Life in the Lower Mainland (BC, Canada)

On sale this week at my local Real Canadian Superstore is Siwin brand  made-in-Canada  Sweet Tocino , a Filipino style heavily marinated pork product. It's quite hard to tell from the package because of all the red marinade, but the pork is quite fatty. Depending on how you feel about your meat, this can be good or bad. Because I was going to char it, and I don't mind tasty fat, I was definitely okay with it. The preparation is extremely simple as the product is already quite a thin slab. I chose to use a non-stick frying pan with a bit of oil: Drizzle a little bit of oil in the non-stick frying pan. Unpack the Tocino into the frying pan, leaving it as a single thin layer. Turn the heat to high and cover the pan. Let it sear for literally just a couple of minutes and check for desired amount of char. Turn the tocino over to char the other side. And just like that, you are done. Because you covered the frying pan, the steam will swirl about in there and leave you a light sauce ...

Aside from a small selection of pastries, Bao Bakery also prominently features a lot of bao . They look like the chinese bao (similar to what you can get at the more dedicated Bao Place ) except the fillings sound decidedly Filipino. A bit strange for me since I was raised on the Chinese tradition but if you don't know bao well to begin with, think nothing of it and consider only whether it's tasty. I tried the one that sounded the most interesting and alien to me, which was "Chicken Deluxe (Bola Bola)", with filling containing chicken, pork, ham, and salted duck egg yolk (how many animal parts can you eat in one bite?). Taste is mediocre. The filling is OK but nothing to write home about. What Bao Bakery does offer however is a really decent amount of filling per bun--although from bun to bun you might get a bit more or less. In the pictures below I dissected two different buns from the same package. Two buns will trump a burger in the quantity of meat you...

The place was crazy busy this past Saturday evening when our little group went. Non-stop line-ups till probably 9pm or so and they were pretty full with reservations (which you can make online with OpenTable). When a place is that popular, it must surely be good, right? And a Filipino restaurant filled with Filipino patrons was another good sign.   Inside it looks sort of like a large McDonalds. Bright and spacious. Private rooms host larger groups and birthday parties. One of the plusses was that it looked clean and maintained. I also had a report that the handicap washroom was really ace, clean and even with music playing.   Our group was recommended the set menu options, and more or less at random we went with Option C plus a few extra dishes. A "Full Table" order of a set menu is 2 orders of each item listed and recommended for a party of 10. A "Half Table" is 1 order of each and recommended for a party of 5. We were seven persons so we went with...