Life in the Lower Mainland (BC, Canada)

Back to Establishment ! It's probably the restaurant I've brought the most guests to and I've had yet to have a really bad experience there. Value for money is generally good (a bit steep on the tapas, though), and it's overall a really safe place to bring guests. The combination of good food and the restaurant not being too busy makes it very convenient for groups big or small. Plus Chef Bongo's Famous African Chicken Peanut Soup is still a winner. They are also still making it very convenient to share their large-portioned soups so you should not be shy about asking a single order to be split into two bowls. (I totally forgot to try the vegetarian version. Drat.) Chef Bongo's Chilled White Asparagus Soup ($11) creamy white asparagus with crab & avocado, drizzled with truffle oil I felt this was a little overdone with the truffle oil because it really covered up the other flavours. I guess if you like chilled soup that smells like truffle oil, that...

Neverland Tea Salon offers a gluten-free and dairy-free (but not vegan, since it still uses egg) option on its $30 "High Tea" menu. I'm not gluten-intolerant but I was curious about it, so when we went last Saturday, that's what I opted for. This option comes at no extra cost. The selection on the tea tower is slightly different, however. Neverland is a smallish place and can be quite busy. Our table was for 4:00 PM and there was a card marking this as the third booking of the day. 4:00 PM tea can feel quite late, especially in this fall/winter season when shortly after it will be dark. However, if you want an un-rushed time (especially if you have a party larger than four), it's probably the best reservation option. When I arrived, it was still buzzing with people, but there apparently weren't many 4:00 PM reservations because the place quieted down quite a bit; and we had a lovely conversation at our table until closer to 6:30 PM. The flowery decor and...

Got this in my inbox just the other day: Looks like the Shangri-La Hotel in downtown Vancouver has gone with an Arabian theme this holiday season. Click here for the full brochure , including Afternoon Tea service, spa treatments involving coffee and dates, Christmas and New Year dinners (though without mention of whether it, too, will be Arabian themed or turkey-traditional), and hotel packages. Hint for page 7, " mignardises ".

Unlike Joe Fortes, Coast does accept reservations for half-priced Happy Hour , and it can see large groups sit down for it. Instead of being shuffled off to the bar, you get tables and sit-down meal service. Nice! They also call to confirm TWO days before, which was a little disorienting for me and I ended up confusing the hostess by trying to confirm the reservation for "tomorrow". Happy Hour at Coast is everything on the left side of the menu, except Sides -- Soups, Salads, Hot, Steamers, Flatbreads. There was also something about taking off the lower-priced of two entrees, but you'd best ask about that more carefully to see which items qualify.   We sat down for Happy Hour at around 4.30pm and it wasn't terribly busy, but attendance was steady and slowly picked up. We were seated sort-of near the kitchen at the back, which had a more enclosed feel probably because of the lower ceiling. I would have thought it an advantage as being close to the kitchen shoul...

Before I got the $30 for $60 Groupon , I didn't know about Kibo Restaurant and Lounge 's half-priced happy hour. Definitely go for happy hour if you can fit it in during that time. Otherwise, the Groupon is a great deal, but it is only for tables of four or more. If your friends are flaky, you could be stuck. It's a huge restaurant! With a huge patio! Inside, it's dimly lit and has a cool lounge vibe. Definitely a nice "date night" sort of place. Sadly the dessert selection is lousy (deep fried banana and ice cream makes up their entire dessert selection), but for late-night you can still zip over to the Hamilton Street Grill for their should-be-famous gingerbread pudding (still a steal at $8) or  Bistro Sakana for their deeply chocolatey brownies. I should say that I still find savouring sushi challenging. For the most part, sushi is sushi unless they do something to really stand out, like the refreshing fruitiness of the rolls at Honjin Sushi . And I...

Could Jimmys Tap House please update their online menu? It's not totally different, but it's not the same either. Jimmys has a great location, large space, and well-positioned TVs so that pretty much wherever you sit, you can watch the sports. Which makes it lousy for date night or get-togethers with friends where you're supposed to be catching up with each other. They have happy hour every day of the week, which is pretty handy because weekday happy hours can be pretty tricky to get to. I was invited to a get-together with some friends on Saturday and we dropped in for happy hour. At some places (like Glowbal Grill ), it is not clear on the menu which items qualify for half-priced happy hour, and you have to ask your server. At Jimmys it says right on the menu. Chicken Wings ($10) Buttermilk fried chicken, sweet chili sauce I chose the intriguing-sounding "butter hot" sauce. It was neither buttery nor hot, sadly. No idea what happened there -- maybe kit...

Just back from Chicha . Our dining group was on the early seating (5pm) and with good reason the restaurant asked us to be done by 7pm as they were just about line-up-at-the-door busy. Tables tend to be for groups and the bar is for couples, or so the seating seemed to be assigned. It's a small, tight place. The main lane between the tables and the bar can get traffic jammed, and your waitress won't be able to get past the people loitering there. Happily they are no longer cash-only (but no AMEX, which is understandable as of the credit cards, that is the priciest option for businesses). Going undercover as a food blogger has drawbacks, including not trying to steal the menu or take notes when I'm there. So I'm gonna have to go from memory here... Chicha Morada ($3.50) The spice mix makes this taste like Christmas! The spices also settle to the bottom, so stir it between sips from the straw. Slightly on the too-sweet side, but you can wait for the ice to me...

