Life in the Lower Mainland (BC, Canada)

The Asian decor clashes with the not-very-Asian looking counter and wall of wooden planks, and feels like it used to be something else, but has since become a Vietnamese restaurant. It is otherwise pretty simple and brightly lit. The outside makes it look newer and more modern than it is on the inside. Service is okay, and more or less on par with the rest of the East Vancouver neighborhood of cheap eats and Chinese restaurants. A1 Chả Giò ($5) spring rolls - Crispy rolls filled with pork, carrot, taro, mushroom, and onions. Served with nước mâm. Oily spring rolls with some sort of thin sauce (fish sauce?). Too oily to recommend. Flavour sort of weak and not helped by the dipping sauce at all. In the unfortunate case where you've ended up with this, try the sriracha sauce or the small pot of (hot) chili sauce on the table. T23 Hư Tiêu Đó Biển Chua Cay ($8 small bowl or $9 large bowl) seafood, tomato, and pineapple in a spicy tamarind soup Even the "small" ...

Dynasty Seafood Restaurant features free parking (if you let them know you parked downstairs) and 15% off their dim sum menu if you are out by 11.30 AM. Since they open at 10 AM, you have to be organized and eat eat eat to be gone from the table by that time. Still, on top of dim sum being sort of cheap to begin with when dining in groups, 15% is welcome. Like most Chinese restaurants, service is shoddy compared to always-smiling-flirty-girl-check-on-your-meal downtown-Vancouver service. Congee initially came without bowls, for instance. Also, items typically come in fours and the person with the scissors (which she wouldn't leave at the table) lagged behind so our party of 5 had to do some messy cutting of our own with chopsticks. On the other hand, they seemed responsive if you do flag someone down to ask for something. Also, I don't recall that we were kept waiting long for pots of (strong) tea, which isn't always the case at many Chinese restaurants. Dim Sum her...

I can't remember what initially attracted me to try Linh Café , but I was definitely sold on it when they replied that 90% of their dishes are gluten-free (but of the desserts, apparently only the chocolate mousse cake is gluten-free). It's a smallish place, so if you do not have reservations, expect their earlier dinner seating to have a small lineup on busier days like Fridays evenings. You are probably safe to do a walk-in later, maybe around 8pm. Larger groups and chatty diners should probably go later so that you don't feel pressured to eat and get out because of the lineup at the door. Decor is okay, with some interesting things to spot such as a row of painted pig heads. Also be sure to check out the potential desserts in the counter before you get started with dinner. I am normally careful to save room for dessert, but the dinner service at Linh Café surprised us and only two of us had any room for more than a couple of bites -- on top of doggy bagging some o...

As a LUVO investor, I have waited a long time for their product to be available in Canada. It's really ironic that it took so long because the founder Stephen Sidwell (co-founder of Gardein ) is local to Greater Vancouver. With any luck, their sister venture LYFE Kitchen won't be far behind. They are on Twitter with #LuvoEH . Here's the announcement blurb: We're excited to announce that Luvo will be making its Canadian debut, with the first selection of meals hitting the shelves on the west coast. Product will begin to arrive in IGA Marketplace locations across British Columbia in the coming weeks. Visit luvoinc.com for updates. Read how Luvo CEO Christine Day wants to reinvent frozen food in Canadian Business Magazine .

I'm always interested in curious foods, so it's no surprise the Asian fusion menu at The Union caught my eye--especially what seemed to be a creative fusion brunch (i.e., more than just omelettes and eggs benedict). The location is in a sketchy part of town, but on the Sunday morning we showed up for brunch right at 10 AM when they opened, the street was very quiet with most of the action just one street over with their busy grocery markets. There's a bit of street parking for cars as well as a bike lane. The neighboring stores are all revitalized and new-ish looking, compared to the rest of the Chinatown neighbourhood. Long communal tables and a mix of short benches and single-seater stools make up the dining space in The Union. This being Vancouver, don't count on the seating arrangement to necessarily encourage conversation with neighbours you don't know. Oddities include soy sauce in what look like cough syrup bottles, and a sign that boasts "pr...

