mangez

Thanks, yes fmed is right, two shops north of Kintaro. Too bad about Corner Suite Bistro de Luxe. We brought a few students there for tasting we thought the place was pretty busy.

Looks like Yoshoku-Ya is closed on Denman, to be soon replaced by:

I understand Yoshi is gone. Best sushi in my opinion is: Sushi Hachi Restaurant 8888 Odlin Crescent, #1278 Richmond, BC V6X3Z8 Tel: (604) 207-2882 Just husband and wife team, and make sure you book in advance, very busy they don't even do takeouts.

I remember 17 years ago at the old Star Anise, they had a killer pork chop..

Lumiere has been nice, they have a summer pre-fixe menu: SUMMER PRIX FIXE Available before 7pm THREE COURSE MENU $65 Wine Pairing $35 DUNGENESS CRAB WITH CHAMPAGNE MANGO Pickled Papaya, Piquillo Pepper Coulis, Coriander BEET AND VODKA CURED HAMACHI White Sturgeon Caviar, Baby Beets, Horseradish Cream PAN ROASTED QUALICUM BAY SCALLOPS Sweet Corn Succotash, Fried Okra . . . . . . . POLDERSIDE FARM DUCK Poached Cherry, Hennessy XO Glaze, Cardamom Duck Jus PEA RAVIOLI WITH CHAMPAGNE VELOUTE Sugar Snaps, Oyster Mushrooms, Pearl Onion, Mint DUO OF AAA PRIME BEEF Red Wine Braised Short Rib with Potato Fondant and Rosemary Soubise Seared Rib Eye with Braised Romaine and Shallot . . . . . . . APRICOT CONSOMMÉ Almond Sablé, Lemon Mousse, Thyme Ice Cream HOT AND COLD BLACK FOREST SUNDAE Brandied Cherries, Cocoa Sauce, Vanilla Gelato and Crispy Sacher Biscuit SUMMER STRAWBERRY PAVLOVA Lemon-scented Strawberries, Vanilla Cream, Pink Peppercorn Meringue

Any gossips on what's happening to Chow's space?

Our favourite Korean BBQ in lower mainland: Kyung Bok Palace in North Vancouver (much better than the Richmond location) 143 3rd Street West North Vancouver 604-987-3112 Go Gung 1410 Parkway Blvd Coquitlam 604-552-7722 The above restaurants offer the best Kalbi in our opinion.

Yes, we like this version with the meat and skin together! The ox tail is also good, so is their soup and their "jer jer vegetables" in a sizzling hot pot.

We discovered a very good Chinese restaurant on Renfrew at East 2nd called Bing Sheng. It's quite authentic serving local dishes you expect to see in southern parts of China. In fact, it's so good that we offered to help them do up menu translations into English. Reasonable prices, they even let you weigh your king crab before ordering. But then, I guess one can never be 100% certain if the weighted crab is the same as the cooked one..

Went to Market for dinner on Monday. Absolutely agree with the above posts, food was truly excellent, at very good prices. Funny we ran into a friend who went on Saturday, and he already returned on Monday for more! I think I'm going back next week.

http://www.mikurestaurant.com/ to replace the old Spotted Prawn at 1055 W Hastings.

