Pho Tai Hoa

March 4, 2012May 3, 2013Leave a comment

I actually never even knew Pho Tai Hoa existed to be honest, until my friend brought me there. We wanted to go to Pho Hoa, which is on Alexandra, but of course parking was limited and we had to go somewhere else. So we ended up at Pho Tai Hoa, which is in the mall near Capstan Way. I never even realized this place at the corner! Well, now I know another Pho place to go to! The decor inside was really interesting. It had a lot of cruise ship decor, with painted sky walls, cruise ship railings, and wooden plank floors. I wonder if this was just the decor left from the previous restaurant or they designed it. Kind of weird actually…But okay, let’s get to the food. I usually get the House Special at Pho places, so I got a small Pho Dac Biet. I like getting House Specials since it usually includes an assortment of ingredients, from tripe, beef balls, beef tendon, to beef flank. It was alright, nothing too special about it, and the size was normal. Soup did taste a little different, but it wasn’t something that I extremely liked or disliked. Not bad I guess, but I will have to try their other food to get a better taste of this place. There were probably only 4 other tables occupied though, but then again, it was a weekday and a little early. Maybe I’ll give it another try!

Sunway Restaurant

March 3, 2012May 3, 2013Leave a comment

Assam Red Milk Tea with Agar Aloe

Taiwanese Road Side Fried Noodle

Special Deep-Fried Tofu

Mayo Dried Pork Egg Roll

Three Spice Chicken

Popcorn Chicken

Second visit to Sunway Restaurant now! Sunway is a very small Taiwanese restaurant located in Empire Center in Richmond. I believe it is a small family owned business. The whole atmosphere makes you feel like you’re at home. The restaurant it extremely small and they probably only make one round of business during dinner hours, so be sure to go early to grab a seat! Tried their Assam Red Milk Tea this time, and it was so good! They use a special red tea that is called “Assam”, which I really like the taste of! The Agar Aloe was a good addition to it and having it hot was great on a chilly day. The Taiwanese Road Side Fried Noodle was just okay. I expected more from it as it had the words ‘road side’ in the name, but it was definitely lacking some flavour. Quite bland for my taste, and I don’t even eat very feisty food usually! Next, we got the Special Deep Fried Tofu which was so delicious! The sauce made it extra tasty, but after my second tofu, I found the spiciness of the chili sauce starting to kick in! Good regardless though! Next up was the Mayo Dried Pork Egg Roll. I really enjoyed this! It reminded me of those Taiwanese beef rolls, but it had dried pork and egg inside instead. The mayo on top was a great complement to it. We also decided to try the Three Spice Chicken, which I felt was made and tasted a little differently than the ones I have tried elsewhere. They had a lot of vegetables with it, but I found it not to be as flavourful. Lastly, I had to get the Popcorn Chicken again! I swear that I looked around and every single table had this dish. It was pretty much why I wanted to come back. Their popcorn chicken is made so differently that it is to die for. I find that it is not as oily as others, and the fried coating tastes so different from other restaurants! I don’t know what it is, but I would definitely get that again. Delicious meal! And pricing is quite reasonable. I find it a better deal than other bubble tea places like Pearl Castle. Only downside is that seats are limited so go early!

Mom’s Grilled Cheese

February 28, 2012May 3, 2013Leave a comment

Mom’s Classic: Marbled Rye with Havarti and Double Smoked Bacon
2 Shots of Roasted Tomato Soup – topped with basil mascarpone
Pineapple Pop Shoppe Pop

