Chow Times » European

Mis Trucos on Davie, Vancouver

Ben — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 13:00:46 +0000

One of the things Suanne and I enjoy in life is having dinner with friends — dinners that are unrushed, with no agenda and purpose other than get together and talk, talk, talk. We had a great time with TS and JS (Eating Club Vancouver) and ET and Christina (Doesn’t Tazte Like Chicken) last Friday.

TS and JS organized this. When they invited us, we dropped our Friday date plans for this. It had been a while since we last met up for Dim Sum at the Top Gun J&C in Richmond.

All these while I thought Mis Trucos was on Commercial Drive. I am not sure what made me thought of that. I almost drove to Commercial Drive!

That Friday night was the Opening Ceremony night of the Vancouver 2010 Paralympics. Driving across the Granville Bridge, we were caught in a traffic snarl — almost a gridlock. So, instead of chancing it, we parked our car immediately after the bridge to walk. And guess what … the road was so empty and quiet all the way from the foot of the Granville Bridge to Mis Trucos on Davie and Thurlow.

Mis Trucos calls themselves a Mediterranean tapas bar. We were kind of surprised how simple and small this place is — just about 8-10 tables in a very casual setting. We were also surprised how empty Mis Trucos was on a Friday night.

The interior was very dark — while romantic to some, but for us, it’s difficult taking pictures.

The menu is also simple. Just a 1-pager. Most of them are tapas size items. Actually some of them are so small I don’t know if I want to call it tapas. It is so small, I might not even call it bite-size.

Not knowing what most of these are like, we just left all the ordering to TS and JS.

Like this one. The Gilda is Black Olive wrapped with anchovy. This is $1.90 … each!

OK, you may call me cheapskate — permission granted but I thought it was overpriced.

On the menu, it says that it is $1.90 each or $6.00 for four.

But we have six of us and when we ordered one for each of us, we were billed $9.80. Basically they bill is one order of four for $6 and the other two orders of one for $1.90.

It tasted really salty. Moreover Suanne and I are not fans of olive as much as we tried to like them.

Got to hand it to Mis Trucos. The Foie Gras was excellent. I recorded four long “Mmmmmms” from ET. ET is a picky eater (Christina said so many times! LOL!) … and so I reckon if he approves, it has to be good.

It was. The sweet and tangy jelly balanced the rich creamy foie gras. This is $17.40 for six bite sizes. Good but expensive.

The Coca is a Catalan flatbread topped with chorizo and anchovy. We got two Coca at $4 each.

This is really nice and especially with the really …
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DB Bistro Moderne on West Broadway, Vancouver

Ben — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 15:00:41 +0000

The one meal I had always looked forward to each week is Friday dinner with Suanne. It is not that you don’t already know that if you had been following this blog.

The one place we had always wanted to go to is DB Bistro Moderne. Frankly, we held back from going there because it is not exactly cheap and requires a special occasion to justify it … until now.

DB Bistro Moderne is located on West Broadway. It is just next door to its more illustrious sister restaurant, Lumiere. Just a few doors away is a place called Moderne Burger. DB Bistro Moderne and Moderne Burgers are two totally different and unrelated restaurants. Just thought we point out the obvious.

Before DB Bistro Moderne came to being, this was Feenie’s which we blogged about oh, so long ago. It is a long story and so I won’t go into that. Needless to say, it is stuff that one could creatively write a story about Feenie’s rise to fame (and fall). Did you know I worked with Rob Feenie before? A few years ago, I was the Project Manager for the launch of a range of high end home appliance in Canada. We had Rob Feenie do a demo and invited the media and public. Gosh, I still can’t believe the bucks the company paid for a 1 hour appearance.

Enough of Feenie … today DB Bistro Moderne is inspired by another great chef, Daniel Boulud of New York.

I had no idea. We had assumed that DB Bistro Moderne a lot like Feenie’s. We were wrong. This is certainly more upscale than Feenie’s ever was.

