*Deborah*

I call apocryphal!!

I like the Roast Chicken Dinner flavour, I think it's Lay's or Old Dutch; UK-inspired I suppose. Not all the time though. Other than that, sourc cream and onion or salt & vinegar. Or Ruffles plain to hold lots of dip. The ones I have eaten a big bag at a time more than once (I mean recently ) are the Miss Vickie's Sour Cream and Sweet Thai Chili chips...

Soup today: Smoked Salmon Chowder!! or White Bean Chili (yesterday's Beef Barley was quite delicious and very warming, mmmm)

My understanding is that taste counts for twice as much as originality, and Morimoto got bad marks for taste on his fondue and his (granted, original) melon/crab soup. There was only one item of Feenie's that I recall that someone said they didn't enjoy the taste very much.

To my recolection it is one or the other, both good dishes but not both. Marsala bing mushrooms in brown wing gravy, Scallopini in a white garlic. ← ...perhaps greenwich is thinking of scallopine the cut of veal....and when I think Marsala sauce, I just know there's Marsala wine in...I don't tend to eat it because I don't enjoy the Marsala sauce.

I heartily endorse Hy's Encore's Caesar, as well as the cheese toast. Also, Hamilton Street Grill serves up a very pungent and satisfying Caesar, although not prepared tableside. If you're on a date, you'd better both have some.

Bread pudding and other similar cake and sauce concoctions are quite the thing in this part of the world. I kind of miss seeing brownie/ice cream/hot fudge concoctions on every other menu...now it's all goat cheese cheesecake and dulce de leche everywhere...

Good question, I asked it - in a much less entertaining way - myself. I think the mid-eighties was a turning point for the better, but that may just reflect my vintage. Have we really turned a corner - I don't know. I think one "turns a corner" when one stops wondering if they have. A. ← Ah, that will be the day Vancouver stops hyping itself as a "world-class" city. (Other cities presumably aren't sophisticated enough to actually be part of the world?)

Ah, but I typed in the link from memory in the fast reply box.

Three of us here saying Parkside on Haro! www.parksiderestaurant.ca

I think I've only been to Shiru Bay on that list, Jamie, but I like it fine, it's still warm somehow in spite of the industrial aspects. Maybe because I've only seen it full of warm humans!

**Spoilers** He made this beautiful crab-stuffed ravioli with two sauces (was that where the black trufffles were? yes, I think so!), roasted veal with crab and hollandaise (Oscar, I believe?) plated beautifully and just casually covered with shaved white truffles LOL, he made a panna cotta with crab in and a pineapple jelly thing with that, he made a miso broth with beautiful sablefish and crab and some of those cute tiny mushrooms and various other veggies, and I am blanking on the other dish...oh! makis, one with smoked salmon and one with I think it was tuna on the outside? and seaweed, and then filled with two kinds of crab and a bit of cucumber and a bit of mango, and the one was to eat with a mustard soy sherry sauce, and the other with...I'm sorry, I can't remember, a different sauce. They were all lovely, although all of his plates were white, so they were kinda pale presentation, but...we were all drooling over the ravioli and the veal, and the rolls were beautiful! It was really funny, at one point the commentator was acting all worried about whether his hollandaise would hold together or not...I mean...! Morimoto did some weird stuff, but the tasters weren't too impressed! Feenie won 45-39, and we cheered! Hope you feel better soon!

Oh Tricia! we missed you! I don't want to give any more spoilers re dishes or whatever, but hey, he did a fabulous job.

Rebranding yet another human trait. The tipping point = what our parents call critical mass. ← Oh, I thought it was when the cow got fat enough to fall over by itself. Thanks, Jamie!

I've only drink at the Latin Quarter, but it was 12-y-o Irish, so it was pretty good in my books.

Oh, maybe he keeps it snuggled in parchment next to the lettuce, per Neal's Yard Dairy's instructions.

I can't even boil a pot of water in 4 minutes, on my stove, and if I make pasta it will be a much larger portion than I will eat if I have some portioned convenience food. So when I'm just cooking for myself, it's often better for me on the whole to go with the can of minestrone or something. And yeah, after working all day, I am seldom in the mood to spend half an hour or more going to the market and finding food, planinng how to prepare it, and then another half hour or hour cooking. Not that I don't do it sometimes, or even often, but since I can't foresee what I'm going to feel like eating even 24 hours ahead, so it's hard to shop ahead of time...I don't like throwing spoiled things out. I'm sure if I were not single I'd be a bit more disciplined about this, but as it is, aglio y olio or scrambled eggs get kind of boring after a while, and convenience foods are, oddly enough, convenient for me, as well as often being quite tasty.

Tepee, more like the second pronunciation, with a hint of growly R in your throat at the end of each syllable. My favourite non-Anglo pronunciation is Van Gogh, which in Europe they say much as is it spelled, with that nice, throat-clearing 'gh' at the end, as opposed to the sanitized Van-Go we say here. That was a surprise the first time I heard it!

I will admit to a fondness for cold pizza. More standard breakfast baked goods include Danish (cheese Danish, mmmmmmm), croissant (aux amandes if possible), petit pain au chocolat, bran-cranberry muffin, or a warm sesame bagel from Saint-Viateur, with either cream cheese or smoked salmon mousse from the fishmonger on Park Avenue near Bernard. Since I don't live in Montréal any more, I seldom get that last item. Another Montréal thing that I haven't really seen elsewhere is a bougatzis (sp?) which is a Greek pastry with custard...not really meant for breakfast I suppose! I like nice buttery toast, too, which is what I more typically have if I have anything baked for breakfast. Maybe with some nice bitter orange marmalade, seedless raspberry jam, blueberry jam, apricot jam, or sometimes even peanut butter. Sometimes on the weekend I will bake myself scones or just nice plain biscuits...also slathered with butter, of course.

*wondering if the patrons glow brighter in the NVGs, the drunker they get*

Try a ganache-tini. ← hee hee hee...wait till you try my Chocolate Oblivion Torte, Lorna!!

Perhaps it's reminiscent of the blindfold/refrigerator scene in 9½ Weeks? Or perhaps not...

I've been at Brix twice when they've had power outages...they're not so uncommon in Yaletown. That's probably not what you mean though.

Whoa! a Dutch pancake place in Kamloops! I'll have to drag my parents there one day. Actually, Ric's Grill, which is to the right off the Hillside exit (turn right just before the Petro-Canada and continue up the hill a little ways) is a good place for steak in Kamloops, and their crab-filled mushroom caps are pretty yummy. If you get as far as Kamloops and you're starving to death, that's a pretty good place to stop; it's a little more than an hour on from there to the hill, and longer if the Tod Mountain Road is messy with weather.

Oh, but a wise man will not get between Lorna and her ganache.