Beyond Robson: Food Feed

Lunch Break: Momo Sushi in Gastown

Ryan — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 11:34:02 -0800

I have a little secret. Everyone in Vancouver seems to love small portions but every now and then I sneak off to Momo Sushi for what can only be described as the "venti" sized bento box.

My long-time favorite, "Box C", has with it all: miso soup, house salad, at least 4 types of sashimi, tempura, some California roll, rice... should I go on? Yes! Even ebi sonomono is included.

Dining Out For Life on March 27th

Jon — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 11:50:00 -0800

Anyone who's lived in the city for more than a year is sure to be familiar with the phrase 'Dine Out', the name of a three-week, tourist nabbing celebration of the best in Vancouver restaurants. Local reactions to the event, which took place in January of this year, are typically mixed... for the few years I've partaken, the 'Dine Out' experience has been associated with empty wallets, rumbling stomachs and under impressed palates. Whether or not you're truly getting any kind of "deal," the event does seem to force Vancouverites into the city, and has the potential to introduce 'em to some really stellar restaurants.

Another culinary event playing on that same phrasal verb (an attempt to scare our ESL away?), but one which comes with my unequivocal support, is about to occur for one day only on Thursday, March 27. Dining Out for Life is a Vancouver-wide fundraising event to help raise money and awareness for local AIDS-based charities. It's been going on for a few years now, and is one tradition that its impossible to be cynical about. With more than 200 restaurants from the Vancouver area donating a quarter of their food revenue to charity, Thursday night is a great opportunity to sample a new menu while supporting our city's less fortunate...

Calhoun's - Student Mecca

Britt — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 22:48:14 -0800

Last night my cousin finally took me to her favourite study spot that she had been raving about for the past while. Located right on West Broadway near UBC, Calhoun's is, in the words of my cousin, a student Mecca. They offer wireless internet and are open 24 hours. I liked it so much I felt the need to return this evening and share the place with a friend of mine.

The tables are usually packed (according to cousin's experience) and glowing with the light of many laptops, yet the space still felt large, partly due to the high ceiling. Further, the atmosphere is calm and it is surprisingly quiet in a room with so many people; each of the customers seem to have an unspoken agreement to sustain a level of quiet for an optimal study atmosphere.

The lighting is warm and they offer home-style comfort foods to match, like their delicious penne and cheese and warm drinks like their seasonal egg nog latte. The menu - which can be seen, and even ordered from online - is varied and incorporates delicious and interesting dishes like stuffed red and green peppers and salmon filo pie served with orange chow mein noodles. All in all, a cool place to study, if you can manage to find a table.

Calhoun's Bakery Cafe Ltd.
3035 West Broadway
Vancouver BC Canada
V6K 2G9
Tel: 604.731.7062

Loo Love

Tina — Sun, 25 Nov 2007 11:23:00 -0800

I don't care how good the food is - if a restaurant has a crappy washroom it gets points deducted. Fortunately I've sourced the finest facility in the city, and it just happens to go hand-hand-hand with arguably the best Indian in the city as well: Rangoli on W. 11th.

After a long morning of power-shopping my Mum and I sampled the Vegetable Samosas and Portobello Mushroom and Red Bell Pepper Curry - both delectable and highly recommended. Refreshingly, the accompaniments to the dishes were just as intriguing: the chutneys, the paneer, the salty beet salad, the other patrons sitting at elbow's length...

Winter Fresh Finds at the Farmers Market

dave — Wed, 07 Nov 2007 13:16:13 -0800

Vancouver is blessed with an abundance: fertile Fraser Valley soil brimming with produce to the east, the bounty of the Salish Sea to the west, the blessed fruits and wines of the Okanagan some 400km inland and those famous Pemberton potatoes a few hours north.

Why then do we still find nothing but New Zealand Galas in our grocery stores in the midst of our fall apple harvest? Why eat imported European cheeses when Little Qualicum Cheeseworks is only a ferry ride away? Why is everyone buying Little Brown Mushrooms when there are so many diverse wild species to dine upon?

It's enough to make you want to just go out there and pick your own damn food. In the summertime that's actually not a difficult task to muster. Many farms offer tours and 'you-pick' possibilities. Come the grey skies and damp chill of the winter months and you may wonder if there can be any escape from the clutches of a Buy Low lineup.

Enter Vancouver's Winter Farmers Market. Now in it's second season, and expanded to twice monthly due to demand, this one-stop fresh fix happens down at the WISE Hall (1882 Adanac) with the first of the season this Saturday, November 10th.

