Keith Talent

I'd love to see what proportion of ALR land in the GVRD is actually used for food production as opposed for a place for rich people to keep a horse (relatively) cheaply as it's subsidized by me, the taxpayer.

I'm uneducated on this issue. Why should I care if it's taken out of the ALR and what's wrong with industrial land?

Five thousand years of artistry, culture and civilisation was just undone by adding pudding to snapple. Way to go, China.

Elephant Castle? Do you mean Pearl Castle? Three/Four doors down from Vogue? Elephant & Castle is a deep fryer-centric brit pub themed hellhole CFD. Although you can get a beer and watch from the bleacher seating at the international arrivals gate at YVR while waiting to make an airport pick up, so that's kinda cool.

You could probably squeeze the naugehyde seating surfaces in the place and extract enough bio-diesel to run your Prius between Rodeo Burger and Davixd Suzuki's house until the spotted owls come home to roost. That place was horrid.

And Xi An food in the needing a good pressure wash Richmond Public Market has hand pulled noodles made to order. Five bucks gets you a large bowl of perfectly chewy noodles in lamb broth with a veg. One of my favourite bowls of soup in the universe. they also have an excellent vegetarian hot and sour with hand pulled noodles full of veg and tofu.

I believe it's called "Traditional Taiwanese Cuisine"? We've been there a couple times and enjoyed the food. They serve this interesting "paper hot pot" thing...it's food put into a cone of parchment paper, and it sits in a contraption that keeps it over a candle. The paper doesn't burn or leak. ← Actually it's Ellie next door to "Traditional Taiwanese" that does the paper hot pot. And the service method is really the only interesting thing about them, the contents have never struck me as particularly exciting, especially when compared to other things on the menu. Trad Taiwan is good, far more a casual noodle shop type place than Vogue, which is a sit down full service restaurant. At Traditional Taiwanese we like the spicy won ton, a dish called stupid noodle. Or maybe crazy noodle, I forget, it's a spicy/sweet peanut sauce on noodles anyway.

So on Saturday we ventured to Bellingham to try Taquiria Tienda El Polivoz. Hallelluah! Mexican. In Vancouver! or at least an hours drive away. It's the real deal. Located in a shifty looking strip mall on the Guide Meridian just north of Bellis Fair. I had a lenchua taco (Yeah, I know it's spelled wrong, I also recognize that not only are the letters not in order, I don't even have the full compliment required. Deal with it.) Tongue taco. Also orderd pozole. Nicely seasoned, huge chucks of pork, a bowl big enought to bathe a baby. Radish, limes, choppped onion and shredded lettuce on the side, half point deduct for using lettuce rather than cabbage. Wife ordered a selection of tacos, carne asada, carnitas, cabrillo. All excellent. Monsters had kids meals, sized for adults, one had chicken taco otehr wanted a quesildilla. Generous with rice and beans. The food was excellent. Clientlele exclusively Mexican. Table behind us ordered a torta and burrito. Both looked excellent. Other tables had steaks and what apperaed to be a very delicious sopa de mariscos. (Seafood soup.) Highly recommended. Take a roadtrip, there's nothing more typical for a Vancouverite than Saturday afternoons in Bellingham. That whole tourism board ski in the morning, sail in the afternoon is bullshit, real Vancouverites go down the 99 on weekends. And Paseo Del Norte was open, at least the doors were open, sign on and lights on. It certainly appeared open by any tradition measure. Thanks to Vancouver for the tip.

I'm going to formulate an all encompassing rule regarding Mexican joints that post walls of Polaroids depicting drunken gringo customers wearing giant sombreros. El Paseo Del Norte has one on the way to the washrooms I beleive. And not that I'm against cheese covered anything per se, just that greasy orange shit where the oil separates away from the curd when heated leaving puddles of oil congealing on your enchilada.

I'd be interested to hear from restauranteurs how the change a year or so ago pertaining to the sale of food with booze has changed their business, if at all. Anyone see a marked increase in drinks only customers?

Paseo del Norte is the place right at the border next to the Denny's? If so, stay away, stay far far away. Cheap greasy orange cheese covers everything. You will leaving wishing you'd made other dinner plans, hell you'll regret not going to the Denny's next door.

Very nice. A road trip is in my immediate future. We got Nexus cards based on the rationale that we may need them, and once you're in line, it's too late. We'll break them out this weekend perhaps.

It closed about fifteen minutes after the post about it last year.

Just to temper my enthusiasm a little now that I'm off the taco high. Make no mistake, Chilo's would be the crappiest taqueria in socal were it located there. The fried minute steak masquerading as carne asada is pretty bad. The lack of appropriate garnish for the pozole is a shame. In spite of all that, it's far and away the best Mexican joint I've eaten at here. Hopefully they correct a few of their wrongs as they get their feet under them. And they also need to know that regular opening hours aren't just for big multi national corporations. The wife and I discussed that one of our projects this summer will be to locate a good taqueria in Bellingham, there has to be one.

