Dine Out Vancouver 2014!

It's that time of year again! Time for Dine out Vancouver, where the local restaurants in town have three course set menu's for either $18, $28, & $38. A lot of high end restaurants that participate in Dine Out, and it allows you to enjoy some higher end fair for a very reasonable price.

I've had varying levels of success with Dine Out, I find a lot of restaurants do the bare minimum by offering a very basic menu consisting of a basic meat dish, a basic fish dish, and a vegetarian option. But I digress, all restaurants do have very high costs to survive so I'm sure I'm talking out of my ass, anyways...

Onto Chicha restaurant!

While we were perusing the Dine Out website we noticed Chicha, a local Peruvian restaurant, on the menu they had a grand total of three appies, 11 main items (choice of two each) and two desserts (no Guinea pig though, boo!). We quickly made a reservation and off we went!

My pictures are absolute rubbish this time (didn't use flash, didn't want to disturb other diners).

First the Appy's
I had the Seafood chowder and Debbie had the Quinoa salad

The chowder was creamy, and full of fresh fish with a nice spicy after finish, a great start!
Debbie's Quinoa salad was astounding! It's a simple Mango & Quinoa salad with a Jalapeno pepper sauce two ways. This is a rare treat indeed, a really tasty salad!

The Mains

Papas Rellenos (Potato Croquettes) stuffed with ground beef & and pickled onion salad

Tasty and simple, and very filling. Reminded me of a Empanada but instead of pastry it is wrapped in whipped potato.

Veraduras Causa, Beetroot whipped potato with Lima Bean puree and chili yam chips

Carb city! The only photo taken with a flash. The whipped potato was smooth and very sweet, served cool. Debbie enjoyed this, but it's pretty small and is more an appetizer size.

Veraduras Novoandinas, Quinoa, cauliflower, spinach, zucchini, and corn fritters with passion fruit sauce

Tiny, bland and mushy. All those ingredients and this is what you get!? A crispy on the outside and mushy tasteless inside? Serious miss. The sauce is good though.

Lomo Saltado, Flat iron steak, kennebec fries, red onion, peppers, tomato wok fried with soy sauce, garlic, and aji amarillo chili

Translated. A meat Poutine with no cheese that's how I can best describe it. Tasty but nothing particularily special. Very large and filling, but I wonder what it would be like with some cheese!

Dessert

Spiced Aji Chili Dark Chocolate Bread Pudding with Peruvian dulce de leche, and pisco raspberry sauce

I love bread pudding, and this was really nice. Very chocolaty with a nice spicy aftertasty. Dulce de leche is amazing!

Lucuma, white chocolate, and lime frozen torte with passion fruit and raspberry sauce

Tart, tart, tart! So unbelievably tart! The crust is nice, but wow this was really sour and tart. Not for us.

After reading the review you must figure that we weren't happy with the restaurant, but on the contrary, the individual parts were greater than the sum! We can't wait to go back to this restaurant! The salad was amazing and some of the other non Dineout menu items sound great. Just avoid the Quinoa fritter and get the Quinoa salad!

I like the Vegetarian dish... Who'd a funk it?

Dining in Bellingham!

These days Debbie and I do a lot of cross border shopping in Bellingham, we normally end up with a huge purchase of Soy milk, Cheese, Chicken & Convenience food. We do a lot of shopping, but rarely do we ever actually eat in Bellingham.

We finally decided to try one of the local restaurants that was recommended on the Urbanspoon website. We decided to give D'anna's Cafe Italiano a try. First thing we noticed was that the place is busy! (A very good sign!) There is a sign up sheet for a table at the front as the staff is extremely busy serving food.

Once we sat down I could see from my seat a man making fresh sheets of pasta for fresh ravioli's. This is a very good sign!

First thing we get is a complimentary Salad & Foccacia bread.

A nice way to start a meal, the little salads are made fresh (a non stop stream of servers coming out of the kitchen carrying little plates of salad!), a bit too much balsamic vinegar, but a nice start. The Foccacia is really good though, served warm and there are literally non stop trays of fresh bread coming out of the kitchen.

Debbie ordered the Gnocchi tossed with pine nuts, mushrooms, peppers, tomatoes light garlic olive oil. Served with more yummy warm foccacia bread.

Sadly, this dish was bland city. The Gnocchi are made fresh in the restaurant, but were a bit on the soggy & mushy side, and didn't have any sear on them. Very boring and bland.

I ordered the special Seared duck breasts with blackcurrant sauce, it comes with fettuccine Alfredo, and more yummy bread!

When I ordered this, I was initially worried I'd get one small duck breast and some pasta, but was excited to see two big duck breasts on the plate! Only in America! The duck was nicely cooked, though the blackcurrant sauce was too sweet. The pasta had nice al dente chew to it and the sauce wasn't too rich.
Overall a great dish!

In the end the meal was hit & miss, but we can say we honestly enjoyed it and will be coming back someday. Hopefully the dollar will rise up a little by then!

New Year's Dinner Out


Happy New Year's folks!

Debbie and I were a little tired of cooking this holiday season, and wanted to go out for a nice dinner. It also happened to be new year's eve. We thought we'd try a new restaurant in town, called Forage. It's one of those "Sustainable Dining" restaurants, basically a place that gets their ingredients from within 100 miles of the restaurant and everything must be sustainable. Now I can appreciate the idea, but it can come off as a bit preachy to me, but that's just my own opinion.

Now onto the food!

Forage is a small plates restaurant and everything is meant to be shared, so we ended up ordering five dishes to share, and not just because we were hungry!

We start off with the snack sized Gnocchi in brown butter.

A very simple dish of handmade Gnocchi cooked in a brown butter and finished with parmesan cheese. The Gnocchi were freshly made and were nice a fluffy with a great seared texture, very small but the dish is $6 which is pretty reasonable for this type of restaurant.

Prawn, Pork and Seafood chowder, topped with a quail egg.

This is their award winning dish, and I loved it!The chowder is really creamy with a strong salmon and prawn flavour. It is very rich and full of spot prawn and salmon bits. One warning though, this dish is pretty tiny. The bowl reminds me of a bowl I would of eaten in when I was a toddler! But you must order this!

Smoked Sablefish, winter mushroom broth, gnocchi, lamb bacon & Brussel sprouts

The fish is cooked perfectly and the dish is tasty, but was a bit too salty for our liking. Salty broth with salty mushrooms and very salty lamb bacon. The Brussel sprouts help with the salt. The fish is darn tasty though, and the dish looks beautiful.

Coho Salmon, Beet risotto, Chantarelle mushrooms, Nasturtium

I didn't want to order this dish. At first glance I thought I was right. The salmon looks overcooked. But I was wrong! This is a great and tasty dish. The salmon has a lovely wood grilled flavour, the risotto is creamy with a nice sweet taste. The Nasturtium... I have no idea what the leaves were, and tasted of nothing. Supposedly a pansy flower leaf... Interesting. I would order this dish again.

Pepper Braised Bison cheek, charred onion, 64 degree egg, Fettucine, Bone Marrow crouton, Watercress.

Easily the best dish of the night! The Bison cheek was amazing, with great flavour and texture, the Fettucine was handmade and had a nice al dente bite to it, the egg made everything extremely rich, and the croutons were beefy and amazing! We got the last available order of this dish, so order it quickly. It's a must try!

Overall this was a wonderful meal, it reminded me of the old restaurant "Ensemble" before they closed down. The meal is pretty pricey though, so its great for a special occasion.