it was served on top of a soy sauce based sauce. I am guessing since it’s ‘for children’ they also deboned the chicken so you can have it all in one bite.

The other dish I really wanted to try was the Coconut Curry with Eggplants and Fish.  It came in a clay pot, besides eggplants and fish, it also had other veggies such as okra. The curry had a very strong taste and is meant to eat with some rice, but even with rice, it was still a bit salty.

We also shared a bowl of Laksa that came in both vermicelli noodles and yellow noodles, kind of weird they mixed both noodles in. It was a tasty laksa with a very rich coconuty soup.

We finished off the meal with some Steamed Coconut Cake. This was highly recommended by the waiter, and he said if we didn’t like it, we don’t have to pay; there goes 5 bucks to the restaurant. It was delicious.

Some of them were too salty for me, for example the fried noodles we had. I ordered a glass of lychee juice to go with my meal, it was a very sweet drink with about 6 lychees in it. It went very nice with my food, but some of the lychees were still frozen.

I’d come back to this place, but probably stick to just a couple dishes since they tend to be heavy in flavors.

Penang Delight Cafe
3885 Rupert St
Vancouver, BC V5R
(604) 566-9898

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Ever since I saw someone blog about the Braised Short Rib and Bone Marrow mashed potatoes, I had to try out the Flying Pig. Two ingredients that get me every time all in the same dish. It’s been in Yaletown for quite a few months now, and me and a friend finally went last Friday after shopping at the Canucks store during their Customer Appreciation days. The Flying Pig was pretty busy, but we were able to get the last open table.

Nothing on the appetizers list really stood out for me, so we went straight to mains. I ordered the Red Wine Braised Short Rib with Bone Marrow Mashed Potatoes ($19), and a side of Brussels Sprouts ($5). My friend ordered the Mussels and Fries which was on special that day ($15). I was really happy with my short rib, though it wasn’t served piping hot. It was just warm. The short rib was delicious and very tender, easily shredded with the fork. The red wine sauce was poured in to add more moisture, and was good as a gravy that you can dip your mash into. The mash potatoes were delicious as well with hints of marrow already in the mash, but don’t forget to scoop the other marrow from inside the bone too and mix it in. It was awesome, very buttery along with the extra “God’s butter”. The brussel sprouts weren’t very good though. It was served with lemon, parmesan, and capers. All I could taste was salt though. Way too salty and didn’t enjoy it at all.

The Mussels and Fries came with very large plump mussels in a white wine butter sauce. This was also too salty for my friend, and she had to use some of the bread to help with that. The fries were cut really thin and small (shoe string?). It was a bit inconsistent with some fries nice and crisp, but others were under cooked and kind of raw.

I kind of wanted to get the Mac and Cheese, but it also came with short rib and may be kind of dumb to get short rib with more short rib… though it probably would’ve been a better choice than the brussels sprouts. I’d come back for my dish though.

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The Flying Pig
1168 Hamilton Street
Vancouver, BC

(604) 568-1344

http://www.theflyingpigvan.com/

Pho Hoa is a Vietnamese restaurant that I typically stay away from. It’s a franchise with tons of locations around North America. I’ve even seen one in LA, and I’m pretty sure there are lots of other locations. Anyways, their Pho isn’t nearly the best. The only thing they have going for them is that they are open late. I haven’t been to a Pho Hoa for a good couple of years now. But we decided to go after a day of snowboarding last weekend.

I was hungry so I ordered a small Pho with brisket and beef balls, and a grilled chicken vermicelli plate. Yup two dinners for me =). Some friends ordered Pho, and some ordered some rice plates.

The first taste of my pho, and I remembered why I don’t like this place. The soup stock was so bland. Hardly any flavour to it at all. When I tried it, I looked across the table to my friend and saw him squeezing in tons of hoisin sauce. I did the same. We both had to keep adding even more as we ate. Seriously, no flavour in that broth. There was a good amount of brisket and noodles for me though. But seriously, there was one beef ball in my entire soup. The vermicelli dish was better. The chicken was flavourful, and the vegetables were fresh and crisp. The fish sauce was decent and added a bit of salty sweetness. It wasn’t too fishy, which is good for me. I was definitely stuffed at the end of the two dishes.

There are so many other Vietnamese places around the area, so if you’re looking for Pho at a reasonable hour, I’d check out other places along Kingsway first. There are a bunch in a 1-2 km span.

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Pho Hoa
5505 Kingsway
Burnaby, BC

(604) 436-0001

http://phohoa.com

Each year for MePlusFood’s anniversary we have a fancy team dinner. Last year it was at Chambar, and this year we chose the fairly new Black+Blue restaurant by the Glowbal Group. I was happy to see Beef Wellington on the menu, something that I’ve been looking to try for a long time. Blame Gordon Ramsey. This space is gorgeous, with huge glass windows on the front, and very nice decor. Once you step into the restaurant, you can see a huge glass meat locker with tons of meat. There are two floors, with the second floor having a wide open space in the middle. The restaurant was packed on that Monday evening.

There were quite a few appetizers that I wanted to try. I chose the Foie Gras, while my friend picked one of my other choices, the Steak Tartare. Beipas ordered a Caesar Salad, and our other friend had  French Onion soup. Glowbal’s goal for this restaurant is to go back to the original steakhouses, where they would make and serve some of the food table side. Here at Black+Blue they made Beipas’ Caesar Salad right in front of her. The salad was very fresh and crisp and creamy, and not overly dressed, though a tiny bit salty. She still enjoyed it. The French Onion Soup was one of the better soups she’s had, but it was also a tiny bit salty for her liking. I preferred the Steak Tartare which came with a fresh quail egg, fried capers, and seasoned crostini. The steak was in nice little chunks, and the seasoning was perfect. Loved the texture of the meat, and extra pop from the fried capers. The Foie Gras was pan seared, and served with poached apricots, and syrup on a toasted brioche. The foie gras pretty much melted in your mouth, and had a buttery texture. The apricot complimented it nicely.

