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2008 Vancouver Restaurant Closure List Available

Just a quick post for the weekend. I was told today that the 2008 restaurant closure list for the Lower Mainland is available.

For more info about food safety in general, check out the Vancouver Coastal Health website.

I’m happy to say that most of the restaurants I frequent were not found on the closure list. However, I did notice that several closures were centered around certain malls or areas. Gene suggested that it may have been due to construction taking place that affected the quality of water since the reason for most of these centralized closures were “lack of potable water” and only lasted a day.

Just something to think about over the weekend for you all.

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Review: Pied a Terre

I’m going to take a break from my trip blogging to review a few restaurants I’ve visited since I came back.  If I don’t blog about them soon, I’m going to forget what it was that I ate. 

Connie was leaving Vancouver and going back to Asia so Derek, John, Victoria, and I joined her for dinner one evening.  Both Victoria and I had been wanting to try Pied a Terre for the longest time and we were finally presented with the opportunity!  Pied a Terre is a small French bistro on Cambie St and is actually owned by the same people as Parkside and La Buca.

We all decided to start by sharing a couple of appetizers.  First came the steamed mussels.  They were steamed in some white wine and shallots.  I usually enjoy steamed mussels as much as the next person but these mussels had a fishy taste.  Perhaps it was because mussels are not in season?  I’m not really sure when mussel season is actually though. 

Despite the fishy taste of the mussels, the broth was very tasty and we enjoyed dipping our bread in it.  Yum. 

We also shared some fries, which came with ketchup and mayo for dipping.  I prefer mayo myself, but find that people either love mayo or hate it with their fries.  :)  There was nothing too spectacular about the fries though…they were just…fries.

For my main course, I had the beef shortrib bourguignon.  It was a stewy dish and came with pork belly chunks, peas, and mashed potatoes. The dish may have looked small but due to the yummy shortribs and potatoes, it was extremely filling.  The rich beef and sauce went great with the potatoes.  Even though it was a rich and filling dish, I didn’t feel too heavy or stuffed afterwards.

Connie had the halibut cheeks, which she noted was also very filling.  I was later told that the halibut cheeks are made differently every so often.

I was full enough after my main course that I could have just gone home.  But of course, I had to try dessert.  :)  I wasn’t feeling too adventurous that day so I just stuck with the chocolate mousse.  It was very chocolaty but tasted light at the same time.  Sometimes, after a few bites of chocolate mousse, you’ve had enough.  However, I probably could have eaten a second or third serving of this chocolate mousse.  :)  It also came with a shortbread cookie on the side.

Connie was the only other person who had dessert and she chose the creme caramel.  It had a nice firmness to it and you could really taste the egg in the custard.  I also liked how the caramel sauce was not overwelmingly sweet.

Pied a Terre definitely met my expectations.  Even though we went on a Monday night, it was already packed at 6PM!  The service was prompt and friendly and I was really impressed by the food.  The prices were also quite reasonable.  I’ll definitely be coming back for a repeat visit.

Details:
3369 Cambie Street, Vancouver
Tel: 604-873-3131
Summary:
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Price: $$

Posted in French, Reviews | 3 Comments »

Jiangmen: Hotel Jinbao Street Eats

In our Jiangmen hotel, there was an “eating street” right on the second level of the hotel. Basically, it was a large restaurant but organized into several different storefronts that offered food from all the different regions of China. You can visit as many stalls as you want and everything is tabulated onto one bill. I ate here a couple of times while I was at Jiangmen and really enjoyed how this allowed us to sample several different restaurants/stalls in a single meal.

There were six of us one day for lunch so we decided to go to the eating street so we could sample a variety of different items. First up was a fried curry rice. It had an excellent curry flavour and was very tasty.

We had to sample some dim sum…after all, we were in Guangdong province, one of the birthplaces of dim sum! I found the siu mai (pork and shrimp dumplings) here to be ok but I’ve definitely had better in Vancouver.

The crab and seaweed dim sum looked pretty interesting so we gave that a try as well. This was actually so popular that I didn’t get a chance to try one myself. I’ll just have to assume it was quite tasty.

The braised pork with veggies went very well with rice. The oil had been rendered out of the pork so it wasn’t too oily.

The ja jiang mein was spicy and very tasty. The noodles were made fresh on the spot and you could really taste the difference.

The vegetables were served with preserved (i.e. 1000 year) egg. I really enjoyed this dish because the egg adds a different taste to the overall dish.

I expected the tan tan noodles to be the peanut sauce version that’s found in most Szechuan and Taiwanese restaurants in Vancouver. This version had no peanut sauce and had a clear soup base but was very spicy.

Now it was time for dessert. We all shared some almond pudding and some black sesame pudding. They were both very tasty but also very thick…meaning they were quite filling.

The glutinous rice with red bean is a popular dessert item for us when we go for dim sum.  The beans were left whole instead of ground up in a paste so it made for an interesting texture contrast against the gooey rice part.

We also had a thin pancake with red bean paste.  I enjoyed this quite a bit because it was nice and crispy …but not oily at all.

Summary:
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Service:
Price: $ (I think all six of us ate for around $20 Cdn!)

