Ducky

I saw some at the Seven Seas as recently as yesterday.

Just back from Meinharts where there is a Valrhona sale in progress.

Thanks for that Ducky ... I was going to say the same thing about Nick's, but I didn't want a repeat of last time [CLICK]. The whole sorted incident resulted from a satisfyingly cheesy experience at Osteria Napoli Ristorante on Renfrew @ 1st. Good luck! A. ← I used to eat at Nick's 30 years or so ago and it was already bad then. I was dragged there twice this past year by well meaning friends who claimed Nick's was authentic, and a complete nostalgia trip and had to be given another chance yada yada yada... Now in the intervening years I have had the good fortune to live in Italy for a spell and I can tell you that there is nothing at Nick's that could be described as even remotely authentically Italian. It begins with the ambiance of plywood and pressboard walls and low stucco ceilings illuminated by dingy yellow wrought iron and plexiglass lamps apparently intended to add a Venetian flair, and the paint-by-number Tuscan landscapes in elaborate gold frames. Of course the utter tackiness of the decor could be high-camp if intended ironically - but neither the surly staff nor the truckers, Hells Angels enforcers, and longshoreman that make up the clientele suggested to us that there was any irony at play here. Nor was any other humour in evidence - apart from the scatalogical variety richly represented on the restroom walls. On some thread somewhere on this forum eGulleteers, after much introspection, concluded that the best simple definition of good cuisine was "fresh ingredients lovingly and expertly prepared". What I was served - and saw served - at Nicks fails to qualify on each and every element of this definition. This place is firmly on my avoid at all costs list. But if you enjoy eating seriously overcooked pasta with sauces that taste principally of flour and metal in seriously dingy and tacky surroundings - well Nick's is a real find. Now if I don't post for the next few weeks - I trust you'll do the decent thing and have someone dredge the harbour at the foot of Commercial.

Adesso yes. Amacord yes. Nick's is really quite bad in every respect except perhaps the nostalgia factor. Then there's the place in the Italian Culturtal Center if you want more of a retro mom and pop Italian experience.

We love the restaurant at the Mission Hill winery outside of Kelowna. The location is perfect - particlularly if you are dining outside - and the kitchen superb.

We have a built in cellar at home with a small ($350.-) cooling gizmo that keeps the temperature constant year round. The room is well sealed - and even if there were a power outage (has there ever been one in Vancouver?) - it would take many hours for the room to warm appreciably. You don't need much space. Our closet sized cellar holds 800 bottles comfortably.

As others have pointed out - concrete and glass does seem to be the Vancouver architectual idiom and as such this building fits right in. I walk by it almost daily - and I think it will turn out to be a very nice open space with spectacular sunset views - perhaps the best in town. Of course I would have preferred something in the Balinese beach hut idiom....but this really isn't bad.

These sounded so good that I today drove to Nestors in Yaletown in search of them - but they didn't have them and no one had heard of them. I also hit Urban Fare and Meinharts - but again without success. I also couldn't find a website for the company. Any thoughts on where to find a regular supplier?

Since this was raised here as an aside....My understanding has always been that pasta was introduced to China by Marco Polo. Some however insist that Marco Polo brought it back to Italy from China. Does anyone have a definitive answer to this burning question? Millions of Italians and billions of Chinese are potentially interested.

Pan, you are quite right to point out the positive influence of Thai cuisine in Malaysia - and that the relative poverty of much of Indonesia (contrasted with Malaysia) has undoubtedly had an inhibiting effect on the historical development of "Indonesian" cuisine as such. My point about Indian and Chinese influences in Malaysian cuisine was that these today have been very much assimilated, and are part of the idiom of Malaysian cooking. And Malaysian cuisine is better off for it!

Or, if you have a good business interruption cover, you might want to spin this out a bit and go to Maui for a while.

Excellent! This means the last two pages will no longer be the only reason to pick up the West Ender!

