flowbee

wow, thanks for your words and photos, peter. sometimes it takes another person's perspective on our local scene to make me excited again and realize that what we have here rocks -- and that i need to get out more!

does the pad thai have ketchup?

i love salade de fruits! mussels and frites for me. i've GOT to try that new ramen place and that korean street food place! thanks for the tips! my latest 3: hin young vietnamese restaurant - victoria drive near 49th (right beside supreme pizza). really good vietnamese made by chinese chef who grew up in vietnam (i think). tastes just like my mother-in-law's homemade vietnamese food! haven't tried the pho yet though, but their crab noodles are great, as are their cuttlefish cake noodles. their beef stew on rice noodles is pretty good as well. their spring rolls use rice paper and has crab meat in it. they're not bad, but maybe a little expensive. the prices here are a bit higher than average, but then you're not just getting average food here imho. they definitely give the extra effort in their dishes (ie. proper herbs with each dish, "bac ha" in the crab noodles, etc). new age chinese cuisine - kingsway east of metrotown...in this motel complex...forget the name. anyways, their awesomest dish is their pork shank that you have to order in advance. it's steamed or something, until it's soooo tender. the fat just melts in your mouth. it's quite delicious and decadent. spicy green beans were good. the wife loved their tung choy. alvin garden - finally tried the hunan king for the first time since their old location on kingsway near crystal mall. super-fire hot hunan flavours. we got the hot pot duck, lamb with cumin, and the taro. towards the end of the meal, all the flavours tasted kinda samey. it's good, but we probably won't go back for a while. oh, and medium spicy was plenty hot for all of us! but my mouth felt fine as we left the restaurant. what a rush! bonus: plus alpha. japanese tapas place on corner of richards and helmcken. decent tapas, but what i really like is that it's waaay less crazy-busy than guu with garlic. bonus #2: guu with garlic. this was actually a while ago...during fireworks? pre-fireworks dinner, that is. i've eaten at and enjoyed the other guu's, but everyone tells me this one's the best. i kept my expectations in check, but the staff were on fire that night! every dish tasted great and the ebi mayo was executed awesomely. so many flavours that night. so many beers. my wallet took a pounding, but it was worth it. one of my best dining experiences so far this year

I'm guessing you mean Windsor Meats ? ← ahem...yes.

That is truly sad. Jacksons is an institution and one of the best butchers I've used. I'm surprised they didn't have staying power. I'll drown my sorrows over their departure with a large steak tonight. ← how ironic that i just had a thick monster steak from costco for dinner tonight. although in my defense, i try to shop at windows meats on main st. when i can...

ooo, i've been wanting to try this place! it's called "Alenka" i believe.

So, the lamb curry I had from Sweet Chili Cafe was really good! Very strong flavours, just the way I like my lamb curry. We went and tried the place for dinner. They're still pretty dead, so you shouldn't have any trouble getting a table We had the Tahu Nyonya to start. I've had the same dish in Malaysian restaurants, and this version is pretty much the same. It's ok, not amazing or anything. I think the tofu was the pre-deep fried tofu you can get in any asian supermarket. If it was fried in-house, that would improve the dish. Then onto some Chicken Satay. Not really impressed... I could swear I could see and taste Shake 'n Bake coating on the chicken. And it was drenched in peanut sauce. Too much. I wouldn't buy it again. Here's the Laksa Ayam (Indonesian style chicken laksa). It was also so-so. The best laksa I've ever had in the Lower Mainland was at Rasa Singapura at the Richmond Public Market, which is sadly no longer there. Maybe the Indonesian style is supposed to be more mild and coconutty? Beef Rendang. Now THIS was a fantastic dish. Very flavourful beef. We substituted the plain rice for coconut rice. Their coconut rice is very fragrant and delicious. At first glance, the portion of meat seems really tiny. But after eating it, it was fine. Quality over quantity, right? If you guys go, I'd recommend the curries. Definitely this restaurant's strongest dishes. I'd come back for the curries! Note, they should really do something about all the disposable dishware. Besides being a bad choice for the planet, it just cheapens the whole experience. I think the woven plates are leftover from Dona Cata, too

A new Indonesian restaurant has opened up in Dona Cata's old location on Victoria Drive and 38th (right beside the fire station and across the street from the park). It's called "Sweet Chili Cafe" and is run by the people who used to run the Bali Restaurant on Broadway near Oak. (I never tried their Broadway location) I saw it on the way home after a party. I wasn't even hungry, but I had to check it out. I got a lamb curry to go: The couple bites I had were pretty good. Nice tang. The coconut rice was really fragrant. According to their menu, the rice is cooked with coconut milk, lemon grass and pandan leaf. Pandan leaf? Sounds good to me! I'll post more thoughts after I actually eat the whole thing tomorrow. They just opened 3 weeks ago. Their hours are m-f 11-3 and 5-8, sat 5-8, sun closed. They've got curries, satay, laksa, gado-gado, rojak, roti canai, tahu nyonya, lumpia and some other stuff.

