Paul B

The news that L'ami is opening in my neck of the woods (West Van) is too good. They're taking over the space previously called The Cheese Shoppe. I was actually in there a few weeks ago when the owner was selling off the last of his stock. I got some nice Brie at half price. I hope L'ami prospers. Can't wait....

I was talking about this problem to the butcher at Windsor meats the other day, and he said it's not so much a matter of the artificially fed chickens being bloated with chemicals, etc. as the free-range birds growing very slowly. Makes sense. I finally went to Whole Foods (or, as we call it, Whole Paycheque), and got a fresh 5lb free range bird. It cost $27.

I went to three stores on Wednesday -- Safeway, Save On, and Windsor Meats (Caulfield branch) looking for a good-sized free range chicken. By good sized I mean 5 or, even better 6 lbs. All anyone had were scrawny little 3 lb birds. I can't feed a family of four (two of whom are teenage boys) with those things. Sure I could, and have, buy two birds, or buy a bird and a couple of extra legs, but I like the presentation of the whole bird especially when it's stuffed. So, does anyone know a butcher who regularly stocks nice big chickens? Extra points if he's located on the North Shore or on Hastings between the PNE and Simon Fraser. Thanks.

Just back from SF and, wouldn't you know it, I wasn't able to get to any of the restaurants you guys so kindly recommended. Instead I had three wildly different dining experiences. I arrived on Thursday and went out with some friends from the conference to the Thirsty Bear. Great brew pub with very nice tapas. The next night was the business meeting. There ended up being 14 of us so we turned to the hotel concierge for advice. He sent us to the Popolo. What a pit. A putative Italian restaurant that listed as one of its specialties cheese burgers. The only good thing about it was that they had a reasonable corkage fee so one of us ran to a local liquor store and bought enough wine to kill the taste of the food. At least it was cheap. On Saturday and friend and I decided to treat ourselves: we went to Jardinaire (sp?). Pretty nice restaurant, and the only restaurant that I've ever been to that had a bottle of wine listed at $1000. I didn't order it. Instead I had the parmesan lemon soup, the beef short ribs, and the sorbet. My friend had the duck live mousse, prime rib, and a chocolate cake. All tremendous. The service was great and the room sparkled. Thanks for all your advice.

Many thanks for the helpful suggestions! I've printed them off and packed them in my flight bag. Now if only the weather will cooperate. . .

The times I have been there it has been surprisingly noisy, especially for a West Vancouver restaurant. I didn't find it unpleasantly noisy though: we could still all hear each other around the table.

Actually, I have had a pint at the Heather but haven't been able to have a meal there yet. The food looks good. I would recommend a vacation in Ireland to anyone. But living in one of the barren, hideous suburbs west of Galway (as I did)? That's a very different story.

Hello from Vancouver BC! I'll be attending an academic conference in San Francisco this weekend. The conference is being held at the Park 55 Hotel, two blocks from Union Square. A sub-group from the conference, probably about six people, needs to slip away and have a working dinner somewhere near the hotel. Now, we're all academics, which means that money is tight. On the other hand, no one will be worried about the decor or the ethnicity of the food as long as it's relatively (say, under $30 a head) cheap and tasty. And remember, some of us live in Vancouver which is, like SF, a gourmand's paradise. And yes, we all like a small tipple with our meal. Any suggestions? Many thanks in advance.

You know, you wouldn't catch me dead on St. Pat's day looking for an Irish experience. Why? Because I lived on the west coast of Ireland for six months and I know all too well about a) real (that is everyday) Irish food, and b) real (at least in Galway) St. Patrick's day festivities. I'm afraid that I don't miss either. I'm also sure that the food that places like the Irish Heather serves is not what they're serving at the local in Gort or Tubber. If you want to know about real Irish food, read the letters about the subject on my blog: http://lava-blog.blogspot.com/

This sounds great. It's exactly what Saskatoon needs. I was there some, oh, six years ago and was appalled by most of the food I had. At the time I said to a friend, "Man, there's money here, why doesn't someone make a cool restaurant?" Glad to know you're doing it. Good luck with the project. (ps. my previous experience in Saskatoon was so bad I wrote a blog about it: http://lava-blog.blogspot.com/2006/02/trip...saskatoon.html)

Here's a real morsel: Thomas Haas' chocolates, especially the pink grapefruit with campari truffle. I'm not much of a sweets guy, but these things! (Actually, all the pastries that Haas has at his North Vancouver store are tremendous. Even his coffee is good.) And on the topic of Savary Island Pie Company, don't forget their lemon - blueberry pie. Yikes.