As usual, Suanne and I went very early at 5:30PM. That was the time that DB Bistro Moderne opens for dinner. We were the first one there. So it is kind of misleading seeing a lot of empty tables above. The place was absolutely filled by 6PM.

With dim lights and soft music, the ambiance was beautiful and it was perfect for a dinner date. The place is very dim for picture taking but who other than us takes pictures in dinner, right? Wrong! When we were there we could see TWO other tables taking pictures of their food too. Gosh, I have a feeling that this is getting so common that restaurants is so used to this nowadays.

As expected, service was excellent … and very French-y. Too French-y for us. We were surprised by some Amuse-bouche. As much as we tried to understand what it is called, we couldn’t understand, despite asking twice. Rather than end up looking stupid, we decided not to get the server say it a third time. Some Frenchy name. All we got was that it is some kind of cured fish. There you go. But nice touch!

Our server told us that their special of the day is Prime Ribs. Well, it was not just called Prime Ribs but a very longish description that really captivated us. It is one of those sharing plates. You know, big big portions for two people that many restaurants are doing these days. Our server was doing such a great job in describing that I was having half a mind already of ordering that. Then she said “This is $40 …”. Oh … interesting … now we are talking.

And she added “… per person”. Hmmm … on second thought maybe we’ll get the burger instead.

Le Bread came next. Pardon my French but this is what I call Le Bread de la Excellente. Very good, very nice.

There is even three different types and served with butter. The first is cheesy and crusty. The second was herb-y and soft. The third was regular baguette.

We gobbled that down rather quick. The server came and asked if we wanted more. “Of course” we said. We had more.

Two things was on my mind before I came. It was “foie gras” and “burger”. I was quite set on getting that. We finally decided get between the two of us a selection from the prix fixe menu ($35) … and a burger and … a foie gras appetizer.

Foie Gras. I said I can’t remember if I had this before. Suanne said I had and I had forgotten. Whatever right? If I can’t remember, I might as well not had foie gras before. Well, at least not as big as this.

I think they call this Torchon. Twenty one bucks. This was not on the menu and we were told this is the special of the day. The foie gras is made in a pate with a fig in the center … and …

… served with fig puree and 2 very crispy toast. Two very, very toasty crispy toast. Four would have been perfect’er.

Smoooooth … is how we say the foie gras is. Now I can say I had tried foie gras before … that is until I forget again.

Très joli mais vingt-et-un bucks … courtesy of Google Translate.

The above is called the country duck terrine. It is the appy part of the $35 Prix Fixe menu.

With onion compote, whole grain mustard, home made pickles scattered all over the plate, we debated how to deal with this. They even had sea salt and pepper placed in the corners of the plate that we almost missed because it was dim and that there was just a small portion on the side.

This is IT.

This is what I always wanted to try. I call this the twenty-eight bucks burger. They call this the New York’s Original DB Burger.

I don’t think I had ever tried a more expensive burger in my life. For twenty eight bucks it had to be perfect. It WASN’T!!!

Well, let me explain …
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Belgian Fries on Commercial Drive at 3rd, Vancouver

Ben — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 15:24:42 +0000

After dropping the boys off for yet another of their top secret training, Suanne and I decided to go to Commercial Drive. We hardly ever go to Commercial Drive at all. Not sure why though, especially knowing that there are a lot of good eating places here.

While checking out the restaurants along Commercial Drive, we came across Belgian Fries. I remember reading a well researched Foodospohy’s review just a few days earlier. Although the review came out negative from Foodosopher, we went nevertheless. We are not picky eaters and we can’t imagine how bad french fries could get.

I remember reading a lot of other reviews of Belgian Fries and each of them talks about having Poutine. I thought it was kind of funny, odd too, that the Quebec version of french fries is the thing to have in a place called Belgian Fries. On the awning in front, just beside their Belgian Fries banner is the tagline that says “CBC Montreal: Best Poutine in BC”. Perhaps they should name this place the Montreal Poutine or something like that … No? Yes? No?