"Mycology is Better Than Yours"

dave — Fri, 26 Oct 2007 11:17:50 -0800

Mushrooms. Fungi. Fantastic foodstuff or forest fodder? Are some mushrooms really the "Food of the Gods", responsible for the spark that began the evolutionary track from primate to human as ethnobotanist Terrence McKenna has suggested? Perhaps they are what some consider to be the World's Largest Organism? A specimen found in Oregon actually measures a whopping 2200 acres in area - that's about 140,000 Vancouver-sized one-bedroom condos! Or maybe mushrooms are just tasty morsels and nothing more?

Diverging viewpoints can battle it out amongst the fungal elite with a visit to Vancouver Mycological Society's Annual Mushroom Show this weekend.

Click for more...

A Taste of Yaletown: Foodies Get Your Swank On

Robin — Wed, 24 Oct 2007 14:50:25 -0800

The glittering restaurants of Vancouver that speak of celebrity sightings and magazine back pages tend to be out of my price range. Of course, just like any other aspiring foodie, I pretend that I wouldn't be caught dead in any place masquerading as a Who's-a-wannabe-Who of the city pretties, but secretly I know that if the price point dropped a few bills I'd be a lot more interested in checking out a menu.

Lucky for me and other budget gourmets, a few times each year Vancouver restaurants set their menus and lower their prices. This month (until the 28th), the foodie spotlight is on Yaletown digs, with 21 neighbourhood restaurants offering $25, $35, and $45 three-course set menus.

Hot Chocolate Grows Up at Non's Drinks

Robin — Thu, 18 Oct 2007 08:47:39 -0800

It's embarrassing, but I'll admit it: I love hot chocolate. Hot, rich, dark... It's had me since childhood. I crave it, especially on the wet days of winter in Vancouver. Unfortunately, it's become less socially acceptable in recent years to order a cup of the stuff. While friends have moved on to the lattes and espressos of the world, I'm stuck ordering a 5-year-old's favorite (preferably with whipped cream and a cherry on top).

Enter Non's Drinks, a beverage oasis tucked away in the tourist-haven of the Granville Island Public Market. This one man show (Sherif Ahmed is founder, owner, and still chief mixologist) is determined to restore hot chocolate's rightful street cred, by creating drinks made of 100% organic Belgian chocolate, milk, and flavours Nestle forgot all about.

Makemysupper

Agasel — Thu, 20 Sep 2007 17:10:26 -0800

"The way to a man's heart is through his stomach." So very true. Years ago I wanted to impress a guy, so I pulled out my cookbook from Spain, translated every second word with my Spanish-English dictionary, then proceeded to make meatballs and patatas bravas. Six hours, 20 meatballs, and a bucket of sweat and tears later, I presented his dinner.

His heart was mine.

But why such an exhausting effort? Because I didn't have a chef in my kitchen, showing me how it was done. Now, we all do. With makemysupper.com, back then I would have had the dinner done with plenty of time to spare, no sweat. Not that Vancouver-based creator Peter Hrynkow really needs his website. "I'm not much of a cook myself," he admits, "but everybody else in my family loves to cook: my aunt, my Mom, my fiance. So I'm surrounded by people who are an inspiration to me and the site."

At least Hrynkow knows web development. Makemysupper.com has piqued international interest from chefs and media. How has he managed to pull viewers from more established video sites, like Youtube?

Eat BC Promotes Local Eating - Even in Ethnic Cuisine

degan — Wed, 19 Sep 2007 11:49:20 -0800

September 14th marked the launch of Eat BC's campaign to encourage consumers to question where their food is coming from and choose local fare. With the growing popularity of the 100 Mile Diet and local farmers markets, the seed has been planted, the buzz is happening and people are starting to ask the questions, but all the while there have been small businesses putting this idea into practice without fanfare. Nyala African Cuisine on Main Street, for example.

Yesterday I went to Nyala, one of the 150 participating restaurants across B.C, to meet with chef and owner Assefa Kebede; one of his suppliers Mark Hills of Hills Foods Ltd; and Ian Tostenson of the B.C. Restaurant & Food Services Association (BCRFA), to talk about the campaign and the intricacies of supplying and serving local food in an African restaurant.