For our mains, I had the Beef Wellington of course. My friends ordered the Prime Rib, and the PEI Blue Ribbon Bone-in Rib Eye, and Tenderloin. My beef wellington was really good. Most of the puff pastry was still crisp and airy, but did get a little bit soggy because it was sitting in the jus. The steak was cooked a bit past medium, but it was still tender. It was really well complimented by the chopped up mushrooms inside the pastry. The rib eye was delicious and very fatty, actually a bit too fatty for Beipas. It was very tender melt in your mouth fatty though, just too much for her. The Prime Rib was a little disappointing though. The steak was a bit dry, and the yorkshire pudding was also not as airy and crispy as it should be. The steaks also came with 4 difference sauces. The chimichurri was hands down the best. It was delicious.

When you order your steaks, you should order some sides too. There was a bunch I wanted to try, so I did most of the ordering. We got the cream corn, B+B Blue Cheese Bread,  Mac & Cheese, Loaded Baked Potato, and Potato Cakes. My favourite side was definitely the cream corn. It’s nothing like canned cream corn, that’s for sure. It was very creamy, corn still had a good texture, and the crisp jalepeno give it a perfect chilli flavour. Not very spicy. The Blue Cheese Bread too. It was a bit doughy, and kind of had a similar texture to Asian bread. The blue cheese wasn’t too overpowering. The Mac & Cheese is not what you’d expect. It was shaped into sticks, and then breaded and fried. I would’ve preferred a tomato sauce, or something not also creamy to add some contrast. For the potato cakes, I was hoping for much more. It was a bit to plain for me, I was hoping for something like a latke, or something similar to the potato cake I had at Wayfarer in Cannon Beach. This was disappointing.

For dessert, there were a couple I wanted to try. We actually got complimentary desserts (possibly because I tweeted that I was coming). I requested that one of them be the Butter Cake that everyone talks about. It was hyped a lot, but for my first taste, I thought it lived up to the hype though I could see how it could be better. The butter cake had a thick semi-hard outer crust, and the inside pretty moist. It was stuffed with caramel which I wasn’t expecting, and definitely an added plus for me. It was also topped with some cream, and a crisp caramel/toffee chip. My friend who had it before said it was better when she had it before because the crust wasn’t as hard/tough, and it was moister. Either way I still enjoyed it, and would not hesitate ordering it again. The other dessert was the Bananas Foster which was made table side by our server. It’s a really good show with huge 4 foot flames. Besides the show, I didn’t enjoy it that much, after all, it is just a creamy caramel sauce and cooked bananas with some whipped cream and some pecans.

Our meal was over 3 hours long, and our appetizers came about 1 hour into the dinner. Time flew though, and we were having fun. Definitely didn’t feel like a long wait. Our wait staff was very knowledgable, and really knew the menu and types of steaks well. I’d come back for sure, to try more of the appetizers and maybe a wagyu steak, and of course the butter cake. All things in though, it does make for an expensive meal. Make sure to be with good company, because you’re most likely in for a long meal.

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Black + Blue
1032 Alberni St
Vancouver, BC

604-637-0777

http://www.glowbalgroup.com/blackblue/ 

• Bruschetta, classic made with tomatoes, parmesan, extra virgin olive oil, basil, balsamic reduction, mozzarella and goat cheese

Choose any TWO of the following four dishes:

• The Grill Salad, six oz N.Y. steak on grilled vegetables, spring mix and tossed together with a balsamic reduction
• Warm Seafood Spinach, scallops, prawns, baby shrimp, baby spinach, mandarin oranges and mushrooms, layered with goat cheese and roasted almonds
• Ako Salad, grilled chicken breast, English cucumbers, tomatoes, onions, peppers, feta cheese and rice along with a balsamic vinaigrette
• Fiesta Salad, romaine lettuce, corn, black beans, avocado, blackened chicken, salsa, nacho cheese, sour cream and a cilantro mint dressing

The 3 bruschetta was made on a thicker bread. The toppings were great, and I really enjoyed the toppings. I really like bruschetta with the fresh tomatoes and cheese along with the balsamic reduction. Tasted awesome, especially with goat cheese which is one of my favourite cheeses. It made it different from other bruschettas because it added another layer of flavour. I wish they used a different bread though, something a bit thinner, because the thicker cut was truly a mouth full, and didn’t keep its crunch all the way through.

For our salads, we chose the Grill Salad and Fiesta Salad. Beipas had the Grill Salad before and said it was pretty good. This time, we both agreed that the Fiesta Salad was our favourite. I’m a big fan of taco salads, and this one comes really close to one (sans the taco bowl). The cilantro mint dressing was very light. The lettuce was fresh and crisp, and comes with really good ingredients. The corn, black beans, and salsa add a nice mix of flavours and textures. Of course our favourite avocado added a nice soft, creamy butteriness to our bites, and the blackened chicken wasn’t too dry, and overall well done. I wished for a bit more chicken though.

The Grill Steak came with grilled vegetables and a 6 oz. NY steak on a spring mix with a balsamic reduction. The roasted vegetables included are red, yellow, and orange peppers, asparagus, and tomatoes. The steak was cooked to order (medium rare), and sliced. I’m not really used to warm salads, but the grilled vegetables had a nice char, and went really well with the balsamic reduction. I liked the Fiesta Salad more, because I like fresh salads.

Overall the meal would have cost us $42.97, but you get it all for only $25. Hurricane Grill is at a really good location, right by the False Creek water in Yaletown. So if you are looking for a good deal and pretty good food, and want to check out the False Creek marina, you should grab this dining package from VANEATS. You can also order additional food, which of course isn’t included in the package, and I believe they are still a Canucks Preferred Restaurant so if you have one of those Canuck discount cards, I think they can still be used here.

