Life in the Lower Mainland (BC, Canada)

Hunnybee is a pretty busy little brunch place with rather limited seating. There's seating outside, but the tables are on the low side and given the neighbourhood I wouldn't really recommend the counter. Price for portion is good! And that's hard to find these days. It's diner style so you order at the counter and pay first, and the credit card machine prompts you to tip first, which is sort of weird as you end up with really not much service except they bring the stuff to your table. So if that irks you, look around the interface for how to skip it, especially as the first tip option is 15%. Shakshuka ($12) red pepper & tomato stew, two poached eggs, lentils, labneh, toast Tasty, and given the portion and price, it's a win. Spicing might be slightly on the tame side, however. Lacking in some of the more traditional aspects, chief of which is not being in a skillet. This means it can get cold really fast, so dig in right away. Based on the presentat...

Before I talk about what I had at Kokomo , I should make it clear that although it's basically a vegan place, I am NOT vegan. Not even really vegetarian. I do lean toward that when I make my restaurant selections, but I feel there's a completely different approach when it comes to talking about food when you have a wider choice. For vegans, there can be a beggars-can't-be-choosers bias. It's a smallish place with a curvy communal table. Overall ambiance strives to be bright and spacious despite the floor space being actually rather small. Like a diner your order at the counter. They are also available for delivery via DoorDash. All-Day Breaky Macro ($13) tofu scramble, roasted squash, spicy tempeh crumble, corn, watermelon radish, greens, brown rice, cilantro crema, hemp hearts, sesame seeds, cilantro, green onion. Basically it's a big salad on rice with "fake egg" made up of tofu. Remember there's rice! It's hidden on the bottom and ...

Was wandering around Chinatown with a friend. Totally impromptu drop-in. Tight busy place even past 7pm on a Friday, so like us you might be asked to share the seven-seat communal table with another small party. This is a NOODLE place. It's not a Chinese place. It's not a Singaporean place. It's not even a ramen place. You get noodles in tasty soup. Don't go here for ethnic or authentic or whatever. Go for noodles in tasty soup, and filling portions for a decent price. Roti ($5.99) Decent curry sauce but could really use some spiciness/heat to it. OK roti prata. $6 for this measly amount? Pass. Get your roti from Amay's House instead where you'll get a big piece about four times as much roti than what's on this plate. The curry there is also better -- tastier and richer. Koh Soi Chicken Curry Noodle ($14.99) braised chicken thigh, turmeric curry, served with wonton noodles and crispy noodles It says "curry" but there's nothing...

Got dragged to the Keefer Bar for their happy hour (Sunday to Friday) . Not a bad deal (2-for-1 food) except you have to buy a drink with it and I'm not a drinker. So she had the drink, I had a non-alcoholic beverage, we shared the two food plates -- and somehow we ended up splitting the bill in half which meant I walked out feeling having overpaid. Which was actually not the case. Food is okay with some nice points and there's a decent selection of gluten-free choices. Nothing that really stands out but decent in taste and portion at full price -- meaning it's really good value during 2-for-1 happy hour, which is at a very convenient 5pm-7pm -- dinner right after work. It's all small plates and it doesn't look like you can put together a dinner, but you actually CAN and at a good price during happy hour! So just patiently order and order again. Two of the larger plates can possibly add up to a fairly filling meal and you're topping it at $10 for two plat...

Been years since I ate at Bao Bei. Last time we were a large group at a family table in the back. This time there were just two of us doing a Monday evening walk-in right when they opened. And that's probably the best way if you can manage it because the lineup started around 5:15 pm and they were basically full shortly after the restaurant opened for the evening at 5:30 pm ( accepts no reservations except for their family table ). Having grown up on Chinese food at home myself, my take on Bao Bei is that it serves the familiar foods you had at home, but magically made more interesting and tasty. It makes other Chinese restaurants look like lazy home-style. It's like everything had a something-extra something-special treatment. Portions are small for price, so if you want any chance of actually walking out of there full at $25+ per person (that's not including drinks), get the fried rice. bean curd skin ($5.50) king oyster mushroom, chili ginger vinaigrette Look...

Virtuous Pie 's smallish brightly lit room with communal seating looks spacious up until around 6pm when the dinner rush starts and goes out the door. So come early or do takeout. At $12 per small pizza (one size only, and apparently no bulk discount) the price is OK for a basically thin-crust neapolitan style pizza. With this type of pizza and the typically sparsely distributed toppings, you are at great risk of having a slice with an OK amount of toppings, or too little; and it's also hard to get an even distribution of the stated ingredients. Don't believe the picture-perfect ad copy on the website and go see for yourself. Virtuous Pie isn't alone in uneven toppings for small, thin-crust pizza, so it's apparently a niche pizza sort of trait and you either accept it or you don't. Add 1 star / 1 point if you are vegan because beggars can't be choosers. We had separate orders of pizza (placed at different times) with the gluten-free crust (+$2 extra...

Whoa, Caffe Brixton is vegetarian! This pub-like place isn't in-your-face advertised as vegetarian, but if you look closely at the menu, it is. We dropped in tonight when it wasn't super-busy, but they also didn't have a lot of staff on the floor either, so getting water topped up only when we asked might have been a short-staffing issue more than an oversight. Still, for a place that is "seat yourself", I think staff need to be more alert. TIP: The very-discreetly-tucked-away washrooms are definitely worth a look. If you go into the bigger (handicap stall) one, look closely at the Star Wars wallpaper and you'll notice a misspelling of "Leia". The music is played pretty loud here! Tandoori Tofu Naan ($10) caramelized onions, goat's cheese, tandoori tofu, mango chutney, arugula Totally not what I was expecting as they tofu-topped and toasted the naan into a crunchy-at-the-edges flatbread pizza. There's no point calling this a naa...

Normally I wouldn't have bought this combo from Starbucks except they were giving out 5 bonus stars, which goes a long way toward keeping my Gold Card status. The offer (good Feb-12 to Feb-14) is: "Pair your handcrafted Mocha beverage with any cookie, and earn Bonus Stars on top." Cookies are a couple of dollars for a big but thin cookie. I went with the ToffeeDoodle. For mocha, I asked which one qualified and one person at the counter said "any", and the other suggested peppermint. Upsell? Anyway, I went with peppermint and they automatically placed the order for a grande. TIPS: Ask for extra hot. Cool whipped cream on top (with chocolate sprinkles) can really cool down your drink, which is sort of like a weak hot chocolate with coffee flavour. The cookie was thin but broad (and still not worth even $1), and very chewy. Also quite sweet, enough to give a faint burning sensation (the sort you can get with something too sugary) at the back of the t...

Still in search of good eats on a budget, I was recommended Canra Srilankan Plus in International Village / Tinseltown by their high ratings on Zomato and Yelp. I'm a sucker for roti, so I went with "today's special": Egg Roti + Plain Roti, with curry ($5.49 for lentil curry, $6.49 for chicken curry). Egg Roti is just one of their large rotis, with fried egg folded inside. The two rotis together definitely make a decent filling portion all on their own. I was asked how spicy I wanted my curry, and I said "spicy". Turns out what they do is chop a fresh green chili and add it into the curry. Curry was slightly watery but there were a decent amount of veggies (cabbage). Flavour was okay otherwise. The curry was also not piping hot, but I don't think they intended it to as you get it in a styrofoam cup. I was also given a sample of apple curry to try, plus a couple of very salty, dried (and fried-till-crunchy?) chilies. Possibly because they had...