Hai Phong Vietnamese Restaurant on Kingsway and Inverness, Vancouver
Every now and then we do get emails from our readers sharing with us a review of their favorite restaurants. About two weeks ago, Julie sent us a longish email giving a description of what we should check out in her family’s favourite restaurant. That restaurant name is Hai Phong. I had heard of Hai Phong, reading it from Tiny Bite’s site and was actually on my list of restaurants to visit.
The Tamarind Crab above was what made us decide make the visit. We had enough of Pho, as you probably already know. We want to discover more of Vietnamese cuisine.
For meals with crabs and such, we had to have more people. We asked if Julie wanted to join us but by the time she got back to us, well, the dinner was already over. However, we got Angie of Sea Salt With Food to come along for this meal. Oh I want to mention this. If you are not familiar with Angie’s site, her site exploded onto the blogosphere a couple of months ago — at the peak she had 40,000 pageviews in a day and that made her Alex ranking leaped to 60,000. Gosh, her site was also featured on BBC two days ago. She is like a superstar of recipe blogs now. [Note to self: blog about recipes, not restaurants. LOL!]
Anyway, Hai Phong is located along Kingsway by Inverness. With so many Vietnamese restaurants along this stretch of Kingsway, it is very easy to dismiss Hai Phong as just one of the many.
The interior is bright because of the glass wall along the facade of the restaurant. The place looks new and even have wide screen TVs mounted on the walls. A very pleasant difference; its not only it looked clean but it is also spacious.
Service was great. We like it when the waitress is genuinely helpful and takes the time to help us understand the menu. Admittedly I do sometimes ask of the waitress questions like “So, what is YOUR favourite dish?” or “what is the dish you are most proud of here?”. I find that this sort of questions do tell a lot depending on how they answer these type of questions. Sometimes they would just sort of decline to answer by asking in return if you like beef! Sometimes, they would point out their most expensive dish. But sometimes I could see the genuineness in their answer and could sort of sense the recommended dish is what we should go for … we often use this way to validate our selection. More on following page. Click here to continue reading.
POM Wonderful — 100% Pomegranate Juice
We do get samples every now and then. Molly sent us an email asking if she could send us some coupons to sample. We said yes and true enough the package came in the mail just a couple of days later. That was fast.
Chowtimes had often been contacted asking if we would like samples from food manufacturers. We replied to Molly saying that we’re in Canada because we thought that she may have mistaken us for a US blog site. Very often, the samples comes from the US and the products are not available outside of the US.
POM Wonderful, as it turns out, is available widely in Canada. It is just that we had never paid much attention to it.
We went to the Real Canadian Superstore to get some. Never knowing where to look for it, we spent quite a bit of time looking — thinking that it is somewhere in the beverage section. We actually had thought it was some form of a concentrate because of the word “concentrate” on the bottle.
As it turns out, it was in the section where food like salads are … i.e. at the produce section. POM Wonderful came in a nice and unique bottle and is supposed to be drank cold. They have a few flavours all identified by the colors on the cap. The bottle is so nice, I know it will end up in the drawer where Suanne keeps these kind of cure bottles — she can’t bring herself to throw cute things away.
The above is Mango. To me it tastes like More on following page. Click here to continue reading.
Lemon-Garlic Pita Chips
Sydney and Joyce made some Lemon Garlic Pita Chips to go with the Creamy Hummus. It’s a perfect match.
This recipe is adapted from Cooking Light and it makes 24 pieces Pita Chips.
This Lemon Garlic Pita Chips is super crispy and can be eaten on its own as snack. We just cant stop munching on this crispy chips.
Ingredients
- 3 (6-inch) pita bread rounds
- 2 teaspoons olive oil
- 1 1/2 teaspoons lemon pepper (since we do not have lemon pepper, we added lemon juice to the olive oil for brushing)
- 1/4 teaspoon garlic powder
Creamy Hummus
Hummus is a popular Greek dip. I must warn you in advance that if you are going for a date, refrain from eating too much hummus as the raw garlic after taste is going to ruin your date.
June and Christina partnered to make this Creamy Hummus in the South Arm Cooking Club for seniors. This recipe is adapted from Cooking Light and it serves 4.