I'll have a stab at this - having lived and travelled extensively in both places. The cuisines of these countries have evolved over years from a combination of the available local ingredients and the culinary traditions of the people that live in these countries. In Malaysia about 50 per cent of the population (or more) is ethnic Malay. About 30 per cent (or slightly more) is ethnic Chinese, and about 15 per cent is Indian - particularly south Indian and Tamil. In Malaysia the well established culinary traditions of both China and India have to some extent been assimilated into what we think of Malaysian cuisine today. Think of the many Malaysian curries for example - or fried noodles and laksa etc as examples of the Indian and Chinese influences repectively. Indonesia on the other hand consists of many different ethnic groups (Batak, Javanese, Sundanese, Balinese etc. etc.) indigenous to the islands - and also has a small but very visible Chinese population of about 5 percent. The Chinese influence on indigineous Indonesian cuisine is less noticebale than it is in Malaysia as the Chinese population in Indonesia is relatively much smaller than in Malaysia and has never been particularly well integrated in mainstream Indonesian society. The many ethnic groups that make up the archipelago each have their own culinary traditions - and it is therefore much easier to speak of Balinese or Javanese cuisine that it is to speak about Indonesian cuisine. Indonesian cuisine is therefore extremely diverse - but largely indigenous to the islands without much outside influence apart from some Dutch colonial influences. Malaysian cuisine on the other hand has been largely shaped by the strong influences from China and India. I will go out on a limb here, and say that Malaysian cuisine is probably somewhat more interesting than Indonesian cuisine as a result of the heavy Indian and Chinese influence. At any rate, we consistently ate better in small Malaysian towns than we did in small Indonesian towns - and indeed we found this rather odd because in all other respects (art, crafts, music, history, geography, language, culture, ethnic diversity etc etc) Indonesia is by far the more interesting country. But both are wonderful cuisines - and if you spend some time in the area the differences will soon become recognizeable. Hope this helps.

Thank you barolo for this thoughtful response. Your quote above is intriguing - and really at the heart of what I was trying to get at in my last rant. Why should it be that the seafood in Tofino of all places is disappointing? How long and how hard would someone have to try to put a restaurant in Tofino on the map that just served very fresh local seafood grilled or fried with some butter, garlic and/or herbs? It seems that every last fishing village in Greece (to use my last example) can support a few restaurants that just serve simple and fresh local seafood - and God knows there's precious little of this in the Aegean compared to what we have here. But in Tofino, where cooking seafood should be bred in the bone by this stage, it is virtually impossible to find a place that prepares fresh seafood daily. To be honest even in Vancouver there are very, very few restaurants where you can order a simple fresh seafood "frito misto" (or something equally simple) and be sure this is going to be fresh. Sure you can go to "C" and pay big bucks for a fine sauce and an creative presentation - but where can you really go for a fresh, well prepared, daily catch that is bigger than a matchbox and not served in a tower with anything else? Pink Pearl and a handful of Asian places perhaps. But where else? I think the reasons for this paucity that you mention in your bullet points are compelling. Still we had some Greek friends here (Vancouver) not long ago who saw the splendid offering of fresh seafood at Granville market and said, "let's find some nice place by the water and have some really fresh seafood tonight." Well we were stumped. And it is tragic that we were stumped - I think - and this was almost incomprehensible to our Greek friends. We ended up at the Cannery - hardly al fresco - but the best we could come up with and had a so so meal. Cheers

