All Entries Tagged With: "Vancouver"

Cafe Gloucester on Cambie and West 17th, Vancouver

Quick. Show of hands those who had never been to Cafe Gloucester before?

I would have thought that a lot of people who have known of this old time HK Style Cafe. I heard of them before I even first used the words HK Style Cafe on chowtimes.

But it was only recently that we went.

BTW. What do you think is the proper way to pronounce the name of Cafe Gloucester? Is it “Glos-ter” or “Glow-chest-ter”?

Located on Cambie, Cafe Gloucester was one of the businesses that had survived the carnage during the Canada Line construction. A restaurant like this will definitely survive because they are very popular particularly with the Chinese community. This is because their prices are cheap, service is fast and food are not bad.

I remember reading that the Copa Cafe located a few blocks down Cambie, is an off shoot of Cafe Gloucester — like a rouge off shoot. Is that right?

Cafe Gloucester can brag that they had won the award for being the Best HKSC. I am not sure which year though but maybe last year.

You know, of all the restaurant awards, I follow the Chinese Restaurant Awards closely. The coveted Critics Awards for 2010 will be announced on April 7th and you can bet that who ever wins these awards will receive instant recognition. He he he … to think that I had dinner with some of the critics at S&W Pepper House just recently.

We were there for lunch. The dining area is large and yet they are able to fill the restaurant in most times of the day. Cafe Gloucester is one of the few HK Style Cafe where service to us is polite. The workers are even well dressed with matching uniforms. It’s a sign to us that they care about good service rather than dishing out cheap food and be done with that.

Their menu is lovely. There are enticing pictures spread over eight pages with some very good selection on each section.

This is the type of menu that we take a long time reading because it is hard to decide what we want. We needed a more sophisticated way to keep track of our shortlisted dishes than keeping a finger at the relevant pages. We actually have to list it down on paper and then do our elimination from there.

I went with the Laksa Chicken Vermicelli Soup ($8). This is just so that I can contrast this with Bo’s Laksa that I had recently where I can see why his is so good compared to those you find around town.

Nope. The laksa in Cafe Gloucester is too watery and it is only a little spicy. So yeah, it was hard to finish this because it’s not as I expected. It is not that it is inedible mind you. In the most part, it is decent.

But the chicken meat are boned in and quite meaty and well done. That kind of save this bowl of noodles.

Normally I would finish the laksa soup down to the very last drop. Here I just had the chicken and the vermicelli. They need to make the laksa thicker.

Nanzaro took the longest to decide what to order. Strange considering that he still end up with fried rice.

The reason was he tried to be fancy and wanted something better than everyone else. He took so long and the waiter was waiting for his order that he felt pressured. So he had the Gloucester House Special Fried Rice ($7).

The fried rice was … More on following page. Click here to continue reading

Mis Trucos on Davie, Vancouver

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 … More on following page. Click here to continue reading

Goto King Near the Joyce Skytrain station, Vancouver

Full Disclosure
This blog post is written based upon a free meal provided by a chowtimes reader who has a connection to the owner of the restaurant. More details below.

Last Saturday we had eight chowtimes readers joining us for a lunch and learn. While Suanne and I were the one organizing this, it was Rey who picked up the tab for this.

Rey is an advocate for Filipino community and in the course of his community work, he has amassed some goodwill barter from the businesses of the Filipino community. One of this is with the Goto King restaurant on Joyce. Since he has a lot more credit accumulated than he could ever eat, he offered to donate some to eight chowtimes reader — which we accepted. After all, we could not resist this as long as it benefits our readers.

Frankly, we mulled over this unusual arrangements for some time because well, it was unusual. Having known Rey for sometime, I know his intentions and how he goes around helping people without asking anything in return. By sharing this with chowtimes readers, he is also able to further promote Filipino culture and food.

Then I thought about how our readers will perceive this because I know some of you would be suspicious about free stuff for chowtimes. This is not about a free lunch just for Suanne and I but it is more for our readers who are willing to come together to meet like minded foodies and learn too. I was also thinking that this would be a great opportunity to have multiple reviews done not just by me but also reviews directly from foodies, not food writers or bloggers. Just see how my thoughts compares with the rest.