For a truly creamy hummus, it’s important to blend the tahini with water and lemon juice first; this allows it to emulsify, and gives the hummus its fabulous texture. This Creamy Hummus is best served with some pita chips.
Ingredients
- 1/3 cup water
- 1/4 cup tahini (sesame seed paste)
- 1 garlic cloves, peeled and crushed
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
- 1 (19oz) can chickpeas
- 1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil
- 1/4 teaspoon black pepper
LetsGoForDinner.com … to Joe Fortes
Suanne and I first came across letsgofordinner.com Restaurant Loyalty Card during the EAT! Vancouver event. They got our fleeting attention with their claim of giving away 50% off dinner with the use of their Restaurant Loyalty Card. We did not think much about it until a few days after we got home while sorting through the stuff we collected at EAT! Vancouver.
The LetsGoForDinner card will certainly appeal to foodies, especially those who wishes to dine out at fancier restaurants. LetsGoForDinner offers half price certificates to some of Vancouver best restaurants. It’s as simple as that. Here are some of the the restaurants covered under this program (click on the links to see what they had to offer):
- Cloud 9 Revolving Restaurant
- Joe Fortes Seafood and Chop House
- Italian Kitchen
- Trattoria
- Coast Restaurant
- Sanafir Restaurant and Lounge
- Goldfish Pacific Kitchen
- Glowbal Grill
- Zin Restaurant and Lounge
In addition the card will give you an automatic $10 discount without having to purchase discounted certificates at the following restaurants. More on following page. Click here to continue reading.
So.Cial at Le Magasin
We had been receiving emails about a promotion at So.Cial at Le Magasin. It was all about their $12 Prime Rib Dinner every Sunday. That sounded so good because I was thinking that it is going to be like the Garlic Studded Prime Rib that Suanne used to make at home. Since Suanne does not use the oven in summer, there is very little chance I am going to get Prime Ribs at home for the few months. We thought that at $12, we could not go wrong.
I was on the phone with ET of Doesn’t Tazte Like Chicken and asked if they would like to join us for the Prime Rib dinner. Suanne and I sort of knew that Christina would say yes because she is a sworn “meatatarian”.
Does anyone know why So.Cial is spelt with a dot?
You know, I had never dined in Gastown before. As a matter of fact, the last time I walked down this street was … wow … 8 years ago. This tourist stretch was very quiet that day. I guess it’s because it was a Sunday evening. We got seated by the window which give a clear nice view of the street.
The interior was really pleasant. I love the metallic ceiling and timber pillars. The restaurant was virtually empty the entire night we were there. There was only three tables taken at max … and none of them ordered the Prime Rib. As a matter of fact, most of the customers does look like they were tourists.
We each ordered their house wine — everyone except for Suanne. It was about $5, I think.
We decided to start off by ordering some tapas. It was $6 each. For five, it was at $5 each. Sounds like quite a discount right? More on following page. Click here to continue reading.
A Treat for Chowtimes Readers at Charm Modern Thai
Hi Chowtimes Readers:
Following our review of the dinner, Charm Modern Thai had very graciously agreed to offer Chowtimes Readers a chance to check out their restaurant at a discounted rate. This is exclusively available only through chowtimes.com.
All you got to do is to read the terms and conditions carefully on the coupon below and bring a printout of the coupon to the restaurant. For the “$5 off the $35 Set Menu”, please note that you need to call in advance to book your table. Also note that you will get $5 off for EVERY person in your party if you order the “$35 Set Menu” — good, eh?
You guys will have it better because Suanne and I did not even have this discount when we dined at Charm. So there you go … it’s not always that bloggers have a better deal then readers. LOL!
Getting the $35 Set Menu for just $30 is like a special on top of a special considering that it is a four course dinner with house wine! Their menu is below. See that the “$35 Set Menu” below states that this is applicable for a minimum of 2 and maximum of 6 person. I wanted to call that out so that you are not surprised if you so decide to dine alone or bring the entire hockey team. If you have more than 6 people, perhaps you could sit at separate tables and make believe you don’t know each other? You reckon? LOL! More on following page. Click here to continue reading.