We also ordered a plate of Nachos for $14.99, because I thought I would be hungry still, as it was a pretty late dinner, and my last meal was about 8 hours before. The nachos came as a huge tower, and while we were eating it, Beipas said it was like playing Jenga! It looks good presentation wise, but not so practical. It was really messy and we tried really hard to not make it topple over or lose too many ingredients. Other than the presentation, I did like the nachos though, and it can definitely feed a lot of people. The multi-coloured tortilla chips was topped with green onions, jalepenos, olives, tomatoes, and a mix of grated cheeses and served with a mild salsa, and sour cream. The cheese was melted throughout, and how could you really go wrong with nachos. It was really good. I just wish I had more people to share it with.

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Hurricane Grill
1137 Marinaside Cres
Vancouver, BC

www.thehurricangrill.ca

On my first night out, after ice skating at the Mall of Asia, we honestly had no clue where to eat. We saw some restaurants that caught our eye, but honestly couldn’t decide. We walked outside where there is a pretty big strip of restaurants to eat at. We decided on Holy Cow! Steak Ranch & American Grill.

This is a really Americanized affordable steakhouse, with a real Western cowboy theme. We each got different meals that came with steak and another protein along with a side and some gravy (they love gravy here, but really, who doesn’t?). At this point I’m really not sure about the quality of their meats, so I ordered a steak medium, along with ribs. Here, I think they still really like to see their meat cooked well done because they are scared to see blood and scared of getting sick. My parents are still kind of this way, but my dad is slowly changing and has gone from always ordering Well Done, to Medium Well, and now he’ll order Medium. Anyways, my friends ordered steak and prawns, and also steak and chicken. Each meal came out to only about $10 each and also came with two side, garlic rice and buttered veggies.

The steaks that came out were 150g or about 5oz. Although it was cooked medium, the cut of meat was pretty tough. I don’t think this place serves very good cuts of meat, or not very high quality. There wasn’t much fat content. It was seasoned OK, but having to chew my steak a lot more than I’m used to is a real downer. They gave us some gravy, but I’m not used to putting thick, KFC style gravy over my steaks, but it did help with the chewing. The ribs was a half rack and I liked it a lot more than the steak. The ribs pretty much fell off the bone and had a nice smokey flavour to it. My friends enjoyed the prawns, and the chicken was pretty good too. They loved the gravy, and even ordered extra servings of it. The rice was good, and not soggy, and the vegetables which kind of seemed like frozen veggies were still kind of crisp and not soggy either.

I didn’t really do any research on this place, or really look for better steakhouses in the area. I’d stay away from this place if you really want a good steak though.

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Holy Cow! Steak Ranch and American Grill
South Wing, SM Mall of Asia
Manila, Philippines

+63 (2) 556-7301

http://holycow.com.ph/ 

Recently, my friends and I have been talking about grabbing a hearty breakfast at De Dutch Pannekoek House before we head to snowboarding. That plan didn’t work out because they don’t open early enough (8am) for us to eat and make it to the mountains on time, so we went on a off snowboarding day instead.

Every time I visit a De Dutch, I always end up ordering a sweet Pannekoek, this time there was no exception, and I munched on a Banana Maple Walnut Pannekoek.

The Banana Maple Walnut pannekoek was prepared like a banana pancake with the bananas cooked within the batter. It was a very sweet dish because there was a good amount of icing sugar, and there were the sweetness from the bananas. There were pockets of crunchy walnuts, I liked this quite a bit.

My friend got his favorite, the #4 Hash Pannekoek. The hash had mushrooms, green peppers, bacon, onions, hash browns, and cheddar. It was hearty, but not overly heavy.

De Dutch Pannekoek House is currently running a sweet vs savoury competition on their Facebook page.  There are several polls where you can vote savoury vs. sweet items that you prefer on your pancakes. I feel like my brain runs this competition every time I visit a De Dutch, but the sweet will always win. They really need to make a pannekoek that is both sweet and savoury. Each vote in one of the savoury vs. sweet polls on the Facebook wall enters you to win a $500 De Dutch gift card, awarded Dec 24

There is also a 25% off January Pass available to anyone on Facebook that likes the De Dutch page and enters. This pass is good for all month long during January 2012. There shall be a lot of DeBakons being eaten with this promotion.

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De Dutch Pannekoek House
#101 – 15235 Fraser Highway
Surrey, BC V3R

For those of you who dont’ know, halo halo basically means mix mix. It’s a shaved ice dessert, with evaporated milk and mixed with a bunch of different boiled beans and fruit, and sometimes nuts and ice cream. You mix it all together before eating. They usually use red bean, coconut, gulimon, and tapioca to name a few. At chow king, I recall red bean, plantains, coconut, sliced almonds, jello, and ube ice cream, and much more that I can’t remember. I’ll be honest though, this isn’t really my thing, but I thought I’d give it a try, since I am in mother country. I’m more of a mais con yelo (basically a dumbed-down halo halo where you replace all of those Asian delicacies with just creamed corn and sugar). First impressions was damn this is hard to eat. It was served in a small cup and a bit hard to mix because it was filled to the brim. Since I had waited a while, the ice also clumped together and wasn’t able to halo it . It was more like chipping away at it, mixing a bit, and more chipping. It was a chore. Overall though the taste was pretty good. I like the coconut, jello chunks and the almonds as well as the ube ice cream. I’m never very fond of red bean though and some of the other things mixed in. I still prefer my mais con yellow because I can make it really sweet. Without refined sugar, halo halo isn’t sweet enough for me. You can buy glass jars of halo halo mix here in Canada too. You’re supposed to add the syrup from the jar to help sweeten your halo halo. I think many Filipino markets have them.

