Life in the Lower Mainland (BC, Canada)

Kokoro Tokyo Mazesoba  has basically been my go-to for impressing out-of-town friends -- even my Japanese friend (albeit one who lives in the US) was interested in going and not disappointed. This time we even squeezed in a bit of dessert. Spicy Tonkotsu Ramen ($15.95) Pork Bone Broth or Chicken Broth, Spicy Minced Pork, Soft Boiled Egg, Green Onion, Garlic, Baby Corn, Dried Red Pepper, Bamboo Shoot, Bell Pepper, Kabocha, Onion, Kokoro Spicy Sauce, Thin Ramen Noodle Spicy Ramen comes with choice of chicken or pork broth; I opted for the pork broth. Deeply flavourful broth makes every bite and slurp delicious. Can't say I'm a big fan of their choice of vegetables, but the broth more than made up for it. I seem to remember only HALF an egg. Ebi Mayo ($14.45) Been a long time since I've had ebi mayo anywhere, and maybe I don't remember it well enough to compare, but this version was terrible. It did feel like they were freshly prepared and still slightly hot. You can see...

Tendon Kohaku basically specializes in tempura on rice and drizzled with a sweet "tendon sauce". Nothing wrong with the tempura, and it does come with the proper crispy batter, but also nothing really special here for the price. The presentation makes it look like they overfilled a bowl but that is of course just an optical illusion to make the portion look bigger than it really is. Nevertheless, there is a decently filling amount of rice underneath all that tempura. Orders come with a small bowl of soup to start. Pretty much everything had tempura prawns (which I have to avoid because of my gout), so I went with the vegetarian one, which has a vegan tendon sauce option (and which didn't really stand out for me; I just drizzled more regular tendon sauce and chili powder on it). Vegetarian Tendon ($16.45) Rice Kohaku Tendon Sauce, 1 Kabocha Pumpkin, 1 seaweed. 1 green Bean, 1 Shiitake Mushrooom, 1 Lotus Root, 1 Enoki Mushroom, 1 yam, 1 Baby Corn, 1 shishitou pepper For a...

Just a quick update here on Kokoro Tokyo Mazesoba . I still recommend the place for all the same reasons, but I don't recommend the Cheese Mazesoba. Went again for lunch with another friend, and I thought I'd try something different-weird. And cheese mazesoba sounded pretty weird. Except it wasn't. They certainly did not skimp on the cheese, that wasn't an issue. And when you see the picture or the bowl that's brought to you, you don't see any cheese at all. That's because the cheese is already pre-mixed into the noodles beneath, and you can see it very clearly in white stickiness all over the noodles. No skimping there. The big problem though is there simply wasn't enough cheese flavour. If you isolate the noodles you can faintly taste some cheese. Whatever they are using just isn't a very strong cheese. Which for me was not just a let-down but felt really pointless. Why have an ingredient that you're barely going to be able to taste and that...

Brought my out-of-town friend to  Kokoro Tokyo Mazesoba  and it was good! My phone was on the fritz so these pictures are from my friend's phone which captures superior pictures. They have various offerings other than mazesoba , but of course this is what they are famous for. What you get basically looks just like the pictures on the online menu. Unlike fast food burgers, what you see really is what you get. The concept is simple - lots of ingredients you mix into noodles and eat. That's it. The ingredients and sticky sauce make them all gum together so every bite of noodle has some of the ingredients. Price point is decent especially considering not just the portion you get but the amount of toppings you get compared to noodles. And in addition to noodles, you can get about one cup of rice toward the end (at no additional charge) to mix into your bowl, to get at every last bit of food and sauce. Some have chili ratings, but even at two-chilies it wasn't particularly spi...

My friend was all excited by the under-$10 weekend brunch and dragged me here. She was immediately disappointed by the rather small menu, but did manage to find something that she ended up liking (Avocado Benny). I, however, apparently picked the one thing you shouldn't get here. Fried Egg Sandwich ($13.75, or $9.75 during weekend brunch if you order before Noon; cheddar cheese costs extra) smoked bacon, avocado, lettuce, tomato, mayo, red relish, brioche bun, smashed potatoes Looks like a pretty tall burger till you look inside and realize it's fluffed up by lettuce. Worse, the mass of lettuce and other slippery ingredients can make this a mess to eat, squishing out juices everywhere. I recommend you try to flatten down the lettuce by flattening down the sandwich. Basically a rip off even at $9.75 for what you actually get. Think about it: An egg is something you add to a burger for +$1, at Red Robin for example. Order something else. Fever Tree Ginger Beer ($4) ...

