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.

Le Tigre food truck

Where I am located now there are very few food trucks, so this is a rare treat for me. I was on my way to pickup something from a friend who happens to work on Granville St. Right in front of his office was the Le Tigre food truck, so I decided to give it a try!

It is run by Clement Chan, one of the contestants from Top Chef Canada.

One thing about food trucks... None are cheap, and this is no exception, so be prepared to pay a little more from them. The good news is that most have much better quality cuisine than your standard food court restaurant.

I decided to order two things, starting off with the Popcorn chicken

This was a fried spicy boneless chicken with a chili mayo dip, pretty darn good, though was a bit greasy (left a big pool of grease at the bottom of the container). Similar to Taiwanese fried chicken nuggets but with his original spices.

The "Kick Ass" rice with Pork belly and a poached egg.

I feel my arteries harden! This is definitely a luxurious dish with fatty braised pork belly, a perfectly poached egg & a topping of spicy mayo. A tasty dish but the pork belly was way too fatty.... I know your probably screaming at me saying that pork belly is supposed to be super fatty! But I seemed to get only the super "lardo" pieces with very little meat on them, but the meat that was there was pretty good, the egg was perfectly poached. Needed more rice though (I'm a bit of a rice addict).

Overall this meal cost me $14, a bit much for a quick lunchtime meal, but worth it if you go out for lunch as rarely as I do.

Shaolin Noodle House

Here's a quickie folks!

I love fresh noodles, who doesn't? My coworkers and I decided to have some handmade noodles for lunch, and we decided to make the trek out to the Shaolin Noodle House.

I ordered the Pan fried sticky rice cake with pickled cabbage and pork.

Be warned this is very filling! The Rice cake is freshly cut to order, and simply pan fried with a special soy sauce, cabbage & pork. It sounds simple, but is very tasty! This is comfort food for me. Kind like Meat loaf to some folk. Best to share with others!.... Must not be so greedy next time!

We decided to share a dish of Spicy Cumin lamb

A great sharing dish, lots of lamb for everyone and not too spicy! Just the right amount of grease!

One dish not pictured was my coworker's plate of Special shrimp fried rice. It was truly special!
It was a multi-grain fried rice with the perfect amount of egg, spice and grease! I will order this dish the next time we hit this restaurant! In fact I would strongly recommend eating family style at this restaurant instead of everyone ordering their own dishes. Lots to share and more to eat!

A Restaurant on the Beach...


In Mexico that is!

Sorry for the long delay folks, I've been on vacation in Mexico. So why not focus today's post on a restaurant in Bucerias Mexico.

After spending a day walking through the little town of Bucerias, we were getting hungry. Unfortunately a lot of the places we wanted to dine at were closed. Luckily a coworker of mine recommended a place that we just happen to stumble upon!

The Fat Boy Seafood

And yes, that is the name of the place.

It is located in Bucerias right by the town square, a little place by the beach with a great ocean view.

After sitting down we started with a Pina Colada...a big one!

Then came a complimentary fish ceviche & chips, the fish had some great flavour though the texture was a bit like hamburger.

Debbie ordered the grilled Mahi with garlic, it's served with garlic bread, rice pilaf, and some really great roasted potatoes!

The fish is very fresh and the accompaniments were great, plus the portion size was huge!

I ordered the Scallops served two ways, One was sauteed in garlic & butter, and the other wrapped in bacon and grilled.

This was an awesome dish, I love scallops and I haven't seen ones this big very often. Great dish and would order again!

At the end of the meal we received a complimentary dessert of Kahlua and cream, a great way to end a meal.

This is a great little restaurant on the beach and I'd strongly recommend stopping by if you happen to be in the area. One small warning though, there are a lot of beach vendors in the area, and literally stop by every five minutes to try to sell you something, it can get annoying at times, but each vendor will leave you alone after you say no.