I don't use Open Table myself, but find it interesting they specifically target hotel staff members with their OTconcierge. Not sure how current the following article is, submitted to us by one of our students: OpenTable.com Launches OTconcierge; First Full-Service Concierge Solution Offers Personalized Online Access to Restaurant Reservations Nationwide OpenTable.com (www.opentable.com), the leading supplier of Internet-enabled customer relationship management, yield management and reservation management tools to the restaurant industry, today announced the launch of OTconcierge, the first interactive online solution to give hotel concierges direct access to the reservation books at hundreds of the country's top restaurants. The launch of OTconcierge advances OpenTable.com's goal of bringing the conveniences of real-time online reservations to everyone that makes dining reservations, whether they are reserving for themselves or for others. OTconcierge -- a highly interactive and personalized online interface connected via real private network to the electronic reservation books (ERBs) at OpenTable.com's member restaurants -- has been in beta testing at four of San Francisco's busiest hotels for the past four weeks and is being progressively deployed throughout the OpenTable.com restaurant network, beginning in San Francisco, Chicago and New York. The new interface was designed and developed by OpenTable.com with continual input from concierges at the Hotel Palomar, Pan Pacific Hotel, Galleria Park Hotel, and The Fairmont. "OTconcierge is an incredible concept," said Thomas Wolfe, head concierge at San Francisco's prestigious Fairmont Hotel and OTconcierge beta user. "It virtually eliminates mistakes. Never before have I been able to make dinner reservations at 6:00 in the morning, which I did three times this morning using OpenTable.com's system. OTconcierge is easy to use, and I can access my hotel guests' reservations from any Internet browser, which makes it incredibly convenient. OpenTable.com gives me instant online access to the best restaurants in the Bay Area, and it's my feeling that the restaurants that are not offering reservations on OpenTable.com yet will be doing so within the next year, or they will miss out on business not only from dining consumers but from hotels as well." OTconcierge brings concierges all of the tools that are available to consumers on OpenTable.com's original interface -- including 24/7 access to tables at restaurants around the country with no busy signals or waiting on hold, instant online confirmation of reservations, and a restaurant reservation search engine that allows them to search for availability according to preferences including city, neighborhood, cuisine type and price range -- or by a customizable list of favorite or nearby restaurants. OTconcierge goes beyond this basic offering to bring concierges the ability to easily make, cancel, modify and manage multiple reservations for their hotel guests from one online page. The new offering enables better communication between restaurants and concierges, including the ability for restaurants to distinguish between hotel and other reservations, instantly recognize the hotel and the specific concierge that made the reservation, and to compile reports on the number of reservations made by specific concierges within any given timeframe. Concierges are also able to compile reports on guest cancellations or no-shows, as well as on the number of reservations delivered to particular restaurants. OTconcierge also enables concierges to view and modify reservations made by other concierges at their hotel, in order to easily provide hotel guests with the best service possible. "OTconcierge is a tremendous time-saver," said Kathy Cady, concierge at San Francisco's Galleria Park Hotel. "The fact that I no longer have to call all over town in search of availability gives me more time to focus on my guests, which is what this job is really all about. Even when the guest knows exactly where they want to dine, and the restaurant has availability, I know that I can save time by making the reservation on OTconcierge. OpenTable.com has found a way to streamline the restaurant reservation process, and my hotel guests are always impressed that I can make their reservations without picking up the phone." Mark Belhumeur, chief concierge at San Francisco's Pan Pacific Hotel, said, "OpenTable.com has been very attentive to the needs of concierges in the development of OTconcierge. They have incorporated our suggestions and considerations into the product from the beginning of the development process, and the result is a system with a user-friendly interface that is not only a valuable time-saver, it's easy and enjoyable to use." "OTconcierge is a win-win proposition for both the hotel and the restaurant industry," said Jeff Edwards, OpenTable.com's CEO. "We're enjoying working with the concierge community to deliver out-of-town guests to our partner restaurants. Concierges make significantly more reservations on a daily basis than the general public; the concierges in our beta test make up to 65 restaurant reservations per day. OTconcierge gives us the ability to deliver business and pleasure travelers to our member restaurants, which will ultimately help us achieve our goal of helping OpenTable.com member restaurants increase revenues and improve the bottom line."

I wonder how much of it is driven by hotel concierges that utilize opentable for bookings? Anyone know what percentage of Opentable reservations are the actual guest themselves vs. a concierge? ← Sounds like a perfect project for a hotel management course study group, I'll ask around.

Do they list out the Wine Spectator and Wine Advocate scores on their wines?

I agree, very nicely done with a lot of sauce, we always order the rack of lamb, very consistent, best lamb in town in my opinion. The other great dishes would be the tomato soup and duck liver pate (the very smooth kind), also very good. Le Crocodile would be my first choice if you are looking for somewhere reputable and romantic. Excellent service at the restaurant as always. My second choice of lamb would be at Vij's but then, no reservations.

Much nicer room than before, however, the open kitchen layout resulted in a dining room that is slightly stuffy, despite the high ceiling. Very busy, very good wine list (you can have any wine on the list as long as you order two glasses, which means you'll be paying for roughly half of the listed bottle price). Food was on the pricey side. Cheese fondue quite good, so is their creamy macaroni and cheese. Steak was average, a little dry. Chicken liver pate very good. Very lively, not a bad place for birthday. There is also a glass private room in the middle of the restaurant, minimum food cost was around $1,000 if I recall correctly.

Vina has decent deep fried squid, that's the only favourite dish we can think of at the moment. Haven't tried their chicken hot pot rice in a long time, should be ok as well. But definitely skip the pho there, not their speciality at all, and the last time we had the shrimp salad roll, the wrapping was too hard (dried up). What do the pho experts think of Taste of Vietnam on Broadway, West of Oak on the South side?

I see it as great news for restaurant goers in Vancouver!

Absolutely agree, the cheese fondue at Bavaria is very consistent and hard to beat. For fish lovers, RimRock is not bad. Our other favourite dish at Whistler is actually just the cheese bread at Hy's steak house (they have one in Vancouver as well). I'm not sure if Seattle has those Chinese hot pot restaurants. The ones in Vancouver have pretty decent standard. If you can take medium spicy food, try the Thai curry fish hot pot at Landmark Hot Pot (on Cambie & Kind Edward) for dinner. You get a Tung Yum Goon soup with a huge fish as your soup base and you can order various types of fatty meat, veggie, dumplings to throw in.

Cantonese dim sum no - but Shanghainese dim sum - yes.

They're part of the Tropika Group actually.

I must be the only one who doesn't see this as a bad thing. Looking forward to a new restaurant with Rob cooking, and new creations by Dale now that he's in the driver's seat.

7th Heaven at the Aberdeen Centre Mall also has free WiFi.

I drove by last week and it looked like they were opened. Does anyone have any other details on Chow? Website, menu? Google didn't pull up much. I'm eager to give it a go once things have settled a bit. ← First report on Chow. Excellent food, we really had a great time. Better luck than Gastropod and Fuel. Jason and Michael are owners with Jean-Cristophe being the chef. Room is a little noisy, quite crowded on a Thursday night, before the long weekend I suppose. Highly recommended.

Thanks very much for the review. I personally enjoy reading all comments, both good and bad. Edit: I actually find honest reviews from visitors who are not in the industry most helpful sometimes.