CASH ONLY. CASH ONLY. Pretty mediocre food, but it's not bad per se. Comes out hot. Value sort of debatable but portions are good -- you'll walk out full even if most of it was noodle. Value is a lot better if you are not dining solo. If you are, I recommend a larger sharing order for take-out and just portion it into two or three meals at home. Shrimp and BBQ Pork Fried Rice Noodle with Curry Sauce ($13.95, comes with a hot drink) Not really spicy at all. Separately offered hot sauce is not recommended as it's a different type of spicy heat from the curry. Overall nothing wrong here. This is a largish portion for one person, so if you are two persons you're better off ordering a single larger portion to share from the regular noodle menu. The closest is probably V4 under Fried Vermicelli. The Boss Signature Fried Noodle ($17.75) Mix of veggies, ham, shrimp, chicken, mushroom. Kind of an elusive amount of each. No doubt about it this is a pretty ma...

Met up with a friend on a rainy afternoon here. We dropped in shortly before Noon and it was maybe 1/3rd busy. Shortly after, the place was packed -- all tables and bar seating pretty much occupied. As there were vegan options, I went vegan to try it out. DISCLAIMER: I am NOT vegan. Vegans, vegetarians, and other limited-diet people sort of have a beggars-can't-be-choosers position so they may rate the vegan fare here higher. I'm omnivorous so I'm probably more critical here. My friend's spicy meatball ramen had a much tastier (and spicier) broth, so overall you will probably have a tastier time here than if you go vegetarian. After all, flavourful broth is one of the main things about ramen. TIP: Be careful ordering drinks and extras as there's a lot of soup here. The bowl is sharply tapered so there *may* be a bit less soup than other ramen places, but probably not by much. Price seems pretty steep but is only a couple dollars more than say, Fat Mao Noo...

Treated my friend for her birthday and she had a craving for Thai from her tried-and-true near-her-neighbourhood Thai place, Green Basil . The free stuff that comes with your meal is really sad but don't worry, your actual order will actually be good! Service on the Sunday afternoon was prompt, attentive, and not pushy. Awesome! Spring Rolls Came with our order. Maybe because it was freshly fried and not allowed to sit around and get soft and soggy (and also drain of oil), this tasted kinda oily. Sauce was so thin as to barely taste like anything at all but I think it was supposed to be that sweet garlic-chili sauce. Maybe. Tom Yum Soup (?) Came with our order. Really kinda thin tasting. G17M. Tiger prawns with red curry paste & coconut rice, served in young coconut ($13.50 lunch special price) This was actually really tasty. And with a tightly packed bowl of rice, price for portion is really decent for a filling meal. "Tiger prawns" were j...

Last time I was at Pearl Castle Cafe at Old Orchard Mall near Metrotown, I had a pretty lame tea . This time another friend dragged me there for lunch (her treat, so her choice) and it turned out to be really decent and good quantity for price! I didn't try their drinks/dessert again to re-review those. CASH ONLY. CASH ONLY. CASH ONLY. Assorted Stir Fried Spicy Pot ($9.95?) Spicy but not excessive and no lingering burn on the tongue. Not secretly filled with cheap veggies -- it's a smallish looking plate but they don't skimp on non-veggie content. Two big prawns included. You need to spend a couple bucks extra to "make it a combo" including rice. If another dish has rice already you might want to skip that depending on how much you can eat. Spicy sauce obviously ends up at the bottom. Remember to scoop deep for it if you're having it with rice. Simple yet delicious and a good mix of ingredients to keep it from being boring as you eat it. ...

Until April-29th you can get KFC's "Double Down" -- two slabs of chicken breast meat sandwiching something. In this Canadian iteration, it's a belgian waffle. Should you get it? The baseline version is sauced with maple aioli but I was offered the choice of spicy sauce. Tomato is extra. The drink and side combo is actually optional, so if you like you can just get the Double Down on its own for $8.69. For the price if you're comparing it to other burgers you basically get twice the amount of meat and does work out to a fairly filling meal on its own. Chicken slabs were probably under the heat lamp till assembled and definitely not as flavourful or juicy as a freshly fried piece of KFC. But otherwise the meat is actually tender and moist. It's also unclear whether it's actually feasible to give you two piping hot pieces of fried chicken since you'd be hard pressed to properly pick it up as a burger. The waffle in the middle is tender, a bit...

Tucked away from foot traffic at Old Orchard Mall is Me Crepe. It looks like they should be kaput from the location where they are hard to spot, but they appear to do a brisk take-out business if what we saw at lunch on Sunday is any indication. And pretty brisk walk-in as well. Before I get into the review, to better understand why Me Crepe seems to do well, realize that there are foods that are simple but tasty. Things don't have to be fancy to be tasty! Like a scoop of vanilla ice cream. Or a nice cookie. Or a chewy chcolatey two-bite brownie. And if you have a craving for it, you can get sold a $6 scoop of ice cream that supposedly has various attributes to justify how it should cost more than a tub of ice cream at the supermarket. You might not even be enough of an ice cream connoisseur to tell the difference but you'll pay for it maybe because everyone else is doing just that. If you go to Me Crepe and deconstruct the crepe you get, you will likely be disappointed...