Oh … I wish I did not have to go into this long lengthy preamble and having to explain this to everyone. But this is necessary since it involves free stuff — and it’s also an unusual arrangement. LOL!

Goto King is located very near the Joyce Skytrain station. Goto King is actually opened by the Cucina Manila restaurant next door. Cucina Manila is a Filipino-Filipino restaurant while Goto King serves Chinese-Filipino fare. Rey briefly introduced Liberty, the owner of Cucina Manila, to us and later told us that Cucina Manila is on an expansion spree. There are plans to open a Filipino restaurant in Richmond and a lechon (similar to Chinese roast pork) restaurant a few doors away.

Goto King is actually the name of a popular food outlet (over 70 outlets) in the Philippines. However, the Goto King in Vancouver has no affiliation to the Philippines. He he he … that reminds me of the Ba Le Vietnamese sandwich name which you find all over North America. Anyway, Goto is not pronounced as “go to” but goh-toh. Go To in Tagalog means congee.

The Goto King restaurant is not very big. With 11 of us in total, we practically took up 1/3 of the restaurant. It was a busy day at the restaurant too as expected it being on a Saturday noon time. There wasn’t a line at the restaurant because they turn the table pretty fast.

Goto King is not a gourmet restaurant. They serve day-to-day Filipino food. I would call this no-frills comfort food with reasonable prices.

It was a good thing we had Rey who explained every single item on the menu (and also gave us a primer on the Filipino community and culture). Without him doing this, we would not have known most of the items on the menu.

When I said no-frills, I mean no-frills. It is almost like Hawkers Delight — just cleaner, and slightly pricier. By that I mean that you get your own drinks from the cooler and they don’t come around clearing each plate as you finish it until you ask.

In Goto King you don’t get that “how is it going guys? The weather is beautiful today isn’t it?” kind of service, if you know what I mean. Here, they will stand by the table with pen on the order chit waiting for you to say what you want. Just an observation because we like exchanging pleasantries … LOL!

Someone ordered the Shanghai Lumpia (deep fried spring rolls – 12 pcs) $5.95. They have several types on the menu (fresh lumpia too). The spring rolls are smaller than those you normally find else where and is served with garlic soy sauce and sweet chili sauce.

I so wanted to order something else but seeing that everyone already staked their claim on the more delicious dishes, I went with Goto (congee). Only Jane and I had the congee. Jane has the real thing … the real Goto … the real one with tripe ($6). This is what Jane had to say:

Jane: I think it was more flavorful than the usual congee. The tripe was tender and good too, but some of the pieces were so soft and tasted like belly/fat. Maybe those were fat indeed? I’m not sure.

I had the other version. It is called Arroz Caldo and has chicken primarily. Also $6, I find this congee filling and packed quite a bit of flavour as compared to the more bland Chinese version. I like that they have lots of ginger and chicken in it.

The condiments on the table are fried garlic chips, fish sauce and soy sauce. We all like the fried garlic chips which many of us added to the rice and congee. The fish sauce is rather salty quite unlike those we had in Vietnamese restaurants.

So I added lots of the fried garlic chips. Nice … real comfort food.

A lot of us got the Sisig Pork  $7. It came served in a sizzling hot plate. This was what I was eye’ing for but what can I do right? LOL!

It was topped with a raw egg. Not really knowing what to do, those of them who got this stared and waited for the egg to cook.

It didn’t cook.

The lady boss came around and asked everyone to stir the egg into the sisig — which everyone did immediately as the hot plate was cooling already.

This is how the Sisig Pork looked like post-stirring and pre-eating.

And this is how Rodney (who knows Filipino food very well) and Marcia (who is new to Filipino food) has to say about the Sisig Pork:

Rodney: The Sisig dish is presented exactly the same on a sizzling platter. The outer skin is usually crunchier as Filipinos are generally fond of it being crunchy and more burned as this can also be eaten as a snack / appetizer (called “pulutan”) which is munched alongside the local beer.

Marcia: I had the crispy pork dish.  Tasty but not quite crispy enough and had some gristle.

