Life in the Lower Mainland (BC, Canada)

Back to The Tipper. After my mediocre experience last time , I normally wouldn't go again, but I was there to meet someone and it was their choice, so I had to make the best of it. I was careful not to order the same thing at least. Linguine Tip ($15.50) sautéed sweet peppers, mushrooms, avocado, feta in a Cajun cream sauce. Pasta sauces are made to order served with grilled garlic bread. This was actually pretty decent. Price feels a bit steep (after tax and tip you're close to $20 for this one plate) but they aren't skimpy on the mushrooms and feta and giving you a half avocado. Sauce was alright and with spicy-heat bite so be careful if you can't handle the heat. Not super tasty but nothing bad per se, certainly not a thin sauce. Noodles well coated instead of pasta drowned in an excess of sauce for you to sort out yourself. "Garlic bread" seemed more like toast with garlic-less butter. But it's more or less what you get if you buy one of thos...

Dropped in here for a function that happened in the back room with a stage for performances! Veggie Burger ($13.50 + $0.50 for soup of the day) Grilled tempeh patty, feta cheese, toasted kaiser bun, crisp spring mix, lush tomato & sweet onion. Vegan patty is available on request Average sized burger with no fancy construction. Bun seemed a bit over toasted but that's probably personal preference. Patty was some dark mash with visible whole black (?) beans. Strangely amazingly bland, which was terribly disappointing. I had to use the shakers of pink salt on it. Pass on this and try something else. Soup of the day was potato broccoli and amazingly thick, which means it helps make this a filling meal. So thick you could scoop it up with the crackers provided. Waitstaff friendly, laid-back, and not pushy about ordering at all.

Back to Amay's House after a very long time ( 2015! ) and good to see this little place is still around and offering good value even with the expected price increases over time. Roti Prata ($3) one piece side order Crispy on the outside, very moist and tender on the inside, and oily to achieve this result but that's expected. Overall texture and taste is good, dough is pretty thin, and easy to hand-tear. This came flat from the pan and not hand-crushed into a tender mass, which is an alternate way it is served. As a side order it does NOT come with anything for dipping. Prata Served with Curry Chicken ($5.50 for 1 piece, $8.50 for 2 pieces) Prata on the side. I had this to go and they crushed the prata, possibly to prevent the crust from cooling and hardening into a chewy slab. This way it was still fairly easy to hand-tear for dipping into the curry. It's chicken curry, not curried chicken pieces. So you do get chunks of chicken meat as well as some c...

With just ONE vegetarian main, it's hard to go veggie at Hoi An Cafe. Fortunately, the one dish you can order is pretty decent. It's a simple, bright place. The layout means it's hard to put a really big group of 10+ together at the same table without a lot of advance warning, so if you really have that big a group AND you insist they all sit together, request it specifically ahead of time. Overall, price for portion is good, good enough to be worth bonus points. Food presentation is also quite nice and taste is decent. I insisted on going veggie, so mine is not a typical food experience at Hoi An Cafe. #24 Hu tieu chay kho ($9.50) Combination vegetables (tofu and beansprouts) with thin rice noodle in soup or homemade special sauce. Pretty boring, EXCEPT that they have that wonderfully tasty fried garlic sprinkled all over it. Presentation also quite nice. Two options: Soup, or tossed in sauce. I got the latter. Be sure to mix it properly before eating as all ...

If you don't already know, Café Kathmandu is closing soon (but supposedly will reopen elsewhere later). For celiacs and vegans, this will probably be sad news because just about everything is gluten-free, and most of the menu is vegan. It's a cosy place with Himalayan decor that sets it a notch or two above a hole-in-the-wall. Maybe it's because the place is in it's final days and staffing is tricky when you're closing, they were busy on the floor and understaffed. Expect to have to call out to get someone's attention, and to have to be proactive about getting your bill. Best to just get off your ass and approach someone at the counter, really. Aaloo Achaar ($7) Chilled sesame-lemon potato salad flavoured with timmur (Himalayan peppercorns) and fenugreek. Served with chiuraa (crunchy beaten rice lightly toasted). Chiuraa is like tasteless cornflakes. Curious to try but I wouldn't order something just to get some. You could probably get away with...

MùiNgòGai  is a simple restaurant without much ambiance. But basically clean and spacious. Price for portion is fairly good as most things come with rice or noodles, making it easy to get a filling meal.  Free wifi but you need a password. SHAW wifi as well. Thịt Kho tộ  Caramelized pork,  越式炆豬肉煲 ($12.95) A special dish in which the delicate sweetness of a light caramel balances the vibrant saltiness of fish sauce.  You can have it spicy or not, as it is cooked to order. Quite salty so eat with a lot of rice, this was a Vietnamese way of stretching a little meat a long way. The "detailed description" of "salty caramelized meat" on the website reads: "Made in a metal pot so that the sugars in the sauce can caramelize. The pork can be ordered lean, half lean and fat or fatty; also you can order with less or more hot peppers The taste is rich with the caramelized sugar, spices and hot pepper. Slightly sweet and salty with a spicy tingle from t...

With a lineup out the door, it's gotta be good right? Maybe after my recent experiences at Soft Peaks and Marble Slab Creamery , Earnest Ice Cream just starts to taste and look like another overpriced place -- if you are not prepared. It is still overpriced compared to what you can get in a supermarket, so I will really need to stop getting dragged to these places. The good: They have vegan options. Usually a sorbet. The Coconut Lime was really decent. Just not at $5 for a scoop. The bad: Ice cream tastes like ice cream. Guess what: "Tahitian Vanilla" tastes like... vanilla ice cream. Who'd have thought? The TIP: Get it in a bowl. Here's why: They still give you the cone. Probably they scoop it into a cone and then invert it into your bowl. For some reason they don't always mention this. It was offered me (at no extra charge) but my friend didn't get the same offer (why?). You get a spoon. Great for sharing. Steal another spoon from the b...

Everything on the menu is under $10! Just one main at Amay's House can see you pretty full. It's a mom-and-pop restaurant in a clean restaurant in a somewhat dingy looking older neighborhood. Not posh, but good dine-outs can lurk anywhere, so be careful about judging a place solely by the decor. I have no idea what Burmese food is supposed to be like, so this won't be a post about what's authentic, only what's tasty. And although Burmese food is the draw here, there are other items that look familiar from elsewhere in South East Asia, such as laksa and mee goreng . Also, "curry" is a tricky word with as many variants as cultures that have their own variants, so any comparison of Burmese curry to any other curry you may have had is a fallacious one. You can say "I prefer Indian curry", but that's really comparing apples to oranges. The various curries we tried (Beef Lemon Grass, Mutton, and Lamb) were more like stews and there was basi...

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" ...

After a good experience during Dine Out Vancouver , I had it in my mind to go back to Graze  for their regular menu and just this past Friday I dragged a back-to-vegetarianism friend there. She invited a gluten free friend and an unsuspecting I-love-KFC meat eater. Between the four of us, we tried quite a few items, and my experience of it was that there's a lot of hit and miss. At your table, some people will love some things and not really care for others. Portion sizes for mains can also differ wildly. The menu online is also mostly correct but not necessarily updated. Marinated asparagus, sunchoke chips, and grilled brussels sprouts This was a daily special 3-item starter. They did something to each of the items to make it tasty. The others really loved this but I thought it was kind of blah. The asparagus tasted like picked whatever; and the brussels sprouts just tasted bitter (which brussels sprouts already are on their own) and slightly burnt but my back-to-veggies...