~Yummy in Our Tummies~

A few weeks ago, the yummy crew had an impromptu dinner meeting in Richmond. It was pretty late at night, but there is never a lack of good eateries in Richmond. Nabs thought that we would give Yuu a try. Yuu is a small restaurant in the Continental Plaza in Richmond (same as the second Deer Garden, Posh, Pearl Castle, etc.). Their offerings are a mix of contemporary Japanese “tapas” or small dishes as well various Asian mains. They also have quite an interesting dessert section as well. We arrived around 9:15-30 or so and ended up being the last customers of the night. We were surprised to find that the place closed at 10:30PM every night when most other restaurants in the plaza opened until much later.

McDonald’s is back at it with their $1 drinks.  This time the deal applies to their small sized specialty hot coffees from Nov 29-Dec 9. If you haven’t tried McCafe drinks, you might be missing out!  Currently, their regular coffee is my favourite coffee; yes it has trumped Timmy’s coffee for the time being.  No I’m not joking!  But their regular coffee isn’t part of the promo. Small sized mochas, americanos, lattes, cappuccinos are fair game though and only hot drinks, no cold drinks.  I have tried their latte and it was pretty good; rich, smooth, and creamy just the way it should be.  I also tried their peppermint mocha which was alright.  This came topped with whip and candy cane sprinkles too.  Not as good as Starbucks peppermint mocha but what the heck, its 1/5th the price! Head on over to your nearest McDonald’s quick before the promo runs out on Dec 9th. (Btw, McD coffee cups are the best.  I wonder if anyone else appreciates their double layered design like I do?)

Anyone who is a frequent flyer to Steveston village in Richmond will have noticed that the area has changed quite a bit in the recent years.  In particular, a high density of coffee shops have opened up in Steveston and some are very large and prominent, such as Waves Coffee House. I’ll be the first to admit that I’m no coffee connoisseur. Sure I enjoy a cup of authentic, aromatic coffee brewed with freshly grounded beans that haven't been subjected to excessive moisture fluctuations or freezing. More often than not though, I”ll opt for a cheaper fast-food restaurant coffee than a more expensive one from a coffee shop.

I will start off by saying that this is not our typical post.  There are no photos or praise in the passage below.  This is simply an account of failure at a grand level. I recently dined at a restaurant with some friends and had such a terrible experience that I feel compelled to warn anyone out there considering eating there.  The restaurant is called The Ticket Kitchen and Bar and prior to renovations was known as Players Chophouse.  Anyway, we ventured there on a Sunday evening but this restaurant was deserted.  Keep in mind that it is in the heart of downtown, steps away from BC Place.  And so it begins.  The hostess arrived and asked us for drinks and gave us the menus.  We informed her that we had two groupons to split between the six of us and asked if there were any menu restrictions.  We were guaranteed that there were none.  Four of us ordered drinks which arrived in a few minutes, the two of us who ordered water waited 10 minutes and had to prompt once more for water.  Then the waitress (not the same person who brought us drinks) arrived and took all of our orders.  About 25 minutes later our food arrived.  Twenty-five minutes in a restaurant that was deserted?? Wow.  From my seat I could see into their prep kitchen and saw about 5 or 6 people just standing around chatting and playing with utensils the entire time we waited. Anyway, the food was mediocre.  The bread on my burger was burnt on the outside and my fries lacked crunch, freshness, and flavor.  I don’t think they make their fries themselves; they tasted like store bought ones.  The steak was alright but nothing spectacular. Once we finished eating, our table was cleared and we waited patiently for the bill.  After what must have been half an hour, the bill finally arrived.  Not sure what took so long because the entire time I could see the staff just standing around in the kitchen chatting.  The bill totaled ~140 dollars for the 6 of us (5 steaks and 1 salmon burger); yes quite pricey for bar food. This is where the experience just blew up. When we showed our groupons to the waitress, she was upset and taken aback.  She said in an incredulous voice “Are you kidding me!? You know you’re supposed to show me that at the beginning right?  There are restrictions on the menu and you guys ordered stuff that doesn’t qualify.”  We explained that we did declare our groupons and were assured there are no restrictions.  This prompted a short lecture by the waitress. “There is a difference between hostesses and waitresses.  You’re supposed to know this...” And so on and so forth.  Since when is the customer responsible for this?  The onus is on the staff to have proper communication and be accountable for the customers and their requests.  Secondly, you do NOT lecture your customer regardless of what the issue is.  WTF. Needless to say, the combination of average food, exuberant prices,  rude staff and slow and terrible service all sums up to one thing: a terrible experience.  To add insult to injury, we were made to feel stupid and guilty.  One thing is for sure.  We are never going back.  Ever.  In Taylor Swift’s words: We, are never ever EVER, getting back togetherrrr. Eater beware... Update Dec 19/12:  In the past two weeks, I have been in communication with a member of the management team at The Ticket.  Readers and eaters, rest assured that steps are being taken to ensure a positive and pleasant experience at this restaurant.  Props to the management team for being vigilant and taking initiative to prevent such an experience from repeating itself. View Larger Map

