Mooshmouse

Valrhona chocolate bars are also available at Chocolate Arts on West 4th Avenue. Upside of going there is sampling all their other tasty chocolate treats!

Yesterday: A bit of a food wasteland, really, except for the Mocha Motion that a girlfriend bought me from the Cupcakes store on Denman Street. Chocolate cupcake smothered with mocha buttercream icing and topped with a chocolate-covered espresso bean. Today: Lunch at Burgoo was a rich bowl of Beef Bourguignon (with caramelized pearl onions, carrots and mushrooms) served atop garlic mashed potatoes. And the accompanying caesar salad with an insane amount of garlic and anchovies. Yummy.

Roland Tanglao's foodblog, VanEats, has a blurb on the menu for Ch'i Restaurant which is slated to open tomorrow. Click here to check it out.

As noted in this Georgia Straight blurb, Settebello was recently purchased by Romy Prasad and Dee Anand, formerly of CinCin. Opening date slated for February 15. Whatever they make of it will certainly be an enormous improvement over Settebello's previous incarnation which was mediocre at best.

Dear God. Bacon, porcini and oyster mushrooms. Heaven.

Late to the table on this, but HSG became the fifth restaurant on my DOV roster for an impromptu late lunch with a girlfriend on Tuesday. My menu choices mirrored Arne's. The West Coast Winter Salmon Chowder was fabulous... and a huge bowl of it too. Sweet corn was a nice complimentary flavour for the salmon. And Tuesday's batch was just right in the salt department. What can I say about the Angus Beef Burger. Bring on the burger love! The wonderfully soft Portuguese bun was a nice touch, but the mile-high pile of fried onions made my day! After the giganto bowl of chowder, I had to reassess my priorities and brought the lion's share of my salad and yam fries so that I could concentrate my eating efforts on burger bliss while saving room for dessert. The duo of Belgian Chocolate and Tahitian Vanilla Creme Brulee was an excellent end to the meal. Portion size bang on. Tahitian Vanilla was smooth, creamy and wonderful. However, the Belgian Chocolate was almost like a brulee version of the best, most expensive hot chocolate ever... and yes, that's a very good thing. All accompanied by a pint of draft beer. Beer and burgers go hand in hand. Neil, maybe you can refresh my memory on which exactly lager it was. Tasty. Thanks Monsieur Wyles for your oh-so-charming company and yet another great meal. To borrow your words, "it was a little slice of heaven."

Coop, I can't decide if the thought of you all punked out and bustin' some new wave poseur dance moves at Luv Affair is either delightful, frightening or some disquieting combination of the two. Were those part of your pink tutu days?

Yesterday: A mouthwatering angus beef burger at the Hamilton Street Grill, piled high with fried onions and served on a Portuguese bun. Courtesy of my fellow eGulleter and new burger guru, Chef/Owner nwyles. Today so far: Two perfect chocolates from Chocolate Arts. One Romeo (dark chocolate pyramid filled with blackberry ganache and blackberry buttercream) and one Poire ("oven-roasted organic Anjou pear, milk chocolate, and dried pear with a hint of Pear William in a dark chocolate shell"). Thought I'd died and gone to chocolate heaven.

Just wanted to say that I love the term shouty stick place... I've been laughing about it since you posted as it doesn't get more accurate than that!

Word Daddy-A. My thoughts? Here and here. Now. Time to get my priorities straight and get me some food!

No. Nor did I have DOV meals at Le Gavroche or C Restaurant, yet I did post on these respective threads to cite my reasons for omitting two good restaurants from my regular dining rotation. Everyone has different palates and different opinions. That's the beauty of this forum: with such a diverse group of local members, we get a broad cross-section of tastes and experiences. Negative feedback is a good thing... what doesn't kill us makes us stronger, yes? But, in order to maintain the respect that we've developed as a group in our local corner of eGullet, it's important to be thoughtful and well-founded when articulating our dissatisfaction. Dining plebs like me should feel lucky to have so many industry folk as an audience and even willing participants in our idiosyncratic food discussions. Luckier still that our feedback is used as a forum for change instead of falling on deaf ears.