my wife's from edmonton and i've been there a few times. unfortunately, all of her family's moved out of there, so we're not sure what's new and good as far as food goes. we like pagolac in chinatown for vietnamese food. here's a blurry drive-by shot of it: i've had the "7 kinds of beef" course there, which was pretty good. the place is a little dingy, but the food's good. there's also a good banh mi place called nhon hoa a block away on 106 ave. they make their sandwiches with the real vietnamese sub bread that's thinner and has pointier ends. last time i was in etown, i had some decent jamaican food at irie foods in mill woods: oxtail stew (i think) curry goat (i think) i also had some pretty good thin crust pizza from famoso on jasper ave: i was impressed to see this kind of pizza available in edmonton.

Too bad if they are gone for good. In addition to the Hungarian food (plate size schnitzels etc.), they had some killer old school pastries. Specifically, a very decadent and large Mille Feuille. ← NOOOOOOOOOOooo!! I loved their Transylvanian Wooden Platter with spaetzel The Alpen Club on Victoria Drive is sadly just so-so, and the Old Bavaria Haus in New West is good, but Budapest Cafe's schnitzel was GREAT... they will be missed... Has anyone tried Jagerhof Schnitzel House on Lonsdale?

We're finalizing buying a house and want to redo the kitchen...expand it, knock out a wall if possible, add gas, make it more functional. Does anyone have any recommendations as to local kitchen/bath reno companies that can do work in south/east van? (Please PM me if you feel that that kind of info is inappropriate to be promoting in a public forum) Along the same lines, any recommendations on gas ranges? I've been using electric coil ranges forever, and have no idea what brands are good in gas ranges. Should I check out Edmonds Appliances or Trail or wherever? Are those wok attachments any good? We're excited and overwhelmed, so any advice would be appreciated!

went to benkei ramen today: it's on robson, just before denman. kintaro ramen is just around the corner on denman. we were there around 2:00pm, had to line up for about 10 minutes. i love the feel of the place! lots of wood and paper. very japanese, very comfortable. feels like a ramen place in japan. the menu posted on their door. i was a little confused about the shio/tonkotsu soup thing. i always thought that shoyu and shio were similar in that the base broth is the same, except with shoyu they add soy sauce and the shio they add salt. tonkotsu was supposed to be an entirely different kind of soup where they cook pork bones for a long time until the soup goes milky/cloudy. on the menu they call the shio soup tonkotsu... i dunno... i think true "shio ramen" is something else, and their "shio" is actually "shio tonkotsu"... does anyone else besides insane food geeks hem and haw over stuff like this?! anyways... when are benkei ramen open? now you know here's the shoyu ramen. my wife doesn't do green onion, and the rockin' server offered to substitute the green onion with extra bamboo shoots! very nice (of her) and very tasty (of the bamboo). here's the tonkotsu. there's bamboo just under the surface. all in all, a good bowl of ramen. both soups were a little on the salty side for us. the noodles could have a little more firmness/bite/springiness to them. but we would go back because the service was great and the decor is awesome. they give you a stamp card. eat 10 bowls of ramen within a year and you get a free bowl of ramen and a chance to win a trip to japan and hawaii we haven't been to kintaro (down the street and around the corner) in a long while, so we'll have to go back there to compare the two...but we seem to remember kintaro's ramen being a little bit more tasty in general, and my wife liked their bamboo shoots better...a drier bamboo shoot, if that makes any sense, giving a tastier taste (yep i said that). zooms of the menu: enjoy!

Ah.Should have specified. Please, no (a) frat boy antics or (b) painfully loud music. See Otherwise it was sounding good. Do we just need to pick a day/time when they're all relaxed and quiet? A Tuesday afternoon or some such? ← i've been to rodney's during a quiet afternoon. it was great! not busy. not loud. i could relax and enjoy my $40 lunch

I wholeheartedly agree. Aberdeen's an award-winning mall, architecturally, but the parking lot is a dog's breakfast. Plus it always seems to be under construction. What's up with that?! But my wife loves Daiso and the dessert tofu in the food court, and I like to yoyo next to the water fountain.

funny you should mention kintaro ramen, cuz we tried to find the richmond location today with no luck! i thought it was on westminster hwy, across from the richmond public market...or somewhere along those couple blocks? couldn't find it for the life of us... ended up going to rpm food court: yummy malaysian delights. used to be rasa singapura. now it's run by a malaysian guy. the mamak mee goreng was really good, with fried crispy bits of lard. the curry laksa was blah, as was the roti prata...