Life in the Lower Mainland (BC, Canada)

I tried their "Roti Prata with Curry Chicken" special meal ($13.75). What they served was some kind of roti, but it certainly wasn't Malaysian style roti. In fact, the roti looked suspiciously like supposedly  Indian style roti you can get raw in the frozen food section of Superstore . You can sit pretty much anywhere in Crystal Mall while waiting for your order because they give you a beeper that sounds an alarm when your order is ready.

Until April-29th you can get KFC's "Double Down" -- two slabs of chicken breast meat sandwiching something. In this Canadian iteration, it's a belgian waffle. Should you get it? The baseline version is sauced with maple aioli but I was offered the choice of spicy sauce. Tomato is extra. The drink and side combo is actually optional, so if you like you can just get the Double Down on its own for $8.69. For the price if you're comparing it to other burgers you basically get twice the amount of meat and does work out to a fairly filling meal on its own. Chicken slabs were probably under the heat lamp till assembled and definitely not as flavourful or juicy as a freshly fried piece of KFC. But otherwise the meat is actually tender and moist. It's also unclear whether it's actually feasible to give you two piping hot pieces of fried chicken since you'd be hard pressed to properly pick it up as a burger. The waffle in the middle is tender, a bit...

Very crispy chicken! But also not your typical crispy fried chicken, so if you're used to KFC, be careful about assuming you'll like The Fried Chicken Works . I figured I'd want to eat it piping hot so I opted for their handy boneless option. If you've ever held a drumstick that had only minutes before come out of the fryer, hoping to eat the chicken while it's still hot and juicy, you'll know what a literal pain it is to hold onto the heat-retaining bone. Price for portion is a bit scary at around $1.50 per chunk of chicken but you get a drink with that, a not insignificant amount of really decently done fries, and there's more filling meat here than a gourmet burger for the same price. Apparently fried to order, and I got to eat it hot and juicy. The crispiness appears to mainly come from the skin-on chicken. The chicken skin/fat is fried to literally a crisp and there's nothing fatty or chewy left about it. It is, however, definitely crispy ...

So I've been telling my mom about Delicious BBQ in Crystal Mall, which she frequents. According to some of my friends, they have good BBQ, but I wanted her to check it out so that she could judge for herself. Today she surprised me by bringing home a $7.80 portion of BBQ pork. Taste was OK -- slightly sweet. But not quite enough charring for that grilled / BBQ flavour, so we put some on our tabletop electric grill. Mistake. Much of the sweetness was then replaced by a saltiness and the gamey pig flavour also started to come out. It was also drier.

After renovations, Xu's Wonton House is now Shanghai Dimsum House. Menu looks the same. Went back with a friend today and this time I also tried the pan fried version. 1. Bayulan Steamed Mini Pork Buns ($4.95 for 5) Tasty (and slightly fatty tasting?), flavourful broth inside. 7. Shanghai Style Pan Fried Pork Buns ($5.55 for 5) The golden-brown bottom looks suspiciously deep-fried. In any case, quite crispy in parts and that it can therefore snap and cause the soup to spill out. Basically you get a fried texture and flavour to #1 for just 60 cents more. The modest cost is really good enough that you should consider it, especially for take-out. Steamed buns don't travel very well in my opinion. Depending on your appetite, one or two plates is enough for a meal, so you are looking at a mere $4.95 to $10.50 for lunch. Tasty, and great value! Counter service was pretty crappy toward my non-asian friend. The server managed to avoid eye contact for a long time even...

  Leading up to their 2016-Apr-1 launch, Crêpe Delicious (or crêpe de licious , depending on which spelling you see) sold 30% off $7-for-$10 Groupons to jump-start their food court location in Metropolis at Metrotown. They currently have this 30% off deal for their other locations. I don't really have experience with crepes, so this will be my "first time" buying a savory crêpe and my observations really don't have anything to compare them with. Veggie-Licious Savoury Crêpe ($8.95) portobello mushroom, lettuce, tomato, onion, black olive, mozzarella, pesto The cr ê pe is very floppy, so they give you a sleeve to help keep it more or less upright while you eat it. Cheese is used to paste the crepe together at the fold. Token amount of portobello. Pesto flavour weak. Taste of olives dominated everything. If they were running low on portobello (?) they could have just told me and I would have ordered something else. Price for portion was slightly high, though...

I was really excited to learn that Gee! Tastes Good had otak-otak and kue lapis (layer egg cake) so I resolved to go. Before going I tried to pre-order the kue lapis but was told the person who normally made it wasn't making it at the moment. I tried to ask when it might be available but the person on the phone wouldn't let me have a word in edgewise and just kept repeating that it wasn't available. Huh. Once I got there I noticed they also had roti canai, and being a sucker for rotis I just had to try it. So I ordered one otak-otak and one roti canai. Roti canai ($2.75) Flaky on the inside and not bad, but not fluffy. Curry weak and not very flavourful. Best part of this is that it's cheap at $2.75. Otak-Otak ($3) Pretty large portion for $3. Taste was OK. What was personally disappointing was that I had hoped for the grilled Singaporean style and hadn't expected it to be the steamed style of otak-otak , and this probably biased my enjoyment of it....

The roti paratha in Snack King Eatery's handy picture menu looked really good -- nice and flaky and light. The real thing was nothing like it. They gave me chopsticks (!) and a plastic spoon. I asked where's the curry? (That's what the spoon is for, right?) The woman at the counter said, "Sorry, no curry." HUH? Who sells roti paratha with no curry?!

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...