As I looked at the menu, it seemed like they were really advertising and pushing their Chinese-style fried chicken. I wanted to try and kept mentioning it here and there until I was able to go out and get some. I ordered a bunch of two-piece meals also came with rice, shrimp chips, and gravy. I think it came out to be only around $3 for the meal. We had to wait about 20 minutes because they were freshly frying the chicken. The chicken was really crisp, and the meat was pretty tender and moist. I prefer Lee’s chicken though. I think the chicken itself was a bit under seasoned, and the meat was kinda bland. The gravy helped in adding flavour of course. One thing I noticed is that fast-food and chain restaurants always wrap their rice in paper. I guess to manage portion size, but I wonder how they always get it perfect. Is it steamed in that paper wrapper? Or is it cooked, and then wrapped in paper after (with the help of a mould).

So for the two things I tried on the menu, it was decent, but nothing special. FYI they have a location in South Center mall in Seattle if you really want to give it a try. Though, the menu probably has its differences. They had lots of small dimsum items, as well as fried rice and noodles.

Sorry I don’t have a pic of the halo halo posted. I think I accidentally deleted it.

Chowking
Many locations (I have no clue which location I was at)

http://www.chowking.com/home 

Last week my friend and I had quite a food filled day, we both felt like eating something light for dinner and preferably vegetarian. We ended up at Nuba on East 3rd Ave.

We sat at the bar because we didn’t want to wait for a table, and decided to just get a couple things for dinner. We ordered a couple things to share: Chicken Shish Tawook and Vegan Meshwi.

These dishes were quite small for entrees. The Chicken Shish Tawook had 2 chicken breast skewers and it’s served on top of a bed of hummus and avocado, as well as some picked vegetables. The chicken was very nice. It was juicy and had nice bbq char on them. It really enjoyed the green chutney it came with as well.

I loved the Vegan Meshwi. It had 2 skewers of grilled onions, cherry tomatoes, mushrooms and red peppers. I especially enjoyed the cherry tomatoes, they were sweet, juicy, with a bit of tanginess. These skewers were served on top of a bed of hummus and taboulleh. There was a nice balance of heartiness (grilled vegetables) and freshness (taboulleh) in this dish.

Their bold flavours and their portion control made me leave the place feeling completely satisfied, yet not overly stuffed. Great place to check out.

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Nuba
146 3rd Ave E
Vancouver, BC V5T1C8

Where can you find the best cream cheese in Vancouver? Mount Royal Bagel Factory in North Vancouver has the best cream cheese in Vancouver.

My friend brought me to this tiny bagel shop earlier this year to pick up some bagels. While in the shop he was super excited about getting their cream cheese, curious me, I got some too. Ever since then, I never went back to philadelphia cream cheese.

You will immediately notice the difference when you put your butter knife into the cream cheese. It’s so freaking soft, making spreading so easy. I still remember my first bite, it was ‘wow’, then followed by the question: This is what cream cheese is supposed to taste like?! My mind exploded a little bit.

3 of my favorite flavors are: Plain, Basil and Garlic, and Honey Vanilla.

The Basil and Garlic cream cheese has a really strong fresh basil smell, which is really nice. The spread itself is fresh and garlicky. Like the plain, this one I use pretty much on all bagels except for the sweet ones such as blueberry or rasin cinnamon. It’s a very nice savoury cream cheese.

Honey Vanilla is crazy good. What is there not to like about honey and vanilla? I love using this spread for my sweet bagels and toast.

As for the bagels here, they have chewy exterior and they are soft on the inside. They are good but not the best I’ve had. I can walk out of here without bagels but not the cream cheeses.

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Mount Royal Bagel Factory
701 Queensbury Avenue
North Vancouver, BC V7L

Since it was breakfast time, I started with a fresh Kalamansi juice, as well as a Adobo (not normally breakfast food, but Filipino’s can eat rice at every meal) with scrambled egg, which came with rice topped with fried garlic. It was good, but not that great. It was a mix of one piece of chicken and one pork. The pork was a bit fatty, with a pretty good adobo sauce. The meat was a bit overcooked.

I also got to try the Pancit Canton, and it was delicious! I really recommend it. Very flavourful sauce, and really good ingredients.

My parents were really big on drinking the Spanish hot chocolate, which is supposedly hand ground. I didn’t enjoy it though, as I think it tasted like the champorado mix (chocolate rice), that I don’t like. Not sweet enough for me, and doesn’t have the same chocolatey that I like. Very different flavour from what we’re used to in Canada. Other dishes ordered was Beef Tapa, Longanisa. The longanisa (sausage) was really good, but wasn’t fond of the beef tapa. I like my tapa very thin, crispy, with lots of fat. It’s so flavourful like that. This was a thicker cut beef tapa, and honestly I think it gets over cooked. In the Philippines, they are very scared of blood, and tend to like things well done.

We also ordered some BBQ chicken, which comes with Java rice. I ordered this on my second trip, and I’ll write about it then. As a heads up, it’s really good, and really liked it over this meal. Be careful though, because the Java sauce probably contains peanuts. They give you a packet of it to dip the chicken in, and the rice is also called Java rice. I didn’t feel any effects from it, but I didn’t use much of the sauce. I just double checked a recipe for it here and it says it has peanut sauce! http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/member/views/ARISTOCRAT-BBQ-CHICKEN-1251840

Outside of the restaurant, there are people that constantly try to sell you paintings, toys, guitars, and stuff. They really know that you’re from out of town and have more money. If you do end up buying something, make sure you bargain, because you can easily get it for 25%-50% off of the price they initially offer.

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Aristocrat
432 San Andres Street
Malate, Manila, Philippines

http://www.aristocrat.com.ph/

I’ve been wanting to try more Indian food recently, and after looking at Follow Me Foodie’s post, I decided to check out Taste of Punjab with my friends last week. It’s really accessible and close to the King George skytrain station.

