Ducky

Take some very fresh snapper or tuna, cut it into sashimi sized slices, and marinate these for half an hour or so in a combination of fresh lime juice, soya sauce and light sesame seed oil. Put the slices on a baking tray and sear briefly on each side with your mini torch and serve immediately with a cilantro leaf per slice. Makes a very fine amuse bouche. (On reflection I am not sure how mini your mini torch is. I use the typical plumbers torch that you buy at Home Hardware for a few dollars.)

I have recently bought a number of Breville appliances for our recreational property - as this brand has started turning up here. I have bought a rice cooker, small food processor and panini toaster. All items seem to be very well made. They come from Australia - and came highly recommended by my cook shop. We have been very pleased with these items to date. (Interestingly I bought these items to replace some Cusinart items which were extremely poorly made and self disintegrated shortly after purchase. The new slick looking stainless steel Cuisinart products all hail from China, and all seem to be singularly shoddy. Has anyone else had this experience?) That said, I have never gone wrong with Waring Pro - which is one of my favourite bullet-proof brands. This probably doesn't makie your choice any easier.

Was this last Saturday night? That could have been my wife.

It's called: Pioneer Fish Company. #100 - 12611 Vulcan Way Richmond Tel:604.273.2885 When we were there they were also gearing up for shrimp and crab.

Chilean Sea Bass has been put on many international watch lists as an endangered species - although of course there is much debate about what this actually means. Here in the Northwest, where most people are card-carrying tree huggers, you would be hard pressed to find a restaurant audacious enough to serve Chilean Sea Bass today. Indeed I was at a dinner party not long ago where a couple left when they learned that the hostess was serving CSB. So, depending on your view of our declining maritime resources, the fact that they serve CSB may be one reason not to go to Biaggis's. There is currently an interesting thread on this in the Vancouver forum - though I don't know how to link this up here.

May I suggest you get them engraved with this quote? Unless of course you don't have one.

Last night we were in an upscale restaurant where the service absolutely sucked. It began with our waiter seating us at a "special table" by the window that was reserved for someone else and then asking us to move after the wine was already served. Then he brought the appetizers for another table to our table - and got surly when we told him of his error. From there on he decided to ignore us - you know the strategy. Our wine is empty and I try to signal him while he repeatedly looks around the entire room and "fails" to see us. Then there is a 20 minute delay between the time we order our second bottle of wine and the time it arrives - without any explanation. And of course the wine is corked, and of course the waiter insists that it is not. We almost left then and there - but our show was next door and it was too late to get a table anywhere else. Now admittedly this doesn't happen often. Infact this might have been the worst service we have ever had anywhere. Well I made my choice "within the system" - and this guy got a tip of zero. Social contract? You must be kidding.

Thought this worth reviving. There's a place on Vulcan way in Richmond (just behind the Home Depot) sellinmg fresh halibut for $5.99/lb.

Jamie: Everything you say at post 15 above is compelling. I could not agree more that our regulators have failed miserably in protecting our fish stocks - largely because, as seems to be implicit in your argument, we have not been alive to the problem, and have not put sufficient pressure on our regulators. Any measures taken (such as this thread) to illuminate the problem are therefore laudable. You will get no argument from me on this. My only, and perhaps small, point in this discussion is that we should be clear about the differences between bad management of a species (commercial extinction) on the one hand and biological extinction on the other. To support arguments against the former by relying on misleading moral imperatives derived from the latter is a poor way to educate ourselves and our regulators about the real problem. In other words this is an administrative and political problem - not a moral one.

Daddy-A, Well the irony lies in the fact that farmed fish was initially thought to be part of the solution for the problem of dwindling fish stocks but then...oh never mind. Yes its also tragic. Contained pens are the answer, but these cost money, and when money is involved - so is politics. I have nothing whatsoever against the Birkenstock Brigade. I was merely being descriptive. I do think we sometimes tend to make too much of commercial extinction. It just means that it is no longer commercially attractive to pursue a species, i.e. it costs too much. Someone did a fine cartoon in the NYT a few years ago where a couple of cod fish read in the morning paper that they are commercially extinct, and the one says to the other: "Finally honey! What do you say we spend the day in bed?" Re food chains: when links disappear the chain evolves. That is the very nature of evolution. Being at the top of the chain, and being rational beings, arguably carries with it a certain responsibility for the other links. Interestingly, no other species gives a f___ about any other. Do the whales care if plankton become extinct? Does Pamela Anderson sleep on her back? In the initial post on this thread, the issue in the "do not eat" section was not, as I understand this, actual extinction, but commercial extinction. Just think of of it as those Chilean Sea Bass spending a while in bed, able to relax.

