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...

Ended up at White Spot for a friend's birthday party. Been absolutely ages since I was at any outlet. Maybe I remember them a bit too fondly but for what I got, price felt outrageous. Even their french fries were so disappointing my mom said not to reheat them and just throw it out for the birds (no really -- she actually suggested that). Crispy Cauliflower Bites ($10.49) glazed in sweet chili sauce and served with mango herb salsa over cilantro sour cream; toasted almonds. Taste is quite decent although prone to being covered up by the various sauces and flavours on the plate. Not even remotely crispy. Avocado Beyond Burger™  ($17.49) Chargrilled 100% plant-based Beyond Meat® patty with fresh avocado, pickled onions, roasted corn, lettuce & tomato. Jalapeño ranch & edamame hummus. Comes with choice of Caesar Salad, The Spot's Salad, or Creamy Coleslay and Endless Signature Kennebec Fries. Mediocre tasting burger. Not even particularly big. At $17.49 it ...

Peaked Pies is basically two components: A hand-holdable pie + topping. The topping is the "Peaked" gimmick and I'd treat it as such for your money's worth. Peak-ing a pie (up to +$3.50) You basically get mashed potato, mushy green peas, and gravy if you go for the full "Peak" treatment, but you can also get these components separately. The peas are just green peas mashed. Nothing special, nothing seasoned. The mashed potato is also just mashed potato. Nothing special, nothing seasoned, and as a result also terribly bland. Plus what I got was slightly gummy, which is not a fresh-feeling mashed potato texture. Overall, I'd say this is not really worth it EXCEPT if you don't want to splurge fully for two pies and want a more filling meal portion, because potato and peas can do that for you. You do get a good scoop of peas, like one generous ice cream scoop. A bit more potato. And definitely not quite enough gravy even though it looks like a ...

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....

For $2.25 you can get a straight stick of churro , and for a buck more you can get a scoop of ice cream to go with it. Sounds expensive, and when the portion comes it looks expensive too, but people will pay $5 for a single scoop of ice cream, so it's hard to discuss price when the dessert market is spendy. I got the "plain" churro, which is coated in sugar and somewhere in there is cinnamon. It tastes okay and as churros go, it's completely fine just like this. And seriously, what do you want? It's a dough of flour, water, and salt deep fried till crispy. You're paying for the novelty, plus a premium for being in a neighbourhood where it's hard to find and maybe a bit of a walk to the nearest churro competitor.

Accepted an impromptu invitation today to try Motomachi Shokudo. They have a variety of soup bases, including an intriguing Bamboo-Charcoal. You get a pretty big bowl with lots of soup, so the volume you get is sort of comparable to a big bowl of pho. Pork tender but not melt-in-your-mouth tender. Still, overall, you get a rich and tasty soup, a generous amount of pork,and some interesting flavours to mix it up, including a tender boiled egg and seaweed. As for the bamboo-charcoal, it definitely made the broth charcoal black, but in flavour I didn't get anything too special. Might be a nostalgia thing. For $1.10 extra you can get extra noodle, and there's definitely enough soup to support more noodle. The soup alone will be filling but you could always super-size for $1.10. Pretty small and cozy spot. We got in just at 6pm on a Friday and close to 7pm it still hadn't filled to any sort of lineup so for small parties a walk-in to the communal table is probably do...

Went veggie on Taco Tuesday at La Catrina ! I didn't look too hard at which options were vegan, but it is likely they would just remove the cheese for the most part. The Taco Tuesday offer is five (5) tacos plus choice of pop for $10 if all-veggie tacos, $11 if you have some meat tacos in there. Normally tacos are $3 each and sodas are also $3, so you're getting your meal for almost half price. Of their four regular veggie tacos, the only one that was curiously interesting and somewhat tasty was Papas Mexicanas (Mexican potatoes with drizzled cream and parsley). Everything else was so boring I needed hot sauce or pickles to liven them up. Overall taste was OK, especially considering I deliberately went veggie here, but vegetarians who aren't there for a deal on their meal should definitely consider eating elsewhere. That said, tacos everywhere do give you good bang for your buck with lots of fillings and it's no different here. In fact, if you are careful, you...

Simba's Grill  is an East African restaurant. The "African" part has a lot of mystique to it since most African restaurants are basically Ethiopian. Unfortunately, there is a very strong Indian influence to East African cuisine, so it's really hard or impossible to separate comparing them. Going in, try NOT to compare them -- you are not truly going for Indian food, so drop those expectations. If you really want Indian food, just go to an Indian restaurant. Muhogo ($8) deep fried cassava root Recommended by the server as the most distinctly African dish. We were asked if we wanted "mild, medium, or spicy". The fries were just noticeably salty when I asked for medium. They did however bring two fairly-to-really spicy sauces, a mango chili and a pili pili sauce . Overall pretty good. Not as dense as potato. Crispy and not oily. A trio of sauces is brought to your table when you order: Yogurt, coconut, tamarind. We got a yellow-coloured mango ch...