Now that residency applications are finally over, I can finally get back to blogging! Here’s to blog about our food adventures in California in the summer…yes…the summer. :( I thought I’d start with my favourite meal of the trip… BUBBA GUMP!

Forrest Gump is one our favorite movies of all time! Rich and I have watched it countless times. Ever since Rich saw a Bubba Gump restaurant in Hawaii a few years ago, I’ve been bugging him to bring me to one. Bubba Gump is a chain of Forrest Gump movie-theme restaurants that have popped up all over the world. Due to “unfortunate” circumstances, I wasn’t able to try it in Hong Kong or San Francisco. :(

On our second day at Disneyland, we decided to venture out for lunch instead of eating the expensive theme-park food. I was pleasantly surprised when TomTom brought up Bubba Gump as a nearby option. Rich finally gave in and off we went!

I’ve always been a huge fan of Korean kimchi and would order kimchi hotpot all the time at various bubble tea places. Richard’s store had Korean student work for a month during the summer. I badgered him to tell me where to find the best Korean food in Vancouver, and kept getting the disappointing answer of Coquitlam, Coquitlam, Coquitlam… Luckily, one of the places he mentioned – House of Tofu Soup, also has a location in Richmond. So we eagerly ventured there one evening in the summer (yes this post is very late…)

Richard finally got some days off…plus his parents are visiting from HK – which means… 2/3 of the yummy crew is going on a family vacation! So, day one of our weekend getaway… Bellevue. We were debating between staying in Seattle (done many times) or Bellevue. Being the food bloggers we now are…and the fact that there were these steamed buns to try in Bellevue, the answer was simple! Once we settled in the hotel, we made our way to Din Tai Fung immediately. Well, I did try to make a dinner reservation, but nobody picked up. :(

What is the first thing that comes to mind when you think Richmond Night Market?  If you’re like most people I know, its food.  Food food food.  Some more food.  A little bit of browsing, sprinkled with some shopping topped off with more food, followed by a little loitering and hanging out around some food.  Ok ok, I’m sure you get the point haha!  Well, the Yummy In Our Tummies crew was determined to make at least one visit to the Richmond Food Market, oh wait I mean Night Market to sample and eat some of the large variety of food available there.  So here we were, trying to find something to do on a nice Vancouver evening. If you’re not a Night Market enthusiast, you might not know, but there are two locations of it in Richmond this year.  The old one is in the same location as before with free admission but paid parking but the new one, where we were headed, is near River Rock Casino where parking is free but entrance is by a $1.00 fee.  (Last I heard, the fee has gone up a few more cents).  Word of mouth has it that the food stalls are more or less the same in both of the Night Markets so we don’t plan on going to the old one, but if we do and we find something different, you’ll be sure to hear from us.

