Michael's Wilton Cake Decorating - Course 2: Flowers & Cake Design

Just slowly getting all these cake classes posted... They will all be up soon!

After taking Course 1, I went and registered for Course 2: Flowers & Cake Design. In this Course, I learned how to make a variety of flowers using Royal Icing. In Course 1, we learned how to work with buttercream, in Course 2, it's all Royal Icing (with the exception of the first class, which we used fondant and gum paste).

Class 1

The first class is an introduction to fondant and gum paste. I think having this as a first class is a great preview for what to expect when working with fondant in Course 3 (Gum Paste & Fondant). In this class, we learned how to make Button Flowers and Pansies. The Button Flowers are the easiest to make as all you need to do is lay the fondant over the button flower cut & press mold, cut the shapes out and then assemble. The pansy was a bit more difficult to make as it takes practice to master the ruffling technique with the ball tool.

Read more - Om nom nom

Deer Garden Signatures

I love a hot bowl of noodles on a chilly day. A great place in Richmond to get a giant bowl of noodles is at Deer Garden Signatures. The restaurant is known for their build-your-own bowl of noodles and the price is right! For $7.95, you pick your soup base, 2 toppings, the type of noodles and drink. It's an additional $1.25 if you want extra toppings, $1 for a cold drink and $1.75 if you want to add a fried pork cutlet, chicken wings, fish puffs, or fried fish on the side.  If you don't feel like having noodles, they also have a variety of rice combo dishes available too.

What I like about this restaurant is that they use no MSG in their fish broth, there is a lot of options to choose from and the bowls of noodles are huge! I can never finish a bowl there! All of the noodles here automatically comes with fresh bean curd, mushrooms, and cilantro toppings. If you don't want any of these, you can mark it off on the order sheet.

 Watercress & Almonds Fish Soup, Flat Rice Nodles with Beef Brisket and Fish Tofu

The soup was really flavourful and all the ingredients were fresh. Noodles were cooked just right and was not mushy. The beef brisket is a bit fatty here, but has a good taste.

Read more - Om nom nom

Miku Restaurant

For our anniversary dinner, we decided to go to Miku as I Love Hotdogs has never been here before. I've been to this restaurant about a year ago and what I remember is how tasty the seared salmon sushi was!

Miku is a Japanese izakaya located on West Hastings street (right by the Shaw Towers) that specializes in Aburi or sear-flamed sushi. The technique behind this is that by adding the heat directly, it will enhance the flavours of the fish.

When we arrived, the restaurant was super busy! There were a lot of people at the front door waiting for tables. I'm glad that we made reservations. We were seated quite promptly after we arrived. A good tip to remember is if you go on Friday or Saturday night, make sure you make a reservation!

Restaurant Interior

Open kitchen, very modern (different from other izakayas), and very blue

Read more - Om nom nom

L.A. Chicken

After reading about L.A. Chicken on a couple other food blogs and seeing how well reviewed it was on Urban Spoon, we put it on our list of places to try and then promptly forgot about it.  Recently, after a trip to Ikea, hungry and in need of dinner, we remembered L.A. Chicken was close by so we finally got to check it out.  

When we got there, the place was far from appealing.  It was extremely dingy and dirty, both inside and out, a true hole-in-the-wall.  This did not deter us though!  The place was empty when we entered, so we put in our order with the friendly woman at the counter, and after a 15-20 minute wait, we had our food.  They fry their chicken to order, which means you wait longer, but I prefer that to getting chicken that's been sitting under a warmer.

Read more - Om nom nom

Chewies Steam & Oyster Bar

A friend from out of town had come to visit and wanted to get some fried chicken, so Flowerbunny recommended Chewies, as they had fried chicken on their menu, and we've wanted to try them out since they opened.

There were 9 of us who came out to this dinner and they don't really have seating for a party that big so we had to cram into a smaller table.

We started with some Louisiana Rock Crab Cakes.  These came with mixed greens and a creole remoulade.  These were pretty tasty, lots of meat, and nicely spicy.  The remoulade added an additional layer of spicy flavour.

Read more - Om nom nom

Ensemble Tap

For Flowerbunny's birthday, we decided to check out Dale McKay's new pub style restaurant, Ensemble Tap!  Located in the spot where Azia used to be, near the Scotiabank Theatre, Ensemble Tap is a lot bigger than his other restaurant, Ensemble.  There are two levels, and plenty of TVs, so this would be a good spot to watch the game at.

We had reservations and were seated immediately in the upstairs section.  Our waitress was super friendly, and did a great job throughout our entire meal there.

Read more - Om nom nom

Phnom Penh

Having never tried Phnom Penh, but heard much about it, Flowerbunny and I finally decided to go check it out with three of our friends. As soon as we arrived we were greeted with an enormous line.  The restaurant was super crowded, and from what I hear it's pretty much always this way.  The restaurant is looks like a typical Chinese restaurant; kind of dirty, a few decorations, but nothing fancy.  This place is far more emblematic of a dive than a few of the places that Guy Fieri visited while in Vancouver.  It's strange that he didn't come here, especially given that they have some signature dishes for him to try.

While waiting we got the chance to look at the many awards on the wall.  There's actually a menu signed by Anthony Bourdain up there too. 

Read more - Om nom nom

Carver's Steakhouse

A couple of friends of ours wanted to go for out for steak and as we were all in Richmond, it came down to either Chop or Carver's.  We'd never tried Carver's so we decided to give it a shot.  When we got there, the restaurant was completely dead.  Not a great sign for a Friday night.  The decor is nice, and very steakhouse-y.  I think maybe this is just the wrong neighborhood for this type of restaurant.

Read more - Om nom nom

Roaming Dragon

I've wanted to try Roaming Dragon since I saw them featured on Eat St.  A friend from work and I have been talking about going to visit their truck up at Robson and Burrard for the last few weeks, but they've been off the street so much that we hadn't had the chance until now.  Luckily, she agreed to take the pictures, as I only had my iPhone with me. 

Read more - Om nom nom

Joey - Burnaby

Hungry after an evening of skating at Killarney ice rink with some friends, we all decided to go out for dinner.  No one was really in the mood for Asian food, so we headed over to Joey's on Lougheed.  I haven't been to Joey's in awhile, as I typically prefer Milestones, so I was looking forward to giving it another shot.  When we arrived we were told there would be a 45 minute wait, which I wasn't too surprised about as it was Saturday night and there were 7 of us.  However I guess some party wasn't using one of the tables allocated to them so we actually were seated within 5 minutes of arrival.  The decor was very modern, but very typical of these types of restaurants.

Read more - Om nom nom