Life in the Lower Mainland (BC, Canada)

Find a Mealshare Restaurant on Zomato! On May 9th, @MealshareTeam will be having their third annual fundraiser - Tonight for Tomorrow! Participating restaurants across #Vancouver, #Calgary, #Ottawa, and #Austin will be teaming to help fight hunger with hunger! Visit a restaurant for an evening of purposeful dining where every $1 dollar spent on food, $1 will be donated to Mealshare to help grow their program! See the list here: www.mealshare.ca/tft

Wednesday May-10 was the second annual  Tonight for Tomorrow , the one-day proceeds-to-charity supporting Mealshare -- the charity that works without costing you anything . Our eating team of three dudes went to JamJar at their new location at Granville and 11th (where Vij's used to be, right next door to Rangoli). Their prices have gone up a bit since I was last at Jamjar's Commercial Drive location  but the sharing platters for two persons are still a great deal. How great? We were three persons and we were pretty full from the sharing platter for two persons. Part of the reason is the basically unlimited pita you get with your meal. They serve it sparingly each time (probably to guard against wasted pita) but you can ask for more, and you will definitely need more even tackling the first plate of dips. We went with the "Meat and Fish Tasting Plate for 2" ($65). No fish here but there were prawns. Some notes... Dips were tasty! Remember to swirl in t...

Just got an e-mail from Mealshare today regarding their charity dining event on May 18th! Here's the blurb: I hope all is amazing on your end. Have anything new or exciting to report? I wanted to reach out and tell you about, Tonight For Tomorrow , Mealshare’s first ever fundraiser/our biggest event ever! It will be a decentralized fundraiser happening on May 18th across 12+ restaurants in Vancouver (and a bunch in Calgary). For every dollar spent on dinner that night, one dollar will be donated to Mealshare to help us grow. How amazing is that?!?! This event will have a massive impact on Mealshare and the youth we help, so I’d really LOVE your help spreading the word. Many of Vancouver's most prominent city landmarks and buildings (ie BC Place, Science World, and many more) will be light up orange in support of our big event. It will be an evening of delicious food, prizes, and impact! To help generate a buzz, we've created "The Most Delicious Petition Ever...

Been literally years since I went to Fortune House Seafood Restaurant . Last time was for Signature Dish 2011 , a Chinese-restaurants-of-the-lower-mainland event that I've never seen again since. The best and most surprising development is their partnership with Mealshare, a charity that gives a meal every time you buy a meal tagged with their logo on the menu. As you can see from the pictures below, Fortune House has many qualifying items -- lots more than most Mealshare restaurants, which typically mark maybe 2-3 items. The way Mealshare works is that the restaurant makes a contribution every time you buy a marked menu item.And because lots of people like to buy dessert (and all the desserts are Mealshare items), Fortune House is providing a lot of meals through Mealshare! This really says something about the restaurant's owner being so committed to the principles behind Mealshare that he is basically making a charitable donation with almost every patron that walks ...

I was at Tuc Craft Kitchen over a year ago , and the menu has changed a lot. Fortunately still on the menu are the Orange Glazed Lamb Ribs (was $9, now $11), which are still three ribs per order, and still very delicious by all accounts of people who had them. I passed this time and tried curious-sounding things instead. Crispy Bacon and Egg ($4) Pretty much exactly as it sounds: Hard boiled egg wrapped in lightly battered bacon fried to a crisp. This was on the menu way back when and probably kept because it's strangely good in its simple way. Parsnip Fries ($5) Long, noodle-like strings of parsnip, coated in batter and deep fried. The sauce that came with this is really tasty. The fries themselves weren't oily to the touch, but tasted like slightly oily batter. Waste of time and overpriced for the fluffy 2-cup portion you get. Farmer’s Summer ($16) tender squash, assorted beets, vine ripened tomatoes, ricotta cheese, sweet pea sugo Sounded like a salad b...

Mealshare  is teaming up with restaurant partner Café Medina to celebrate International Waffle Day : On March 25th, for every waffle sold, another waffle will be provided to someone in need at Mealshare's local charity partner, Mission Possible . Share your waffle pic that day (using the hashtag #WaffleShare) and be entered to win breakfast for two at Café Medina. For more information post, click here to read the announcement on the Café Medina blog .

Continuing my tour of MealShare restaurants, last Friday I went with a couple of diners to Anatoli Souvlaki in North Vancouver. It is basically across the street from the very well attended Twilight Market at the Shipyards , and perhaps for that reason it was busy till past 9 PM. Despite the width of the store front, it is a large and deep restaurant, so chances are even on a seemingly busy night, while you might not get a patio seat, you will probably still get a seat somewhere. Service is friendly and attentive: I was intercepted almost immediately by a server and led to a table for my reservation. Water is regularly topped up. It felt like there was a sincere desire for you to have a good experience, which helped to make up for some of the unfortunate shortfalls in the restaurant: For example, our two square tables were wobbly. The apparent fix were old-looking pieces of cardboard shoved under one of the legs. While a older wobbly table could be said to add to the old-fas...