All Entries Tagged With: "Washington State"

Olive Garden in Bellingham, WA

Off late, I had been suffering from what I call the “fat wallet syndrome”.

You see, in the span of a week I found out that I have this wear in three of my pants at the same time. I have no idea how long I had been walking around like this. I soon found out that it’s because I carry my fat wallet in my back pocket. I stick all kinds of plastic cards in my wallet that it just got fatter and fatter over time that I did not really notice how fat it was.

I have a habit about my clothing. I had been buying them from the Washington State for the past few years. I just find that it is easier to find one that fit and looks good from the US than those in Vancouver. So Suanne and I took the opportunity over the weekend to drive down to Bellingham to buy new clothings while the boys were engaged in their activities.

After a round of shopping, we decided to stop by the Olive Garden for lunch. We had always seen their commercials on US TV channels and thought we should check it out. We went to the one on Meridian St.

Olive Garden is an American chain restaurant specializing in Italian food, particularly styled after the region of Tuscany.

Olive Garden does quite a good job styling their restaurant like old rustic Italian setting. Behind it all it’s really another American chain restaurant. Even the dining rooms were arranged in such a way that it’s separate dining rooms with different themes in each room.

I really like their chairs … with rollers. That to me is good old American efficiency at its best. It’s actually a great idea because I find it very easy to reposition my chair when I want to.

Service was great and prompt. With the menu being new to us, they were very helpful in getting our drink orders. We ended with a Strawberry Bellini and Frozen Tiramisu. Both drinks were about $6+ each. Suanne liked the Frozen Tiramisu especially which was really rich and creamy.

The breadstick were quite good. It was served warm, is soft and lightly salted. What I like best is that they were very quick to ask if we wanted more the moment the last piece was taken from the basket. The service is top notch — it was awesome.

We noticed that one common item on every table is the large bowl of fresh salad. They do make good salad with really fresh vegetables and a “say when” amount of grated cheese. He he he … when the wait staff came by and asked Suanne “say when”, Suanne did not quite hear what he said and replied “yes” … and he went on and on grating cheese into the salad until I realized there was a breakdown of communication and quickly said “stop!”. More on following page. Click here to continue reading

Seattle: Maggie Moo’s Ice Cream and Treatery in Burlington

Right in front of the Popeyes Chicken, sharing the same building is an ice-cream store called the Maggie Moo’s Ice Cream and Treatery. “Treatery” — is that even a word? We thought it was a real nice word and decided to give ourselves a treat after the Fried Chicken lunch.

Maggie Moo’s ice-creams are freshly made in store. Since our first trip there, we had been there three times already. We simply love their super rich ice-cream and especially their prices.

You can have the ice-cream in any way you want. You could order one of their creations which they call “Fresh Escape”. We tried that (sorry no pictures) and they were simply awesome. Selecting from one of their dozen or so choices were bewildering to say the least. But it will cost you something like $6 or so.

Alternatively, you could go the traditional route of ordering a base flavor and then select one of their many mix-ins. However, the cheapest alternative is to just choose a wafer cone and a couple of ice-cream flavours.

We learned that if you just select a chocolate coated wafer bowl and then two large scoops of ice-cream, it will cost just slightly over two bucks. It’s a very nice dessert after the fried chicken lunch.

Believe it or not, but we had never been to any ice-cream places in Vancouver before. There is one place we want to check out sometime this spring … Vivo’s. Do you know of any such ice-cream places in Vancouver, or Richmond?

Seattle: Popeyes Chicken and Biscuits in Burlington

Oh shoot!

I felt so pressured to keep up blogging on this Seattle series. My memory on this trip is somewhat fading. I had been looking at the screen for the past 5 minutes just thinking of what to share. Sigh … and some of you just gotta say you look forward to this series. Pressure, pressure, pressure! LOL!

We left Richmond kind of late … in the late morning. By the time we got over the border, it was already noon. We drove on and decided to make a stop at Burlington for a quick lunch in a fast food joint. We did not care about what it is except that it should be something we do not have in Canada.

As we drove along the shopping row on S Burlington Blvd looking for a fast food joint we chanced upon the distinctive yellow and red Popeyes Chicken and Biscuits restaurant. Popeyes was one of the places we had on our shortlist of restaurants.

One would have thought that in a place called Popeyes, you would have expected that there will be Popeye (the Sailorman) images all over the restaurant. Nope, there was none at all. Strange.