From the label: Great Taste, Calorie Free. How do we do it? Smooth and creamy Walden Farms Whipped Peanut Spread is made with natural fresh roasted peanut flavor. Delicious on crackers or toast. Calorie Free. No Sugar added. Fat Free. Gluten Free. As a peanut butter substitute, the main question is whether it tastes like peanut butter. And the answer is sort-of no. There is some roasted peanut flavour as advertised, but there is also a strong saltiness along with some sweetness -- sodium is rated at 105mg / 4% per 15 grams (1 tablespoon). I have a strong suspicion that the saltiness is there to distract you from the rest of the flavour. Beggars can't be choosers, so if you are picking up a fake peanut butter for whatever reason, then you either learn how to like it or go without peanut butter. If you can have the real thing, this will taste sort of gross. It's like smooth peanut butter, except it's wetter and the saltiness is quite off-putting. If you don't want...

CASH ONLY. Chicco Coffee and Dessert Bar has a website that suggests way more French elegance than it actually has. It's a tiny, tiny place. There's barely any seating so expect to just do take-out. Their parfaits appear to be their signature item, so that's what we tried. Honestly, I don't know how people eat this Japanese parfait stuff. Unlike a pretty much all-cream parfait , Chicco (and D'oro Gelato & Caffè  further up Robson Street) offer a different sort of parfait, with a base of cake and cornflakes, a layer of jelly cut into cubes, then mainly whipped cream, ice cream, a macaron, and a pastry stick. There's some other stuff too depending on which one you choose but it's sort of token compared to the overall price of $7.75. Like a honey toast box , you need strategy to properly eat this. Otherwise you end up with junk at the end. You can eat this very slowly, thus letting the whipped cream and ice cream melt down into the bottom layers,...

Sushiholic on Denman is a smallish place if you look from the doorway, but there's a side room with larger tables for larger groups. We went for a slightly later Friday dinner (7 pm) and the restaurant was quite quiet. I'm no sushi expert, so as long as it doesn't taste stale or fishy, and I don't need soy sauce, it's all good to me. Sushiholic on Denman satisfies these conditions. Where Sushiholic distinguishes itself are its  Special Maki Rolls , which have ace presentation and "wow" factor. Strangely, their taste is not too special, and some rolls are "spicy" (meaning they liberally use some sort of mild chili sauce), which also covers up other flavours. Some of the rolls are deep fried, which sounds like it should have deep-fried flavour and crunchy fun, but sadly I found that lacking, which was disappointing (they also weren't oily, though, which is a plus). Of the special maki rolls, some noteworthy ones are: Awesome Roll ($7.9...

Mealshare  is teaming up with restaurant partner Café Medina to celebrate International Waffle Day : On March 25th, for every waffle sold, another waffle will be provided to someone in need at Mealshare's local charity partner, Mission Possible . Share your waffle pic that day (using the hashtag #WaffleShare) and be entered to win breakfast for two at Café Medina. For more information post, click here to read the announcement on the Café Medina blog .

If you haven't already, you may want to sign up for My Starbucks Rewards  to take advantage of their new " Happy Mondays " 2 PM to 5 PM special rewards. Normally their points program is a pretty long slog toward getting free stuff by buying a lot of stuff (to get "stars") quickly. With Happy Mondays, you can get more instant rewards just for being in My Starbucks Rewards. You still have to buy stuff, but sometimes you can get freebies. See below for the 2015-March schedule.

I have a friend in the US who used to live in Canada -- so she's noticed that some things taste differently. Such as Twizzlers . And she likes Canadian Twizzlers better. So I inquired with U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) as to how much I could bring: I am visiting a friend in San Francisco later this year. She wants Twizzlers -- she says the same product in the US tastes differently from those in Canada. How much am I allowed to bring into the US for her? I don't go to the US regularly and she doesn't come to Canada regularly, so I was thinking of getting her more than just a couple of bags. Here is their initial reply: You can bring the candy to the US, and there is no set limit on the amount. All you have to do is declare the food to a CBP officer at the border or airport. Mark Answer Title: Food- Bring personal use food into the U.S. from Canada Answer Link: https://help.cbp.gov/app/answers/detail/a_id/1273 Answer Title: Travelers bringing food into the U...