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Jiangmen: Jinbao Hotel Dinner

We finally made it to Jiangmen, which is a medium-sized city about two hours by car away from Guangzhou in southern China. I had several relatives in Jiangmen, most of whom I’ve never met before so this part of the trip was pretty exciting for me and my family.

There was a nice restaurant in our hotel and we ate there for dinner one evening with my dad’s schoolmates. In China, it seemed pretty popular for people to reserve small private rooms when eating with a group of people taking up two or more tables. I guess this works out well for everyone because you can be as noisy as you want without disturbing anyone.

The first dish this evening was some vegetable soup with carrots and bok choy. My grandma actually likes to make this dish quite a bit…now I know where she got her inspiration from.

We also had a bunch of cold dishes. I didn’t try any of these because I was just recovering from a bout of food poisoning (from Shanghai). However, I was told they were quite tasty.

There was beef tripe…

…and chicken fingers. Parts of the bones were actually taken out, making the chicken very easy to eat.

My mom enjoyed these pickled cold cucumbers quite a bit.

Now onto the hot dishes. The free-range chicken was a pretty standard dish. It was nice and moist though from the soup that it came in.

The prawns were big but I found them to be undercooked, making the shells quite difficult to peel off.

I liked the light garlic flavour coming from these garlic chives with pork. The chives were nice and crunchy, which I always enjoy.

The roast pork and BBQ pork dish was very tasty. The roast pork was a bit on the fatty side but I think this was partly what made it so tasty. The skin was super crispy. I noticed that all the restaurants in Jiangmen served the roast pork with some sugar for dipping. I’ve never had roast pork like this before but it tasted really good.

By now, I was starting to get full so I didn’t try the puff tofu with lamb although it was very popular with the people sitting at my table.

The stewed beef with potatoes was another tasty-looking dish that I didn’t get a chance to try.

The steamed cod came with chives and ginger. It was simply made but pretty good.

I really liked these sweet dessert buns. They were filled with some sweet sugary poaste, sesame seeds, and peanuts.

One of my dad’s friends told me that this place was about average in terms of food but is always popular because of its nice surroundings and decor. I did like some of the more unusual dishes (such as the dessert buns) but did agree that some dishes could have been better.

Summary:
Food: 3/5
Service:4/5

Posted in Jiangmen, Other Cities, Asian, Chinese, Reviews | No Comments »

Shanghai: Street Food

So first of all, sorry for the lack of posts. I’ve been maligned the past week with the flu. And now back to our regularly scheduled programming…

While we were in Zhujiajiao, we stopped by one of the street stalls that sold candy. My brother and I split some sticky candy that came on a stick. I think it was pure sugar and it was very sweet…but it was fun to mold the candy using the sticks. These sugar candies cost about $0.50.

Here is a picture of a lady making the rice “tamales” that we ate for lunch.

Here are some more yummy looking snacks that we were much to full to eat!

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Shanghai: Zhujiajiao Water Town

While we were in Shanghai, we had the opportunity to spend part of a day in one of the region’s water towns. Think of Venice…but Chinese-style. It was pretty neat to visit Zhujiajiao, which is one of the closer water towns to Shanghai. After a nice gondola ride around the town, we stopped for lunch at a restaurant recommended by our gondolier.

We ordered some stir-fried veggies with bamboo shoots. The veggies were chopped up quite finely but had a nice crunch to it.

The fresh lai mein with preserved vegetables was quite tasty. The preserved veggies were not too salty and went well with the noodles. You had to eat this dish fairly quickly though because the noodles got mushy after sitting in the soup for too long. The preserved veggies seemed to be a specialty in this town as we saw quite a few people making them outside of their houses.

These vegetables were cooked in chicken broth (similar to the first dish). They had quite an interesting texture…similar to grass but still very crunchy.

The deep fried peppery pork was very popular with my brother. Personally, I would have liked it if there was more of a pepper taste but this still went very well with rice.

This chicken soup was one of the best chicken soups I’ve ever had. An entire chicken was used to make this soup. Most of the fat was actually skimmed off the top so I didn’t feel too bad about having several bowls of this stuff. The soup obviously had a great chicken flavour and the chicken itself was juicy and tender.

We saw a bunch of these braised pork hocks on the street so decided to order some to try for lunch. It came with a lot of sauce, which went very well with rice. I’ve had a version of this dish back in Vancouver but this one was not as sweet as what I was accustomed to.

These rice “tamales” looked better than they tasted. Similar to the pork hocks, we saw a lot of these being sold on the street so we really wanted to try it out. Although the flavour was good, it was not strong enough and I also found the rice to be a bit undercooked.

We also ordered some dumplings at the recommendation of our server. These were filled with vegetables and pork. Taste-wise, there was nothing special about these.

I liked our meal at the water town because it was different from the usual Shanghainese fare we were used to. I also liked trying out the new variety of vegetables, which I’ve never had before. Our entire meal, which fed 5 adults, cost only $40. Not bad, considering we were stuffed full.

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Posted in Shanghai, Other Cities, Asian, Chinese, Reviews | 1 Comment »