Assefa served up a delicious spread of Lamb Kebabs, Chicken with Curry sauce, Potato and Beet salad, Tabouleh, all made with B.C. ingredients and paired with Okanagan wines. The kicker is that Assefa, also a potter, even makes the tagine dishes himself and uses clay from the Fraser Valley!

Cityphile: Sean Heather

degan — Tue, 04 Sep 2007 11:46:13 -0800

A little while ago, I asked Sean Heather if he would do a CityPhile profile for us, because as the proprietor of Gastown gastropub The Irish Heather and secret Scotch house, The Shebeen, he has indirectly been the source of much inspiration, fun, education and comfort for me and my friends and I wanted to get a feeling for the force behind it all. Not to mention his thoughts on my new favorite neighbourhood - Gastown.

I hope you will enjoy the interview that follows. Just this morning, however, I learned from Urban Diner that the whole operation is picking up and moving across the street. So now of course, I have many more questions for him, but he is a master of his environment and mostly I just can't wait to see what he comes up with.

What inspired you to open your first restaurant - a gastropub - The Irish Heather?

I am a work-a-holic, and there came a time in my life when I asked myself the question..." is it better to work like a dog for myself or for somebody else?" That is why I opened my first restaurant, as to why it was an Irish gastropub? I felt that at the time there wasn't a true Irish establishment in the city and having traveled the world and experienced fantastic, authentic Irish Pubs in places like Prague & Budapest, I felt that this was a niche that I could fill.

Nu Reviewed: RestoLounge or Undersea Lair?

degan — Mon, 23 Jul 2007 11:11:48 -0800

A few weeks after dining with my writing class at Nu, I'm still convinced that rather than a restaurant/lounge, it is the setting for the undersea lair in some yet unwritten Bond film. The scene is set when you enter the tiny room and look out past the polished copper, neon green lighting and sea-green disks repeating themselves in retro-glamorous fashion right up to the edge of the sea - which thanks to the circular shape of the restaurant jutting out over False Creek, is lapping up to the edge of every window. But the key evidence for the undersea lair theory lies in Nu's clever camouflage. It's just impossible to find. I run past it probably 3 times a week and (OK, I've seen the signs, I knew it was somewhere around there) never noticed it.

It's hard not to notice all the hype surrounding it, however, and judging by the number of free tables on a weeknight (a scant few), those looking for it can find it well enough.

So.Cial Butchery

degan — Fri, 20 Jul 2007 11:21:50 -0800

So.Cial At Le Magasin is a new culinary venture in a 1911 Gastown heritage building that has filled most of the unused space in a mall. There is a restaurant dining room that I've peered into numerous times and deemed not for me. The old-world-hotelish feeling about the lushly upholstered chairs and the white tablecloths is too uncomfortable for my tastes, no matter how good their brunch menu looks. There is also an Oyster Bar downstairs that looks promising, and now, just freshly opened last week, is a Custom Butchershop and Deli. I went down there on opening day to see what a high-end butchershop in a neighbourhood with no food stores looks like.

Not surprisingly, considering the gorgeous space they're occupying, it looks good.

Technology in my Food? What's in Your Food, and How Do You Know?

Jark — Tue, 10 Jul 2007 10:11:05 -0800

What happens if (Shock #1) a Biotech giant (i.e. Monsanto) used incomplete data to obtain approval of its genetically modified foods? Apparently this happens more often than we think! It reminds me of how (Shock #2) the first few million bottles of "pure" water sold in North America were, actually, tap water while nobody seemed to know, care, or rebel against this, in spite of independent reports of such things. I am surprised to hear that (Shock #3) Canada, and BC (by virtue of its vast agricultural industry, aside from the Prairies which mine for uranium and grow GE food!), is one of the largest producers of GE crops in the world and, across the country, up to 70 per cent of processed foods found in grocery stores contain or may contain GE ingredients. The most common GE ingredients come from crops like corn, soy, canola and cotton. So why should you care? And what's it got to do with Vancouver? Click for MORE...

Spot Prawn Season Makes Summer Sweet

Brianna — Thu, 21 Jun 2007 12:29:46 -0800

Huge, luscious BC spot prawns are one of the most delicious things to be found in the waters around Vancouver. Sweet, firm, peachy-pink and tender, the prawns are sustainably harvested by local fishermen, which means I get to enjoy eating them and feel all cozy and self-righteous about it. Score. The brief spot prawn season is on right now, and will only last for another two weeks or so. I trundled down to Fishermen's Wharf near Granville Island to get my fix.