snacky_cat

I'm off to a Christmas potluck with some co-workers this evening and my contribution was a fantastic recipe for sweet/spicy glazed nuts I grabbed off Epicurious. I made them last night and already ate about half. Good thing I doubled the recipe Anyway, they're not cookies but they do make a good addition to a Christmas baking gift box - make up a big batch and package them in individual cellophane bags. You can find the recipe here. I did a batch of almonds and a batch of pecans, which I kept in the oven for about 10min more on the advice of one of the reviewers, and I also cut the salt by half. They are obscenely good. I had to lock them in my desk drawer to keep me from eating them all before the party.

Ugh. Mystery solved. They're using just shy of 2-3/4 cups of sugar in the recipe to slightly less than 2 cups of flour. Nasty. Over in the cupcakes thread in the Pastry and Baking forum and in all the other recipes I've either tried or considered trying, the amount of sugar is generally equal to or slightly less than the amount of flour. I am getting cavities just thinking about this. Blech!

You'd probably like the cupcakes at Uprising Breads (I know I do ) - their smartie cupcake is a chocolate cake, cream cheese icing, and - surprise, surprise - smarties on top. We stop by there for morning coffee and muffins occasionally and I have been known to forego my muffin in favour of a breakfast cupcake.

About a month ago, the Sun featured a short article about the proposed redevlopment of the area under the north end of the Granville bridge. Since that's my new hood (and the Nu hood, for that matter), I had a closer look at the city's plans for it today and was totally delighted. It looks like city planners are going to raze the ugly impound lot, maintain the existing heritage buildings, eliminate the westernmost on ramp, and turn the whole area into a little neighbourhood market zone. You can read an older report on the city's ideas here, or skip directly to the awesome picture here. How cute it sthat? A little under-the-bridge high streets, with butchers and grocers and delis and cafés. If this little area were yours to control, what would you put in there? Me? I'd like to see a small supermarket - another Nester's would be great - and some speciality shops - a really great butcher and fishmonger, a good source for fresh veggies, maybe a couple of cafés, a bakery, a Steamrollers... It would be great if the area became one of the city's farmer's market locations too. Any other ideas?

I blame the cupcake fad on Sex and the City. Ever since they featured the Magnolia Bakery on one of the episodes, cupakes have been selling like, um, hotcakes. It plays into that whole late 20s-30s female girly bourgeoisie chic that's so prevalent now and has paved the way for other retro-feminine treats, like meticulously decorated sugar cookies as party favours and anything decorated in pink. Getting on the ground floor of the marketing-girly-chic-to-monied-hipster-yuppies was a great move on Cupcakes' part. That being said, their cupcakes make my teeth hurt. Seriously, I have never put such a sugary bit of food in my mouth, EVER. Even a mini one is almost too much. Disgusting as this may sound, my favourite cupcakes in this town are at the IGA bakery out in Port Moody. Plain old fluffy cake mix cupcake topped with a frosting that is fluffy, puffy, and not too sweet at all. And each one is something like 69 cents. Oh, and as for the folks to blame for this - the Magnolia Bakery - their cupcakes taste like a mound of wallpaper paste topped with a sugar-infused sugar pate with a sugar glaze. The only redeeming features of the place are a) the window looks cute, with all the little cupcakes lined up and b) it's about 30ft away from the Marc Jacobs store.

Jason's post is bang-on. All of us have probably eaten the flesh of birds contaminated with the low pathogenicity H5 strain and these culls are not to avert a human pandemic, they're to ensure that the virus doesn't get a chance to mutate from low pathogenicity to high pathogenicity. A couple more facts to arm yourself with next time ill-informed Cousin Cletus says he won't eat that chicken dinner you just prepared: 1. There is no evidence showing that the highly pathogenic bird flu, or any bird flu for that matter, has ever been transmitted to a human through food. 2. Even if it were possible for the virus to infect humans via food, it is heat-labile, meaning heat will kill the virus. A study of avian flu in eggs revealed that standard high-temperature pasteurization protocols are sufficient to kill the virus. High heat pasteurization is done at 72C. You should already be cooking your poultry to 74C. I agree with Jason in that we all should make a special effort to support local poultry producers at the moment - just when they started to recover from the last viral epidemic, along comes this. Buy local when it's available - it's safe, and you're helping to sustain BC's poultry industry. It's lunchtime now, so I'm off to do my part with a chicken bruger or something