Waddled home stuffed from FirePots tonight. Soooo many mistakes on my part. FirePots is very conveniently near Brentwood Mall and the skytrain station. (Incidentally, it's neigbour is the intriguing and delicious-looking Edible Arrangements ). We were there for a 7:30pm dinner, and although there was no lineup at the door, the restaurant was busy till closer to 9pm when there were basically just bar patrons -- So for the neighbourhood, it handily doubles as a pub. Not much else in striking distance except Starbucks, and there's no alcohol at Starbucks. The hot floor staff at FirePots makes it a lousy place for a date with a guy with the roaming eye. Our server was the friendly, energetic Wendy, who was very helpful to a first-timer for "modern" hot pot like myself. My experience of hot pot was the charcoal-heated metal bowls with a chimney in the middle, and individual dipping sieves for food. This was long ago and far away when I was a kid, visiting my grand...

Thursday afternoon was my very first time to La Tacqueria  (Cambie location). 12 Tacos x 0-4 sauces x 0-2 condiments = 180 combination = big headache. I didn't really want to spend hours thinking about what amounts to essentially fast food, so I opted for "chef's choice" -- That is, I asked the person at the counter what were the four most interesting ones, and let him recommend condiments and how much to put on them. The fellow at the counter was really welcoming and friendly, and especially for a first-timer like me (he asked if I'd ever been there), it was comforting that he had zero hesitation and great confidence in what to recommend. Not afraid to zap on the optional sauces for me either, and not seemingly haphazardly -- for each type of taco, he recommended a particular sauce. For the condiments, it was up to me, and I opted to throw on some jalapeno (which turned out to be a big mistake). The tacos also came with a wedge of lime, which I used sparingl...

The last time I was at Joe Fortes was years ago, for a vegan prix fixe special dinner. ( No, I'm not kidding ). Food was good, service was great. Neither have changed. On Wednesday our dining group popped down for their 4-6pm Happy Hour. The Happy Hour menu at Joe Fortes shows a list with daunting painful-to-your-purse prices, but which was OK at 50% off Happy Hour prices. Some items actually become a steal. Expect to be reminded that ONLY the Happy Hour menu is half-off as they apparently get people who get the wrong idea. NOT drinks, obviously, where restaurants make their moolah. Have a few drinks at your table to help them out, eh? It all started with making a reservation on OpenTable. Apparently restaurants don't check the messages on these reservations till much later because a few hours prior to our Happy Hour reservation, I got a call from the restaurant saying Happy Hour was first-come-first-served at the BAR. Reservations for tables were for dinner only. They we...

After god knows how long, I dropped by Leonidas again last Friday to grab a hot beverage on a cold, rainy evening right before heading over to Peckinpah. Turns out they have small round cheesecakes now, that the owners pick up from The Confectional in Seattle. They were still serving their Hot Chocolate Festival offerings, though the menu has been trimmed down to about a half dozen of their most popular items. The lonely storekeep holding down the fort on that dark, dreary evening was a Belgian import, and ecstatic to be working for Leonidas, the chocolates she grew up with. She recommended the raspberry cheesecake flavoured hot chocolate, made with white chocolate. It was quite sweet, but not so sweet as to require a glass of water on the side or to give you a sugar burn at the back of the throat. I was warned that it would have some sourness, but this didn't show up for me. It did definitely taste like cheesecake, though without so much cheese flavour to make it more a ch...

OK, Britney Spears does NOT work at Scandilicious . But when we went on Saturday to the family-owned-and-operated Scandilicious, there was this friendly and helpful server behind the counter (Karlie?) who I swear was the spitting image of Britney Spears (well, more like Britney 10 years ago). Anyway... About the restaurant... It has a narrow store-front that might look more like just a take-out window. Inside, past the long walk past the service counter on one side and self-serve water / sugar / napkins on the other, are a measly 16 or so seats, including four barstools around two tall tables. Turnover for duos dropping in for a bite was quite quick, though. And despite the tight space, they didn't  try to maximize it with tight spacing, as some places are often tempted to do. It clean and bright and cheery inside. Scandilicious boasts the best waffles in Vancouver, and their freshness does definitely make them a contender. They also have gluten free waffles in vegan and non...

So I finally got around to trying Peckinpah last Friday. It's a tight no-reservations place that saw line-ups at the door and people waiting at the bar. While we were waiting for the last two of our party, we placed our orders. Which was a good thing because some of the orders can take a little while (like the Baked Mac'n Cheese), which is annoying in a room with passive pressure to eat and go because of other diners waiting patiently for their turn. The other stand-out BBQ places locally are Memphis Blues Barbecue House and the Hog Shack Cook House . Before you start comparing them, you should first know that not all BBQ traditions look alike, and Peckinpah is very different. Mijune Pak of Follow Me Foodie has a great primer on this in her review of Peckinpah . It's hard to avoid comparisons when it comes to whether it was tasty or not, you should at least recognize that you can't get/expect the same type of barbecue at Peckinpah -- Just as you can't take poin...