Sunny day in Vancouver the other day! Okay actually, weather has been acting weird here, with hail and snow in end of February… but this was before that crazy weekend happened…So it was actually a nice sunny day, but windy and cold! Decided to head downtown to try out Mom’s Grilled Cheese! I have heard such great things about them, and who can resist grilled cheese sandwiches… I can just never get them cooked perfectly at home! Did a little google mapping, and realized that it was so close to Pacific Center! I guess I just never walk on that side of the street normally! We approached the truck with a lot of people surrounding it waiting for their food. Apparently, they are only open on weekdays during lunch hours. Steph and I shared a Mom’s Classic, where we got to choose our choice of bread and cheese. We chose the Marbled Rye with Havarti, and added $1.50 for some Double Smoked Bacon! Mmmm, mouths were already watering with the aroma coming from the truck! While we were waiting in the freezing cold, we saw other customers buying shots of Roasted Tomato Soup, and thought it would be a great idea to warm up! Good choice because it was so delicious!!! I’m not sure if it’s just because I was freezing cold, but the basil mascarpone topped on the soup made everything so much better! We waited for probably 5 minutes or more til our food came since there were a lot of people ahead of us, but when it got to ours, they had forgot to put bacon in ours. They however, quickly apologized and redid our sandwich. Something about their friendliness didn’t make me mad about the wait though. It seemed like they had regular customers as they knew each others names, and everything seemed so personalized when they presented your food with your name. They seemed like such fun and friendly people to talk to, and they even joked with customers that they are always illegally parked here, and to look out for the cops… I don’t know if they were joking or what, but they gave me a good laugh. We went back to Pacific Center to eat since it was freezing cold, and yum! It was so good! They also came with two pickles, and potato chips at the bottom that had the Ms. Vickie’s texture, but I think they are homemade. Also tried the Pineapple Pop Shoppe, which was actually pretty good! Reminded me of Jones Soda, with the colour and cool, vintage looking bottle. Really fizzy though, and probably not the healthiest thing. I will definitely be back for some Mom’s Grilled Cheese! I just wish they opened during the weekends!

Trees Organic (Richmond)

February 26, 2012April 25, 2013Leave a comment

Plain Cheesecake and Blueberry Cheesecake

I was craving for some cheesecake the other day on a random weekday afternoon, but everywhere was closed during that time! So I ended up going to the library to buy some cheesecake for Steph and myself so we wouldn’t starve ourselves during our meeting. And by library, I mean the Richmond Public Library, where there’s a little cafe you see everytime you walk by. It’s called Trees Organic, which is also the same one that is in downtown, Yaletown and Gastown! They say that they’re Vancouver’s Best Cheesecake, but I think that might be a little overrated. Definitely not the best I’ve had in Vancouver, but not bad! I’ve had the one in downtown before, and it was pretty good. I had the mango one back then, and at this location, they only had three flavours to choose from. There was the Plain Cheesecake, Mocha Cheesecake, or Blueberry Cheesecake. I always have trouble deciding what to get, so I just decided to go by how many pieces were left in the fridge. The less pieces left must mean that they’re the best sellers… well at least I like to think so! So I ended up with the Plain and Blueberry flavours, with whip cream on the side. The lady working was very nice, although service was a little slow since she was the only one on shift. After a long ride to UBC, I open the containers up to see my whip cream had totally smushed everywhere. Not so appealing, but it was still pretty good! I think I prefer the plain one to the blueberry one, but I think the mango one I had last time was better than these two… Not bad! At least it satisfied my cheesecake craving!

Lao Shan Dong Homemade Noodle House

February 24, 2012May 3, 2013Leave a comment

Boiled Seasonal Vegetable

Braised Beef Flank with Noodle In Soup (Small)

Braised Beef Flank And Tendon with Noodle In Spicy Soup (Large)

After a early shopping trip at Metrotown, my friend brought be to a Taiwanese Noodle House nearby that was claimed to be really good. Apparently, it’s supposed to be the best Taiwanese noodles in Vancouver! To be honest, I think it wasn’t THAT amazing, but I have to say, the noodles are really good. You can tell that they’re handmade, and not like the ones you get at bubble tea places. The vegetables were a dish that I actually hadn’t had before. I’m not sure if it’s some typical Taiwanese dish, but it tasted really good. They had like bits of onion and garlic chips as well as a special sauce in it. Quite different from the Cantonese style dishes I’m used to. The size of a small was already very big, and when my friend’s large came, I was in shock. It was huge! That would probably be enough for two. The soup base was very good, and they say that there isn’t any MSG, which I trust, as I wasn’t thirsty afterwards. They have a lot of seasoned radish type of things on top which gave it a nice crunch while eating the noodles. Overall, pretty good, but I don’t know if it’s the BEST.

Triple O’s (UBC)

February 22, 2012May 3, 2013Leave a comment

Mmmm yummy milkshake on a gloomy day! Thanks to Steph for getting me this when I was too lazy to walk out of the building! Got to love that girl for always knowing what I crave! (If you’re reading this, I mentioned you again! :D) The Triple-O Vanilla Milkshake is probably one of my favourite milkshakes so far. So much better than the McDonald or Dairy Queen milkshakes! It’s thick and creamy, and you can taste the vanilla bean which doesn’t taste artificial. I believe it also comes in strawberry and chocolate flavour.