Our lab decided to descend the hill today and hit Burgers Etc... for lunch - all of us who pass by it on our way home at night had been eyeing it since before it opened, and the recent awesome reviews lit a fire under our butts. Man, was it ever good. One guy had the brisket burger, but the rest of us went for plain old burgers (ground chuck steak- very moist, juicy, low on grease, good meaty flavour - cooked medium well). Between all of us we managed to order most of the available toppings and all of the different sides. $7.50 gets you the basic burger and a choice of one side (I had sweet corn, which was delish, others went for mashed potato, fries, coleslaw, potato salad, mushrooms, baked beans...). You can add extra sides, or order anything from the BBQ end of the spectrum. They do 3 sizes of BBQ platter too, the choice sampler ($12.95 for two meats and two sides), the etc. sampler ($29.95 for 5 meats, I think, choice of 3 sides), or the menu sampler ($59.95 for a supersized version of the menu sampler plsu chicken wings). As an aside, my menu memory seems to be much better during the workday. If I went here for dinner and tried to remember all that, it'd be hopeless. Maybe it's cause I didn't drink with my lunch. That must be it. Anyway, the food was fantastic and got great reviews from the whole group. The average bill with tax and tip was about $11. Portions were just the right size, there was no grease factor at all, and the staff were really warm and friendly. We shall all be back soon, no doubt. Now I'm going to go breathe stinky onion breath over the one co-worker who didn't come.

I'm in. I want a Burgasm. After the 7th is best for me, until then I'm busy with moving.

Referring strictly to the "business eating" aspect of business travel, I'd say the Economist got it right. Vancouver is unique in that we are one of the only cities whose downtown/financial area (where business travelers work and stay) DOESN'T empty out after 6pm, consequently there are tons of great places within spitting distance of any hotel a businessman might find themselves at. Walk to Yaletown and you've got another metric assload of great eating options. Expense claim yourself a $5 or $10 cab ride and you're at West or Lumiere... Add to that the fact that it's pretty easy to grab a local rag and find a good recommendation, and you're sorted. Oh, and I can't forget that you can actually experince BC through restaurants - locally-sourced produce and seafood, BC wines, etc. When we host out-of-towners, we show off BC at restaurants like C, Coast and Raincity Grill. If you're going to be kept from sightseeing by the drudgery of long business meetings, might as well get your tourism fix by eating your way around the province. Other cities are too expensive to eat well in (I HATE filling out expense claims for trips to the UK and having to explain to the apparently provinvial accounting department that YES a lox bagel and an americano really DOES cost $18CDN in London) or too sprawly to get from the business district to the good food (LA, I'm looking at you), or just too @#$%ing scary (while most of you were at the C luncheon, I was in the urban jungle of Detroit, trying to get some Mexican food without getting capped). Yay Vancouver!

I like the version at New Grand View, now located on Fraser up around 28th or something. It does have a moderate glaze, but the crispy-crunchy beef has the best texture of any of I've tried - great batter crust! I have a less-than-appetizing name for that style of beef: "cat poo beef". It looks like little kitten poos - sort of skinny and kinky. Hands up all those who are going off ginger beef for awhile now that I've said that?

makanmakan's got it. The Chubby is indeed a tiny soda. I didn't know about its Caribbean provenance, however! First time I ever saw them was piled high in a Loblaw's when I lived in Montreal. I just love how it warrants its own line on the menu at Rehannah's. Water. Pop. CHUBBY.