But so much of it ? ← That's what these threads are for though aren't they? If one person posts some constructive critisism and 5 other people felt the same way are the other 5 supposed to keep their lips zipped? Maybe that would have been better..... I don't know. ← After reading and re-reading this thread as so many of us have, I feel compelled to add my thoughts. Inanimate put it rather eloquently; there is definitely a fine line between constructive and destructive criticism, one which some are walking more effectively than others. Certainly, the purpose of this and all other DOV threads is to recount and evaluate your dining experience at a particular establishment. Good or bad, we each have the opportunity to stand on our little soapboxes for the duration of our post. Then we step off our respective soapboxes and let others have a turn. Yet, as on a schoolyard, the snowball effect has a nasty habit of taking over a thread when comments on mediocre or poor meals start to fly and it's easy to get carried away. As "educated" diners, we are fully aware that restauranteurs and their staff, both FOH and BOH, are pushed to the limit for the duration of Dine Out. Yet we choose to participate with that caveat in mind. Is this an excuse for poor food or poor service? Absolutely not. But use this understanding to weigh your DOV experience against one that you could have during the rest of your dining year before posting comments for the rest of the e-universe to read. We're fortunate enough to have Sean (and many other chefs and restaurant owners) as a fellow eGulleter, doubly fortunate that he cares enough about his profession to give us some insight into his world by starting this thread and respects his clientele enough to receive our feedback. In the interests of fairness and reciprocity, we should be equally respectful. When a meal is dissatisfactory, then post about it. Naturally, there'll be discussion, but if you're still heated, then afford a restauranteur the courtesy of a more detailed PM or e-mail to voice your opinions rather than continuing to kick at the insult can. Any chef and/or owner worth his or her salt will take your concerns to heart. And will survive DOV, a little battered perhaps, but survive nonetheless.

Whoohoo... am heading there tomorrow night and can't wait!

Dear God Bill. Those scallops look nothing short of magnificent. I've already had dinner (nothing magnificent, believe me) and I'm hungry all over again just looking at that photo. (Insert drool emoticon here)

Not having dined at Le Crocodile in a year or two, I scanned their website and will agree that the two are rather similar pricewise, with Le Crocodile being marginally more expensive. Both restaurants are fantastic. John Blakely was actually the Maitre d' at Le Crocodile for a number of years, which is where I first made his acquaintance. I'd say that Le Crocodile is slightly more upscale than Bistro Pastis, the latter striving for more of a traditional neighbourhood bistro feel with their recent renovation. Neil's absolutely right. To choose between the two would be splitting hairs indeed.

Milk and Pepsi. Where's the ack emoticon when you need it?

After having culled a variety of responses, I've gotta add my thoughts to this thread. I've been to Le Gavroche three times, twice for dinner and once two years ago for a Wine Festival event. What these responses and my dining experiences have in common is that any service where Manuel exercises any personal influence is phenomenal. However, take Manuel out of the equation and the service is rated terrible to indifferent or mediocre at best. At the Quinto do Castro wine dinner, service was at its best. VIPs and invited guests aplenty, and FOH was in tip-top form. I was dining with a personal friend of Manuel's, so that definitely helped matters in the hospitality department. However, my two other dinners at Le Gavroche measured up to Arne's initial comments. Indifferent waitstaff who paid much more attention to the regulars than the rest of us dining plebs in the room certainly left more than a bad taste in my mouth. So much so, in fact, that the FOH brush-offs overshadowed any memory of the food and does to this day. Will I go back to Le Gavroche? Not likely. Unless, of course, I'm with a personal friend of the owner...

If you're willing to make the drive over to the west side for Notte's Bon Ton, then I'd also give my hands-down vote to Bistro Pastis as the French restaurant of choice. It's the perfect place to go for a special occasion: a warm, comfortable room with John Blakely as the consummate host. Fantastic value for your food dollar... and the best pommes frites in town.

