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.

Lunchtime Special!


Here's a rapid fire triple play special for all you lucky folks!

Three restaurants, Three meals, Three reviews!

First meal!

A few of my coworkers head out for lunch almost everyday (bad Camilla!), and are always tempting me with some tasty lunches out (I normally pack my own). I finally gave in and decided join them. On a nasty rainy day, the options are pretty limited to Boston Pizza (I barely consider this to be food, and shame on anyone who actually CHOOSES to dine here on purpose!), or Denny's (which I do like!). But another option is the Seoul House Royal Korean restaurant! A traditional Korean restaurant close to my office.

I ordered the Korean braised shortribs and Sweet beef bone soup with Potato noodles

I love braised shortribs! It is my Kryptonite! Korean cuisine has some of the best out there! It's also nice to get them on the bone! I've already ranted about this before, but some restaurants out there serve so called boneless shortribs. DO NOT FALL FOR THIS! It's normally just some cheap cut of beef that is simply labeled "shortrib", kinda like how "Red Snapper" is on some restaurant menu's out there, when in fact it's just some cheap whitefish. Shortribs should always be served bone on! OK Rant over.

The shortribs were tender and tasty, with a nice thick sauce. The bone soup was full of meat but lacking in the noodle category. A very mild and gentle flavour. But here's the kicker, all this was for $13 and it comes with the Korean side dishes! I think I'll be heading out with my coworkers a bit more often!

Second meal!

Gloucester Restaurant on Cambie. A popular local HK style cafe. I must admit this wasn't for lunch but a latenight meal with Debbie. Hainese Chicken with flavoured rice.

Chicken was good, but served ice cold. I don't like ice cold chicken. The rice was cooked perfectly and really flavourful, a lot of places out there, will serve the rice soggy and mushy, but this rice was darn good! Chicken had some great flavour too, if only it was served warm!

Third meal!

Full Ramen (yes, that is the name), a proper Japanese Ramen restaurant in of all places... Surrey!!

I was shocked when I saw this. So Debbie and I decided to immediately give it a try!

The restaurant is actually Chinese owned and run, but the Ramen is authentic Japanese flavour and style.
I ordered the Tonkotsu Ramen...

And it was good! The broth had that nice creamy pork bone flavour, with the proper amount of salt. Served with some tasty "Chasu" pork, Fish cake, Softboiled egg, Bamboo shoots, etc. I was happy with my meal, and will be coming back to this restaurant soon! It only opened a week ago so they are still getting their legs under them, so service was a little slow. But I'm happy to say Surrey finally has a proper Ramen restaurant! Hurray for Surrey!

Neptune Seafood Restaurant


Dim Sum Time! In of all places Surrey!

The Neptune Seafood restaurant in Surrey has been opened for a few months now, and we decided to finally give it another try, we've been there before, but was right after the grand opening and we wanted to let them settle in (weekend afternoons can be insanely busy).

As I'm sure most of you have tried Dim Sum before, I will spare you the more common dishes, and focus on the unusual ones.

We start off with the Tenderloin beef with Eggplant

I'm a sucker for Chinese tenderloin beef, and this is no exception. The beef was tender and cooked well with a nice sauce. Debbie says it tasted a bit fishy, but tasted good to me.

Next up the the Mushroom & Truffle oil dumpling

This is Debbie's favourite menu item here. It's a mushroom medley with a good dose of truffle oil. I love the taste of truffle and this is a great mushroom dish.

Deep Fried Tilapia wrapped in noodles and topped with wasabi mayo

Greasy. It has a nice crunch but those noodles absorbed all the oil! The fish is perfectly cooked, but is rather bland inside the noodle wrapping. The wasabi mayo is tasty though.

Golden Fried Egg Tofu

This dish cost $8!!! More than the fish or the beef and everything else. Moving on...

Truffle Mushroom tart

Sound familiar? Same filling as the dumpling, but in pastry form! I like this version better (puff pastry = yum!), but the pastry was a little undercooked. Overall is a great dish when cooked properly.

Neptune restaurant has improved a bit since we first came here, the dim sum menu has expanded to double the original size, but is missing some of my favourite dishes (Steamed Chicken rice hotpot and Fried Sticky rice are my fav's). The restaurant is a beautiful place to go for dim sum, but is still missing a few things on the menu, we will be back, the restaurant finally reaching it's stride.

Manzo Izakaya


Debbie and I a little while ago happened to be in Richmond and wanted to try something a little different than our usual choices (ie: HK style Cafe's). So we decide to take a detour through Alexandria rd in Richmond.

This is a great area for the adventurous, literally a street of nothing but restaurants (mainly Hotpot restaurants, HK Cafe's, Taiwanese Bubble tea cafe's, Izakaya's, etc).

We were craving Japanese, and there are quite a few of these around and a lot of them look identical, after some discussion, we decided on Manzo Izakaya (simply because it was busier, which is always a good sign!).

This place specializes with Robata (grilled meat on skewers)

We started with a Beef Sukiyaki

A simple beef stew with cellophane noodles, fishcake & tofu. A great winter food item. This one was ok, I was hoping it would be raw dish and cooked table side. A good dish with rice, not bad for $10!

We ordered some Robata's consisting of Chicken, sweet potato cake, and wait for it..... Chicken skin!
(unfortunately I forgot to take a picture of the chicken skin or sweet potato).

Best dishes of the night! The skewers were juicy, flavourful with a great dipping sauce. Especially the crispy grilled chicken skin! Extremely guilty pleasure!

Miso grilled Sablefish 
 Another great grilled dish, except for two things. It is a tiny porton! And it costs $16!!! It was barely two ounces of meat! Great dish, but an absolute ripoff!

Our final dish was a Pork Cheek fried rice. 
Sadly this was bland, and flavourless. A real miss. I would avoid ordering this next time.

Overall the meal was hit & miss. We loved the robata, but everything else was kinda average and a bit pricey. We will be coming back to this restaurant, but next time it will only be for Robata!

The Flying Pig

*The photo's are a bit small today, click on them for their full sized glory!*

My cousin from out of town dropped by and I wanted to take her and my family out to a nice western meal, as we had been having nothing but Chinese food since she arrived! I've been looking forward to going to this restaurant for a while now, the menu has a nice fancy comfort food theme to it, and finally had a chance to go there.

Sometimes you don't get what you hope for...

It was Sunday brunch so we had a few breakfast themed dishes.

We ordered a Pulled Pork Poutine to share

My cousin had never heard of Poutine, so this was a nice intro. Fries were good, but pork was a little bland but overall who doesn't love Fries + Gravy + Cheese!?!??

Debbie ordered the Chicken Cutlet with mashed potatoes and vegetables

Pretty darn good, the chicken was well cooked and the mashed potatoes had some nice flavour to it, another hit!

My Cousin ordered the Croque Madam

Basically a ham & cheese sandwich with a fried egg on top, she enjoyed it and was very filling

My Sister ordered the Baked pulled Pork Gnocchi

Bland Pork, the Gnocchi was pasty, and sauce was non-existent. She only ate half and didn't bring it home. I think this says everything.

I ordered the Braised Shortrib Pasta with a creamy mushroom sauce

And it was not good...

It's strange that the dish was extremely salty, yet had no real flavour to it! The pasta was soggy and broken, and the sauce again had no flavour. The "shortrib" was just some cheap braised chuck steak and didn't have the texture or flavour of a true bone-in shortrib (but in their defense a lot of restaurants around town have "braised Shortrib" on the menu, when in fact it is just some cheap braised beef).

Overall I have to give this restaurant a pass, but maybe you'll have a better meal than me.