Victoria Day 4

Rise and shine.. This is what I had in my hotel.. My hotel happened to be the OLDEST hotel in Victoria =) haha, the walls were so thin I could hear my drunk neighbor singing at night...

So here is the waffle machine! It's pretty cool, you pour the batter in and set the timer, lock the grill and flip when it's time. The waffle came out pretty good =) The rest of the breakfast was borrring.

Port Alberni

I took a short trip to Port Alberni and I found this cute little place..

The Sugar Shak

http://www.thesugarshak.ca/

Everything looked so tempting!

From left to right smartieo, eggio and caramelo.

Basically... it's a graham cracker, marshmallow, caramel sandwich covered in chocolate. Enough said, start drooling....

Side profile shot =)
Then Raju and I stopped for lunch at the cutest place in Port Alberni...

Waters Edge Bistro

We started with a Seafood vol-au-vents covered in a creamy mushroom sauce
Side picture...
Spicy cajun chicken pasta

Seafood pasta.. Basically it said it had everything that the Victoria waters offers!!

Mussels, shrimp (these were succulent), salmon, hallibut (?)and some other fishes...

Ooops this came out quite blurry...

This is the wine we picked up from Emerald Coast Vineyards http://www.emeraldcoastwinecellars.com/

The service was awesome here, they let us try all the wines and ports that they offered! I was like a kid in a candy store! We were actually on the search for a candy store but we stumbled upon this gem =)

I recommend the dark red one... Ahh! What is it called again?! Will fill in later...
This was all a blur again... For some reason, now I have a picture of pizza?? I think this is from Hot Tin Roof. Don't ask me what's on it because I don't remember haha...

Vancouver-Victoria Day 3

Before I went to Victoria. Amy took me out for some Ramen! I went to Ajisen Ramen, it's a big chain for ramen http://www.ajisen.ca/

Don't snicker just yet, the ramen recipe is tried and true. It's not the best that I have ever had, but it's pretty darn good. Way better then anything I have had in Edmonton. I don't consider any of the noodle houses here to carry real ramen.

First of all I started with a cucumber/mayo/crab/roe salad. It was ok.. not enough crab though..
Gyoza!
My Ramen =) Miso ramen with bbq pork =) my fave!
Amy's Eel fried rice.. What a delicious concept!

Then an hour away from Vancouver, I am in Victoria!!!

First stop...

Sauce Bar

This bar was just redoing their menu and this looked pretty tasty!

I was too full to have any at the moment!

Mac and Cheese with Chorizo

Yam Fries... Before I actually decided to document all the caesars that I had (I had one every day) I didn't take a picture of the caesar I had at Sauce. It is delicious!! Get the one with the horseradish! It was just the right amount of spice and you can see that it's fresh horseradish that they throw in. I would go back here for that drink =) Yum

My trip to Vic was sort of blurry because that was all the food pics I had from this day... Hmmm? I know this much though, I love BC wine!

Vancouver Day 2

Vancouver Day 2

Walking around Richmond in the morning is pretty dire. I was hungry it was around 8 am and I wanted a typical Hong Kong breakfast. On my adventures I went into malls and buildings where there were loads of elderly chinese people practicing Tai Chi, maybe that was why nothing was open yet!!!! This meal took me around an hour to find... Thank goodness for my GPS on the iphone <3

E-Canteen (a recommendation by Charles and Mike)

This is Chinese math and food at it's finest. They have a pretty confusing menu.. You get to figure out mathematical formulas for your meal. (Well sort of..) Say...

Section A is like Congee (A1), Noodles (A2), Condensed milk toast (A3)... and Section B

Eggs and toast (B1)..etc, etc.. then you get the Toast and cold drink (C2), Toast and hot drink (C3)...etc..etc.. The lady was going to deny me of my milk tea because i wanted to substitute my regular toast for toast with condensed milk... IT WAS MADNESS... but I got what I wanted =)

Sushi for lunch @____

This was an interesting bento, we have freshly bbq short ribs, a sunomono salad with shrimp, sashimi and chicken karrage. (The chicken was soooo good!)

My misoooo

I knew the ribs were freshly bbq because I saw him do it! Here is the chef bbqing the black cod... yum yum, I tried to make small talk with him about what he was making but he didn't budge and didn't give me any of this delicious looking black cod...

The Reef....

So this part of my blog will be commented on by my friend Jason who was the one who suggested to go to this restaurant and who also informed me that it was dine out week =)

However, he forgot about these bread pudding things.. These are sort of like corn fritters... they are delicious...

You cut them open and spread butter in them, yummm

plaintain chips - interesting starter, the plaintain chips thinly cut and deep-fried make a delectable snack to chomp on. The fried plaintain was crunchy yet slightly tender with a subtle starchy texture which wasn't at all oily. when combined with the wonderful "Jerk Mayo" (a nice mayo-consistancy dipping sauce, with carribean style flavors and bit of kick) made a great app.

Island Thyme Chicken - nice blackened style chicken, very large chicken breast cooked fairly well with an outer layer of different herbs and spices, served with caribbean-style rice. Good dish altogether.

Jerk Chicken - This one was a bit of a conundrum. I've had jerk chicken before and this was obviously not done traditional. Large chicken breast cooked well served with mashed potatoes, covered in supposed "Jerk" sauce with non-traditional spicing, the one thing caught me off guard in the "Jerk" sauce was the coconut milk they added, the sauce was also much thinner than a traditional jerk chicken sauce. However, I do like the "Jerk" sauce they used, it had well-rounded flavours and seemed very versatile (I'm assuming its the same sauce base used in their jerk mayo), didn't have much kick but that could easily be remedied with a bottle of Matouk's. I did like this dish and wouldn't mind it again, but not as a traditional "Jerk chicken".

