anisette

My reply is a little late but here it goes: There's a great Portuguese restaurant in North Burnaby on East Hastings called Gallo Mercado. Funny that it's right next to possibly the worst restaurant in the lower mainland - Anton's which has silly long lineups and terrible piled-to-the-sky plates full of bland cheap pasta dishes. IF only those people were to move one door to the left they would discover some really great food. Their salted cod dishes are fantastic. As was their seafood paella which has more seafood in it than rice - full of mussels, clams, scallops & prawns. Generous portions although the service is pretty slow. Be prepared for an evening event. Anisette

My last visit to Bishops was shall I say it ... disappointing. It lacked the pizzaz of earlier visits. I ordered the deboned stuffed quail with cherry compote. It had decent flavour however: deboned should mean no bones, correct? Well this little bird arrived with all bones intact. Including what appeared to be a good portion of the backbone. Given this was the night I got engaged and we were drinking some nice vino, hacking into this tiny creature with my knife and trying to carve off some shards of meat became annoying quickly. I noticed that the stuffing in the quail had large crystals of what was probably Fleur de sel. Great salt, not great to bite into several salty chunks that should have been ground finely. Upon spotting Mr. Bishop himself doing his usual tour of patrons, I thought this night could potentially be saved. But we were disappointed to find that he could only really devote time to the one 'regular' American customer who flew in from Seattle just to eat at his restaurant. I guess to hell with the rest of us. Needless to say, will not return to Bishops. Sorry. Anisette