Wow! Its been a while since I’ve done this now. But I think I’m back on track and I should be able to post more regularly now, wohoo! This particular piece is about fish and chips we had at Fish on Fifth in Sidney BC, just off of the Swartz Bay Ferry Terminal. The story of how we ended up here, goes something like this. There is this phenomenal Thai food restaurant here in Sidney that I’ve been to called Sabha Thai and I really wanted to go there, but when we got to Sidney, it was closed (they close between 3-5pm) and so the search began for another eatery. We ended up selecting Fish on Fifth as our plan B because it was one of the better rated Fish and Chips in Sidney.

It was a beautiful night and we were looking for something dumb to do. So we went to Anton’s Pasta to stuff our face. It was quite the drive along E. Hasting as the traffic was so busy. Parking on the street was really easy to find. However, getting into the restaurant was no easy task as there was a half an hour line up. I was glad that summer is kicking in and we didn’t have to stand in the blazing cold because unlike Stepho’s, there was no heat outside. On this warm summer night, Ying and I cheerfully waited and carried out our conversation regarding how we can help Nabeel get an Asian girlfriend.

Yet another blogging adventure fueled by a deal voucher I purchased online! Today we ventured out to Ichiban Sushi, a small Japanese restaurant located in the London Drugs plaza on Kingsway and Joyce. The place is hidden by Honolulu café in front, and if we didn’t know about it, we probably would never visit. Anyhow the voucher entitled us to two special rolls, two bowls of miso soup and 10 pieces of assorted sashimi for $15.

Ah! Back to blogging after such a long time away! Rich recently got a promotion at work and has been super busy, while I’ve been having a terrible schedule for the past two weeks. A couple of weeks ago, we paid the downtown Costco a visit after I finally got a Costco card (after so many years!). Unfortunately for us, you have to pay for parking there. :( We ended up not using up all the parking time, so we were going to eat at the food court. However, upon seeing the super long lineup, we decided to head elsewhere. I remembered that La Taqueria Taco Shop was somewhat close by (~10 minute walk), so off we went for some delicious Mexican food! The interior is super simple looking with plain light bulbs as fixtures and these cute little coloured stools. The brick wall added a homey feeling to it. Quite charming.

So, after being disappointed with my first excursion at Red Rooster but only having tried a very small sample size of their menu with the Fish and Chips, I knew I wanted to go back and try more of their food. This time I was out to get pizza and feed the friends coming over. I now this isn't a specialty item still (chicken is their thing) so I'll probably go back again one more time before I'm done haha.

So we ordered 3 pizzas. A chicken, a meat lover, and a Hawaiian. This was the first time we had a meat lover pizza since there are very few halal pizza stores around this area, and we were stoked.

Yay! I managed to get off work on time at 4pm for once! :) I love getting off work and still see the sun shining nice and bright outside! It puts me in a cheery mood! While driving to Ying’s, the majestic view of the mountains of North Vancouver made me want to pay North Van a visit. So, I decided to go on a date with Ying to Lonsdale Quay using her East Side Mario’s coupon! The string attached is that we cannot eat inside the restaurant and we must do an online order. The online order was straight forward. Even Ying figured it out! :D

I was in downtown with MooseMan last week while when he had some business to take care of when we suddenly felt hungry and decided to have some shawarmas, or as they are more commonly known here, donairs.  Now, this was pretty impromptu and I didn’t have my camera with me while we ordered out food for take out, and so I didn’t get any photos of the outside or the interior of the place, but I’ll try and create a feel for what I felt while I was there.  I did get photos of the food though.  Anyhow, we decided to drop by Babylon Café, one of the first few halal shawarma shops we found out about many many years ago and have been going to since.

It was high time we had another Eat Nabs Day! This title is Turtle’s brainchild and originated 2 or 3 years ago as a label for Dine Out expeditions but the label had gone into hiding since. Due to popular demand, it was brought back as a label for a special dinner at Kiyo Sushi. Typical to our reputation, we spent a loooong time figuring out where to eat and were settled on Tandoori Kona but ended up changing our minds last minute and going to Kiyo Sushi instead. Impromptu FTW! Anyway, Kiyo Sushi has always been on my radar, but I have never had the opportunity to go there. Ying and Rich have been there though and didn’t recall it being disappointing so we took their word for it and off we went. Eat Nabs Day was back!