Gristle? What does the work gristle mean, Marcia?

Most of the rest including Suanne had the Chicken Inasal ($7).  It is marinated fried chicken served with garlic rice and pickled vegetable on the side.

The skin-on chicken is crisp and nicely fried. It was also a big meaty piece of it too.

Here is Rodney’s take on the Chicken Inasal. BTW, Rodney is apparently a big time food reviewer on Yelp.ca

Rodney: The Chicken Inasal is our first time to eat this dish, but then with the description that Rey provided being marinated overnight, I felt that it tasted bland. I could have just easily mistaken it as a Crispy Fried Chicken dish.

I noticed that they serve a lot of rice with the food. That tall mound of rice adds up to quite a meal. I thought it was quite flavorful and with a dash of soy sauce and a bit more fried garlic chips, I could even eat this alone.

With the 11 of us, we ended up ordering only four different types of main dishes. That is because most of us went for either the Sisig Pork or the Chicken Inasai.

The dessert part was a bit more varied. The Sapin-sapin above is $2.00. It is a colourful glutinous rice cake and very sticky … More on following page. Click here to continue reading

Spices Vietnamese Cuisine on Cambie and W 17th, Vancouver

This is the last post where we will say “we were there after dropping off/before picking up our boys from their secret Olympic rehearsals”. All the rehearsals actually gave us the chance to eat at a place where we normally do not go to.

Their last practice was the day before the closing ceremony where it stretches until past 10PM. The organizers provided them food (sandwiches and subs) and so Suanne and I decided to go eat before picking them up.

After cross checking our to-try list, we decided to go to Spices on Cambie. Ever since Thien Kim (where we tried 4 different soup noodles and none of them are phos) and Song Huong (7 courses of Beef), we had been trying to see what else Vietnamese offer in their cuisine other than Pho. We like pho, but we had so many of them it is less of an adventure eating them these days.

Spices fit the bill. While Spices also has the usual Vietnamese fare like noodle soups, sandwiches and brochettes, they also have a few specialties of their own.

Spices is a reasonably sized restaurant. Unlike the bright interiors of most Vietnamese restaurants, this place a bit dim. The red and wood paneled walls gave it that reddish hue. The walls were decorated with interesting black and white photos of life and architecture of Vietnam.

It was a pretty busy night at the restaurant. Even though you don’t see any of the tables above taken, I took that picture way past 9PM where most of their customers had just left.

We observed that we were the only Asian customers here which we initially thought that perhaps Spices will westernize their food to suit non-Asian customers. And then we heard the workers speaking to each other in Cantonese too. We were so wrong.

So we first ask the waitress if this is authentic Vietnamese cuisine they have here, pointing to some of the items which I had never come across before. She vehemently said that their cook is Vietnamese. We took that at face value.

Their menu is diverse. Pho represents only a small section. What caught my attention was a few dishes that has the word “Imperial” and “Royal” in the name (see the 1st and 2nd images of the menu above). Anything “Imperial” and “Royal” has to be good right?

Look at the last page of the menu above where there is a page on combos ($12-$17) you can order if you want to try a few of their dishes. We wanted to order from it but it is too “limiting”. It is also too little if we order one combo to share but too much if we order two.

So we ordered Prawn Imperial as an appetizer. We had just one piece to try which is $3.50. The appetizer size option is two pieces for $6.25.

It deserves the Imperial name. It has a large prawn wrapped with ground pork and vegetables and then re-wrapped with Vietnamese egg roll wrapper. It is deep fried and served with what they call the Imperial sauce. We can’t really pick out why this seemingly normal fish sauce tasted good and different.

It was quite a meaty spring roll and the wrapper was crunchy as expected. Wished we had ordered two instead.

Suanne wanted to order a lighter baguette but was told that it was only for lunch. Not wanted to scour the menu again, we asked the waitress what is their most popular dish. She rattled off four dishes but the first one caught our attention … the Royal Prawn Citron.

This, to us, is the OMG dish of the night. It is pricey ($15) but worth it. The dish is filled with jumbo prawns which are marinated in a “special sauce” and then sauteed with fresh garlic dill sauce.