Anyway, Popeyes is one of the biggest chicken fast food outlets in the US. There is none in Vancouver.

We ordered the 8 pieces Spicy Chicken. It seems like their flagship product just like the Big Mac is to McD’s. It came with some “biscuits”. I still thinks that biscuits means cookies. At least where I grew up, biscuits IS cookies. These US-style “biscuits” should just be simply called bread, or scones.

Anyway, the biscuits were flaky but too dry for my liking. If only I have hot chocolate, I’ll dunk it in. I took a bite and decided I had enough.

Despite being called Spicy Chicken, it is quite mild. We like the crispy skin a lot and the fact that it was not all too greasy. The pieces were quite big too, especially the breasts. I would say they were huge, not only big.

We read the brochure in the store that the chicken are made fresh and hand battered. It is marinated in Louisiana seasonings.

The Cajun Sparkle was really nice with the chicken. It is a mix of salt, garlic, onion and spices. It was so nice, we took a few extra packets with us.

We also got ourselves the Chicken Po’Boy. Po’Boy is a Louisiana subs made of baguette and fried meat. I remembered the first Po’Boy I had in New York’s Oyster Bar last year. That Oyster Po’Boy was great … this one, it tastes just like Mc Chicken if you ask me. Popeyes Po’Boy has the edge over McChicken because of the Cajun Sparkle.

The bill came up to $25.47. The expensive one is the Fried Chicken which works out to be about $2 per piece. For what we had, we felt it was quite expensive.

Arby’s in Bellingham, WA

Oh, did you guys know how long was the border wait last weekend? It was unbelievably long … 3-5 hours south bound. We had been going south for our shopping at least once a month since the Canadian Dollar reached par with the mighty USD. However, we had been somewhat lucky not to be caught up in lineups over 1 hr.

A couple of months ago, we stopped by Arby’s in Bellingham. Arby’s is struggling in Canada with just a handful of outlets in BC. We like Arby’s and used to go often for their Roast Beef sandwiches when there was an outlet in Richmond. It’s closed a few years ago but we still remember having the sandwiches almost once a week.

We got the French Dip and Swiss Toasted Sub Combo for $6.85. The combo included some fries and a soft drink.

We prefer toasted subs. Some people told us that the reason subs were toasted was because it’s a way to hide the fact that the subs were not freshly baked. Regardless, we prefer it toasted.

This one you should try. It has thinly sliced roast beef and swiss cheese in between a warm toasted ciabatta roll. Dipping it into the hot savory au jus takes the flavour to a new level.

The fries was OK. We get a choice of either curly or homestyle fries. What we love most is the dips. There are four different types available from the condiment counter.

Suanne will do anything for cheesecakes. Arby’s has Cheesecake Poppers which costs $2.61 for six small pieces.

More dips … for the Cheesecake Poppers, it was the Raspberry Sauce. The poppers were quite good … it was very crunchy on the outside and soft, creamy and warm inside.

Cascade Pizza in Bellingham, WA

Ever since we had started blogging two years ago, we had never met up with any fellow bloggers. That is not until around the (US) Thanksgiving last year. We had been in contact with Jennifer from Pie Is The New Toast for some time and had agreed to meet up if we are in the Bellingham area. Actually, Jennifer had already blogged on our meet-up here.

Suanne and I went spent a day in the US during Black Friday for shopping. We had been there shopping almost every Black Friday but do find it is somewhat subdued this year. After 10 hours of walking around malls, our feet were killing us.

The Cascade Pizza is an Italian restaurant located on Meridian Street. If you know where Bellis Fair Mall is, you’ll easily find this place. Bellis Fair is on the intersection of I-5 and Meridian. So, you just drive south bound along Meridian for 1.5 miles after the I-5 intersection.

The Cascade Pizza is one of Jennifer’s favourite restaurant. What we like about this place is that the quality of the food is good and the price really reasonable. It was a great choice of restaurant, Jennifer.

The Garlic Bread looked absolutely delicious. We like it with lots of garlic spread and we can see how much the spread had soaked into the bread. And most important of all, it is toasted to a crunch.

The Lasagna and Ribs were some of the richest, creamiest lasagna we had tried. It was just excellent and the portions were generous. What I enjoyed most about this is the ribs … they were simply beyond great. For $8.95 and the portion we had, I really find this value for money.