Anyway, Belgian Fries is located on Commercial Drive at East 3rd Ave.

The interior is bright and spacious. The music is loud. It is definitely a youngster hangout. We felt old in there. We could smell the deep frying from the edge of the restaurant where we park ourselves. One thing that irks me is that the floor is so sticky like they had never mopped this for ages.

They used to be half the size you see in the picture above. I am not sure when they had expanded but looking at this old picture of Belgian Fries, you can just imagine that business must have been very good.

To order, you pay at the counter and they will give you a number. They will call your number once it is ready. This means that they make the fries only on order — which is good.

We got the Montreal Smoked Beef Poutine to share. The large one costs $8.50.

It sure looked unhealthy and I mean very, very unhealthy. It also looked very delicious and I mean very, very mouth watering.

We had a way to eat this. You really need a strategy because it could get very messy. We started off by …
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Campagnolo on Main Street, Vancouver

Ben — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 19:00:21 +0000

It must have been like 3 weeks ago when this happened. For some reason this is a hard to write post. Not sure why though. Maybe this is in the presence of food bloggers and I must be feeling like this had to be perfect. LOL!

So I had been sitting here for the past 30 minutes, playing Spider Solitaire on the PC and trying to get an opening line.

Suanne and I attended a food blogger photography workshop earlier this month. This workshop was organized by Jackie Connelly. This is actually the second workshop organized following the success of an earlier one. Jackie is a professional photographer specializing on food and beverage.

Suanne and I were late getting to the workshop. We were punctual people but that Saturday was a nightmare. We ended up getting caught in two traffic snarls in Richmond and Vancouver because of road constructions. So we got in late and missed the first part where Jackie showed the various tricks used to touch up the food and “food”. Hah! Now I know that some of the delicious food pictures in magazines are not real food.

The 2-hour workshop covers basic food photography. Although I never had formal training in photography, most of the things discussed were not new to me. Suanne benefited a lot from it though. What I enjoyed in the course most was about the lighting techniques. That is the single most important thing in photography.

The other thing that I picked up is Jackie’s insistence of using the tripod, even when the light is good. My problem is that a lot of my photography is taken seated at the dining table. Even though I had a couple of table top tripod, it is too cumbersome to use and limited in the angles it can support. Since this workshop, I had been carrying my favourite table top tripod in my camera bag.

Three things I would like to learn outside of this workshop is composition, food styling and Photoshop techniques. Am hoping that Jackie will organize one for these topics in future. Anyway, Jackie is organizing another workshop similar to the one we attended on January 9th. The details are here.

The workshop were attended by the following bloggers:

Eagranie from The Well Tempered Chocolatier
Shannon from Bakergirl Creations
Cassandra from Good Life Vancouver
Nolwenn from ABC Cooking
Liz from Bits n Bites
Oana from Ian and Oana *also see Oana’s post on the workshop here!
and Brenda! (aka @mightyvanilla)

The workshop was held in the wine bar at the back of the Campagnolo restaurant. I had been reading a lot about Campagnolo but did not check out until now.

After the workshop, some of us stayed behind for a late lunch. Campagnolo closes for lunch at 2:30PM but they stayed open for us … which was kind of cool because we had the entire restaurant for ourselves. The dining area is spacious.

Campagnolo is an Italian restaurant. Not formal but a casual sort of a restaurant. My eyes glazed on the Italian menu because I find it so hard to understand them. I am just not familiar with Italian and the menu are divided into so many sections. It’s easier if it is broken down by appetizers, main and dessert.

This is what I just found out from Wikipedia. With Italian cuisine there is a distinction between courses. These courses are called aperitivo, antipasto, primo, secondo, contorno, formaggio e frutta, caffe and digestivo. Fancy isn’t it?

Italian cuisine connoisseurs can correct me as I attempt to recap my understanding.

Aperitivo and antipasto are basically appetizer but am not able to tell the difference between them.