Au Petit Café has been a place that Ying has wanted to try for a long time! Well, ever since our food blogging adventures have started at least. The main problem with this place is that it closes every day at 7 PM; while Ying and I are rarely both free for lunch in this neighbourhood. This is definitely a hole-in-the-wall neighbourhood gem type of place that you have to know about to enter. It’s located on Main St. and 32nd/33rd Ave, in a stretch of Main St that isn’t very busy. There was quite a bit of street parking available. :D It advertises itself as an authentic Vietnamese restaurant, not that I really know what authentic is. :P I’m just here for the yummy food.

I had the good fortune of lunching with Rich and Uncle Jimbo today at sushi house in Richmond. At 2 am the night before, Uncle Jimbo messaged me saying he was having a craving for spicy salmon sushi. Just outta the blue just like that. Haha weird eh? Anyhow, since it had been quite a while since I ate at sushi house and considering that its one of my favorite sushi places in Richmond, I settled on it pretty quick. And believe me, this place does not disappoint.

Rich and I recently had dinner with his sister and her boyfriend for the first time. I remembered that I still had a voucher for a crab dinner for 3-4 people at Harbour Spirit Restaurant that was expiring within a week. Oh these vouchers! Harbour Spirit is located along busy No. 3 Road in Richmond, right beside Cactus Club by Lansdowne, taking over the old Sammy J Pepper building. It’s actually pretty unusual for a Chinese restaurant in Richmond to have its independent building, but the plus side was that it had plenty of parking! <3

It was a fine March afternoon. It was a good day to eat! The yummy crew decided to head out for some yummy sushi…at Apple Sauce. Hehe, the place is actually called Applause; but the first time we passed it, Rich read Apple Sauce instead and the name stuck! We had initially tried this place really randomly on a rainy day last year after some failed photography at Jericho Beach. We were surprised to find such yummy sushi and have been back several times since then. On this occasion, we were joined by Turtle and Vicky. :)

The interior was well lit, although we were mainly basking in the glorious sunshine. It is clean and cozy, able to seat ~30-40 people or so comfortably. I really like how they have these dark blue curtains (much like the ones at the front door) that can be used to separate tables to give more privacy.

With the Vancouver weather finally showing some signs of spring (aka sunshine), Rich and I ventured out to Downtown for an afternoon drive. It was around 2PM or so when we started getting hungry, because we had a really late breakfast that day. Since we were in the neighbourhood, we decided to check out Meat & Bread, the sandwich shop that has been raved about so much recently. It took a few loops around the block before we were able to secure meter parking on Cordova Street. 26 minutes of free meter from the last payer…WIN! I promptly added another dollar to top it up to 46 minutes and off we went. :) The exterior of Meat & Bread is very unassuming. In fact, if I didn’t know about it, I would probably never visit. Not to mention it’s in an area of Vancouver that we rarely visit as well.

I was hungry while walking around in downtown doing street photography. As Ying and I passed by Kintaro, we discovered there wasn’t much of a lineup! Win! So we hurried in and discovered that the inside was still packed. Oh well… So we waited… and waited. Finally, we got a seat in about 20 minutes. Kintaro is a hole-in-a-wall Japanese restaurant that specializes in ramen. If you only do one thing, you better be very good at it. This saying applies here. They make excellent ramen and is synonymous with best ramen in Vancouver in my book.

So it was another one of those days when I had an extended lunch break followed by afternoon lectures. Rich had the evening shift that day, so he picked me up and we met up with Ringo for lunch. Rich was seriously craving claypot rice, and we really wanted to go to Soup.com (best claypot rice!). However, since that’s in Vancouver and our afternoon lectures are in Richmond, we opted for something a bit more local. We had passed the place called Claypot on Alexandria Road many times, but never ventured in as it is an all-you-can-eat hotpot place. Though judging by the name, Rich was convinced that he would be able to find claypot rice here as well.

