Vancouver Lee

"Those Little Donuts" are enough to get me excited by themselves, let alone the people-watching potential that Keith's description of this human zoo makes clear. There is a downtown one??? Details, please.....

Great find, Keith. Thanks. And I'm secure enough with my masculinity that I, too, have no fear of using smilies.

Nah.....we'll just hit you with an electrified fly swatter. Edited to add: jeez, the mind boggles at all the possible uses for one of these things. Who knew such a thing was available?

Hours of Operation: Friday: 7PM - 12AM Saturday: 7PM - 12AM Sunday: 7PM - 11PM Also open on long weekends

They have Those Little Donuts AND candy that's better than Internet porn??? I may have to move to Richmond.

Where exactly in Richmond is the market located? Edited to add: OK, I just read the tail end of the Truth be Told thread, and heard about Those Little Donuts (love that expression, Lorna! ).... So when is the eGullet outing?

Darn, I moved away a year too soon! I doubt you will need to obtain a second mortgage to keep these folks in business. Is they have any marketing savvy, and from their web site it would seem that have some, I'd imagine they will be quite successful. Now, if only they'd deliver to Vancouver.....

Very creepy, indeed. My wife and I have worked hard to make sure our son has developed a preference for healthy food choices, and we trust him to do what is best for his body. Do other parents really distrust their kids so much that they need to monitor what they buy at the school cafeteria? What kind of message does that send to the kid? I'm not usually the paranoid type, but I hate the idea of someone's food choices ending up in a database somewhere. I fear, for example, life insurance companies denying a policy to someone based on that information.

WOW - with a description like that, I MUST check the place out!!!! Lee, would you expand a little on the Night Market? I've never been, and am suddenly very curious...

As last night was my last night out with an expense account, I was MOST unhappy we ended up at Smugglers. Yeah, that makes sense. It sure isn't the great burgers that keep them coming.

Hilarious - my client actually told me last night that I should try the River Cafe, too. Go figure.

Last Saturday night, Mrs Vancouver Lee and I dined at Lucy Mae Brown. This restaurant is fast becoming one of my all-time favourites. The service is always excellent (they do a great job of making you feel like Norm at Cheers (in a good way ), and the kitchen is solid. We ate tapas style, beginning with a tomato-and-can't-remember-the-herb soup and salad. We then enjoyed the duck, stuffed portobello mushroom and the scallop and beef brochettes before tucking in to the antipasto platter for 2. Despite never touching a main course, we were stuffed. Lunch today was at Medallist Bar and Grill in the airport. I believe this restaurant is a White Spot masquerading as something else, but the reason why escapes me. In any case, I had their daily soup and sandwich special which was a turkey sandwich and cauliflower and cheddar soup. The sandwich was pretty good, and the soup was decent despite being clearly out of a giant tin can with "Sysco" on the side. I can't complain, as lunch was $12 including a coke. Cheap and cheerful. Dinner tonight was in Calgary at a restaurant chosen by an important (soon-to-be-former) customer of mine. I told her I'd take her anywhere she wanted to go for dinner as a thank-you for the business she sent my way this year, and she choose The Smugglers Inn across from the Chinook Centre. I opened the door to go inside and honestly thought the power was out, it was so dark. I managed to find the hostess without getting arrested for groping her, and she led me to our table. Fortunately our table was at the far end of the restaurant where they actually have windows, so my worries about the optics of a romantic candlelit dinner with my client vanished. I was seated in a chair with upholstery so stained and dirty that had I not been wearing jeans, I would have put a napkin down first (and a glance around at the other tables confirmed that their furniture is in desperate need of a steam cleaning). The service was excellent throughout the night - attentive but not solicitous and very cognizant of not interrupting our business conversations. My client suggested I have the prime rib, which of course I did (for those of you not in sales, if your best customer has you to their favourite restaurant and recommends you order the grasshoppers, the only acceptable answer is "a double order or just a single?"). I believe that all dinners at Smugglers come with a trip to the salad bar, which was exactly what I remember salad bars being like as a little kid. Except now I'm tall enough that I look down through the sneeze guard to see the iceberg lettuce, gherkins and the blue jello (yes, blue jello). No hard boiled eggs, though. The prime rib was properly cooked and, well, what can one say about prime rib? It is what it is. My impression is that prime rib is pretty hard to screw up and basically tastes the same from kitchen to kitchen - someone please correct me if I'm wrong. The sauteed mushrooms were pretty bland and had a hint of undercooked garlic to them. The baked potato was fine, though. Dessert, which I did not need at all, was some kind of brownie sundae (the name escapes me). A freakishy huge and very cakey brownie with a mountain of whipped cream and a scoop of vanilla ice cream, drizzled with hot fudge sauce. I ate the ice cream and called it a night. And then I Ling'ed and stopped off at Peter's Drive-In for a burger on the way back to my hotel. Read the Burger Club thread for my report. Hint: very disappointing.