Saturday morning at Seb's (see breakfast thread for customary laudatory remarks and heaping jam praise), Saturday night at Shanghai River (see Chinese in Vancouver thread for more kind words) and lunch today with PapaCat at Rehannah's Roti in Port Moody. It was written up in one of the local papers a few weeks back so we decided to check it out. For the last 8 years it's been 10min away from PapaCat's house but this was our first visit and certainly not the last. The restaurant and the menu are both quite simple. The restaurant has a bit of pizza-shop vibe to it: a few small tables (3?) in front, a counter, and a magic window into the back where the food is prepared. The menu is basically Roti and Chubby. Any kind of roti you can imagine, and a lot of flavours of Chubby. Jamaican patties too, I think, and water and pop, but who needs anything more than roti and Chubby? Seriously. I didn't check the prices and flavours of the veggie rotis (any section of a menu labelled "vegetarian" doesn't even register in my visual field), but meat rotis were around $6-$11, most around the $7 or $8 range. PapaCat and I both went for the goat roti (Goti?). You choose whether you'd like the curry mild, medium or hot. I recommend medium - it was perfectly spiced so that I enjoyed the flavour of the first 3/4 of the roti and then had burning ears for the remaining 1/4. PapaCat - the man who makes salsa by buying a huge can of jalapenos, dividing it into 1/6 and 5/6 and using the 5/6 for the salsa rather than the other way around - chose medium too and on the drive home said his mouth was tingling. Thr rotis are massive - I'm a horrible estimator, but I'd say about 6" long, 4" wide, and 3" high. The roti bread is wonderfully puffy, hot and fresh, and the filling was delectable. There was so much of it I skipped a lot of the potato and just concentrated on the goat, which was cooked so wonderfully you could cut it with a gentle tap of the fork. Slow-roasted goat is delicious. I've been having these awesome goat-burps all afternoon. You get a great big slice of cantaloupe along with your roti too. Anyway, if ye be passing by Port Moody way, stop by Rehannah's. It's on St. John St., north side, half a block west of the A&W. Open lunchtimes and early evenings. Rehannah is lovely, and seems to do a brisk take-out business (lots of folks she knew by name stopped in to pick up stuff while we ate). You can check out photos of various Trinidadian and Caribbean celebrties who have stopped by, like Buju Banton and Angelique Kidjo. And you can buy tickets to upcoming reggae shows and read The Source while you eat. Rotis. Chubby. Reggae. Goat. That's all you need to know.

The jam is totally amazing. It seems they have a rotating cast of jam characters (which would make a thread unto itself a la kolachy flavour spotting), all of which are fantastic. The blueberry-peach and the marmalade are some of my favourites. You can buy 'em in the market area in the cooler and enjoy them at home on non-Seb's mornings. The Yaletown Melriche's is our other weekend breakfast spot; this week we were there on Friday. I can also be found there on any morning I decide to work at home, as I consider eating breakfast, having a coffee and reading the paper to be an integral part of the work day I guess I do that a lot, since whenever I go in they just ask if I'm having my usual. I get the breakfast sandwich on multigrain, which I have previously referred to as the ideal breakfast food - you can hold it one hand and turn the pages of the paper with the other hand. It's fluffy egg, ham, tomato, onion and red and green paper with kind of a light mustard dressing. Tastes even awesomer when dragged through a puddle of the hot sauce they give you on each table. I also highly recommend the apple cinammon pancakes and the maple muffins. Agreed re: breakfast potatoes. Elsewhere in this forum (or maybe this thread, I can't rememebr), I got on my anti-potato soapbox or potato crate or whatever. Usually eating these malcontent little tubers makes me feel like a boa constrictor digesting a python, but Melriche's and Seb's both do them very well. Melriche's can vary a bit depending on who the chef is (they seem to have a rotating cast of characters; I can tell from the various permutations of breakfast sandwich I get) but are generally awesome. Seb's goes for more of the diced potato approach (vs. Melriche's halved baby potato) and gets the crispy right every time.

Heh heh, we were there too yesterday, like just about every other weekend. Mr Cat and I are sort of late eaters though, at least as far as breakfast is concerned, so we weren't around until around 11:45 or noon or so. Mr Cat had ths scrambled eggs and turkey sausage, comme toujours, and I had the smoked salmon benny, just to deviate from my usual bacon/caramelized apple omelette. Delicious as always. Handy Seb's tip: they are happy tp replace one side order with another (at least they are for us, who they recognize from our weekly-or-more visits). Mr Cat skips potatoes for extra fruit, and if I order something that doesn't have toast and jam (i.e benny), I skip one of the sides dishes and get toast instead. And I always use my whole jam container on my toast. All of it. Every last molecule. Toast with a 1.5cm high layer of preserves tastes sooooo good.

