Goldfish Pacific Kitchen - Taste of Yaletown

We went to Goldfish to for their Taste of Yaletown menu. I've been to Goldfish before and I really like the food and atmosphere there. The food is always well executed and it's a very chic, modern and trendy restaurant. The dining room is sizeable and the lounge is a great place to hang out and get drinks. This restaurant is one of the few that I think does fusion very well.

For the Taste of Yaletown, they offer a $35 set-menu where you get to choose 1 appetizer, 1 entree and 1 dessert from a selection of 3. On the menu, the appetizers that you can choose between are a tuna ceviche, papya salad or king crab tempura. For the mains, a salmon, prawn gomiti, or bison. And finally dessert, creme brule, almond cheesecake or chocolate lava cake.

For the appetizers, we ordered the tuna ceviche and the king crab tempera. Our server recommended that we should get 2 orders of the king crab tempura as it was really good and that you can't have just one. Sounded tempting, but we decided to just order different dishes so we can try all of it. For the entrees we ordered the salmon and bison. Our server also recommended the bacon fried rice with the quail egg as a side. We decided to get a 1/2 order of it to accompany our mains. And finally for dessert, the creme brule and the chocolate lava cake.

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Italian Kitchen

Armed with a couple of the very common Glowbal group vouchers, one for a free teaser and one for a free main course when you buy two mains and two appies, we decided to head to Italian Kitchen.  We'd been there once before and received poor service, but the food was good so we decided to give them a second chance.  Upon arriving, we were promptly seated and greeted with glasses of water.  The waiter was friendly and overall, the service was much better this time around.

We started with our teasers - the typical meatball teasers that are given out at Glowbal and Trattoria.  They are always good.

Meatball Teaser

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Gyoza King

Gyoza King is a Japanese izakaya which is a restaurant that serves drinks and tapa style dishes that are meant to be shared. Gyoza King is well known for their hand made gyoza. I really like the gyoza there and I think they are well made.

The restaurant is relatively small and cozy. They get pretty busy there during Fridays and weekends. So if you go during dinner hours, expect a wait. When we went, we went relatively early and didn't have to wait in line. For 2 people going, ordering 6 dishes is usually enough food.

Ebinara Gyoza (Prawn Gyoza)

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YEW Restaurant + Bar

We went to YEW for some drinks for a friend's birthday. The restaurant + bar is located inside the Four Seasons Hotel Downtown. The decor there is hip and modern and the wood inside the restaurant really adds character. It's a place where people can have a few drinks and hang out. It isn't too loud in there (which I like) because most of the time at lounges, it gets too loud and you can barely hear the other person talk.

We ordered some cocktails and appetizers. The cocktails menu will change from time to time and there are a lot of cocktails/drinks to choose from. The cocktails there are unique and I haven't seen any of them at any other restaurant before.

Chocolate Dream Martini

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Paul's Place Omelettery

Paul's Omelettery is a place to be if you're craving a well made omelette. The omelettes are light, fluffy and delicious. Made from 3 eggs and a 3 cheese blend of cheddar, edam and cream cheese. The one thing I'm not a fan of is the service. The service there is a hit or miss. One time we went, we received great service. Greeted and seated right away and the waitress was friendly. The second time we went, we were ignored. We waited at the door for 10 minutes and no one even made eye contact. We left that time.

We ordered 2 omelettes and some pancakes! All omelettes come with some fruit and multigrain toast. For an extra $1.50, you can add some pan fries.

The 1306

A mixture of Shiitake, Oyster and Button Mushrooms

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Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Turkey Day!

Yesterday my friends and I had a huge Thanksgiving dinner. It was a potluck style dinner where everyone brought a dish to accompany the turkey that the guys made. There was a large assortment of dishes: broccoli casserole, mac n cheese, roasted veggies, baked potatoes, carrot & turnip mash, garlic mashed potatoes, corn, candied yams, caprese salad, brussels sprouts and of course, the turkey, stuffing, gravy and cranberry sauce. It was a lot of food! And for dessert, pumpkin pie and apple pie!

Before shot (A lot of food!)

Why blog about this? Well, it's food, it's Thanksgiving (and who doesn't like turkey?) and I also made food. I made the candied yams and apple pie. See more after the cut!

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Hidden

Hidden restaurant is located inside the Westin Grand and is a tasting bar and lounge. It's a place where people can sit down and share a bite to eat. The food they have there is comfort food with a "modern twist". The great thing about Hidden is that they use local ingredients. Local = Good =)

I went to Hidden during the summer and at that time, I haven't started my blog yet. So this entry will be some of my backlog from the summer. After looking through my camera, I realized that I had a bunch of food photos and that I have yet to put up =)

We ordered 4 dishes and a dessert. I liked all the dishes we ordered and it was enough food for the 4 of us.