I pretty much copied Mijune’s recommend list, and hardly looked at the menu. We ordered the Chicken Jalfrzie, Turka Dal, Lamb Curry, Butter Chicken, and some Paneer Pakora. We also added some roti, and garlic nan. I also ordered the spinach nan but it never came, which sucked but was also a good thing because we were stuffed and unable to finish our food. We ordered everything hot, which was surprisingly very tolerable. Definitely not hot enough to make you sweat, but the perfect amount of spice for me.

The paneer pakora is kinda like an Indian fried cheese stick. It’s like an Indian cheese battered a bit, and deep fried. It was stuffed with a mint sauce inside. It was kind of crispy, and the paneer had a slightly firm texture. It was really good, though I think I prefer the one at Asian Spice more, since it came with a really good sauce. This one came sauceless, and I actually put it in the excess butter chicken sauce to make my own Butter Paneer. I enjoyed the other dishes too. They kind of all had the same spicy flavour, with slightly different spices and ingredients. My favourite was the Butter Chicken. The others had some vegetables mixed in too. I don’t think I’ve had enough Indian food to really pick out the differences in spices, I just know that the food was very tasty though and I liked it.

The Turka Dal isn’t my thing. My friend said he usually eats that with lots of roti, but I’m just not really big on that kind of lentil dish. The garlic naan was very garlicky. We were also able to ask for extra basmati rice for free. The service was pretty good (besides missing the spinach nan), and refilled our waters often.

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Taste of Punjab
10009 Whalley Blvd
Surrey, BC

(604) 588-7700

tasteofpunjab.ca

On the day I visited The Mac Shack‘s media event, I arrived early and starving. I decided to get some snacks at Tokyo Thyme, a couple stores down after a quick search on Yelp.

This Japanese owned restaurant has some interesting and unique Japanese dishes. I managed to only order a few appetizers with Dee, but trust me, I wanted to have a full blown meal right then and there.

We started with Agedashi Tofu.  My favorite thing about it was the sauce because you can taste its authenticity, it’s sweet yet light. My only issue with this tofu dish was that the tofu wasn’t crispy.

Next stop was very fancy, elegant looking and tasty Tuna Stack.

It was chopped red and white tuna with avocado, mountain potato, nori and green onions (raw quail egg can be added for an extra 50 cents). It came with some nori sheets and a bowl of rice. The way to eat it is to break the pretty tuna stack and really mix everything together, then take a sheet of nori and make your own bite sized sushi with the rice and tuna.

This tuna stack was so yummy. I had asked what the sauce at the bottom of the tuna dish was.  ”Secret sauce” was the answer I got from the owner. Everything was fresh, had a really nice texture, and the secret awesome sauce just binds everything together.

Our last two appetizers were Baked Eggplant and a Shitaki Tama Q roll.

The baked eggplant was glazed with special miso, it was buttery, sweet and had a crispy sugar glaze at the top of the eggplant, a really nice dish.

Shitaki Tama Q roll was a vegetarian roll with shitaki mushroom, tamago, avocado and cucumber.  For a vegetarian roll, this was very well done. It was tasty and the avocado gave really it a nice creamy texture.

After these appetizers, I planned to come back for a proper full meal. I brought a couple friends with me a couple days later to go for lunch here with me.

For lunch I started with a half order of the House Special Sunomono.  This was not a noodle in sour soup kind of sunomono. I remembered my Japanese friend told me that a sunomono is basically any vegetable prepared cold and somewhat pickled. This house special sunomono had smoked salmon, crab, prawn, avocado, mountain potato, and everything was wrapped in cucumber ribbon. The rolls were sitting on top of a sour sauce with some cooked seaweed. This was extremely tasty, refreshing and not to mention, pretty cooking! I really got to taste each ingredient as I chewed, I absolutely loved it.

My Chirashi don arrived shortly after I finished my sunomono, and again, this was a very fancy, pretty looking dish. I liked the fact that some of the sashimi like octopus and saba came with their own seasoning on top to compliment the seafood. I also really liked the fact that there wasn’t a huge amount of unseasoned steamed rice underneath. The rice was topped with very thin slices of shiso, nori, and daikon, all together they had nice texture, and the shiso made the rice taste minty and refreshing.

This was definitely a hidden gem in Vancouver. Everything was prepared carefully, beautifully and was tasty. If you want something different and authentic, this is the place to check out. I love this place.

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Tokyo Thyme
5405 West Blvd
Vancouver, BC V6M
(604) 263-3262

My favorite mac and cheese dishes of the night were: classic and lobster.

The Classic was the first one I tried. It was just simply creamy, cheesy and comforting; what a mac and cheese is supposed to be.

The lobster mac was the one I looked forward to all night, it consisted of oyster mushrooms, truffle oil, dill, and of course, lobster. It was nice eating the pasta alone with the sauce, there was a distinct seafood taste. It got a lot better once I had a piece of the perfectly cooked lobster. A tad more truffle oil and lobster would be extra nice.

Other crowd favorite mac and cheeses were the meaty ones such as Bacon cheeseburger, Ultimate, and the Brooklyn.

Most of the mac and cheeses are cooked in cream sauce, and some were in red such as their Veggie mac. I love vegetables, but this was my least favorite. It lacked the creamy, cheesy characteristics of a mac and cheese because it was in a red sauce and there was hardly any cheese. It reminded me more of a baked pasta rather than a mac and cheese.

One dish I wasn’t expecting was the Mac and Grilled Cheese. Take a regular fixing of a turkey sandwich but add a layer of classic mac and cheese it in. It was a hit among many, including myself. There’s a crispy texture of buttery toast with some saltiness from the turkey and pesto, and then add on the creamy mac and cheese, all in one bite. Such a guilty pleasure.