When it was brought to the table, it was sizzling hot which drew a lot of attention from our neighboring table. It just smell heavenly and we were quite pleased with the choice.

The prawns were fat succulent ones with brittle shells. A little more crunchier would have been 100% perfect. I just like to eat the prawns with the shells.

The dills too were great with rice. It is not often (if at all) I see dill done this way before. Now … the best part is the … More on following page. Click here to continue reading

Ba Le Deli and Bakery on Kingsway and Fraser, Vancouver

It was Day 17th of the Vancouver 2010 Olympics. Arkensen and Nanzaro was getting all excited about this big day when they will perform in the Closing Ceremony. The Closing Ceremony does not start until 5:30PM but they need to report at their station at 11:30AM.

For Suanne and I, the plan of the day is centered around watching the Canada-USA gold medal hockey game and the Closing Ceremony on TV at home. After dropping the boys off and wishing them to break a leg, we thought we quickly grab a sandwich from Ba Le and go back for the game with time to spare.

We went to the location on Kingsway and Fraser. Their other location is in Chinatown. BTW, is the name Ba Le mean Paris in Vietnamese?

Ba Le is well known f0r the Vietnamese baguette. Between the Chinatown location and this location, you MUST come to this location. This is because …

… Ba Le had just started operation of their new expensive oven just a few weeks ago. As reported on Chowhound, the owners had this industrial sized oven imported from France and had the baker sent to France to learn to use the oven too.

Just as we were to place our order, we saw them taking out a freshly baked batch of baguette from the oven. It smell so good that we told ourselves we are going stay and eat in Ba Le … on one of the three small tables just next to the oven.

We counted that batch that just came out. It was 200 baguettes in those trays. It seems like they make a lot … more than a thousand for sure. Looking at the operation here, I am sure they make this and sell it to other restaurants. We were wondering if they do sell just the freshly baked baguette to walk-in customers.

The picture above was deceptively quiet. It was all about angle and timing! There were a lot of customers lining up for their orders. A lot of them obviously taking out for the hockey gold medal game because they were wearing Team Canada jerseys. I had never seen such lines for Banh Mi before. The assembly station was extremely busy and somewhat chaotic. I can see that all four people were working heads down trying to keep up with all the orders.

Suanne observed that the man who was taking the orders (and handling the money) uses his hands to pick up the food too.

They have ten different types of sandwiches on the board. They are all about $3 to $4. Besides the baguettes, they also sell a lot of other Vietnamese delicacies. People come here for the baguettes.

We got two sandwiches to share. Selecting one of them is easy … it was the one that is simply called the Special sandwich (right). The other one was the meatier Grilled Pork sandwich.

The baguette has the nice golden look to it. The slashes is shallow and the crust thin. Light and airy, it crumples easily when pressed.

So, I was complaining to Suanne that she does not know how to eat sandwiches. You see, she just has to press the sandwich each time she takes a bite. It was reflexes I know but this makes her sandwich all flat like sliced bread by the time it was half-finished. Ohhh … I can’t stand that. LOL!

The Grilled Pork Sandwich ($3.50) had that moist pork pieces which was slightly … More on following page. Click here to continue reading

Santouka Hokkaido Ramen on Robson, Vancouver

The last two weeks had been a blast for all of us in Vancouver, hasn’t it? Without a doubt, yesterday was the high point of the Olympic. We felt so proud of being Canadian and having hosted the world in this great sporting event. Hope the legacy now in place will lead the city to greater things in years to come. We now nervously wait for the accounts people to tally the tab!

Last Saturday was the final dress rehearsals of the Vancouver 2010 Closing Ceremony for Arkensen and Nanzaro. They received an email just the night prior informing that they need to do TWO dress rehearsals instead of one. So instead of 11:15AM to 7:00PM, they were informed that they need to stay right until 10:30PM. They sure worked hard for it … and in total secrecy too. We are actually proud that they kept it a total secret from us. We finally saw their performance on TV! But damn the guys at CTV who cut out a LARGE part of their performance to air commercials!!!! Both Arkensen and Nanzaro was so totally upset when they saw the replay last night. They practiced so hard to show the WORLD.