One thing that Suanne and I find about the ribs in the US … they are much bigger than what we normally find in Canada. Every since, MammaViv raved about how she will make trips to the US to buy ribs, we had been comparing the ribs we find in Vancouver’s Safeway, Safe-On-Foods, Costco, Superstore, etc against what we find in the US. The ones we buy from the US is like twice the size of the puny ribs we have here. So, nowadays, we almost end up buying ribs back from our shopping trips to the US.

The Garlic Chicken Pizza with white sauce was great stuff. We ordered that pizza because it had uncommon ingredients for a pizza. The small pizza costs $10.95 and still it was way too much for us.

It was great being able to meet up with fellow bloggers and to be able to put a face to a name. Jennifer, it was a great choice of restaurant. Suanne and I really enjoyed this place — we would not have found this on our own. So, where will you show us the next time meet up again?

Horseshoe Cafe in Bellingham, WA

I am so behind in blogging these days. On the next few days I am going to blog on the places we visited about two months ago. Here is one entry from one of our shopping jaunts to Bellingham.

We had not warmed up to the idea to pay for a Nexus pass. It seems to be a lot of money of which we are not sure if we will use it all year round. So, instead, we would normally drive across the border at an unearthly time, before 6AM usually, just to beat the border lineups. We would have breakfast after we cross the border.

We just randomly picked a breakfast joint along Holly St and went to The Horseshoe Ranch Room Cafe. We had originally wanted to go to The Old Town Cafe which we knew was voted the best breakfast eatery in Whatcom County but they were closed.

The Ranch Room is just a simple 24-hour eatery. We noticed that we are about the one out-of-towners around. This caters a lot for the locals. We like that because we know such places will serve a really mean breakfast … breakfasts in Vancouver in comparison to the US, is so puny.

I guess there are not a lot of BC shoppers that venture to this part of Bellingham. Most BC shoppers will flock to the east of I-5 where all the big boxes are.

The coffee in the Ranch Room is not good — we did not enjoy it. I am so fussy about my coffee in the morning and so this is a bit disappointing. There are free refills though.

The Ranch Room’s German Hashbrown full serving costs $6.95. There were a lot of hash browns and I mean a LOT. It was a jumbled mess off hash browns and chunks of ham — not the prettiest of plates but really nice. There’s more than enough carbo on this to last us a full day.

We also got ourselves their Hotcakes Plus Egg. It was pretty cheap — just $4.99. There is nothing fancy about this except again it it too big for us small breakfast eaters. Suanne only managed to eat 1.

Red Mango in Bellevue, WA

After the 12-egg omelette breakfast, we went for a bit of shopping around Bellevue. After all, with the exchange rate between the CAD and USD these days, everything in the US seems like a bargain to us. Before heading back to Vancouver we drove over to the Bellevue Suqare for dessert — Frozen Yogurt in a place called Red Mango.

Red Mango was recommended by Erick who mentioned that this fro-yo chain from South Korea had taken California by storm. The only yogurt we ever had was those Danone yogurt that was sold in small plastic cups at the Real Canadian Superstore.

Locating the Red Mango was a bit of a challenge for us. It was because it was not listed on the Bellevue Square store directory. After walking about for a bit and having asked the info counter did we realize how new this store is. They had only opened just last month.

This Red Mango outlet is small with just a few small tables. We did notice that most of the customers are Asians. Frankly, I know very little about yogurt and never imagined that a popular yogurt chain would actually originate from east Asia.

Froyo, or frogurt, is a low fat alternative to icre-cream. Red Mango claims that they use only natural ingredients in making their “Authentic” frozen yogurt.

Ordering this is easy. The menu is really small. You get a choice of two flavours — vanilla or green tea. And then you choose the number of toppings you want. The toppings are fresh fruits or dry stuff like nuts. chocolate, etc.

We ordered two Red Mango Yougurt to share. The first was the medium sized, original vanilla flavour with three toppings. We chose chocolate chips, golden grahams and cocoa pebbles. This costs $5. The texture was smooth and creamy with a slight sourish taste.

The second Red Mango Yogurt is also a medium sized one with Green Tea yogurt. For this we chose fresh fruits — strawberries, mango and blueberries. This costs $6. I personally prefer this one over the earlier one. It had a hint of green tea.

I am not sure what the big deal is with having live active cultures in yogurts … sorry for the ignorance.

Going northbound is not too bad that day — “just” 45 minutes.

Alrighty … that’s all from me for next week or two. Am going on a blogging hiatus and will be back after Suanne had blogged her stuff. I hope you will enjoy my next series. I had planned a 26 day series of my vacation in New York City.