The Squished was one of the desserts we got to try, and it was awesome. It was a ice cream sandwich with vanilla bean gelato and raspberry sauce squished between 2 double chocolate cookies. It was a delicious dessert with a fun name, I enjoyed this very very much.

Back to the mac and cheese, I really like the choice of cavatappi as their only pasta for all their mac and cheeses. It’s a fun pasta to eat, and it holds the sauces well. All of the noodles I tried were cooked perfectly al dente.

I have read other food blogger’s previous experience at the Mac Shack and most of them were negative. I think at this media event, they really showed that they listened to all their customers feedback and improved on a lot of the dishes. Although I have no previous experience to reference to, based on my first visit this night, I’d visit them again.

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The Mac Shack
5395 West Boulevard
Vancouver, BC V6M
(604) 267-4225

Yoko is one of the few Tonkatsu (Japanese style fried chops) restaurants around.  I’m very picky about my fried food, I want the outer layer to be crispy, crunchy, flavorful but not oily, and the inner layer to be juicy tender,and of course flavorful.

Yoko did exactly what i expected and more. All meals comes with miso soup, small dishes, and self grinding sasame sauce. They also offer combo options where you can order any type of tonkatsu ( chicken, pork, shrimp..etc) and pair it up with some sushi rolls, udon noodle…etc.

If you’re in the mood for some fried japanese pork cutlets, this is the place to be.  Highly recommended.

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Yoko
4566 Beach Blvd
Buena Park, CA 90621
(714) 739-4353

A couple of my LA homies were in town for a weekend, they have requested to get dim sum for brunch, so we ended up at Sun Sui Wah in Richmond.

We ordered the usual suspects of dim sum, shrimp dumpling, Sui Mai, rice rolls lots of other shrimp based dumplings.

My favorite of the day was rice rolls with chinese donuts. The chinese donuts were crispy but soft on the inside, it had a nice chewy texture. I was happy with their version of my favorite dim sum dish.

My other favorite of the day was fish maw with shrimp paste. The broth at the bottom of this dish was really nice.

My friend ordered a steamed rice ball dish. It was meatball, rolled with rice and steamed. The meatball filling was a lot like the filling in a sui mai. I’ve never had this dish before, and it liked it a lot.

One of the desserts we ordered was tapioca pudding with red bean. I was a disappointed with this dessert actually. It came out luke warm, and the crust was rather soft.

The food in general was good but it wasn’t as good as the couple times I had dim sum here before. The services here also needed some improvement that day, the waiters were rather aloof and had little patience. After this experience, I’m not sure if I’d come back as there are a lot more better options for dim sum out in Richmond.

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Sun Sui Wah
4920 #3 Rd
Richmond, BC V6X

Italian Kitchen is one of the last few Glowbal Group restaurants that MePlusFood hasn’t been to yet. We just need to go to Coast and the newly opened Black and Blue. This is the more expensive version of their other Italian restaurant, Trattoria, on West 4th, with Pastas ranging from about $16 – 25.

When I saw the menu, there were quite a few things that I wanted to try. However, we settled on trying the Pasta Platter, to try to taste as much as we can, without spending tons of money. Our platter came with – (their famous) Spaghetti and spicy Kobe Meatballs with Truffle Cream, Braised Veal Cannelloni with Wild Mushroom Cream, Pappardelle with Lamb Sausage, Cabbage Potatoes, and Rigatoni Pomodoro.

Everyone that I know loves the Kobe meatballs at Glowbal Grill, but I’ve never actually tried a lot of it. My brother orders it almost every time he goes to Glowbal, and so does one of our other friends. They also serve the Rigatoni Pomodoro at Glowbal as well. Anyway, I definitely wasn’t disappointed with the Kobe Meatballs and Spaghetti. Meatballs were large, meaty, and airy. There was definitely some spice to it, but I wouldn’t call it spicy. I think the Spaghetti was amazing though. The truffle cream is to die for and is one of the best sauces I’ve ever tasted. It does come with a high price tag though, as it’s $25, the most expensive pasta on the menu. This was definitely my favourite.

My next favourite was the Pappardelle with Lamb Sausage. The pasta was wide, and cooked right to al dente. I really liked the sauce and enjoyed the lamb sausage. The noodles were cooked perfectly. Beipas really liked this pasta and sauce, but wasn’t a big fan of the lamb sausage. She’s not a big fan of lamb though. The Rigatoni Pomodoro was next. It’s basically just rigatoni with a simple tomato and basil sauce. I though the rigatoni could have been cooked a tiny bit longer, because it was still a bit firmer than I like. The tomato sauce was delicious and comforting. My least favourite was the Braised Veal Canenelloni. It was like pulled veal with mushroom cream sauce wrapped in a pasta sheet. The veal didn’t have enough flavour for me, and the mushroom cream didn’t add much to it. I prefer my cannelloni to be cheesier with lots of ricotta and spinach.

Sorry for the lack of quality pictures. It was so dark in there, my camera couldn’t even focus, so we were manual focussing in the dark. I probably should have turned my auto focus assist lamp on, but didn’t want to ruin the mood inside the restaurant. Our service was really good too. Next time there are a few appetizers that I want to try, especially the bone marrow beef tartare!

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Italian Kitchen
1037 Alberni St
Vancouver, BC

(604) 687-2858

theitaliankitchen.ca

HongMi is a Korean restaurant that has your standard Korean dishes, as well as offering Korean BBQ. For those of you who’ve never done it before (like one of my friends), you are given a bunch of meat, which you can “BBQ” right on your table. If you don’t really know what to do, don’t be afraid to ask. The people at HongMi are very helpful. The three of us opted for the AYCE KBBQ for $25.