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PHAT Sandwich

PHAT: Pretty Hot And Tasty. I didn't know that was what it stood for. I always thought it was a play on words... PHAT = Fat = Big Sandwich.

PHAT Sandwich is located in Yaletown and is one of the few sandwich places that serve Montreal Smoked Meat Sandwiches. I ordered their Skinny Hot Montreal Smoked Meat on Marble Rye ($7.99) and my co-worker ordered the Skinny Reuben Sandwich on Marble Rye ($9.99). For an extra $2, you can upgrade your sandwich a larger size or PHAT size which will have more meat. Mmmm extra meat. 

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Glowbal Grill Steaks & Satay

This weekend, we went to Glowbal Grill Steaks and Satay twice! I actually forgot that I've made reservations for Sunday dinner and we ended up going there on Saturday for brunch!

Every Sunday, Glowbal has a special promotion on their prime rib. For $24, you get a 10oz prime rib, yorkshire pudding, organic arugula heirloom tomato salad and a side of poutine! It's a pretty good deal! And another great thing is that I have a card for a Free Teaser at any of the Glowbal group restaurants. I brought this card to both brunch and dinner!

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Sciué

Scuié, pronounced "Shoe-eh" is slang for "good and fast". Good, yes. Fast, not so much as there were a lot of people lined up there for lunch. I'm pretty sure if there wasn't so many people, it would be fast!

Scuié is an Italian café located downtown that serves flat bread pizza, pasta, sandwiches, coffee and pastries. The pizza there is soooo good! The pizza here isn't sold by "slice" but by weight. You tell them how big of a piece you want and they will cut a piece, weight it and then tell you how much to pay. I'm not sure how much they charge per gram or kilogram as I didn't see the scale when they weighed the pizza. But we paid about $21 for 3 slices.

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Taste of Yaletown 2010 - October 13 - 31

Taste of Yaletown is a yearly event where restaurants in Yaletown offer a 3-course prix-fixe tasting menu of $25, $35 or $45. A portion of the profits will be donated to the Vancouver Food Bank. Why not help out and enjoy great food at the same time! This year, the event runs from October 13th - 31st and restaurants are already taking reservations.

There are 25 restaurants participating this year:

- Bistro Sakana: $35
- Brix Restaurant Wine & Bar: $35
- Cactus Club: $35
- Capones Restaurant & Live Jazz Club: $35 or $45
- Charm Modern Thai: $25
- Earls: $35
- George Ultra Lounge: $25
- Glowbal Grill & Satay: $45
- Goldfish Pacific Kitchen: $35
- Hamilton Street Grill: $25 or $35
- Hapa Izakaya Yaletown: $25 or $35
- Hub Restaurant & Lounge: $25
- Hurricane Grill: $25
- Milestones: $25
- One Hundred Days: $35
- Provence Marinaside: $35
- r.t.l: $35
- Rodney's Oyster House: $45
- Section (3): $25
- Simply Thai: $25 or $35
- Society Dining Lounge: $25
- Sweeney's of Yaletown: $35
- The Keg Yaletown: $35
- Urban Thai Bistro: $25
- Yaletown Brewing Co.: $35

Menus for the restaurants can be found here:
http://yaletowninfo.com/events/taste-of-yaletown/menus/

After looking through all the menus, the one place that I really want to go to is Goldfish Pacific Kitchen. I think this is the only restaurant that I will be going to this time.

Hokkaido Ramen Santouka

I realized that I've been eating a lot of noodles and going on a noodle craze lately.

The next noodle/ramen shop is Santouka on Robson. I've been to Santouka a couple of times but never really think about going there since I always default to Kintaro for ramen. But this time, I didn't feel like anything too heavy and thought about Santouka since their broth there is lighter and less greasy than Kintaro.

Another reason why I don't frequent Santouka is that the prices for their ramen there is slightly higher than most ramen places. It ranges about $10 to $13 for a bowl of ramen, $5 for gyoza and they also charge about $2 extra for corn, an egg or seaweed. The good thing about this place is that there are rice combos where you can add a bowl of salmon, ikura (fish eggs) or cha shu (BBQ Pork) rice to your ramen. The rice combos will run you about $15 per set. And also for $1 more, you can upgrade your ramen to a large size.

We ordered Gyoza, Toroniku Miso Ramen and Cha Shu Miso Ramen.

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