I saw  an article in Klip magazine Feb-2015 on [Audrey's] Moment  and decided to give Audrey's Moment High Tea a try after a long hiatus on "high teas" / afternoon teas. At $28, the "Luxury [Hightea] set" weighs in price-wise on par with their Vancouver counterparts like  The Secret Garden . I had heard that gluten-free versions were available, but when I called I was told that too much of the menu was bread-based so that option was out. Honestly I didn't know what to really expect from a high tea / afternoon tea place in Burnaby. I mean, it's Burnaby, and near Metrotown. It just feels so out of place there -- but I guess that's also why the location is brilliant. It's about time we got a nice high tea place. They've only been open since October, so it's too soon to tell how the menu and operations will stabilize, but at the moment, they are trying to keep costs down by limiting unnecessary waste. Which is why if you want to do a...

Next time I go to a Japanese restaurant, I'll have to remember to ask the staff what the name means. "Basho" can apparently mean different things depending on the kanji . Although "location" is a good guess, it may refer to the haiku poet Matsuo Bashō . Anyway, I finally got down to Basho Cafe to have a peek. For a smallish place, it's really nice that they didn't try to cram the floor with as much seating as possible. Instead, there's a respectable amount of legroom and privacy between the tables (though for roominess in cafes, Lost + Found still can't be beat ). I ducked in late afternoon for a meeting, so I just got a peppermint tea and a mini-muffin. Kabocha Muffin ($1) I was sort of hoping that they'd mispelled kombucha , but no, it was kabocha --Japanese pumpkin. $1 for a ping-pong ball sized muffin that'd been sitting in the counter for god-knows-how-long since it was around 2.30 pm. Why did I buy it? No idea. Well whad...

Walked in for a Friday night 8 PM reservation and it was still busy! Things quieted down closer to 10 PM, but considering there's no shortage of restaurants on Granville Island, Edible Canada deserves a closer look no matter what their online ratings. This said, because of their sheer busy-ness, if you intend to linger for dinner conversation I recommend a later seating, maybe 8pm when the dinner rush is basically over and people are on their way out. No shortage of tables after that--which means no anxiety on the part of servers to move you along and out the door. The floor space is mostly restaurant and they do their best with decor, but the architecture doesn't really support that well. At the back is a small grocery store, and beyond that, the pleasantly clean washrooms. Seating isn't too tight in the open and airy feeling dining area, but if your seat is against a wall, it could be a tad squashy. Also, the broad round base of the tables means you are liable to...

If you are into interesting chocolates, BETA5 offers monthly chocolate experiments. See below for their 2015-February offering. Pricing is about $60 for a one-time purchase; discounts available for memberships. You can sign up for their mailing list in-store or online .

It's in an industrial zone because BETA5 Chocolates was initially a chocolatier for hotels and such. Only later did they open a chocolate shop. I think they also added another oven to keep up with the ridiculous cream puff demand. Despite the location, the exterior is clean and in the interior is a bit spartan and hospital-warehouse-chic but also clean and reassuring. And you can watch the oompa-loompas  do their thing through the glass window. Keep an eye out for the curious spray-station. Can you go to a renowned chocolatier and not buy any chocolate? Apparently you can. Or at least I did--The closest I got to getting chocolate was a small free sample of chocolate with pop rocks in them. Yup, it's fireworks in your mouth. Neat, but, er, didn't make me desperately want to buy them. Maybe because I don't have bratty kids to shut up. Anyway, I went yesterday and just got some cream puffs. Which, from looking at the pictures and from I-don't-know-where-it-come...

So I finally got around to trying To Dine For Eatery after hearing about their Peanut Butter and Bacon Burger forever. Since my Korean friend was curious about their "Hot Spicy" Korean Kimchi Burger, I got a bite of that as well. The location looks like a dead-end industrial black hole, but the building it is located in has a good population including an ESL school, so if you try to walk in at noon you'll likely face a packed room. On Wednesday we did a 1 PM walk-in after the lunch hour and it was barely a third full. The kitchen was still pretty busy -- too busy for the chef to cut our burgers in half, apparently, so we did it ourselves -- but service was still pretty fast. Burgers come with your choice of fries, salad, or (+$1) soup-of-the-day. My friend attempted to get half fries, half salad and was told that would be a $2 surcharge! Apparently their busy kitchen is pretty ruthless about protecting its time and takes no prisoners. Kimchi Burger ($13.95) Nice...