We were started with their version of a miso tofu soup. Quite flavourful, and thicker than normal miso soup. It had some more vegetables and large chunks of tofu. She recommended that we eat it with some rice to reduce the saltiness.

We were given the typical sides – kimchi which had little bit less than medium spice to it, the bean sprouts, potato salad, and some other greens which was quite bland. The kim chi was nice, a bit sour, and a decent amount of heat. Not too spicy. The cabbage still had a bit of crunch to it. The bean sprouts were good too. The main sprout of it wasn’t as firm as I’m used to, but I prefer it this way. The potato salad kind of tasted like mashed potatoes mixed with coleslaw. The greens were quite bland, and there was a spicy sauce that was off to the side. Not sure if it was intentional that it was separated. We were also given a plate of lettuce leaves, and also a nice fresh slaw, as well as a couple of different sauces.

They have 4 different meats served here. Pork Belly, Pork, Chicken, and Beef – and that’s the same order that I enjoyed the meats. The Pork Belly was quite thick, but it quickly shrinks when it sizzles on the grill. Wait til it crisps up before you eat it. It’s delicious. The pork, chicken, and beef were all marinated in the same mix. It was really good. The pork were very big pieces and scored so it would cook faster and probably soak up more flavour quicker. After cooking it, it was very tender and flavourful. It had nice salty, sweet, garlicky, sesame flavour to them. Really liked the texture. The chicken was similar. The beef was sliced thiner than the others,  and still pretty good. In the end though, everything did taste the same, so we kind of got sick of it. We did order more pork and pork belly though. I would’ve also gotten more chicken, but my friends were getting full.

Our servers were very helpful in serving us, and making sure we were taken care of. They switched our grilling plate 3 times during our meal, so it was usually pretty clean. The restaurant is really big, because it used to be an old buffet. Though when we went, there weren’t too many people there, maybe that was amplified by the giant size of the space, and how many tables there were. In our table, we could’ve sat 4, but it felt kind of cramped with all of the dishes, and side dishes around.

I was glad to see that they also had pork bone soup and bibimbap so I’m surely going to come back to try those out.

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HongMi
100 – 15155 101st Ave
Surrey, BC

(778) 395-7033

I was first introduced to Thierry Patisserie by a friend. She was telling me that this french pastry shop has amazing macaron and how they have real fruit inside some of the fruit flavoured  macarons such as blackberry and raspberry.

I have visited Thierry a number of times since then, and each time especially for their macarons. About half of those times I walked away with disappointment because they’d be all sold out or they’d only have the flavours I have already tried.

Out of all the times I’ve been I managed to try their pistachio, coffee, lemon, passion fruit, ginger bread and raspberry macarons. Honestly, these were really good macarons. It’s the texture that I liked the most. They outside was crunch when you bite into it, but the inside was soft and chewy. I really dig the chewy texture.

Flavour wise, some of them were really sweet, like passion fruit while the ginger bread (it was special of the day) had more subtle taste. The raspberry one had real raspberry inside, pretty cool.

They have pretty good coffee there. I’d usually get an americano or a latte.  One time my friend and I shared a hazelnut liquid chocolate, think of it as a very very dense hot chocolate. I think it’s ok to sip this chocolate while eating none sweet pastries, otherwise it really just be too sweet.

This place was opened a couple months ago and it is still seriously busy all the time. If you don’t think you like macarons, you have to come try them out at this place, they will change your mind.

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Thierry Patisserie
1059 Alberni Street
Vancouver, BC V6E
(604) 608-6870

So there’s a new restaurant in Vancouver that specializes american cheesesteak sandwich, cool! Not sure why this is a novelty for me, probably from watching too much food tv but I was excited about The American Cheesesteak Co.

I have no idea what an authentic american cheesesteak sandwich is supposed to taste like, but from watching tv I ordered a small classic with (fried onions) and provolone cheese. I also placed a small order of onion rings.

A small order of the sandwich is quite large. There was so much beef, so much cheese and so much guilty grease. The first bite was amazing. The bread was nicely toasted, beef was tender, fried onion was sweet and the cheese just binds everything together. The sandwich however quickly became one dimensional when I was about half way through the sandwich. It became too much of the same taste since it didn’t really have any sauce. I started eating with some hot sauce which helped a bit.

By the time I finished half of the sandwich, I also wished that I’d have my onion rings so I can switch between beef and onion rings.  I thought they forgot about my order, but they were just slow. The rings didn’t come until I was nearly done the sandwich.

An small order of onion rings was also quite large. There was plenty for sharing between 2-3 people. The onion rings were cut thin, and the batter was really nice and crispy.

My friend got the New Yorker, which had mushrooms, tomato, lettuce, garlic mayo and peppers. This sandwich is ginormous, definitely a messy one to eat. He enjoyed the sandwich in general but he did find a little piece of bone just as he finished up the sandwich – not a good last impression.

This is a perfect place for meat lovers and those who are looking for something extra greasy to munch on after a night around town (they do open late). The place has really clean and bar-like decoration. I started to think of it as a fancy-fast food joint, very casual, modern, but you’ll also walk out with fried onion and beef smell.

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The American Cheesesteak Co.
781 Davie St
Vancouver, BC V6Z2S7
(604) 681-0130

During the dinner at Cosca, I was complaining that there aren’t enough good Mexican restaurants in Vancouver. Sherman, being the #1 food blogger in Vancouver highly recommended Taqueria Playa Tropical in New West, so off I went.

I started the meal with a horchata. I didn’t really get into this rice cinnamon drink until this summer. The horchata here is more cinnamony than I expected, still pretty good though.

I also started the meal with 4 tacos: carnitas, carne asada, camaron and pescado.

Carnitas was a slow cooked pork taco with guacamole, onion and cilantro. I found it to be a little dry on its own, it had very subtle flavors. There was a lot of pork on a single sheet of corn tortilla, it needed another corn tortilla just to hold all the pork together.

