Life in the Lower Mainland (BC, Canada)

Basil Garden Pho has been open just 4 months but the family has been in the restaurant business since the 90's. The unassuming exterior opens into a bright, clean, modern, newly renovated space close to Renfrew Skytrain Station just a couple blocks down the street. Weekday lunch is usually so busy that they are not able to take reservations, although larger groups could try an 11.30am or 11.45am reservation. Evenings and weekends are calmer, presumably because the nearby college and commercial buildings are less populated. DISCLOSURE: I was there for a complimentary tasting so. We got a chance to try some of their popular dishes, some "special menu" items, and some test kitchen items. At the moment the "special menu" is basically available when the owner Philip is there to cook it but in maybe a month or less the menu will be updated and hopefully those items won't be do elusive. They are also short on desserts at the moment and have experiment...

Basil Pasta Bar (on Davie) has a dingy, dilapidated feel to the small place. Window seat is still the best because people don't bother looking in, and hey, it's Yaletown -- chances of a really cute/hot girl walking by once every 2 minutes or so are pretty good. Portion sizes are good so their ad copy is no lie. For under $10 (usually $8.95) you can have a filling lunch of pasta. However, taste is mediocre, probably because the sauce tasted thin. Lots of pasta, yes, but you miss the richness that comes from good sauce. After all, pasta really just moves the sauce from the plate to your mouth. I got the "spicy" Penne Arrabiata (spicy tomato sauce with chorizo sausage, red peppers, and garlic; garnished with fresh parsley and goat cheese) and my friend tried the Spaghetti Carbonara. Penne Arrabiata was barely spicy but there is a mild buzz in your mouth. Otherwise tasted okay - which is to say on par (maybe even inferior to) getting your own pasta sauce from th...

A much better taste experience at Meet in Gastown! Last time I was at Meet in Gastown I had a Portobello Burger that didn't look very good and I mentioned it in my blog and on Yelp. Surprisingly, someone was actually reading and Meet offered me a gift card. When a restaurant offers you a gift card through Yelp, obviously they are trying to get you to revise their rating. I asked the Yelp Community Manager about that, and she said it was legit as long as there was full disclosure. So based on that, I accepted the card. I mean, how much could it possibly be? $5? The cost of the burger? Anyway, I found a friend curious about Meet and we finally went, months later and hopefully incognito. I was tempted to try the burger again to see if my experience before was a one-off, but even if it were, one bad menu item shouldn't damn a restaurant. All of the picks on this visit were by my dining partner. We tried four things: Sweet-Chili Cauliflower ($9.75) house beer-battered wi...

Found some Knorr Onion Soup on sale at Superstore and decided to try it. Based on the packaging I thought it was an onion dip mix, but it's actually primarily a soup, with alternative uses. The flavour is a savoury onion flavour, and pretty good, EXCEPT it is salty salty salty. Did I mention it is salty? Can I say it more than four times? Because it's crazy salty if you follow the recipes. I tried the "Juicy Burger" recipe and the "Onion Dip" recipe, and both came out really salty. For the onion dip (sour creme + onion soup mix), the colour was also very, very, different from the picture on the package, which suggests a clean creamy white. It's actually more like brown (see pictures below). Recommend you halve the quantities indicated in the recipes for Onion Dip and Juicy Burger, and cautiously add more if you are not satisfied with the saltiness or onion flavour.

Small clean place at the dingy foot of Stadium Skytrain Station (stadium exit). Things on the menu look reasonably priced to slightly expensive, except the tacos. Which are OK-sized but at almost $4 each, very pricey to put together a meal with, if you want any chance of actually having a filling meal. They said they were new and don't have bulk pricing yet. Tacos are standard size but only one taco shell each instead of the usual two. Fillings are light -- lighter than almost every other taco place I've tried -- but fluffy-ish so it looks like a good quantity. My Jeju Taco didn't overflow or squish out or tear through the shell because the fillings were wet when I pinched the shells together, so you don't really need two shells. Veggie options for tacos also really weak compared to many Mexican-ish taco places, so vegetarians should definitely look carefully at the online menu before going. Jeju Taco ($3.45) Spicy pork belly Tasted like nicely done shredded...