All Entries Tagged With: "Waffle"

Qoola on Denman, Vancouver

This is a complementary meal from Qoola.

A week ago, Suanne and I received an invitation to checkout a new frozen yogurt place called Qoola. Since we were going to be in downtown anyway for the Taste BC event on the same night, we decided to pop over. I know it is kind of weird … we were going for yogurt, waffle and crepes immediately after wine and cheese, sushi, burger … all on the same night.

So, Suanne, Angie and I took a short drive to the western end of Denman to where Qoola is. Qoola is actually located at the old location of Cupcakes (1116 Denman).

We were met up front by Warrick who is the man behind the entire idea of Qoola. Warrick came across to us as a bright, energetic young man with great passion in what he does.

Qoola had been opened for just one month so everything is spanking clean. We love the bright greenish interior. Qoola is green … more greener than what we expected and we soon realized how seriously green they are.

We had a crash course, to say the least … much of which went swosh over my head. Too much data and too technical for me after all the wine from Taste BC.

Not really a person who knows what is what, we left the choice to Warrick and his partners. The only thing we asked is that they surprise us. First came their Green Tea Yogurt with blueberry and marionberry sauce. It was good and we like it.

I don’t care much for frozen yogurt. The only time I had frozen yogurt of note is Red Mango which we had in Bellevue,WA. I was told that many frozen yogurt places uses powdered yogurt which contains only about 1 million bacteria. However, Qoola uses only fresh yogurt despite its limited shelf life of a couple of weeks only. Fresh yogurt has 400 times more bacteria than powdered yogurt.

The next surprise is the Original yogurt with apples, cinnamon flakes and caramel sauce. We love this more than the earlier one. I like especially the fresh looking and crunchy apple chunks. More on following page. Click here to continue reading

Brussels Series: Belgian Waffle at the Grand Place

I hardly spent a few minutes in the hotel room. The sky is getting dark and I wanted to at least spend sometime getting to the centre of Brussels. So, I dropped my bags, had a quick clean-up and headed out immediately. I am so glad for this room because compared to the dump in Paris this is much comfortable. I got a good deal from Orbitz which is only USD$60 per night.

The Brussels downtown core is so compact. You could walk to most places of interest. I read a lot about the Grand Place which is a central market square. This is the most visited tourist site in Brussels. The square is surrounded on all sides by grand buildings. The Gothic style City Hall, below, is 600 years old.

UNESCO had declared the Grand Place as a World Heritage Site.

The City Museum, located right across from the City Hall, is dedicate to the history of Brussels. There is a room that contains all the costume of the Manneken Pis.

I can never figure out the Manneken Pis. For some reason, every tourist must go look for this little pissing statue. One would expect this to be bigger but it actually is very small. Every now and then, it is dressed up in costumes. There is even one costume in the Toronto Maple Leaf’s hockey gear.

On the way from my hotel there are quite a number of places that sells Belgian Waffle. I think these waffle places caters more to the tourists.

All of them have large mouthwatering waffles pictures and waffle samples on display. I was not hungry but could not resist stopping to get one to try for myself. It comes in so many different combinations of toppings. It was hard choosing what I wanted … I wanted all!

There are also simple, no-frill ones … just simple icing sugar or honey. I read somewhere that the locals do NOT go for the fancy multiple topping varieties — those were for tourists. The locals just have simple ones.

Who cares, I am a tourist and so I ordered the tourist special … the biggest that they have on the menu! This monster costs 5.50 Euros. It was so sinfully delicious. I can recall all the toppings are … I see lots of whipped cream, melted chocolate, strawberries, and banana.

Come to think of it, this is no longer a waffle! There are so much toppings that I could not even see the waffle or even remember tasting it.