After dropping the boys off for their final practice, Suanne and I thought we go to the section of downtown for lunch knowing that the western part of Robson is quiet. Indeed it was. There was lots of street parking around.

We went to Santouka, the new Ramen place that everyone is raving about the past few weeks. Apparently, Santouka is a popular chain restaurant in Japan which specializes on serving Hokkaido ramen. I think they also operate a chain in the US too.

Santouka is located just next door to Guu with Garlic on Robson Street. You might miss it because the shop front is hidden behind a bus shelter. Anyway, the address is 1690 Robson Street.

We were surprised to learned that they had been opened only for the second day. We assumed that it was already a week since they opened. The restaurant was busy, not quite full but given it being opened for just the second day, we were impressed.

The dining area seats about 35-40 people. There are counter seats that overlooks the open kitchen which was separated by glass which we thought was good because it does not steam up the entire restaurant with the boiling broth.

We were seated at the section in front where there is a low kidney shaped table which has a large wooden carving of a bear in the center. We like that section. The only draw back was that there is no where to hang our coats or place our bags.

Service was excellent as one expects from Japanese restaurant.

We were promptly served glasses of water with mini ice-cubes. For a restaurant this size, there were a lot of waitresses. There were four of them milling around ever ready to help when needed. So yeah, we get almost anything instantaneously and the glasses were always topped.

Their menu came in a plastic binder and has pictures. They only have limited selection on that day. Basically we only can order from the first two pages. What a bummer.

The other pages were items they will only serve on their grand opening day. Click on the images above to see a more legible version of the menu.

I ordered item listed under the section that says “Limited Quantity: First Come First Serve”. I see a lot of ramen places does this “limited quantity” thing that makes people want to order that even though it is more expensive. The normal ramen is about $9 while the “limited quantity” ones are $13.

I got the Toroniku Kara Miso Ramen. It came served with a bowl of noodles in a spicy hot miso soup and a side plate with all the other ingredients including the pork jowl which is the star of this dish. First thing we did was to taste the soup … in a word, awesome. It is sesame flavoured and rich. I don’t know how to describe this better … it is not the smooth kind of broth but grainy (?).

The noodles was equally good and tasty too. We could even eat this alone with the soup … More on following page. Click here to continue reading

True Confections on Denman, Vancouver

Suanne likes desserts. She likes all kinds of desserts. It does not matter if it is cakes or pastries or ice-cream or cookies … even Asian type desserts like red bean soup. It does not take a lot to get her to go out to have dessert.

She goes for her dessert fix with Polly every Friday. The problem is she has to go according to Polly’s schedule which is only a couple of hours in at noon. The thing is also most of the better dessert places are opened at night.

After the ramen dinner at Benkei, I suggested that we go to True Confections on Denman since we are already around the area. True Confections is one of the places Suanne often says she wanted to eat in.

There are three True Confections dessert restaurants in Metro Vancouver. The other two restaurants are on West Broadway and North Vancouver.

True Confections is known for their cakes which they say is completely made in the restaurant. They also made sure that they do not have fillers, preservatives but uses only fresh ingredients. So yeah, they take their cakes very seriously.

Specifically, they are known for their very tall cakes. Some of their more popular ones looks like it is 9-10 inches tall. The ones you see above are not the taller ones, but you get the idea.

The restaurant was empty on the Friday night we were there. It was the Olympics which drew everyone away to the Olympic zones. We asked the waiter about it and he said it had been very quiet ever since the Olympics started. They had even extended the restaurant in anticipation of more Olympic traffic — but all in vain. I feel for them. If there is anything we could do to help rally people to come to places like this, we would … we should.

There are cakes, premium chocolate cakes, cheesecakes and stuff like pies and tarts. I knew what Suanne wants … cheesecake. We also cannot ignore their tall PREMIUM chocolates cakes too — they look too good to resist.

We got the simple Fresh Fruit Cheesecake which costs $8.25. They call this a Montreal-style cheesecake. We were  not sure what that means actually. We did observe that is … More on following page. Click here to continue reading