Fraser Park Restaurant on Byrne Road, Burnaby

Nanzaro treated the family with a German brunch.

Fraser Park Restaurant is located at an unassuming warehouse park at Byrne Road. It was very busy when we arrived around 11:30AM on a Saturday. Sharing table is a norm here.

Ben and I shared a German breakfast as the serving is big. It is a bed of hash brown topped with 3 eggs scrambled with sauteed onions, peppers and cheese. On top of that, there is sausage and generous amount of bacon and ham.

The German breakfast also comes with 2 toasts of your choice and a piece of fruit. (more…)

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Black Forest Restaurant in Harrison Hotsprings

After the salmon tour, the bus brought us to Harrison Hotsprings for lunch.

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We only had one hour for lunch due to the time lost on the way due to lost of our way.

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After walking down the Village Mall, we (Marian, Lorna & I) decided to have our lunch at Black Forest Restaurant.

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Black Forest Restaurant is a German restaurant.

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The interior is dimly lit and cozy. (more…)

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German Breakfast at Fraser Park Restaurant on Byrne Road, Burnaby

It was Ben’s off day on Friday in exchange of working on Canada day. But he had to take a call at 6:30AM. So, I accompanied him to his office as he planned to have a morning walk with me after that.

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As it was just 8AM, there is not many restaurants open that early, Ben thought of Fraser Park Restaurant which he had not been to for a while. We just missed Anton who is the owner of the restaurant. He is retired now but he came in early in the morning to take do his round of inspection before he went off to enjoy his day.

Ben and I shared a German Deluxe breakfast as the portion here is big. It consist of 3 eggs scrambled with sauteed peppers, onion and cheese served with hash brown, sausage, bacon, ham, 1 piece potato pancake and toast.

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The server also gave us a new spicy sausage to try. The deluxe version also include a piece of Schnitzel and gravy. Ben and I were full even though we shared it. It was a great breakfast.

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The server also brought us Sylvia’s special chili sauce for us as she remembers we like it. Sylvia is Anton’s wife and she manages the restaurant now. (more…)

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Breakfast of Champion

Well. It is done. We have initiated the cutover procedures about an hour ago.

It was another early morning for me. Got into the office. Checked all the fury of emails from overnight. Everything fell in place. No big issues. Had a final status review with all team members from Atlanta and Dublin. Went thru readiness checklist. Checked off one item after another. Can hear team is drained from their voices. They gave their all. Can also sense they are relieved. Last minute industry news trickled in. Two more major Global DS announced they can’t cut over at 0000 GMT tonight. Woohoo … Looks like my company will be the first off the starting block. Can imagine there will be a press splash later today! This team should be proud. They beat the world.

After the final readiness meeting was over, cautioned team this is not over yet. Crafted an “RE030 Good To Go” email of overall status. Team recommends we are good. Cutover procedure was to start in 1 hour at 0000 TYO time. Will be a long 9 hour process in three waves ending at 0000 GMT.

Hit the send button. In a way, my role on RE030 is done. Transition from project to operations will be completed by end of day. I will be winding down this phase and kick off the next.

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It is always a surreal feeling at this point of the project. I feel like the center of the universe when the project was in the delivery phase. After this act of handover, it is no longer my baby. The other part of the company takes over. I had to step back while the cutover is in execution.

With time on my hand while the cutover us going on, I thought I give myself a treat. I thought I go have a breakfast of champions. Drove a few minutes to an industrial area. Very unlikely place for good food but this is certainly considered as the best there is for breakfast.

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Went to … (more…)

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Fraser Park Restaurant — Hard to Find in Burnaby

ChowtimesNoWord32x32Complete Disclosure:
We did not pay for the food in this restaurant as Anton was expecting us.

“Difficult to find. Hard to forget.”

That is how I would sum up this place.

It is the character behind the Fraser Park Restaurant that I find very interesting. It is this interesting character of this place that the a popular TV show from the Food Network is going to feature this nondescript restaurant in the coming spring.

I just don’t know where to begin telling you about Anton and the Fraser Park Restaurant. LOL!

I wish there is a way you could meet Anton … get to know him and see what goes on inside his head and you will know what I mean.

I met Anton in his restaurant over a year ago. He first contacted me because he saw that I had been planning dinners (the 8GTCC dinners) and he thought that it was fun and wanted to talk about doing something like that. At one point, he was thinking of getting people to come together to cook together in a afternoon and the sitting down to enjoy the fruit of the labour. At another time, he was thinking of getting his chef friends together for a cook off and then invite people to come and pay-what-they-want. All for the love of food!

I like Anton. He did not come across to me as someone who would want to do this just for publicity for his restaurant. As a matter of fact, he told me way up front that he did not want me to write about his little restaurant because he has way enough customers already than he can handle.

That was then … one year ago. All that initial brainstorming was not carried through. He got busy and I got busy with other things in life. And I did not blog about the restaurant.

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Out of the blue, Anton wrote to me again. He was telling me that the TV show had identified his restaurant and planned to shoot in his restaurant over two days. I can’t tell you what the TV show is but I think some of you can guess which show it is. Don’t ask me because my lips are sealed.

Anton asked me if I could meet him so that he could pick my brains on what he needs to do to prepare for the TV shoot. It is not that I am an expert in this sort of things but I would love to go and catch up with Anton again and bring Suanne along to try his food.

So where is Anton’s restaurant? The Fraser Park Restaurant is not exactly unknown. Many people knows him and loves his simple authentic German food. It is located in an area you will least expect. As a matter of fact, it is one restaurant you will not go into if you saw it by chance.

And that is the beauty of it. Sometimes one should not judge a book by its cover. As I mentioned up front … it is the character that makes this restaurant that I think many people should experience. You might hate it … or you might just love it. I love it.

It is “difficult to find” as I said. Fraser Park is located way down the southern most part of Byrne Road in Burnaby. There is virtually nothing here except for lots of industrial buildings. Oh, I think there is also a correctional facility nearby too! There is also a nice park that I used to walk along after lunch when I was working in the area.

Outside the restaurant and in the general area, don’t be shocked with rusted cars and vans parked haphazardly around.

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Anton’s specialty is his German lunches. He is after all a master butcher and a master sausage maker. He studied food science in microbiology. So he knows his stuff. You can see his credentials on the walls inside the restaurant.

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He changes his menu every week and serves different things everyday. However, there are days that he will feature something standard because people loves that:

  • On Wednesday it is his famous German lunch
  • On Thursday it is lamb based
  • On Friday it is salmon day

We picked Wednesday to visit Anton because we wanted to eat his German lunch.

See the menu above. Don’t you just love him putting in a smattering of German words on his weekly menu? You can click on it to make it more readable. He emails the menu of the week out to his customers so that they can plan to come in for the specials of the week. It is hard to get bored with his food when he tries to vary it every day, every week.

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Anton is a crazy nut if you ask me. He is a perfectionist and he insists on making his food from … (more…)

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