Still Serving Large Portions at Establishment Lounge

It'd been a while since I was at Establishment Lounge, and the menu hasn't changed much, so I wouldn't normally have gone again having tried just about everything now, but I was seeing a friend who was going to be away for a year or so to study medicine in Australia, and Establishment was a safe choice of a great restaurant. She was only back in town for a short time, so I wanted to see her off with a great food experience. For excellent, interesting, tasty food I've found you really can't go wrong with Establishment. On top of that, for many items such as the soups, you can expect good quantity for your dollar.

Chef Bonbo's Lobster Bisque ($10) creamy, rich lobster bisque infused with brandy, drizzled with lobster remoulade & orange vanilla crème fraîche

This delicious soup comes with chunks of lobster big enough to be prawns.
If you're not looking for a large meal but want to try more than just the soup, you can ask for it to be split into two bowls.You still get a very good portion -- two bowls of maybe 3 cups of soup, both bowls individually garnished on top.
The lobster probably forces the price here to be higher than the peanut soup, but Chef Bongo's Famous African Chicken Peanut Soup is still my top pick at Establishment.
There's so much soup here that an inexperienced server will possibly bring out the rest of your order before you are done. You might want to ask to delay your other courses until you have finished the soup, otherwise everything else might get cold, especially for the tapas plates.

Bison Short Rib Pappardelle Pasta ($19) slow-braised short ribs, wild mushrooms, caramelized onions, cherry tomatoes & spinach, tossed in a creamy Madeira demi-sauce

The Madeira demi-sauce uses pepper so there's a bit of kick to this.
The portion is huge, and it's not just filler pasta. There is so much pulled rib here that every bite will probably have some meat stuck to it because of the sticky sauce.
I also very much liked that this wasn't very salty despite the generous amount of sauce and meat.
If you have both a full bowl of their soup plus this item from their "large plates" you are definitely at risk of not being able to fit in dessert. I gave away half my soup and maybe a quarter to a third of my pasta and I still gave a pass on dessert.

All in all it was another happy evening at Establishment Lounge. At 6pm on Thursday we were one of the few diners there, so it looks like Establishment is still in a sort of black hole of restaurants. Definitely a hidden gem, a bit hard to find with so many restaurants in the neighbourhood.

Trafalgar's European Explorer 2006 memoirs part 3

A picture from my 2006 trip, a Trafalgar 's bus tour, on an itinerary called the European Explorer. I can't remember why I had this couple in the picture, but I do vaguely remember this to be in London, on the first official day of the tour group getting together. Their insistence on my helping them take a picture caused the three of us to be late getting back to the bus. The local tour guide had a "rule" about lateness, that we had to buy chocolate to share with everyone. As it turned out, later in the trip, on at least two occasions, we were stuck on the highway on either a long commute or a traffic jam, and I had chocolate and chocolate-covered marzipan to share. About the chocolate-covered marzipan -- Apparently we were in Austria just as they were celebrating Mozart's birthday with special marzipans wrapped in foil with the famous composer's picture. I'm pretty sure it was Mirabell Mozartkugeln . Anyway, there were enough to go around the en...

Trafalgar's European Explorer 2006 memoirs part 10

The last of my pictures (at least the ones that survived the cheesy disposable cameras) from my 2006 trip, a Trafalgar 's bus tour, on an itinerary called the European Explorer. Below is the obligatory group photo. Not sure everyone's in it, actually. I'm pretty sure this one was taken by the tour director, Mike Scrimshire as I'm in the back row, on the right side.

Trafalgar's European Explorer 2006 memoirs part 9

More assorted couples on my 2006 trip, a Trafalgar 's bus tour, on an itinerary called the European Explorer. An American couple who joked about being from "the land of the giants" -- and with good reason, because both of them were really tall! A cute Jewish mother-daughter pair who ducked out part-way to divert to Israel. I vaguely remember the issue of the daughter being an orthodox Jew was highlighted in France when, to make things easy, she just declared herself vegetarian for the wait staff. I also remember there was some logistics error in France because our party size was way underestimated or simply relayed incorrectly, and there was a shortage of food at dinner. Dessert came as an unopened can of yogurt. It did not seem like they tried to make it up to us later, either. Plus there was smoking every which way in France, and I had a helluva time with that. We were also in a hotel that seemed tucked away in the burbs, and not walking distance from anythin...

Life in the Lower Mainland (BC, Canada)

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