In honor of Coco’s arrival we were headed to De Dutch for breakfast. Why breakfast? Well I was having a craving for breakfast for a few days which had been going unsatisfied. I'd especially been drooling over the taste of hash browns. Mmm deep fried potato so good mmm. But there aren't too many breakfast places in Richmond and I m not really big on Ihop. and I've recently had White Spot breakfast. De Dutch had come up a few times in our conversations and we were surprised to find out it existed in Richmond. So De Dutch it was!!

Impromptu plans are often the most fun.  And this was the case on our visit to Berry Good in Richmond on this chilly Monday night.  One minute I'm getting ready to crack open chemistry in my PJ's and the next, I'm putting my pants back on and thinking about where I want to have dessert.  And I thought I wouldn't get anything sweet today!  ha!  We were quick to settle on Berry Good that night probably because none of us wanted bubble tea or ice cream and I was craving cheesecake instead.  I haven't discovered too many dessert places that serve good cheesecake, or cakes for that matter, in Richmond. Yavis Club and Berry Good were the only two places that came to mind at the time.  Seriously, I think we've overdone bubble tea and need to expand our dessert tastes haha.  And so Berry Good it was!

Why do I call it Pig King? That's what the Japanese characters (豚王) stands for. Butaya is a one of a kind Japanese style fried food restaurant. On the side of the eatery, an advertisement claims that they are the first of its kind in lower mainland. Indeed, everything on their menu is fried. We learned of this place through a friend (Ringo, who went on several food adventures with us). Today, Ying and I both had the afternoon off, so we decided to pay this place a visit! It's a small restaurant that can seat about 30 people at most. It was by no means upscale but the interior is clean, cozy, well lit and quite comfortable.

I suddenly had a hankering for fish and chips around 4 pm today and I tried to convince my parents to venture out to Steveston so we could have Pajos, but there is no convincing them out of their lazy Sunday afternoon state of being and so it was a lost cause. So then I made plans to hit up Pajos with my brothers and MooseMan and his brother, but turns out Pajos was closed by the time we decided to go. And so MooseMan and I attempted to decide on another food spot. We went through a list of names and finally settled on Red Rooster. Why Red Rooster? Well, because there is a very apparent shortage of Halal restaurants in Richmond and when one does open up, word of mouth contagiously spreads the message around in the Halal-eating community. And Red Rooster opened up 9 days ago and is Halal so naturally, we were going to try it out.

Last night, Rich and I paid a visit to Tomoya Japanese Restaurant in Burnaby – again because I had recently purchased two deal vouchers. Tomoya is a Japanese/Chinese BBQ fusion place, right next to Lao Shan Dong Homemade Noodle House at the corner of Nelson Ave and Kingsway. It’s a really unassuming restaurant that might be easily missed. There wasn’t even an exterior sign, with the word Tomoya slightly obscured by its front doors. We had two vouchers, one for its new BBQ selections and one for sushi.

Now, we haven’t been to S & W Pepper House for many many years. This particular location in Richmond used to be called Southwestern Wind – hence the S & W in its name. The original location is in Burnaby’s Crystal Mall. I didn’t even notice that they had recently changed names until I came across a voucher online. It is situated in the heart of Richmond right across from Richmond Center on No. 3 Road. There is ample parking at the back, but you have to enter from Park Road.

This place has been on my radar for a while but I never find myself in this area so I hadn’t been here. Until this past Monday after skating with Turtle, The Torontonian, and JChan. By the way, if you like skating you really should check out the new facilities at Hillcrest near Nat Bailey Stadium. This place has a skating rink, swimming pool, curling rink, gym, and sports facilities altogether in a shiny new (relatively) building! It a really nice area! Ok back to the topic; after skating I was hungry and I felt like going to a breakfast only location. After some indecisive loitering, snacking on chocolate, eating rice crackers and waiting for Wei Gor to finish work, we settled on the Mac Shack in Kerrisdale. Makes sense right? Totally. Click the title to read on !