Life in the Lower Mainland (BC, Canada)

Small bright space open for lunch and dinner with a bit of a break in between. Get ready before you go in: Menu is accessed from a QR code available at each table. If you don't have data, you can probably connect to the free Wifi provided by the City of Vancouver. Pay attention to the menu! It tells you about the complimentary tea (it smells a bit like coffee but it's made from beans) and the bowl (it's not as deep as it looks). Premium Bowl ($18.95 + $5 for cold tofu) Conger Eel, Shrimp, Kakiage (mixed seafood tempura), Soft Boiled Egg, Seaweed, Green Bean For $5 even though it's got fancy stuff on it I'd pass on the cold tofu next time. Nothing really special there. Tempura came hot but it's not going to stay hot. Neither will the rice, special bowl or not. Tempura wasn't particularly crispy probably because of not just the rice which was probably more than room temperature at some point, but also because they pre-drizzle their special sauce on the te...

DISCLAIMER: I got a Yelper discount e-coupon for J&G Fried Chicken as an incentive to try the place. I dragged along a couple of friends who live downtown and who happily turned out to have already been curious about it so that between the three of us we could try many things. The place is tiny. Basically it's a take-out joint, except you probably don't want to take home freshly deep fried food because it'll be horrid by the time you get it home, especially with the current low temperatures. Seating is minimal, but since people generally walk out with their purchases, you could just eat it right there. Price-wise there are a couple of meal options but mostly it's snack-sized. So if you try to put together a dinner with the various snacks, it's gonna end badly dollar-wise, just as if you were to try to put together a dinner with just appetizer portions of, well, appetizers. KFC coupons will probably get you more bang for your buck and comparable tastine...

Went with a friend to redeem my Red Robin Royalty free birthday burger (comes with the usual bottomless fries!). As I was feeling like I had had too much meat recently, I went for the Garden Burger which, sad to say, is just OK, and that's if you immediately take out the pickles so you don't just taste pickles. Do NOT come to Red Robin for their veggie burger even if you do a patty swap. For approximately the same price (sometimes LESS) you can get a way more interesting and tasty burger (but with a meat patty). However, my friend got the Veggie Fajita, and OMG it was totally not what we were expecting -- in a good way. Generous almost for-two portion for $14.99, and although they start you off with about 4 wraps, it is clearly not enough and you can get free refills. Veggies are cheap (it looked like mostly onions) and clearly they don't skimp on it maybe because they can. NON-alcoholic drinks are big-portioned and cheap! My Coconut Pineapple Smoothie was just $4....

Poké Time serves up what looks like deconstructed sushi with marinated raw cubed fish. And if you get the Super Cruncheritto ($11.95), they call it a burrito but it's more like a massive sushi roll so packed with stuff that they can't roll it up without some of the fillings squeezing out the ends. Unlike sushi, you're not tasting the freshness of the fish so much as the marinade -- yeah, there's sauce. Still, the entire construction of the Cruncheritto tastes fresh and light despite being filling because of the rice. Compare how much you get for your money to a couple of sushi rolls at just about any sushi restaurant and Poké Time is a winner. The hole-in-the-wall is basically a take-out place that works like a Quiznos or Subway so there's no point scoring them on ambiance. But you can eat in, and if you do, tell them so they don't give you the plastic container for your non-burrito order but rather the reusable bowl that you return after. TIP: Eat in...

Where once there was a 7-11 on Robson is now The Holy Crab , a seafood boil sort of place. The basics is this: You order seafood. They boil it. You extract the meat (and there's a TV televising the various way to efficiently get meat out of crustaceans), dip it in sauce, and eat it. If you're not sure what sauce to get, they can bring out a flight of samplers. Get this! To me, crab is crab. So I looked at the menu and ordered other stuff instead. Yeah, I even got the chicken. Really. Seafood Chowder ($4.50) Miscellaneous bits of stuff in it. Still came across as slightly on the watery side of a chowder, and definitely not chunky with stuff. A bit bland. If you have the flight of sauce samplers, you can try putting a bit of your favourite sauce into it and stirring it up. Seafood Bisque ($6.50) There's actually stuff in this! Looks like similar stuff as the chowder. Tastes ok. Fried Bread ($2) Two small buns. Price is atrocious unless you are ...

Lucky lucky! I got a chance to participate in Yelp's CaliBurger preview , a mere day before they officially open on Friday, June 3rd, 11 AM. CaliBurger  is  an American chain just starting their world conquest, with franchises in even exotic locations like Sweden, Malaysia, and Kuwait . IMPORTANT grand opening event: The first 100 people in line will be entered to win 1 free meal a week for 1 year! The space is just off busy Robson and roughly opposite Red Robin. It's a diner style setup, clean and bright, and with some super-cool features that really emphasize the modern smartphone culture: At each table there is a power outlet underneath. Use your own charger or borrow one from the restaurant. There are marked locations on the tabletop where you can wirelessly charge your phone if it has that capability. There is (of course) guest WiFi, at this time password protected. Or you can actually try getting a signal from the nearby Banana Republic! From outside the fron...