Life in the Lower Mainland (BC, Canada)

Siam Le Bien Thai Cuisine  has really decent food as well as several levels of "spicy" heat. If you like spicy food to actually be spicy, and find "hot" to mostly be feeble, then give their "Thai Hot" or even "Thai Super Hot" a try. Price is more or less on par with everyone else, and combined with either a bowl of rice or noodle, each plate works out to quite a filling meal. 35. Pad Ka Pao Moo Grob ($18.50) Stir-fried spicy crispy pork belly, bell peppers, green beans, fresh chili, garlic, Thai basil The pork belly looked like it should have good crunch but of course the crispiness of the skin won't last in the generous amount of sauce. I opted for "Thai Hot" and the dish on its own would have been really quite spicy, but this was dulled considerably when I started mixing in the noodle. So overall, it was just what I was looking for: Actually spicy hot but also not relentlessly spicy and I could just pick at the dish without the n...

Gave this place a go for lunch with a couple of friends. They ordered pad thai, one fried rice. I asked the server for what might be "weird" or "interesting" on the menu and she suggested a not-on-the-menu yellow curry with noodles and chicken. All three items together were just over $60 after tax and BEFORE tip. Presentation is lacklustre. Dishes are plain, as if done with the minimum number of ingredients. Maybe this makes them "authentic", but if you have to spend $20 on a plate, get something more interesting than food court quality food. And in a food court you wouldn't have to pay tip programmed at a minimum of 15%. I would have given them 2/5 for mediocre food but price and tip pushed this experience even lower. Menus are all online and you scan the QR code at the table. If you don't have data on your phone, you can try connecting to the wifi from (no joke) the Sutton Place Hotel across the street. There's conference room wifi with a ...

Squeezed into this tiny space for a get-together with friends. They did accept a reservation, but get really anxious if your party does arrive on time and they clearly have people waiting to dine-in. It's a really small space so every customer is precious. TIP: Don't be late! And expect to be asked if it'll be okay if they take away seats if not enough of your party shows up on time. Rather interesting that they've dropped baby corn as an ingredient. Roti with curry sauces ($4.99) It's a Thai restaurant offering a Malaysian/Singaporean staple. That's ominous to begin with but I'm a sucker for roti so of course I had to order it. The roti looks like it got fried into a crunchy crisp here and cut too large (plus it's now too stiff) to properly fit into the little cup of coconut flavoured curry. You're ordering roti in a Thai restaurant, so be prepared for something different. If you need your roti to be close to the Malaysian or Singapor...

Treated my friend for her birthday and she had a craving for Thai from her tried-and-true near-her-neighbourhood Thai place, Green Basil . The free stuff that comes with your meal is really sad but don't worry, your actual order will actually be good! Service on the Sunday afternoon was prompt, attentive, and not pushy. Awesome! Spring Rolls Came with our order. Maybe because it was freshly fried and not allowed to sit around and get soft and soggy (and also drain of oil), this tasted kinda oily. Sauce was so thin as to barely taste like anything at all but I think it was supposed to be that sweet garlic-chili sauce. Maybe. Tom Yum Soup (?) Came with our order. Really kinda thin tasting. G17M. Tiger prawns with red curry paste & coconut rice, served in young coconut ($13.50 lunch special price) This was actually really tasty. And with a tightly packed bowl of rice, price for portion is really decent for a filling meal. "Tiger prawns" were j...

Caught up with an old friend today at Green Basil Thai Restaurant this afternoon (her choice -- she likes Thai apparently) and checked out the lunch special. Rather rare to find a decently filling lunch for under $10 these days and for sure it exists at Green Basil Thai. There's a lunch rush around Noon but dies right down shortly after 1 pm. Lunch is served till 3pm. G9L. Chicken with cashew nuts in Thai Chili sauce ($8.75) Rated 3-chilies but not spicy hot at all. My suspicion is they go easy on the spiciness to accommodate more palates. You'll probably have to double check how spicy something is if you really want spicy-hot food. Overall okay taste. Dish portion is good, and what helps make this a filling lunch is the bowl of coconut rice, bowl of soup, and vegetarian spring roll that comes with the specials (some specials that are noodle dishes do not come with rice). Spring roll was oily. Sauce was weak. Tom yum soup was weak. Drink it while it's hot. ...

Jane's at the Heights is in a neighbourhood I very rarely go to. Wouldn't have gone today except Zomato sent me a voucher for one free main, so when I was catching up with a friend I suggested we try it. It's a smallish diner with a very interesting and rather extensive east-and-west something-for-everyone menu. TIP: The lunch menu is not the same as the dinner menu! Some items like laksa are composed differently when you get it at lunch and when you get it at dinner (according to the menu, if you look at it carefully). The new owners are Thai, so there's a goodly amount of Thai items. DISCLAIMER: As mentioned, I went to Jane's at the Heights with Zomato voucher. I didn't tell them at first , only after we ate and went to the counter to pay. Only one item (my friend's burger) was removed from the bill. Everything else we paid for. Goong Hom Pha ($5.95) Crispy prawns with sweet chili dipping sauce Looked interesting but turned out not so much. ...

Since the last time I was at Days Thai mid last year , lunch prices have gone up by $1 to 8.95 for every item. Food and portions are still really decent for price, and you can still get a filling lunch plate for around $10 after tax and tip.