As this is the last time I'll be in Calgary for the foreseeable future, I decided I had to stop in at Peter's Drive-In and sample their burger. I understand that Peter's had a little problem a few weeks back. Apparantly a dozen or so people who had eaten at Peter's contracted e-coli, and the source was traced back to the marshmellow milkshake these people had with their food. Fortunately nobody died, no doubt due to the cast-iron stomachs of anyone who would order a marshmellow milkshake. Being a big believer in the pervasiveness of the "locking-the-barn-door-after-the-horse-is-gone" school of crisis management, I was confident that I wasn't risking serious illness or possibly death with my cheeseburger. The restaurant is not much to look at. It's drive-thru only, with the exception of picnic tables out front (and a parking lot with more picnic tables next door), but otherwise the building looks like every slighly seedy independent burger shop you've ever seen, right down to the local toughs hanging out in front. The line up was long at 9pm, and I'm told line-ups at all hours of the day are not at all unusual. The line of cars moved quickly, and with only a few minutes wait I made my way to the speaker. The first thing I noticed was the wide strip of masking tape covering the "Marshmellow Milkshake" item on the menu board. ( ) The second thing was how many other milkshake flavours they have - I didn't think to count, but there were lots. I really don't like milkshakes so I didn't order one (sorry, I know Peter's supposedly makes great shakes, but since I don't like them anyway, what would the point have been?). I managed to stop myself from ordering an "Extra Value Meal" and instead ordered the traditional "burger/fries/coke", but with a double cheeseburger when I noticed the menu said it was their specialty. Which raises another point. The clerk who took my order seemed rude to me, but on second thought it wasn't so much that she was rude, it was just that she wasn't repeating the insincere-but-polite-sounding McSpeak you hear at a chain fast food restaurant. Not sure if my being originally put off is a good thing or a bad thing....but I digress. Anyway, the food is ready very fast, clearly they don't make their burgers to order. With the volume they are doing, I suppose that should have been obvious to me. I wasn't asked what I wanted on my burger (not sure if you can specify toppings/condiments or not), but it came with mustard, pickles, onions and about three gallons of ketchup. The patties are very thin, and even a double burger felt underweight. The cheese was cheddar - well, wait, I guess all I can say for sure was that the cheese was orange . The bun was soft but very generic - no flavour at all. The overall taste of the burger was quite sweet. It wasn't at all enjoyable. The fries were just OK. I had heard that they were homemade, and I certainly don't have any hard evidence to back this up, I would bet a bunch of money that they were frozen. Moosh would have hated them - they were mostly soft, with a few getting within sight of crispy but just not quite there. And I'm sorry to say the coke sucked, too. Way too much syrup and no ice. Man, I hate it when you get tepid, syruppy coke with no ice. It makes you realize you are drinking liquid sugar. The bill came to $7.30, cash only. Needless to say, I was most disappointed. I had heard from several people how good the burgers are here, so perhaps I had inflated expectations. I should also qualify my impressions by saying that I was Ling'ing at Peter's tonight: I stopped in for dinner on my way back from a previous dinner. Perhaps I was just too full to properly appreciate the taste. In any event, Peter's doesn't live up to the hype, IMHO.