Definitely sounds like Bao Chau. Paul B, there's a Radio Shack across the street and a coffee shop on the corner of the next block, right? ← Yup. That's it. Thanks. A couple of years ago I took my father there for lunch. He was visiting from Toronto and had never had Vietnamese food. He was bowled over not only by the tastes but the price. Mmmm. I could use some pho right now. I'm suffering from a cold and it might just clear me up....

Our family fave for a long time has been the little place on Hastings near the corner of Slocan (that's two blocks east of Renfrew). Darned if I can remember the name right now but it's on the north side of the street, one business west of Slocan, right beside some greasy spoon. The place is utterly charmless, but it is always packed because the pho is good and dirt cheap. Spring rolls are pretty fine too. Cash only.

We were at Baru on Saturday night. The place was pretty full when we showed up (around 7:30) but packed when we left. It was loud and a bit crowded -- it felt more like a singles bar than a restaurant to me, especially by the end of the meal. When we left the restaurant a quartet of young blonde Sex-in-the-City wannabes sashayed in, leaving a trail of perfume that made my eyes water. I was also a bit non-plussed by some of the seating. Ours was fine, but some people were sitting on these bizarre fixed stools that looked very uncomfortable. Anyway, the food. Not bad. We split an order of the "Latin chips" and the plantains to start. Pretty good. Then we waited for our entrees. And waited. And waited. Eventually one of our party got up and went to the kitchen to ask what had happened with our food. I don't know what response she got but we were finally served. I had the steak. It was excellent. Really good. My wife had the tuna and liked it. Our friends had the lamb and, uh, something else. Everyone liked the food and the presentation was beautiful, but man, they got to get the kitchen working faster. We had two pitchers of red sangria with the meal. Good, but not as good as the my wife makes at our annual paella party:(http://homepage.mac.com/dsdunbar/Paella_2005/PhotoAlbum65.html)

I'd have to go with the cassoulet at Cafe de Paris. Served with a bold red. For dessert? A cheese plate, as long as it contained Epoisse, and more red. Oh yeah, an appetizer. A dozen oysters and a cold Stella.

Bistro 1734 in West Vancouver, mentioned above, opened this week. I've got reservations for Valentine's day and will report. I gotta say, my hopes are running high because they have cassoulet on the menu. If it's good, I'll never have to leave the North Shore again.

Well, we finally got to Frederico's on Friday. We had 8pm reservations for eight. Because we had four couples, all coming from the North Shore, and because we knew we would all be drinking, perhaps heavily, we rented a limo, packed a few bottles of sparkling wine in it, and had a very civilized trip over the bridge. The club was about 2/3 full. On stage was an old boy with an accordion doing Sinatra standards and other ballads. He was, frankly, pretty annoying. The club has a set meal that you can order if you have over four people. So we all ordered it. This got us 1) two large plates of antipasto. Pretty durn good. 2) two larges plates of pasta, three kinds. This was also pretty durn good, especially the gnocchi. 3) a salad each. Not bad, but perhaps a bit heavy on the bitter greens. 4) a choice of entries each. I had the chicken, which was a bit dry, but certainly a generous serving. Several people around me had the veal, which they liked. 5) dessert, but since I passed on this I don't even remember what it was. Sorry. The mark up on wine was pretty steep. A bottle of Farneze, which goes for 8.95 in the liqour store, was 24.95. I settled on Yellow Tail Merlot. We went through a lot of bottles. The accordionist mercifully left and Frederico, a female back-up singer, and Uncle Aldo, a guitarist, took to the stage. Turn on the schmaltz!! Wow, what a kitschy show. He did a couple of medleys of the best/worst songs of the past 30 years that seemed to go on for 40 minutes. He left the stage to come back wearing a Phantom of the Opera mask so he could do a song from that show. He played waltzes, polkas, everything, all with the same beat and keyboard sounds. But he sort of pulled it off because a) he was so utterly confident of his own genius and b) because everyone got up to dance, even yours truly who, truth be told, cannot resist a polka. The show ended at 12 and we got back into the waiting limo. The meal and show cost $150 a couple. If we hadn't gone through so many bottles of wine (I lost count) it would have been half that. As a culinary experience, it was so-so. The pasta and anti-pasta were good. If I were to go again I would just order those items a la carte. But as an experience, it was pretty great. We’re going to take my mother-in-law there for her birthday.

Hmm. The food court in the Aberdeen Centre is actually on the third floor, but this still might be the place since the court has some very interesting stands. I've noticed a couple of exotic dessert places there, but haven't try them all. Yet.