Ended up at the River Market looking for vegan eats last night. My friend and I wandered into Longtail Kitchen during the dead-time before any sort of happy hour (between 4pm and 5pm) and we inquired about what might be vegan. The suggestions were the tofu pad thai and eggplant stirfry. There's a wall of very limited south east asian groceries, assorted seating in two's, four's, and a longer communal table; and a condiment station with self-serve water. If you look around, a sign thanks you for bussing your own table, and since everything is disposable plates and cutlery, it's easy to do so. Pad Thai with Tofu ($10) Portion is slightly smallish for $10 but passable. Taste is pretty good. Nothing too special looking here, BUT you can load up with chili flakes, sriracha sauce, or crushed peanuts at the condiment counter. Stir Fried Seasonal Veg on Rice ($10) When we were there, it was eggplant. Pretty tasty considering its eggplant. Plus the rice included...

Kurumba Restaurant is a pretty simple place. Medium restaurant, basically clean. Spacious between tables. Polite and helpful staff. Only two persons on when I went there on a Thursday night, and therefore sometimes service was a bit slow when they were cleaning up tables. Otherwise fine, and kitchen was pretty fast considering we were a party of 7. Although this is in Port Moody, it was surprisingly not that hard to get to from a skytrain station -- the 97 B-Line from Lougheed Mall practically drops you outside. Kurumba's menu has a great concept: Many of the not-too-expensive (like whole crab) popular dishes of various asian / south-east asian countries can be found in it. You have Chinese, Malaysian, Sri Lankan, Thai (What? Not India? Especially given the name Kurumba ). Obviously not everything gets on the menu, but a really good selection of many recognizable items. We tried a bunch of stuff, but here are just the things that I remember most clearly (remember that I d...

Days Thai Restaurant is totally nothing special to look at inside or out but taste and portion is really decent for the price: Under $10 lunches after tax and tip. Apparently there are two cooks: The owner and another cook. My friend who took me there today recommended that when it's not the owner cooking, the food is better. (?) Fresh basil leaves from live plants in their drinks fridge. We went in for lunch and it was actually quite busy with the lunch rush and take-out orders. Many lunch specials come with coconut milk steamed rice, and vegetarian spring roll. (The proper kind of older style fat spring roll about 1 inch thick, not the skinny and thick-skinned-thin-filling ones that I'm starting to see at various places, such as Malay Family and Saigon Fare ). L31 Green Curry ($7.95) Green curry cooked with coconut milk, bell pepper, eggplants, sweet basil. Your choice of chicken, pork, beef, tofu, or mixed vegetables. Very roughly chopped vegetables (read: large...

Spoon Kitchen is on a traffic-busy section of West 4th street-parking-hell. Small 50-seater restaurant with fairly good table spacing. Chairs = revenue in restaurants (and airline) but they aren't putting you in an Economy Section squeeze. Place looked tidy and clean. I was too busy with my dining partner to really have a good look at the decor. I went with a $35 Groupon Nine-Course Thai and Malaysian Tasting Menu , and although you will read my mixed review of the menu items, overall it is a good deal. At $35 for two persons, you will leave full but not stuffed. You will also probably feel you got a very good deal for sampling so many items: After tax and tip you'll come out close to having spent $24 for a two person dinner (assuming a 15% tip on a $70 value dinner). Nowadays, especially in a neighborhood like West 4th, a $24 dinner for two is a better deal than you'll get during Dine Out Vancouver or Taste of Yaletown, where the prices have been inching up year af...

Their Sushi Garden neighbors see lineups earlier, but this place does get busy on a Friday night shortly after 6pm. Despite the claustrophobic entrance, it is quite spacious. Nothing too special to look at -- simple and clean. Traditional Phat Thai ($13.95) Rice noodle or egg noodle with shrimps & scallops, ground peanuts & bean sprout in Tamarind sauce OR tomato sauce Quite a big portion! For a single person, this will probably see you stuffed. Good for sharing as a light dinner between two persons. Tasty, safe choice. Pretty big shrimps. Haw Mok Ma Phraao ($15.95 with chicken) Red curry paste with sliced coconut served in fresh young coconut If you have it to go or have leftovers packed, ask for the coconut. Otherwise they will pour it out into a styrofoam box. This was somewhat creamy-ish and pretty tasty. Good amount of curry, although it's packed into a small coconut, so it will initially look small. Good ratio of curry to content -- that is, not "w...

It was the second Tuesday in as many weeks in which my works-downtown-friend and I failed to locate Guanaco Food Truck to use my VanEats GuanaCombo Dining Passes . Last week they had moved from their usual Seymour and Georgia (probably because of all the construction there) and we ended up at Finest At Sea . Yesterday, they weren't even downtown at all, and we ended up going to Khai Thai Cuisine because it was nearby and my friend was on the clock as she had a strict lunch hour. One of the nice things about this restaurant is the interior. Looks sort of lousy on the outside, especially now that it is right next door to the shiny new-ish Dunn's Famous . However, inside it's bright yet cosy, and the table spacing isn't too packed. We were in at just around Noon, which turned out to be about fifteen minutes before a lunch rush that saw the place packed. As mentioned, we were on the clock, but the restaurant said a quick lunch was no problem, and in fact we were out a...