Ox tail - hands down winner of the night for me. This was more traditional Jamaican style, with the flavours and cooking technique. The ox tail used in this dish was a little fatty but were big ox tail parts and had good meat on the bones. This dish reminded me of the ox tail my grandma used to make, slowly braised in various vegetables and stock to absorb their flavor. The ox tail was very succulent and tender, there wasn't much sauce as the ox tail had absorbed most of the flavours and didn't really require it, served with rice. If there's one dish I'd go back for it's this one, but I also lo' de ox tail man.

Banana Cream Pie - its a banana cream pie, not too sweet, which I like, good.

Overall: good experience. "The Reef" has a bad reputation for terrible service, I didn't really see much of that. Good food, large portions, decent service make a good experience. As long as I don't have to straighten out anybody, if its worth having some bad service for food that makes you feel good, I'm okay with that, you snobby westcoasters.

Pictured below is our fabulous commentator Jason and his hot sauce.

Candy and I =)

Vancouver Day 1

Monday April 26

My dearest (and one and only) Soph picks me up from the YVR and takes me to the really cute community of Steveston. Steveston is a very small community in Vancouver with a huge dock and it is where they used to can fish.

First stop at 11 am. Mary's italian ice cream store.

Yes I am having gelato in the morning!! Lychee gelato... very light with flakes of lychee inside
Strawberry cheesecake gelato... I really don't think this is gelato because it is extremely creamy.. like regular ice cream. But it was so delicious!
First gelato of the trip!
With Soph =)
Then we went to eat Dim Sum at ______ will fill in this name later.. don't remember

Sui Mai.. my favorite dim sum item. Chopped up pork made into a meat ball and it is stuffed into a wonton wrap and it is steamed...
Eggplant with shrimp stuffing (this was okay... I find the eggplant wasn't cooked enough to make it soft)
Stuffed chicken wing. The chicken wing is stuffed with sticky rice.
Chicken feet. It's a must for dim sum.
Soup dumplings. It is weird that these were submerged in soup. Normally when you eat them the inside of the dumpling should be meat and soup. So be careful when you pick these up!
Then I met up with Candy is is going to school in Vancouver for baking classes.

This is my first baked good from her. Butter pecan tart. This was so rich but I didn't feel sick after eating it. I normally don't like these tarts but this was really good! The filling was just right and the crust was very hearty.
Living in Richmond has it's perks. I can go next door from Aberdeen to this restaurant thats on browngate road I think. I don't know the name of this restaurant because it is all in chinese. But I can tell you that it is next to a bakery and a tofu/soya product cafe. Their pineapple buns are the best!! I went back the next day for another one. It is so soft. The outer layer that resembles a pineapple is crispy and very tasty.
Apparently one of these cute looking buns pack loads of calories and is one of the leading causes of obesity in Hong Kong! Really? This small thing?

Candy was the one that directed to this tasty cafe...
Curry fish balls. I can't believe that the ones here are not elastic-y. Normally the ones you get in Edmonton are frozen and when you accidently drop on on the ground they bounce. The ones here are so soft and fresh...

Later that day we went to Kitslano for drinks before dinner with Amy. This is the one of the most epic caesars that I had. I was on a caesar binge. I love them. I used to not like it because of too much of the vodka taste. The trick is to order them extra spicy!! Thanks John for intro-ing me to extra spicy caesars!

At LOCAL their caesar's biggest difference was adding a pepperoni stick to it. What a great idea!

For dinner we went to The Eatery with Byron and Hannah. This is a super funky sushi bar with pop culture inspired decor. Reservations are recommended. When we got there at 8 pm with a group of 5 with a reservations we still had to wait. And this is a monday night!!! http://www.theeatery.ca/

We started off with a Tuna tempura.... Everything was really good here, I loved how you can get very different dishes here. So everything I had I would recommend to you...
We ordered a lot of different sushi I will describe them as you see a close up of each piece.
Close up of the tuna tempura... The tuna was cooked to almost an ahi consistency.
My favorite sushi! It's such a weird combination. This is called Electric Banana. It is got a piece of unagi (eel) wrapped inside the sushi with a banana on top of the roll finished with teriyaki sauce. this combination totally works!!
The Red Sanja- Spicy Tuna toped with tempura salmon and avocado and roe.
The Erotica roll- Salmon, Tuna, Avocado and Roe with Crab, mayo and cucumber inside.
The Andy Warhol- Mango, Tuna, Salmon and Mayo
The KFC there is a piece of fried chicken in this roll with avocado and unagi mayo surrounding it
Not really sure what roll this is.. Scallop and tempura avocado with mayo...
Mixed Seafood Oko nomi (I really wanted to try the mochi ones but they were sold out) their special okonimiayki sauce is so good, like a seaweed sauce.
Close up....
Then being the pigs that we were, we left the eatery to go have some more sushi and apparently the best yam fries in town. This place is so cheap and delicious!

This place is called Brown Rice Sushi (Thanks Amy for having amazing memory!!)

This is brown rice sushi with dungeness crab , avocado and asparagus.
Yam fries with a balsamic reduction (so fancy! Thanks Amy for the correction =)) and I think this was a miso mayo.
That's it for day 1!