Well, it was odd, but we didn't care because the server was so nice and apologetic about it. And the people who took the booth were an eccentric and wealthy older woman and a young man that we took to be her grandson or nephew. Their conversation was batty. She began by declaring, "When I want to see you it always costs me $100!" He spent the evening dropping hints about how expensive it is to go to school. It was like something out of a P. G. Wodehouse novel. So we felt the table shift was worth it for the entertainment.

 On Saturday night my wife and I did the DOV thing at the Beach Side Café here in West Vancouver (it’s located in the 1400 block of Marine Dr.). Even though it’s just down the street, I had never been there before. It always looked a bit too stuffy and stiff for my tastes. But, hey, $25 DOV, time to check it out. It’s actually a very nice room inside: elegant and nicely decorated. The staff are friendly and not entirely unattractive. The only odd glitch we found when we arrived had to do with seating. We were put in a booth, but then asked almost immediately to switch to another table because a regular had arrived who always insisted on that particular booth. We didn’t care, and I guess this shows that the restaurant takes care of its special guests. (On a side note, the clientele seems to be old money West Van types – a lot of people were braying about their portfolios and trustafarians were sucking up to parents. It was actually pretty entertaining.) Anyway, the food. There were two appetizers: a pea pate with chilled, beet-poached scallop and cardamon sauce; and smoked salmon wrapped black pasta & green tomato salad with curry-coconut dressing. The pea pate was a bit bland. The purple scallop sitting on top of it was tasty though a bit small. The salmon appetizer, on the other hand was great. Nice presentation, strong flavours and an interesting combination of tastes. Very good. The two main courses were pan roasted black cod filet & lobster-cauliflower pudding with leek-lime sauce & mini beet-potato gnocchi; and slow roasted, prawn-stuffed veal breast with cream cheese potato croquette & lemon-arugula cream. The cod was nice: a big piece, perfectly cooked, perched on top of the “pudding,” which was tasty. The little gnocchi on the plate were fine, but I would have liked them a bit bigger. They teased rather than satisfied. The veal was also fine, with a nice stuffing. Nothing to write home about, but pleasant. One of the DOV desserts was sold out – the pannacotta. The server substituted an orange creme brulee which was fine. It’s pretty hard to mess up a creme brulee. The other dessert was a white chocolate cupcake with raspberry mousse. The slice of mouse was balanced on the cupcake making for a very odd presentation. It was fine, but the cupcake was too dense and did not taste of white chocolate at all. So, not a bad night, but I’m not sure I’d rush back there once DOV is over. I'll take Le Regalade any day.

I second this vote. And I'm a Northern European who grew up on rye bread back in Toronto.

I take it Icelandic food it similar to Scandanvian food (lots of pickled fish, smoked meats, etc). If that's right, then the only place to go is Jolly Food which is located in the industrial area near the transfer station in North Van. Jurgen Gothe wrote about it in the last Georgia Strait, but we've been going there for years to buy goodies for Christmas Eve. As a Lithuanian, I have seafood on Xmas Eve and lots of it: traditionally 12 dishes. Jolly Food has all the pickled herring, sardines, and condiments that a Baltic baby like me could want. They also have nice European advent calenders, Xmas candles, and traditional decorations. My wife and I will be going there to load up on Saturday.

I hate Cobs bread. I don't see the appeal at all: gooey white dough with different toppings. Forget it. Try the different breads at Savary Island Bakery (West Van, on Marine near 15th). They make a great (and big) sourdough, a very authentic soda bread (I lived in Ireland where soda bread is a religion), and an Italian bread that is, as far as I can tell, utterly non-Italian but so good my teenage son has been known to eat a loaf in one sitting. As someone else mentioned, Pic-Nic makes fine boules.

I've had the cupcakes from the Denman place and they are too sweet, for me anyway. My kids hoover them down.

I'll also throw in a vote for Tapastree. We've had some great meals, and parties, there. Is Le Regelade getting enough praise? Well, they're packed, but they deserve any praise we heap on them. A couple of other places: Cafe de Paris on Denman. Haven't been there in a while but hope to go over the holiday season. The food is consistent and good, the service great, and the room charming. And they make real cassoulet. Thgat clinches it for me. Here's another one: out here in West Van, in the 1700 block of Marine, is an Italian place called Amici's. We had always avoided it because the place that was in that space before was pretty bad, but a couple of months ago we had the in-laws over and, on the spur of the moment, we decided to try it. No reservations, nothing. The staff were great, setting up a table for us in a minute. The service was friendly, and the food was very good, much better than we expected. We had a great night with the folks. We'll go back. Last one that no talks about: the Japanese noodle shop in the food court of the Aberdeen Centre, Richmond. Best cheap ramen and udon around.