Isn't it one of the great ironies of the livelihood/sustainability debate, that the lice from our farmed salmon are now apparently rapidly depleting our wild salmon stocks? One of the bits of "real work" could perhaps be to rid the fish farms of lice. (We know how to kill lice and we know where the fish farms are.) On the larger question, why do you, Jamie, say of the Atlantic Cod fishery that "commercial extinction is final"? I thought the cod was commercially extinct - but still thriving in the Atlantic in smaller numbers. Presumably as these stocks grow this fishery will again become commercially attractive. I thought this was a fairly common cycle. Because of this cycle, and because of the larger Darwinian point that species evolve (and come and go) I have always been fairly sanguine when accosted with these issues by the Birkenstock Brigade in front of Capers on a Saturday morning. Of course there's a lot to be said for being at the top of the food chain.

PS: If someone knows of a really good South Indian curry house that does very hot fishhead curries and the like - I would be very interested in hearing about it.

If you want to cover south Asia (Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia), and eat spicy food, my three suggestions for spicy dishes would be: 1. Kedah House at 41st and Fraser: (Malaysian) Try their Mee Mamak and a side of spicy rendang. 2. Cafe Delite at Broadway and MacDonald:(Singaporean) Try their spicy seafood Laksa 3. The Spice Islands at 41st & Dunbar: (Indonesian) Try just about anything on the menu. The Sambal Buncis for example, or their Chili Chicken.

The French Laundry Cookbook. There is virtually nothing in this book you could attempt without the help of at least three sous-chefs and 24 hours lead time. The triumph of method over ingredients!

Exactly right. This is indeed very close to the current practise in many countries in Europe and Asia, and it works just fine. In Switzerland, where we lived most recently, people only tip for exceptional service and then only by "rounding up" the bill from say, 92 to 100. Many people from those countries simply do not understand the concept of directly transferring personnel costs to the diner through a tipping mechanism. Why not just raise the menu prices and dispense with this subjective and arbitrary personnel-cost subsidy? I am curious how this culture of laying off personnel costs in the restuarnt industry originated in the US? Why, in the US, do gas station attendants, receptionists, store clerks, stewardesses etc. etc. not have to rely on tips?

With respect, I think this is crap. A tip is a gratuity - first and foremost. It is a gratuity for service - preferably good service. It is not a gratuity for someone merely living and breathing and turning up for work. Like you Neil, I am happy to leave seriously large tips when the service is seriously good. Equally I am happy to leave seriously low tips when the service is seriously bad. And if it is indeed "the custom" in North America for a restaurant to try to offload personnel costs onto the diners by means of a "compulsory" or "customary" 20% "living and breathing" tip - then I would encourage any and all reasonable protest against this kind of mendacity. (i.e., The mendacity of a restaurant owner saying to his customers "we won't pay our guys a decent wage - but sure hope that you tip them handsomely - regardless of how competent or incompetent these guys may be".)

Has this issue ever been definatively resolved? I have had several Italians insist to me that it was the other way around: Marco Polo brought pasta to China.

Yes D.Peckham and Viola da Gamba, that was also the point of my previous tounge-firmly-in-cheek post. Most egulleteers likely believe that they have a reasonably sophisticated palate - and it may even be correct to assume that the average egulleteer actually has a more sophisticated (better trained) palate than the average non-egulleteer. But so what? What is wrong with those of simpler culinary tastes - those who eat to live (rather than live to eat) - themselves having a go at voting for their favourite restaurant? Of course you can expect a different list of favourites. We should be more tolerant in this. By way of analogy the "Top Ten" automobiles nominated each year by Consumer Reports will invariably be quite different from those nominated by "Car & Driver" magazine. Who cares? Different markets. Different tastes. I suspect also that a very large percentage of the GS readership is older than one might think. Like my parents. They read the thing from cover to cover each week because its the best single source of information in Vancouver for what is on in the cinemas and the theatres etc - and then, as a bonus, there are the titillating personal ads. What is more, these retired folk have time on their hands and make a sport out of responding to polls of this sort. The Cannery? Seasons in the Park? I rest my case. Noblesse oblige.

A wonderful blog(s) Lucy! May I be so pedantic as to inquire what camera you are using for those brilliant photos?

Could egulleteers not show a bit of culinary noblesse oblige and allow the unwashed masses who read the Georgia Straight to vote for Anton's, Cobbs Bread, Milestones and The Cannery and any other damn place just as often as they would like? Are we not secure enough in our roles as elitist foodies to permit those less fortunate to amuse themselves with polls of this sort?

Maria's. 4th just off Vine. That and the Kalamata already mentioned are our favourites for slow cooked lamb.

Very keenly observed Jamie! Here is Kerrisdale, where our riches are not quite so nouveau, the equivalent of having an affair would be to borrow your neighbours table saw in the first place.

The label on by bag of dried pitted cherries from Famous Foods says 250 grams for $6.20. Not too shabby.

Good choices all. I would add Cioppinos and Rodney's Oyster Bar.

Famous Foods