Way to go, Andrew. Couldn't happen to a nicer or more deserving fellow.

The deep-fried Snickers bars have been there for a while...see here:

Not all that recent, but we tried Rebellious Tomato's pizza the first week we lived here (early June), hated it, too, and never went back.

Friday afternoon lunch with the Mafia at Dario's, already well documented above. Saturday night dinner at Incendio West, in an attempt to quell the sudden huge pizza craving I developed immediately upon seeing the CLOSED sign in the window at Da Francesco's. My Montreal pizza (salami, green peppers and mushrooms) with extra cheese was good, but unfortunately didn't quite do it. The room was very very noisy and hot, too, which didn't help the experience. The quest for great pizza continues.... Sunday lunch with the family was at our local White Spot at the request of the six-year old in our household. Inexplicably, the siren song of the Pirate Pack is a big draw for the primary school set. Having been raised in Toronto, I hold no childhood sentimentality for White Spot, a fact I suspect I will regret more and more as my son develops a taste for eating away from home...

Da Francesco's at Slocan and Hastings is closed.

It's official: Da Francesco's is gone. I drove by today and the CLOSED sign is in the window, the door is locked, and the fixtures are being disassembled. If anyone from Da Francesco's is lurking here, please let us know what happened. Judging by the number of customers, it would seem that business was booming.

...and I live right smack dab in the middle of all these new stores! Woo-Hoo!

You'd be better off smoking.....

Clearly you were at the HSG...

I hosted a dinner last night for two other eGulleteers (Mooshmouse and Sashavan) and their spouses. The appetizer was seared horse tenderloin over arugula and cherry tomatoes. I marinated the meat in a splash of red wine (cabernet) with onions, carrots, celery, sage and a bay leaf for 7 hours, then just before cooked I added fresh-ground salt and pepper directly to each steak. I seared them in butter for about 2-3 minutes per side and sliced them thin to serve. I drizzled the arugula and cherry tomaotes with some EVOO and balsamic vinegar prior to topping it with slices of the meat. The main course was BBQ pork side ribs. They were somewhat of an adventure to get, as my regular butcher (Tenderland Meats in the Granville Island Market here in Vancouver) does not carry them. I was told "It's Vancouver - there's too much fat in side ribs so nobody eats them". He did , however, order them for me, and looking at the back rib racks in front of me, I ordered 4 side rib racks, too. BIG MISTAKE. When I picked them up, I felt like Fred Flintstone at the drive-in, getting that huge brontosaurus rib that tips over his car. Anyway, I had so much meat that I decided to cook them two ways: I did some the old-fashioned way, cooked for 6 -7 hours over low heat on the BBQ, and some more the "cheater ribs" way where you boil the ribs with onion, clove and peppercorns until the meat is soft, then and rub and sauce and grill them until hot. Both ways yielded excellent ribs. Accompanying the ribs were roasted asparagas and red peppers, tossed in EVOO and balsamic prior to roasting. The mashed potatoes were made with goat cheese, half&half, sour cream and a little bit of butter. Once mixed, I put them in a baking dish and grated fresh reggiano parmesan over the top (this was all done earlier in the day). Once dinner was ready I put the dish in the oven to heat the potatoes through and melt the parm on the top. Oh, and there was cornbread, too. Dessert was fresh strawberries over Vanilla Swiss Almond Haagen-Daaz ice cream with a glass of Moscato d'Asti.

I just drove by the restaurant, and nothing seems out of the ordinary. There is a "Sorry, we are closed" sign in the window, but that's to be expected as they are normally closed on Sunday. The sandwich boards are standing just inside the door and the hanging chalk board still has the specials written on it. No signs or notices in the windows, fortunately. I guess we'll see if they open for business tomorrow or not. Where's the smilie for "crossing my fingers"?

Unverified...maybe someone can make a drive-by verification. Sad, if true. ← SAY IT AIN'T SO......! I'll try and do a drive by today...