Well Barolo, we must have crossed paths in Tofino this past week. After a hectric month in Europe we decided to chill out on our own west coast for a few days, and, whilst the nature and spirit of the place was as grandiose and overwhelming as always - we were not entirely happy with the service industry that is sucking the tourist tit. SOBO: well we had heard so much about this place - and read so much about it in this forum - that we expected some sort of singing and dancing Jesus to appear. But all we got were soggy shrimp cakes, sickeningly sweet (to the point of being inedible) soba noodle salad, and fish tacos that cried out for someone to do something interesting with the overcooked salmon and kiwis and onions that comprised this dish. Jikes! Now the southern California coast is dotted with places of this ilk - but sadly our experience at the much touted SOBO was far inferior to just about anything we have tried in SoCal. Why is this? Tough City Sushi? Well we are devotees of Toshis in Vancouver - and so I guess we were bound to be disappointed. TCS has such a wonderful location that we almost forgot about the meal. Almost. Now the only thing worse than old, fishy tasting sashimi is old, fishy tasting sashimi that is seriously overpriced. Go there, by all means, smoke a spliff on the terrace and order some nachos and you'll have an unforgettable afternoon. But do not go there for sushi. Please. Of course we had a wonderful evening at the Wick. But you would have to be brain dead not to have a wonderful evening in this setting - despite the overprepared and overpriced food and the indifferent service. What I do not get is why a place like this does not just focus on perfect, fresh seafood? The setting cries out for this. Friends took us to the Boat Basin Restaurant at the Tauca Lea Resort. By this time I was so pissed off with the indifferent seafood I had had elsewhere that I ordered a lamb shank - and this turned out to be quite brilliant. The others at the table all complained about their mussels and seafood stew. It struck us all as highly incongruous that we should spend a few days at the navel of our so called fishing industry and eat indifferent and overpriced seafood. This would be unthinkable in any of dozens of other towns around the world where fishing is a major component of the local industry - for example Cadiz, Fukuoka, Kiel, Pkuket, Galway, Reykjavik, Hobart, Veracruz - or any little fishing village in Greece where you can find all manner of local seafood simply and expertly prepared. Why don't one or two places in Tofino just concentrate on the brilliant preparation of, say, halibut, wild salmon, prawns and oysters. Establish a west coast culinary idiom of sorts for the products that we harvest from our shores. Who actually expects to eat New Zealand lamb in Tofino? Can someone from Tofino share their views on this? Also, the rapacious, mendacious mentality that has so characterized Whistler these last few years has clearly transplanted itself to Tofino. We were looking for some accomodation for some European visitors coming in July, and we checked out what was available. For the prices we were quoted for very modest wooden cabins - often very tackily decorated etc. - you could rent small castles in Tuscany! The Whistler bubble has burst. Can Tofino be far behind?

I have said it before and I cannot say it often enough: Every Las Vegas Diva should have at least one magic bullet. Do not be discouraged by the nay-saying riff-raff that preys on this thread. These are nothing but misbegotten children. You are the Diva, after all.

Well, they have a constantly changing selection of oysters, mostly BC sourced - but also from the east coast and elsewhere. For me the litmus test of oyster bars is the oyster bar at Shaw's Crab House in Chicago - and although Rodney's is not quite there - it does it's very best. I think we will probably never have "royster the oyster" festivals in this part of the world - and it is unlikely that we will find sawdust on the floors, ice cold Ketel One served in pitchers and Buddy Guy sitting at the counter next to you at Rodney's - but still, Rodney's is the best glimpse of this idiom that we are ever likely to have in this town.

Definately Rodney's. It's a pity there aren't more serious oyster bars in this town.

My guess is you did the right thing. Every Las Vegas Diva should have at least one Magic Bullet. I can see you standing by the bar in your glass bungalow, the desert light streaming in, dressed in a terry towel tutu and making smoothies with your Magic Bullet with Dean Martin on the stereo singing "If You Were The Only Girl In The World".....

Keith: Let me ask you this quite seriously: If you were paid to write the definitive book on Ukranian Haute Cuisine, how many pages would we be looking at? My publisher may be interested.

Apparently the Ukranians. Full respect!

Ha, Ha...well I am happy to applaud my Ukranian friends as great survivors and even as builders of nations - but as culinary geniuses??? Without getting into high Ukranian cuisine (the cabbage roll, white fish in white sauce etc) - can you tell what aspect of the perogy I should be applauding?

So that's what happened to John! Death By Perogy! I dated a Ukranian girl in high school, and truly dreaded the family suppers at which mountains of perogies and veranikes (sp?) etc. - (yes with fried onion oil!) - were the staple. In the end these suppers killed the relationship, and in retrospect I am very grateful to those perogies. But is it really possible to claim with a straight face that this kind of food has any culinary merit? Is it not nostalgia alone that keeps people eating this stuff? A bit like folks from my background insist on sauerkraut and boiled pork hocks from time to time to remind them how far they have come.

This is so contrary to my experience in just about every corner of the globe that I have to ask the question: just where, exactly, do you live?

Well I think that settles that!