Life in the Lower Mainland (BC, Canada)

The Grand Villa Casino now has a $25.95 seafood buffet (HALF price if you used the 2-for-1 coupons that were recently mailed out). Even at that price, it's pretty decent value as they keep bringing out the crab legs and you can have as much as you like. Look around and you'll see that's what everyone "in-the-know" goes there for. That said, The Buffet does have other items, including (big) prawns, a beef carving station, and a good-enough selection of more mundane buffet items like salads, rice, and noodles. The food is so-so but at least looks freshly same-day prepared. Not gourmet eats, of course, but nothing that looks re-heated either. The mussels did turn out sort of dry, so try to get ones with more tasty sauce on them. The soup of the day (mushroom soup when I went) was very thick and creamy and with chunks of mushroom. Stir fried prawns were largish, not juvenile shrimps. Cocktail prawns were medium to big sized prawns. If you are in very early, slo

You may remember I mentioned in another post that Leonidas was extending their Hot Chocolate Festival offerings by making it a permanent addition to their waterfront cafe, rounding out their various offerings as a café in addition to being Vancouver's flagship Leonidas chocolate store. I got the chance to try their Boho Secret last time, and this afternoon went back for the even more intriguing Jamaican Kiss (they were out of the special ganache last time). Boho Secret - Leonidas 72% São Tomé origin dark chocolate ( Claudio Corallo ?) , peppermint, tumeric, pepper, honey. Jamaican Kiss - Leonidas milk chocolate, coconut milk, pineapple rum ganache. The Jamaican Kiss was $7. !!! -- I know. BUT, it comes with a Belgian waffle , slice of cheese cake, or one macaron (normally $2). The waffle is probably the safest choice if you don't want to complicate tasting your hot chocolate. I've tried a couple of their macarons so far, and they are quite sweet and have intense

If you don't already know, pre-fab Grilled Cheese sandwiches are now available at Urban Fare Shangri-La. They do have a $6.99 build-your-own-sandwich bar , but now they have a selection of pre-made grilled-to-order sandwiches that have interesting ingredients like a vegetarian one with apples, and a "Carnivore" that has cubes of CROCODILE meat. That said, can someone slap me upside the head the next time I order crocodile? I am such a sucker for strange meats, but it disappoints every time. This is not to say that the Carnivore sandwich was bad. It's a nicely put-together sandwich at the high end of the sandwich offerings at $7.49. The thing is, if you're ordering it to check out what crocodile tastes like, you will be very disappointed. It tastes like chicken. It's white meat. Firm like chicken breast but the texture isn't quite the same. Just as bland, though. Do NOT buy this just to get exotic meat. Heck, don't buy it to get a lot of meat, becau

I was at True's Tea for a social this past weekend. I didn't choose the venue, so honestly, it's not like I deliberately went there just so I can write about what's bad about it. There are some plusses to the place (no, really!), and I will definitely mention them. Even before you go in, the place looks dilapidated. The awning over the door was so crusted with grey dirt that it looked like an abandoned restaurant. It gets worse once you walk in. I looked around the lobby and there were light fixtures in the ceiling that were held in place with red duct tape -- I'm not making this up! One sprinkler head was so crusted with dust that it looked furry. I also saw a silver panel that had some sort of stain on it from having been wiped with a too-wet cloth and allowed to dry. So obvious it stuck out. Why would anyone just leave that be? Other than the obvious lack of housecleaning, the place does actually look pretty decent. It would help a bit if they also clear

This was my friend's pick for the Easter weekend, and boy was the place packed! I guess we'd gotten in right at dinner time because around 6:15pm it looked sort-of deserted. Closer to 7pm it was full. From the get-go, we were told that it would be share plates (the waitress gives everyone the pep talk) and that not everyone would come out of the kitchen in the order that they were ordered. Presumably this meant the kitchen was collecting orders of various items and mass-producing them for efficiency. Four of us teamed up to share plates, and it was basically one dish shared by four persons. Not a good ratio. We wanted to try many things and let everyone have a go at ordering what they wanted, so we accepted the portions that we ended up with. But mostly one plate per two or possibly three persons is probably closer to getting a really good taste. Especially if you order anything that is a salad or that requires scooping, immediately ask for extra serving spoons. $5 salt

VANEATS "SalivEIGHT" $15 dining passes are still available for Eight ½ Restaurant Lounge, and include their for-this-promotion-only crab cakes, which are not on the regular menu. If you do go, you *can* separately order the crab cakes at $12.50. Here's how the VANEATS coupon works out... Flight of Stanley Park Brewery Belgian Style Beer, 2 "Ambers", subtle toasted malt, lightly hopped, exceptionally clean finish 2 "Bruns", distinctive dried fruit aromatics, complex chocolate, roasted nut and malt biscuit Your Choice of Appie: Tortilla Soup Baked Brie Dungeness Crab Cakes Your Choice of Thin Crust Pizza: 8th Avenue Market Place Wild Smoked Salmon The beers are basically four half-height glasses, which works out to about two glasses of beer. You can order a "Craft Beer Flight" for $8.50, which gets you four different beers, so the flight of beers on the dining pass works out to about $8.50 in value; and the pass itself a