Carne asada was grilled steak with onions and cilantro. The steak was moist and had nice charred flavor. It was a flavorful taco, I liked it better than the Carnitas.

My favorite tacos here would have to be the seafood tacos. Both the camaron (shrimp) and pescado (fish) tacos were amazing, especially the fish, so flavorful and so yummy. It’s probably because they both have melted cheese on top to make the tacos more moist, the celery added a good crunchy texture. Seafood tacos are the way to go here. I really wanted to order more of these, but I had a chicken enchilada coming.

Chicken enchilada verde is one of my favorite Mexican dish, so I had to order it. It had 4 small rolled chicken tacos and it came with rice and black beans. The presentation is very home styled and friendly (there was a smiley face on my beans).

The enchilada had shredded chicken breast, and red peppers. There were a generous amount of verde salsa, which was awesome. The beans had nice smokey flavor, the rice came in whole grains rather then broken like some other places would serve it. For less than $10, it’s a generous portion, and a very tasty one too.

My friend ordered their Pastor burrito. It was a little different than regular burritos because you’d need to tell them you want to add rice and beans for an extra $2. I’ve never had a burrito without rice and beans, and it was actually pretty good, kind of like a rolled up quesadilla.

Honestly, after the tacos and horchata, I already knew I’d be coming here very often. It was a nice place to get reasonably priced and authentic Mexican food in a quiet and non pretentious restaurant. Yes, it’s all the way out in New Westminister, but it’s so worth the trip! They are open everyday for lunch and dinner.

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Taqueria Playa Tropical
334- 6th Street
New Westminster, BC V3L
(604) 544-5006

I’ll be honest – I’m not that big of a fan of Nando’s Chicken. One of my friends really over hypes it, and it wasn’t that good the handful of times I’ve tried it recently. I think it’s kind of expensive for what it is. Anyway, there’s one just outside my office building. My 2011 Entertainment Book was expiring soon, and I honestly haven’t made much use of it, so I decided to use the Nando’s coupon before it expires on November 1.

I used the deal for two-two leg meals with regular sides. Me and my brother both chose medium spicy, with peri fries and two bottled ice teas. The total still came to $23, which seemed like quite a bit given we had a coupon.

The chicken came out and it looked different from what I’m used to. This time, the peri sauce was just poured on top rather than cooked and basted with it. I’m not used to seeing so much sauce on top of it. The taste was pretty good and the chicken was pretty juicy except for the overly charred bits here and there. The sieze of the chicken legs were not that big too.

Overall, I’ve eaten at Nando’s about 10 times in my life and from what I remember, the last 3-4 visits haven’t been very good (or maybe just over hyped by my friend). I do like their peri sauces, and you can buy them and use them it at home.

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Nando’s Chicken
4334 Kingsway
Burnaby, BC

(604) 434-6220

http://www.nandoscanada.com/

I went to see Robyn’s concert in Seattle last month. I left home without having lunch and thought it would be a good idea for me to snack on something before the long drive. A quick search on Urbanspoon, my friend and I stopped by Boomer’s Drive In.

Even though it was a drive in, I didn’t really consider doing the whole eating in your car thing. There was also a dining area here, but after we parked, we decided that we got to try this at lease once, so we pulled up to one of the drive in spots.

There’s a menu beside each drive in spot. To order food, turn your car lights on.

Food was here was cheap! You can get a burger for just $3.99. My friends and I both went for the Burger Combo. For $6.99 we got a burger, waffle fries and a milk shake, it seemed like a deal.

The burger was quite big. It had the usual fixings, lettuce, tomato, pickles, mayo, and American cheese. It was quite good, I didn’t expect to finish the whole burger, but next thing I knew, it was gone. Waffle fries are always fun to eat, these were salty waffle fries but like the burger, I just couldn’t stop eating them. They were really nicely fried, crispy outside and soft insides.

There were a billion milkshake flavors here, but I went for the classic strawberry milkshake. It was very thick, very sweet, very yummy.

Clearly we were newbies at this, the waitress had to give us instructions to roll down the window so she can hang the food tray there. The scene was quite funny. It’s probably the waffle fries and the milkshake, it make me feel like a kid again, the days I’d get excited about visiting a fast food restaurant.

There were a lot of concerns about if we were doing the whole drive in thing ‘right’, there was a lot of giggling, and it felt kind of bizarre. Why would you want to eat in your car? Overall a fun experience, and So American. I’m glad we tried it.

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Boomer’s Drive In
310 N Samish Way
Bellingham, WA 98225
(360) 647-2666

To be honest, I have not heard about Prestons until now, so I didn’t really know what to expect. Upon arriving the restaurant, this lounge like restaurant gave me a clue that it probably specializes in west coast cousine.

There were 10 items on the tasting menu, and to my surprise, there were quite a lot of Asian influenced dishes.

With probably over 100 people showed up at the tasting event, there was a stationary food section, there were also waiters and waitresses walking around with trays of food. It was a little bit hectic with all that people, getting food was a bit hard. Some of the dishes I sampled were: shrimp gyoza, eggplant slider, chicken karaage, and crab cakes.

The things I tried were simple and straight forward. The chicken karaage were served in a cute chinese take out box. The sizes of the chicken were more like popcorn chicken. It was sweet and spicy, and the crunchy cabbage slaw was a good compliment.

The eggplant sliders were very well done. The eggplant patty was meaty, it doesn’t taste like a vegetarian slider at all.

I was a fun event as I got to catchup with other food bloggers as well. If the event organizer wanted us to know that Prestons is a fun, upbeat place to share food and have drinks with friends, they certainly have achieved it. Thank you Prestons and @GoPopcorn for having us there!

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Prestons
1177 West Pender Street
Vancouver, BC V6E
(604) 673-2173