Another weekend, another Chinese restaurant for the humble bohunks of the cat clan. We finally made it to Shanghai River out in Richmond and it was well worth the trip. Started off with some xiao long bao. I ordered them by saying that and not "steamed pork buns", which totally impressed the other cats. Uncle Cat then set to teaching himself some Chinese characters by looking at the menus and comparing items. He learned "pork" by the time we ordered. We also had the Shanghai Noodles (PapaCat's favourite - he orders this everywhere we go), sweet and sour boneless pork, and a diced chicken and chile hot pot. Everything was just delicious! Canucklehead's soup bun battle photos are exactly right - a nice thin dumpling around a golden soup filling with a wonderful rich flavour to it. Two of the dumplings experienced premature desoupulation, however, when they stuck to the paper lining the steamer. REALLY delicious, though - much more flavourful than pretty much any of the dumplings I've ever had at dim sum before. We decided we're going to try Shanghai Wind's dumplings too for scientific comparison purposes. The 3 dishes we chose were enjoyed by all - I found that in each of the dishes the flavours were much more pronounced, much fresher-tasting, and just much more all-around awesomer than many of the restaurants we usually try. If you sat me in front of 100 dishes of Shanghai noodles or sweet and sour pork or chile chicken from all the restaurants we've been to over the years, these would be the only ones that I would instantly recognize. All in all, delicious and cheap (4 dishes and one drink, $47 after tax). Decor is lovely - open and warm, and when we arrived just before opening at 5, there were already about 4 or 5 groups waiting patiently outside. Staff were very helpful, great English and great suggestions.

I think we need a wild game thread, wherein people can point out all the restaurants in town that do really good game. I will start with a brief report on the Wild Game Extravaganza at Seb's, which runs until Nov. 19th, Wednesdays through Saturdays. The special Wild Game is a list of 6 or 7 entrées not normally found on the menu. A possible non-complete list includes a pheasant breast, a goose roulade, an elk medallion, a buffalo strip loin, a caribou and juniper berry sausage, and duck. Of course their descriptions are much more mouth-watering. Since I have a terrible memory I figured I'd only bother to try remembering the animal, and not all the accompaniments Prices range from $13-$15. The regular evening menu does contain some game dishes in the "amuse geule" category, so even if you miss the game festival, you can still go back to try: cumin-scented buffalo cakes with an apple-tomato relish, 5-spice duck spring rolls with cilantro lime trempette, and braised venison steak on a bed of fresh watercress with cranberry jus. (No, my memory did not suddenly improve. I cheated with the help of the online dinner menu. Mr Cat wanted the buffalo cakes to start and the buffalo loin for dinner at first, but decided that was too much buffalo for him (is there really such a thing as much buffalo? Surely not!) so he switched his appetizer order to the 5-spice duck spring rolls. Oh my GAWD, were these ever delicious. You have to love a spring roll that says "@#$% you" to vegetables and other filler, and is stuffed with nothing but sweet, sweet, gently spiced duck meat. A mere $9 gets you 5 very generously sized rolls (inch thick, 4 or 5 inches long, not those pinky-sized night market ones). The cilantro lime dip is great, but you could eat these all on their own. I managed to get a few bites of the buffalo strip loin ($15) which was phenomenal! Wow, I don't know what it was cooked in, but it had a wonderful light sweet taste to is and was cooked perfectly. I didn't have my camera, but it would have made great steak porn. Man, it was good. Go get yourself some before the 19th! I had a corn cakes and prosciutto salad to start with. It was quite tasty - sort of like corn latkes - but it was overshadowed by those awesome duck spring rolls, which Mr Cat was nice enough to share most of! My main course was the spice rub elk medallion cooked in a shallot and Madeira reduction, served over blue potatoes and roasted baby carrots. It was incredibly good - less of a sweet flavour than Mr Cat's buffalo, and the shallton and Medeira reduction was fantastic - I put as much as I could of it over my potatoes too. Overall, great game items. We are going to try to get back there one more time before the game festival ends (gotta have the buffalo again!) so I'll report back with more data. The prices were amazing (four glasses of wine, two appetizers, two entrees, one dessert and one americano came to $80 after tax, before tip) and the service there is always lovely and sweet. It's just as awesome a place at dinner as it is at breakfast! So, pipe up. Which local restaurants have great game dishes on their regular menus or are having special game nights? I'm thinking Stormin Norman's, Aurora's super-yummy venison and fennel sausage, the Don Francesco game menu mentioned in another thread. Give us info, people! I want to eat my way through the North American ungulate population and I need your help? Oh - another question! Chef Neil - do game animals have hanger steak muscles?