For the mains, there is the primo, secondo and contorno. Italians start with the primo which is pasta or soup followed by the secondo which is the heavier main where meat or fish is served. Accompanying them is the contorno — the side dish.

They then move on to Formaggio e Frutta (cheese and fruits), coffee and ending with this fancy thing called digestivo. Digestivo is the “coffee killer” … basically liquors like grappa.

Italians sure know how to eat huh?

The Antipasti — “before the meal”.

Everyone on the table was raving about Campagnolo’s …
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Damien’s Real Belgian Waffles in Steveston Village, Richmond

Ben — Sat, 19 Dec 2009 23:00:38 +0000

Just last week, I blogged about our breakfast at the Cafe Medina. One of the more popular items at Cafe Medina is their Belgian waffles which is not surprising given that it is a Belgian owned restaurant. In that blog post, Jonnek responded in a comment informing us that there is a Belgian waffle place in Steveston. That reminded us of the post we read just weeks ago from Yum-O-Rama of that same place.

What we learned about this unassuming place was surprising. Read on …

It is called Damien’s Real Belgian Waffles. It is located in the picturesque Steveston Village in Richmond. More precisely, it is on Chatham and No 1 Road, just slightly to the west of No 1 Road.

The sign outside is so small that you can’t pick up the name Damien written on the logo of a boy holding a waffle. We learned later that the name and the logo does not matter as much. It is the words “Real Belgian Waffle” that is more important.

Since it was just a short drive from our home and I was not working on Friday, we decided to go to Damien’s for breakfast after our boys went to school. Damien opens at 9AM and so we went close to their opening time so that we can get freshly made waffles.

It was a bright spacious place with a few tables scattered in a smallish eating area. We could see way to the back where Philippe and Miho Leroux were working. Damien’s does not look like they have lots of customers coming for breakfast here. As a matter of fact, we were the only customers.

With no walkin customers other than us, we were kind of surprised to see them making hundreds of waffles.

Their offerings are mainly waffles. Anyway we were there for the waffles only.

I opted for the Breakfast Waffle combo. For $5, I get to choose one waffle from a selection which includes …
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Cafe Medina on Beatty Street, Vancouver

Ben — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 18:00:38 +0000

Life is good — especially not having to work on Fridays.

So, after the boys went to school, Suanne and I went to have a real nice breakfast. I just love those unhurried mornings. It is unhurried because it felt like a bonus day off and I had nothing specifically I need to do.

The Medina Cafe is located just next door to the Belgian restaurant, Chambar (our previous reviews here and here). The address is 556 Beatty Street and is just outside from the Stadium Skytrain Station.

Look at the stacks of food by the window (above). That is what Medina Cafe is known for … Belgian Waffles.

Suanne and I went to the Medina Cafe. We had been wanting to go there for a long time but could not because … well … it is not exactly a conducive place for a family breakfast. I don’t know, I felt it has a Parisian Cafe feel to it.

The Medina Cafe is super busy. They will only take reservations for parties of six or more. So if you are in a smaller party of six, you could be in for a wait during mid mornings on weekends. I have heard that waits could be up to 1 hr.

We did not have to wait. We were early. Moreover, it was on a Friday. But we got a really crappy table. It was the only one clean and it was by the door. So, each time someone walks through the door, the freezing draft hit us directly. We had our coat on the whole time.

Suanne had coffee — the largest 16oz Latte which is $3.60. The latte was … well just latte. I had always wanted to learn how to do that fern thingy.

I tried to be fancy right? So without knowing what it really is, I ordered the Moroccan Mimosa.

The menu said that it is “Fresh OJ infused with cinnamon and fig”. No mention of alcohol.

Mimosa as I learned later is a mix of orange juice and champagne. Not nice. I did not like it. I just felt that liquor and orange juice is not a good mix. But I finished it nevertheless. The reason is simply because this is $8.

The Medina Cafe serves breakfast and lunch only. Breakfasts starts at 9AM to Noon while lunch is from Noon to 3PM (4PM on weekends).

