All Entries Tagged With: "Fast Food"

Churros from Empanada Hut in Lansdowne Mall, Richmond

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 … More on following page. Click here to continue reading

Japadog in Downtown Vancouver

Street food is the pits in Vancouver.

As far as I know there are nothing but hot dogs that are allowed on the streets. It is kind of sad right? With such a cosmopolitan population, there are so much potential to make Vancouver the mecca of street food. Already we are probably one of the best in terms on ethnic cuisine in North America but for street food, it is the pits … with one exception.

Despite this limitation imposed on street food vendors by the city health authorities, we do have something that we could be proud of.

When Anthony Bourdain came to Vancouver, the one thing he chose to feature was Japadog (wind to the 7th minute of the youtube above). I might be wrong but I think Japadog is uniquely Vancouver.

Japadog started off with a storm at the corner of Burrard and Smithe in downtown Vancouver. Back then, the long queues were a spectacle. There were people who would stand in line for 30 minutes just for a hotdog.

When I was there recently, there was no queue. Maybe it was because they were forced to move across the street due to ongoing road construction at their usual spot and not many of their regular customers were aware if it.

Besides Bourdain, there are quite a number of famous people who had tried Japadog. They proudly display their famous fans’ pictures on their cart and what they ate.

Some of them are more famous than others. Click on the picture above if you can’t read properly who they are. ;-)

Bewildered by the many combinations, I decided that that I won’t go wrong with their most expensive item on their menu — the Kurobuta Terimayo.

Kurobuta is described as the “Kobe Beef” of pork. According to Wikipedia, Kurobuta is listed as vulnerable because their are only 300 breeding females. Hmmm … I learn new things everyday.

I am not a hotdog person but I like Japadog. It is unlike any hotdog I had ever tried. What makes Japadog a difference is the … More on following page. Click here to continue reading

Barcelona: Guess Where We Had the Tarta de Queso

After the whole day of walking, our feet were killing us.  We looked for somewhere to rest and get a drink.  We wanted somewhere simple.

We came upon this restaurant which looked familiar.  So we went in and since they have really delicious looking pastries too, we ordered some.  Suanne gravitated towards the Tarta de Queso as always.  Alright, it is cheesecake but the words name Tarta de Queso sounded cooler.

It was served somewhat fancy considering that we did not expect a place like this to do that.

I had a simple pastry.  Loved the way they served this.  You may think that … so what?  This is nothing unique.  It sure is considering where we had this.  We had this in, believe it or not, … More on following page. Click here to continue reading

Barcelona: Getting Around Barcelona (and Our First Spanish Meal)

We got to Barcelona — finally.

As much as Suanne feeling that the vacation started when we crossed the US border, it is only when we landed in Barcelona that I feel the vacation really got going.  After all, Suanne has put everything on my shoulders.  She said that she is leaving it entirely up to me to do everything … she is there only for the ride.  I am the tour guide, she is the tourist.  She got the better deal.

Here is some self explanatory trivias for you which I got from Wikipedia.

Source: Wikipedia

In terms of cities, Barcelona ranks #11 in the world.

It did not take us too long to clear immigration at the newish looking Barcelona airport.  We travelled light with no checked in baggage.  When travelling standby, you don’t want to have the mess dealing with retrieving your baggage in case you don’t get to board.

Getting from the airport proved to be easier than we thought.  Due to the lack of planning, I had earlier been prepared dole out some bucks (or rather euros) for taxi ride to the hotel.  I was really expecting it to be expensive too.  For some reason I do not know, many airport taxis in the world have surcharges making it more expensive than normal.  Do you know the reasoning behind this?

The Information counter at the airport speaks perfect English.  We were directed to down an escalator and there was a stand with a bus waiting.  The bus shuttles to the city very often and costs a few euros.

The shuttle bus last stop was at the main square of Barcelona.  It is called the Plaza de Catalunya.  It is like the Barcelona city center.

Having got off from the bus, we needed to get some bearings on where we are and where the hotel is.  The bus driver was of no help because he speaks no English.  So, we went to the Information Center office at the Plaza de Catalunya, lugging our bags along.  We were not so conspicious because there were tourists doing that too.  So, yeah … we blended in alright!

At the Info Center, the folks there were helpful.  But that place was super busy and More on following page. Click here to continue reading

McDonald’s Angus Third Pounders in Burlington, WA

Our flight to Spain was from the Seattle-Tacoma (SEATAC) Airport.  Flights from the US are way much cheaper than if one flies out from the Vancouver International Airport.  Frankly, I don’t have much of a choice of the departing airport when it comes to staff travel.  Flying from SEATAC is the cheapest they could route me.  Otherwise it would have been about $200 more … per person.