This reminds me about the thread on the all-cereal restaurant... Cereality, I believe it's called. We don't eat a whole ton of cereal at the Mouse House. Every once in a while, I'll buy myself a box of Crispix or Post Cranberry Almond Crunch. But what I really miss are Team Flakes. Made from rice, wheat, corn and oats, Team was one of the only cereals that would actually stay crunchy in a bowl of milk. Sigh. Team. My kingdom for a bowl of Team.

Betwixt and between our DOV meals at West, Chambar and Circolo, there has been: Dinner with another family at Pondok Indonesian on Commercial Drive. The restaurant was jam packed on a rainy Saturday evening. Since that was two weekends ago, my memory fails me on the exact dishes we had. A bottle or two of Masi Valpolicella (2002, I think). Grilled tilapia, mee goreng, green beans in shrimp paste with prawns, lumpia and chicken sate for the kids... there must've been something else. Of course, deep fried bananas with ice cream for dessert. Comfort food, much like Filipino cuisine. High tea with two girlfriends at The Secret Garden in Kerrisdale. Three tiers with lots of goodies, almost too many to remember: egg-salad pinwheels, chicken salad on mini-croissants, scones with clotted cream and raspberry preserves, slices of a mini banana-walnut loaf, lemon tarts, coconut banana (?) cake, mini tiramisu topped with a chocolate-covered coffee bean. And too many cups of vanilla almond tea for me to count. All of that food before our eGullet DOV dinner at West. Lunch on Wednesday at Josephine's on Main and 11th with a couple of fellow eGulleters. It was a Filipino tasting menu of sorts; I ordered lots of little dishes for us to sample. Lumpiang shanghai (egg rolls filled with pork and minced carrot, sweet chili dipping sauce), sinigang na bangus (milkfish, tomatoes and spinach in sour tamarind soup), kalderetang baka (beef and tomato stew), bistek (thinly sliced flank steak, fried with onions), kare kare (oxtail and tripe, cooked in peanut sauce, topped with bok choy, eggplant and green beans), barbecued chicken (in a sweet marinade), bopis (pork innards, minced and fried with chili peppers, green and red peppers, onion, tomato sauce, and vinegar), pancit palabok (rice noodle "chow mein" with chicken and assorted diced or julienned vegetables). Dessert, naturally, accompanied by cups of Tazo chai tea. Cassava pudding cooked with coconut milk, turon de saba (deep-fried banana and jackfruit spring rolls, drizzled with caramelized brown sugar), leche flan (a creamier version of creme caramel) and ube biko (sweet sticky rice, mixed with taro root, cooked in coconut milk and brown sugar). Clearly, just a little full after that meal. And lunch today at Ezogiku Noodle Cafe on Robson Street across from the library. Two bowls of teriyaki chicken ramen between the three of us, one bowl with miso broth and one bowl with shoyu broth (which I prefer). Still to come: our last DOV dinner at Bistro Pastis this Wednesday.

Lee, you're one of the first people I've read who shares our opinion of C. We've been for three dinners, all in the spring/summer, all outside on a picture-perfect evening. Three-course meals with cocktails, wine and cappucinos... yet each time we've come away thinking, "Good, but not great." I likened each of our dining experiences at C to watching a much-anticipated movie after reading lots of stellar reviews and then coming away somewhat disappointed. And it's not as if we've only been once... we gave it a second and third chance. Consequently, it's never been a recommended restaurant of ours; we'd much rather send someone to West, Bistro Pastis or Cru. Just my two cents worth.

Veal Medallions Forestier from this evening's Dine Out Vancouver dinner at Circolo, served in a red wine jus with wild mushrooms. Tender, melt-in-your-mouth fantastic.

My morning latte and a light, flaky croissant filled with chocolate ganache.

Dang, lemoncurd, you make good cookies! Crossing my fingers that my stomach will be the recipient of some of your Pave at the Iron Chef get-together.

Yesterday: a tall, thick strawberry milkshake. Worth every cholesterol and fat-laden calorie!