The menu is not very big. Two columns … one for breakfast and one for lunch. That’s it. But each item is interesting and so it was hard to choose.

Service wise, not good. They are busy and you need to flag them down if you wanted anything extra. But when you got their attention, its OK.

As simple and humble the Belgian Waffle is, this is the hero of our breakfast. This is what we were here for. It is $3.15 for the waffle and an extra $1 for the fig orange marmalade.

But the waffle is so …
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Churros from Empanada Hut in Lansdowne Mall, Richmond

Ben — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 14:32:52 +0000

We are still searching for the perfect Churros in Metro Vancouver ever since we tried that great Spanish snack during our vacation in Spain this past summer.

So when Jonnek twitter’d me saying that he found Churros in Richmond, Suanne and I was pretty excited. BTW, did you know that we are on Twitter too? If you are interested to also follow us on Twitter, it is on http://twitter.com/chowtimes.

Our boys wanted to get the newly released Modern Warfare 2 from Best Buy (MW2 is an amazing game). So, we all took a drive to the Lansdowne Mall to pick up the game from Best Buy and then pop over to the food court to check out the Churros.

Jonnek informed us that the Churros can be found at the Empanada Hut.

Empanada Hut is famous for their empanadas. Having just had lunch, we decided not to try them although they looked very mouth-watering. Foodosophy did a write-up once on these empanadas, so you might want to check it out here.

Our mission here was the Churros. Here it is …
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The Dutch Wooden Shoe Cafe on Cambie and W17th, Vancouver

Ben — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 06:01:16 +0000

It’s breaky time again.

For a change we decided that we would go all the way to Vancouver to check out the Dutch style breakfast at the Dutch Wooden Shoe Cafe. I still remember having eaten Pannekoek for breakfast when I was in Amsterdam two years ago.

Yeah, I know. Some people tell me that Pannekoek is eaten for lunch and supper, not breakfast in the Netherlands. But to us, it is pancakes and we Canadian eat pancakes for breakfast. :-)

The Dutch Wooden Shoe Cafe is located on Cambie around the intersection with West 17th Ave. It’s easy to spot the restaurant. The outside has this faux Dutch windows with flower boxes.

The inside has a Dutch ambiance and coziness to it. But the place does look old. The dining room are partitioned into three distinct sections giving this large restaurant a small restaurant feel.

I heard that this very Dutch Wooden Shoe Cafe is the origin of the De Dutch Pannekoek House franchise that you find all over BC today. So, if you like De Dutch, you should check out the real deal here.

The restaurant has a very homey feel to it. It is haphazardly decorated with wooden clogs, paintings and Dutch posters. Along the wall, they have pictures of their past customers lined on a strip on the wall with cute comments written on them.

We started off with the normal coffee and hot chocolate. However on their menu, they have a half page showing the “GIANT” Coffee Mocha for $4.25. Yeah, they capitalized the word GIANT but at the same time they also put the word GIANT in close inverted commas. It was not in anyway giant, but is sure is “GIANT”. It was quite normal.

There is a large section on the menu dedicated to Pannekoeken (the word Pannekoeken is plural of Pannekoek). We all pestered Nanzaro to agree to get the Pannekoek because we wanted to order something other than Pannekoek. He flip-flopped a few times on what he wanted. First he wanted the Nasi Goreng (fried rice!) Pannekoek. Then he changed his mind to Curry before finally settling on the Cheese Lover’s Special.

The Cheese Lover’s Special has five different type of cheeses … Edam, Gouda, Swiss, Cheddar and Mozzarella. We felt that this is really expensive because to us it is just a thin layer of pancake with 3 slices of tomatoes on top of the cheeses. This one is $12.15. Their other Pannekoeken ranges from $11 to $13.

On every table is quite a large bottle of syrup meant for the pancakes. That all-black bottle stands out and so we had to try it on the pancake.