It was very much down to the wire.  He he he … Suanne was quite nervous but I knew our travel services will come through.  On the day before our scheduled departure date, we still had not had the e-ticket issued.  We only received the e-ticket about 18 hrs before our departure time.

Lots of Hotels and Long Term Parking along International Blvd

Since our flight is in the morning the next day, our plan is to drive to the SEATAC Airport the day before and stay the night in one of the many motels around the airport.  We chose one that has a night stay with discounted long term parking.  Found one that had crappy hotel rooms but at least the long term parking was cheap at $8 per day.  One tip about the long term parking in the hotels in SEATAC — you can actually bargain with them on the posted rate.  We had our parking reduced to $8 from $9 per day.  All long-term parking and motels provide free shuttles to the airport.

Our original plan was to have a nice lunch in Seattle at Mae Phim.  But because by the time we gotten the e-tickets in our hands, it was already too late.  So we decided to just take it easy and take a slow drive and just settle for burgers.  We stopped at the McDonalds outlet in Burlington along I-5.

If you remembered, McDonalds sent chowtimes quite a number of McDonald’s Angus Third Pounders coupons last month (see our post here).  We have given away all we had except for two.  So we used that.  To our slight dismay, this coupon is only for the sandwiches, not the meal deal.  Oh well, at least it was free.

For those of you who received the coupons from Suanne, have you used your coupons yet?  Let me know what you think.

The Angus Third Pounders are only officially launched in the US.  They are not in Canada yet and if you see them here, it is probably under trial or test or whatever they call it.  The Angus Third Pounders came in three different different offerings:

• Deluxe
• Bacon and Chesse
• Mushroom and Swiss

The sandwiches alone costs $3.99 USD.

One thing we noticed differently is the bun.  They are much better tasting than the normal ones.   They are toasted sesame seed buns and are sweetish and soft.   More on following page. Click here to continue reading

New McDonalds Product – The Angus Third Pounders

Hi All:

Chowtimes were informed by McDonalds USA that they were launching a new burger nationwide yesterday. Please note that this is currently being launched in the US and not in Canada. Normally we would not be interested because it’s for the US but since they offered to provide us BOG (Be-Our-Guest) cards, we jumped on it and said yes.

The new products are called the Angus Third Pounders.  Obviously from the name itself it is large … a third larger than the quarter pounders.  As a matter of fact, this is the first new burger launch from McDonald’s since the Big N’ Tasty burger was added to the menu in 2001 … eight years ago.

The Angus Third Pounders are available in three offerings:  Deluxe, Bacon & Cheese and Mushroom & Swiss.  The big-big difference between this and the other McDonald’s burgers are the introduction of ingredients never seen before on a McDonald’s burger:

• Red onion rings
• Full slices of bacon
• Sauteed murshrooms
• Natural Swiss Cheese
• Bakery-Style sesame seed roll

It seems like McDonalds is upgrading their burgers to offer More on following page. Click here to continue reading

Washington DC: Food Court in the Union Station

By the time we were left the Arlington National Cemetery, it was already getting late. We did not want to go to unfamiliar neighborhood looking for food and decided to just head back to the hotel and pick up some food at the Union Station. Frankly, we did not care too much for food. We were just too hot and thirsty … both of us thought of only one thing — smoothies.

We did not know that there was an even bigger food court at the basement level of the Union Station. For the past three days using the Union Station, we had always thought that all the eating places were at the street level floor until I peeked down an escalator and there was it … a huge food court with quite a lot of variety of food.

Suanne and I simply need rice. If we go a few days without rice, we felt like we had not eaten at all. There were the Chinese food stall but we did not really like that … it is, as expected, American Chinese food. You know … what they call fried rice is more like soya sauce rice.

So we settled for the stall called Kelly’s Cajun Grill.

They claim is that their Bourbon Chicken is world famous. This is their signature dish. It is a large serving and consists of succulent marinated chicken.

Frankly, this looks suspiciously more Chinese than the name implies. It is just like Char Siew rice. Instead of using pork for char siew, they used chicken instead. It is a simple meal but a truly filling one.

We both got ourselves a smoothie each. You know, we rarely have smoothies normally but for the duration of our vacation, we were practically searching for smoothies everyday.