Chambar

February 21, 2012May 4, 2013Leave a comment

Iced Tea Infused with Rose Petals

Carpaccio de Chevreuil

Charred venison carpaccio, sesame soba noodle salad, pickled radishes, white soy & red wine reduction, garlic chips

L’omble de l’Artique nicois

Crispy Arctic char, sea asparagus, pea shoots, bacalao, lemon & grana padano concasse, tapanades

Moules Frites Vin Blanc

Mussels, white wine, butter, braised celery & leeks, coarse black pepper

Salted Chocolate Caramel Bar

Lemon Curd, Toasted Meringue, and Shortbread

Alright! Finally have my last post from Dine Out Vancouver 2012 in! I was so excited when I got reservations for Chambar since I’ve been hearing really good things about it! I guess it lived up to the reviews, but then again, I think I went in with too high of an expectation, so I only came out “satisfied”. But nonetheless, very good food! The Ice Tea was actually a special drink that wasn’t on the menu. I wanted an ice tea but they didn’t actually have it on the menu, so the bartender basically mixed up something for me and it was actually really good since it was rose infused! Something I hadn’t had before and pretty cool and of course good! Next, for appies, we got the carpaccio which was very fresh, and the soba noodle with the carpaccio was an interesting complement! It was of course presented very nicely too! The arctic char had a very nice texture and the fish was cooked very well. The sauces, like the olive sauce were kind of weird though. Wasn’t something I preferred. The mussels were pretty good, although they were overloaded with cilantro, and I have to say I dislike cilantro a lot, so it kind of ruined the dish for me. The mussels were really small, but extremely sweet, so that was good. Fries were just okay, nothing too special. Lastly, for desserts we had the caramel bar and lemon meringue. The caramel bar was kind of salty (well it was supposed to be), but I guess it’s just that I don’t extremely like salted chocolate. When you try to break it on the plate, it’s extremely hard and difficult to cut, but when you put it in your mouth, it just melts apart! And the good thing is it doesn’t stick to your teeth! The lemon meringue dessert was probably my favourite dish of the night. It almost tasted like a deconstructed lemon meringue pie. So delicious and you don’t see it on many menus around. Overall, I was quite satisfied with Chambar! For $38 for a 3 course meal, it was definitely worth it. It is quite pricey normally without dine out though, so perhaps I will only go back for a special occasion!

Kitsilano Daily Kitchen

February 20, 2012May 3, 2013Leave a comment

Sweet Potato Bread with Olive Oil & Vinegar, Kimchi, and Sea Salt

Scallop

Roasted Cream of Winter Cauliflower Soup

Butter poached king crab leg, trout caviar, truffle oil

Short Ribs

West Coast Seafood Cioppino

Yes, it’s my long overdue posts from Dine Out Vancouver 2012 that should’ve been uploaded long time ago! Well they are coming along! Here’s another dine out I went to. This one was a $38 set menu at the Kitsilano Daily Kitchen. This restaurant is so interesting because they change their menu everyday! I believe they post the menu up at a certain time, but if you don’t have a look beforehand, then you are going in for a surprise! Pretty cool twist, I personally think! Upon waiting for our food to arrive, we were given a jump fried squid as our amuse bouche. It was delicious as it was cooked in just the right amount of time, so it wasn’t hard to chew at all. We were also given complementary bread, which was a sweet potato bread with some complements to go with. We only used the olive oil though, as we thought kimchi and bread would taste funny..Maybe should’ve given it a try! The bread was alright, but it was a little on the mushy side. I’ll give props for it being different from bread that we are usually given though! Since the restaurant changes menus all the time, I couldn’t go online afterwards to look up the menu names, so I can’t quite remember the full names of the food. The scallops were cooked perfectly, and overall, I think they do a really good job with their seafood. The cioppino had very large pieces of fish in it, and they were very fresh. I found that the scallops in the cioppino weren’t cooked as well as the ones for the appetizer though. Perhaps it is because of the way it is cooked! The cioppino was cooked in a tomato base and had three types of sausages in it, which were all very spicy! For dessert, I did not get a picture of it, as we had it to go, but it was a chocolate tart, which we found to not be anything extraordinary. I know that most chocolates are paired with some sort of salt, like “salted chocolate”, but this was had a very strong salty taste to it, that became unpleasant. I have to say the dessert was my least favourite part of the meal, especially because it was nothing special. The place is kind of hidden as there are no large signages, so it was quite hard to find. You probably would’t notice the restaurant if you were walking by. However, the inside is very classy, like fine dining, but not as fancy as the downtown restaurants. Still has a very modern vibe to it though! Not bad and a great place to go if you want a surprise!