For me, I had the Nasi Goreng and Eggs ($10). You did not hear this wrong. The name Nasi Goreng is …
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Stepho’s Souvlaki Greek Taverna on Davie, Vancouver

Ben — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 14:00:34 +0000

I have always heard that Stepho’s Souvlaki Greek Taverna is popular and the lines were legendary. Still I was amazed with what I saw.

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Suanne and I decided to go to Stepho’s our Friday night out. Since we heard that the lines was long, we decided to be there early. We were already at Stepho’s at 4:45PM. I mean there should be no waiting for a table right? After all, how many people would eat at that time. Wrong!

While we did not have to endure waiting outside the restaurant, yet we still had to wait inside for 30 minutes. Shortly after we got seated, the lines began to form outside.

By the time we left at close to seven, the line stretches over to the neighboring shop! Amazing, everyone seems to be patiently waiting. I think this is at least an hour wait for these people … most likely more!

For these people there is a two-stage line. One is outside and a smaller group inside the restaurant. It took us 30 minutes just waiting inside the restaurant. So just imagine how long this line will take.

So Suanne and I was certainly excited to finally check out Stepho’s. It has all the signs of a very successful restaurant. For one, they had just celebrated their 20th anniversary last year. There were a lot of wait staff working at a furious pace. It seems like they barely are able to keep it all together.

The inside of the restaurant is larger than we thought. It was also very dark for the most part. It just happened that we were seated at the darkest table in the restaurant. I had to manually crank up the camera’s ISO setting to 1600. So the pictures here are rather grainy and soft.

I tried their Greek white wine. There is a name for this but I just can’t remember what it is now. I did not like it. It tasted somewhat coarse and dry. This is $5 for a glass.

You know what makes Stepho’s so popular? It’s their price and especially their humongous portions. Yet despite knowing that, we ordered an appetizer to share.

It is a Stepho’s creation called Toriboukes ($6) … or just cheese balls in English. It is served with …
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Les Faux Bourgeois on Fraser and 15th Ave, Vancouver

Ben — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 13:52:59 +0000

Frank, my boss, came over to Vancouver a few weeks ago. The last time he flew in 5 months ago, we were wondering if he was coming to serve termination notices. That was because he did not state what his mission was. This time he came with a pre-announced agenda — he was here to conduct final interviews for more Project Managers. So no fears of losing our jobs anytime soon because all the projects is going to keep us busy for sometime. Good!

The last time Frank came, I brought him to Burgers Etc on Hastings. He absolutely loved that. He is not into fancy adventuresome Asian food which is a shame. I would have brought him to some memorable places. So I played safe and went to …

… Les Faux Bourgeois. It’s so hard to spell that Bourgeois word, not to mention pronouncing it!

I think it is pronounced as lay-foo bow-zu-ar … something like that.

And I think it is French for The Fake Middle Class.

For a French restaurant, Les Faux Bourgeois is located in an unlikeliest of places. For directions, I would say that it is at the intersection of Kingsway and Fraser but technically it is on 15th and Fraser. The place has a rustic feel with original structural details. This creates a certain charm which makes Les Faux different from other French Bistros.

Les Faux Bourgeois is perpetually booked solid. I used to make reservation on a Monday for a Friday and they would tell me they do not have tables anymore. I was lucky that day. It was a Thursday when I called at noon and they told me that’s the last table they have for the day. If you think of walking in, I don’t think its a good idea.

There was three of us. Gage joined us. He is not too much of an adventrous eater from what I see. He always has this big bowl of salad which he mix in the office.

We called a few drinks hoping to just relax after a few hectic days. And then we had to be told by our waiter that we have to leave by 7PM. He said that was the condition that they told us when they took my reservation. I did not recall being told that. We made no fuss over this but I thought I should let you know. I think they want to turn the tables fast.

I had the Corona. It is a Mexican beer, nothing French about it. What is this thing about the wedge of lemon on Coronas anyway? Is it a branding kind of thing for Corona? I don’t see this done for any other pale lagers. Is there a story behind this?

The bread came. It was absolutely marvelous. It is especially so when you see this …
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