We went to Chilos today too. Twice. Showed up at the crack of noon, to find the lights out, chairs stacked up and the proprietor telling us he had a party last night and was a little slow getting going this morning. Sign one that things were going to be good. Came back a couple hours later after a trip down to the only mall in the city that's even slightly interesting, International Village. The whole place has a cool Blade Runner/Shanghai after the apocolypse feel. The surfeit of empty storefronts only add to the cool vibe. Had a spring roll from the Vietnamese place in the food court to tie us over. Back at two. A young girl greeted us, beautiful smile and a born front of house confidence. Turns out she was all of eleven and left to oversee things till dad got back. She informed us that her dad was out getting food, would be back and was expecting us as we had told him we'd be back. Sign two that we were in the right place. Two other tables in the place. A couple and a large table of kids that I swear played in "City of God" as extras in scenes as the "Groovies". I fully expected to see Rocket stroll in. Proprietor showed. Chips and (very very good) salsa were served. Mom took our order. Except she didn't speak english, and our Spanish is limited to dos cervesas por favor. No menu, it's like Mexican dim sum, point at stuff going by that you want. I had a beer, which came full of hot sauce, lime and salt. All that was missing was having it topped with ice, I guess they didn't want to freak the gringo too badly. We ordered four carne asada taco, four carnitas, a quesidilla and a bowl of pozole. Food came slowly. Muy authentico. Mannana. Best mexican in the city? After one visit I'm fully confident saying yes, absolutely. Most authentic by a country mile. Carne asada is fried instead of BBQ'ed, I'd stay away in the future, but in spite they're still way closer to the ideal than anything I've seen in this town before. Carnitas was braised rather than roasted with crisp skin on the outside, but still very good. Pozole was excellent with the exception of the missing cabbage/radish on top. Other tables had what appeared to be bowls of camarone soup, which looked good, as well as cockitelles of shrimps, which also looked appetizing. Total came to 32 bucks, with the above and three sodas. I suspect we payed an extra tax for being unilingual, fair enough I suppose. Closest thing to Ensenada without going into the Golden State around here, by a long shot.

The best buffet in the city is at The Captains Club prior to Canuck games at GM place. The food generally follows a thematic logic, so you never have jello nesteled next to roast beef. Plus, you get to keep your table for between periods and after the game for drinks/coffee. The other kinda okay not so bad buffet is Samba Brazillian BBQ. Not a buffet per se, rather the waiters bring assorted meats to the table and slice it onto your plate. And if there's a good all you can eat Japanese place around, I don't know of it.

I'll never maintain a computer based cellar system. A Moleskine notebook and pen sitting there have no boot up prior to use. If I have to look for the computer, wait for my wife to finish with it, boot it, open a file...blah blah blah I'll never do it. Never mind the fact that I'll never reverse the process when I want to retrive a piece of info. I recognize my tendancy to procrastinate and take the route of least resistance.

The problem is info retreiveal. We track the same thing, but I need some way other than flipping back to find when and where I got the wine. The reason I'm keeping the info is too often you'd go pull a cork with no recollection where or when you got the bottle. Maybe gluing labels with thew pertinent info on the bottles bottom would be better? I have taped the cash register receipt to specific bottles. Although, vintages will be more or less chronological (ie. most wine bought now is from the early 00's) which should make retreival of data easier in ten years, just find an '02 vinatge for example to locate something bought this year.

I have approx. 500 bottles I'd like to track using a non-computerised system. Ideally I'd like to use a plain ruled moleskine type notebook only, no fancy forms or anything. I'd like to track price when and where purchased, when to drink and any Parker scores/comments. I'm currently doing this by linear entry into a journal, which is fine but I'm really creating more of a diary of wine purchaes rather than a useable tracking method. Anyone have any tips/tricks/techniques for tracking wine?

My reading skills are superb. "As far as I know, starting April 1st they're gonna have regular hours... M-F 5-10, S-S 11-9. Right now, I think they're just doing weekends until their big opening." So maybe lunch today isnn't meunedo.

I'm going to Chilo's ASAP, like today. The pozole should have come with some raw cabbage and radishes on top as a garnish. A good bowl of pozole is waaaaayyyyyy more than I ever hoped for in Vancouver. Hell a bad bowl of pozole is more than I ever hoped for. The tacos look right, perhaps a little stingy on the toppings. Looks promising.

I've never understood why they continue with the idiotic readers choice awards. Perhaps as suggested by Rhonda May its' to give the sales department of The Straight cold call leads. Every year you think that the editors are going to be embarrased by the fact that apperently their readership consists of mouth breathing subway eating morons and spike the readers picks. And isn't the internet supposed to kill off these stupid polls? We now have a more interactive manner to disseminate out impotent opinion, why shill for McDonalds for free? Very weird. On the pro side there is some dubious behavior exhibited as well. I'm certain the powers at C arre thrilled to have spent X million to beat out a taco stand on the docks and a beer soaked sailing club house. Quality does triumph. Free papers are worth what you pay.

My kid bring home nori snack she trades one of her friends. It's always sweet, or at least sweetish, something I'm not a fan of. I like how it's really crisp, but would prefer smoky/salty flavoured nori rather than sweet. Maybe that doesn't even exist. Japanese snacks are completely bizzare to my western pallette, esp the preference for sweetness along with seafood flavours. Once coming home from Japapn I bought a bag of tiny dried snack crabs, covered in chili and sugar. They were odd.

They have a food court there? Anyone been? What's there?

First off, great post. I enjoy seeing things from others perspective. The quote that seems incongrous with Jamies article to me is If so, why pay Bond/Noble etc. for menu input? Souds like an account/corporate training specialist could effect far more positive change than a "name" chef.