The menu at Earls on Kingsway near Metrotown has changed since I was last there about a year ago  and I still can't get a decent meal there. Vegetarian Burger ($13) Brown rice and mushroom vegetarian patty, aged cheddar, sauteed onions, vine ripened tomatoes, lettuce, pickles, mayonnaise, and mustard on a freshly baked brioche bun. Tender bun was the only good thing here. Patty tasted like salt. It was salty. No other flavour. Total waste of time especially for $13. TIP: Unless you want your burger to taste like pickle, remove the pickle right away. TIP: Might also want to try distributing the onion more evenly inside if it's not too caked into the cheese. Pot of Tea ($3.75) Service was also fail. At the time I placed my order, I asked for the hot water in my teapot to be topped up. The server did not take my pot. Neither did they take my pot when my order came. I honestly don't remember our table being checked on until the server came to clear our dishes an...

So I've been telling my mom about Delicious BBQ in Crystal Mall, which she frequents. According to some of my friends, they have good BBQ, but I wanted her to check it out so that she could judge for herself. Today she surprised me by bringing home a $7.80 portion of BBQ pork. Taste was OK -- slightly sweet. But not quite enough charring for that grilled / BBQ flavour, so we put some on our tabletop electric grill. Mistake. Much of the sweetness was then replaced by a saltiness and the gamey pig flavour also started to come out. It was also drier.

Been ages since I've been here and was surprised to see so many things. Large space with a spacious feel to the seating arrangement. Nice and interesting decor. Clean. And staff friendly and helpful, totally deserving of a tip, so if you agree after your meal, put something on the table if you didn't tip up front when you paid for your order at the counter. Always in search of something curious to eat, I ended up trying the Grilled Chicken Livers ($7.75 "on its own", comes with either a Portuguese bun or their Portuguese Garlic Bread). The garlic bread was faintly garlicky and completely forgettable except that together with the "meat" (liver), it can add up to a light meal for under $10 after tax -- which is hard to find these days. Liver is liver, and despite choosing the normally sharp-lemony "Lemon & Herb" sauce / baste, the grilled livers tasted like liver. I even asked for extra sauce (which they provided for free!) and compl...

After renovations, Xu's Wonton House is now Shanghai Dimsum House. Menu looks the same. Went back with a friend today and this time I also tried the pan fried version. 1. Bayulan Steamed Mini Pork Buns ($4.95 for 5) Tasty (and slightly fatty tasting?), flavourful broth inside. 7. Shanghai Style Pan Fried Pork Buns ($5.55 for 5) The golden-brown bottom looks suspiciously deep-fried. In any case, quite crispy in parts and that it can therefore snap and cause the soup to spill out. Basically you get a fried texture and flavour to #1 for just 60 cents more. The modest cost is really good enough that you should consider it, especially for take-out. Steamed buns don't travel very well in my opinion. Depending on your appetite, one or two plates is enough for a meal, so you are looking at a mere $4.95 to $10.50 for lunch. Tasty, and great value! Counter service was pretty crappy toward my non-asian friend. The server managed to avoid eye contact for a long time even...

Sheesh, I didn't even know Pearl Castle Cafe existed in the Old Orchard Shopping Centre! Small space, nice and bright decor. Servers very alert tonight -- I can't even glance around to take in the room without catching their eye and having them immediately veer toward my position! Ginseng Honey Grapefruit Tea ($5.95) There's definitely ginseng inside the pot, but I can't really taste it. Quite sweet, no grapefruit bitterness. Overall tasted like a honey-citrus sort of drink. Disappointing for the lack of ginseng flavour so I can't really recommend ordering it.

  Leading up to their 2016-Apr-1 launch, Crêpe Delicious (or crêpe de licious , depending on which spelling you see) sold 30% off $7-for-$10 Groupons to jump-start their food court location in Metropolis at Metrotown. They currently have this 30% off deal for their other locations. I don't really have experience with crepes, so this will be my "first time" buying a savory crêpe and my observations really don't have anything to compare them with. Veggie-Licious Savoury Crêpe ($8.95) portobello mushroom, lettuce, tomato, onion, black olive, mozzarella, pesto The cr ê pe is very floppy, so they give you a sleeve to help keep it more or less upright while you eat it. Cheese is used to paste the crepe together at the fold. Token amount of portobello. Pesto flavour weak. Taste of olives dominated everything. If they were running low on portobello (?) they could have just told me and I would have ordered something else. Price for portion was slightly high, though...