barolo

The thanks should go to you for devising such a literate, informative and entertaining blog. Welcome!

Lots of changes at the Island. City Food reports that Edible BC is moving in to the Public Market: Libery Wine has an "Opening Soon" sign up, SPUD has moved in and is open, Carmelis Goat Cheese has a day vendor booth.

Welcome Florin. I haven't been to your bakery yet but I have plans to rectify that situation in the near future. I look forward to your participation.

Yes, I'm pretty sure she's done a list for the past couple of years anyway. Like all the papers, they are playing around with the format a bit every year.

I'm really ejoying The Old Foodie who can tell you better than I what she is up to: Today is all about cake:

Sorry, she's the Vancouver Sun restaurant reviewer. I did an edit to insert that point.

Mia Stainsby reviews 1215 in today's Sun. She's relatively positive giving it 31/2 stars overall, as well as for food, ambience, and service. She notes it doesn't have the ambience or the buzz of Hapa Isakaya but she liked most of the dishes she tried. There have been pretty mixed reviews about this place and Davie is tough street for restaurants, I wonder how they will fare over the summer with no patio and no windows.

The Vancouver Sun's Mia Stainsby has made her choices of top restaurants of 2005 - I'm not going to list them all because there's 110 but here's some highlights: Best overall - Lumiere Best New 2005 - Nu Budget - Lolita's South of the Border Cantina Lounge - George New for Vegetarians - Chai New Comfort Food - Diner New Family - Earls on Hornby West Coast Cuisine - West Brunch - C Service - Bishop's Pho - Pho Hoang Ocean View - Beach House

Both the CBC and Sun reported today that the Vancouver Park Board is considering privatizing its concessions to improve the menu, and presumably its income. Here's a short quote from the Sun story, link below: Park Board Eyes Concession Overhaul What do you think about this idea? What would you put on the menu if you owned the concession?

turducken ← In the Victorian era a similar dish was called: Still available in London: Coppin Bros In the Middle Ages there was a dish called Trojan Hog - a pig stuffed with various fowl and seafood.

From Wikipedia

There's a couple of articles in today's Sun featuring Chocoatl one on chocolate/drink pairing and one on Chocoatl itself.

I stopped in yesterday. I didn't try the hot chocolate but I picked up a few filled chocolates and truffles to sample and share. The truffles were a bit rustic - one had a flat bottom with the filling showing through, another had odd lumps; not important to me, but some may care. The enrobing chocolate was very good, velvety and smooth with a very long, persistent finish. The centres were rich and creamy, although some flavours weren't strong enough to really emerge clearly from the chocolate ganache. I had a similar reaction to the molded, filled chocolates (a dark chocolate matcha and a praline) - great snap to the exterior shell, great flavour with a long persistent finish, the fillings were soft and creamy but, in the case of the praline, without a really distinct flavour beyond the ganache. Great little shop and product.

Mia Stainsby likes Century: Four stars overall, four stars for food, amience and servce in today's Sun.

I hope it is a temporary close, otherwise, my friends and I be utterly devestated. ← I believe they had a visit from the Health Inspector that resulted in a lot of requirements. Vancouver Coastal Health ← Interesting. I have seen reports like this before and then they were removed, leaving only a "everything is nice" report in it's place. I find it kind of wishy washy of the Health Dept when they cull bad reports. You fucked up enough to get the bad one, you should have to live with it as a constant reminder of your evil ways. ← I just checked in on the Health Board web site, it would appear that not only did this restaurant have their bad report removed, it would appear that they never have existed either ← That is interesting. One can learn a lot around here.

I like the food at Aurora Bistro a lot, but I find it noisy. Perhaps my ears are especially sensitive but it is all hard surfaces which do not make for a quiet room.

Salmon definitely can have worms and other parasites present.

A good book which includes a chapter on the ubiquity of corn in all that we eat is Much Depends on Dinner by Margaret Visser. It was published in 1986 - 20 years ago - but I still think it is worth reading.

A new book by Michael Pollan, reviewed here.

I think there's some good writing in City Food and I think the design is better. I agree the material is often not timely by the time it is distributed, but there is also the website which is updated fairly regularly now and I see references to it here fairly oftern. I read both and I'm glad both exist.

I've meant to post this for a while but got distracted. The spring City Food is out, featuring a new column for coffee geeks by Mark Prince, newly opened restaurant listings, a feature on the Whitewater Cooks cookbook, as well as Okanagan, Vancouver Island and Whistler reports, among the contents.

For those who didn't see the paper version of Mia Stainsby's review, the electronic version is available now: Primping and preparing makes rare dishes . Not sure how long the link will last.

Oyama had smoked duck and chicken halves on the weekend - $6.99 for duck and $4.99 for a chicken half. Good for sandwiches or just snacking.

Perhaps the list is related to the 10 city tourism organizations that have doing the most promotion recently?

Well there was an article in last week's Business in Vancouver titled "Granville Island poised for a major makeover" which suggests that the CMHC is focussed on improving the public market. The article quotes developments such as the Whole Foods plans for Broadway and Granville as well as Save-on-Foods and Capers plans in same vicinity as driving Granville Island changes. It also notes an increase in market sales since the 7:00 o'clock closing but acknowledges that the increase may be to general economic conditions, not the change in hours. They are also doing an urban design study, transportation studies and I know that they are looking at doing major upgrades to some of the island infrastructure. Blackberry Books also was closed for renovations today, I noticed. I think we can expect more changes and renovations, rather than less, in the next while.