Go directly to Daiso in Richmond. That place has the coolest packaging around, and everything in the store either costs $2, or is get-X-for-$2. Not only do they have cool boxes, tissue paper, bags and other decorations, but they also carry some culinary-specific packaging too. Last year I saw these crazy "muffin kits". You bake a muffin or cupcake or two, put them in the special cardboard muffin cups, put the cup inside the muffin box, complete with fluffy stuffing, wrap it all up in the special cellophane, and tie it with the ribbon and bow. And fill out the card. It's crazy. They also have stuff like decorator cardboard rings and things to put around mini-loafs or small cakes, and I seem to recall lots of the paper doily thingies for putting around squares or candies. Daiso totally rules.

Brunch this morning was at Bacchus, to celebrate a birthday. It was Mr Cat's first visit and he was so delighted with the decor and the food that he actually responded positively to my idea of going for the New Year's Eve gala. Considering we usually spend NYE doing the circuit of all the lame hipster Emily Carr student parties in the skeezy Woodward's area, this is a landmark day in the Cat family. Myself and the birthday lady both had the smoked salmon and sun choke hash, which was just delicious. Two perfectly poached eggs atop sun chokes, a very generous poriton of cubed smoked salmon, and wee wee wee tiny potatoes. Papacat and Mr Cat both had the omelette du jour, which today featured chorizo and mushrooms, and Uncle Cat had the eggs benny with Nova Scotia lobster. Everyone loved their meals, though sadly I didn't manage to snag a bite of anyone else's. The omelettes were fresh and fluffy, and Papacat's black rye toast looked out of the world. Washed everything down with a Beaulieu Vinyards Semillon Blanc, and noshed on some chocolate truffles on nut cookies sent out by the kitchen in honour of the birthday. Returned to casa del cat to toast the birthday lady with some chapmagne, and polish off some mango and strawberry mousse cake from Anna's. This is hands-down my favourite cake in the world. It's so light it's practically health food. Brunch yesterday at Milestone's to satisfy Mr Cat's eggs benny craving. I had a cornbread muffin and the California Spring Salad. As much as we belittle Milestone's around here, I freakin' love that salad. Strawberries, poppy-dusted goat cheese and little sweet pecans top off a bunch of greens in a light and sweet/savory mystery dressing. Dinner the night before at the HSG with all Mr Cat's crazy half-relatives in tow. The new TVs are completely hot and provided excellent hockey viewing, and the food was amazing as always. We finally got around to trying a new menu item - the black and blue ahi tuna. Holy crap, was that ever awesome! Especially if you dragged a yam fry around in the remnants of the sauce. I had a hanger steak (delish, comme toujours), and was so full we had nary a inch of space left for GBP. Sorry Mamacat, GBP evangelist extraordinaire. I am a bad kitten.

Just got back from lunch at La Casita with PapaCat. I had the "super tortilla soup" , not to be confused with the normal tortilla soup (apart from the $1 gap in price, I have no idea what makes the two different and I forgot to ask.) PapaCat had the special of the day, consisting of a huge bowl of "cowboy bean soup" (black beans, bacon, tortilla strips and other goodies), a nice portion of carne asada, and an egg cooked on top of a tortilla blanketed with a lightly spicy sort of puréed salsa. Everything was delicious, and the bill was less than $20 after tax and before tip! I haven't had tortilla soup since I was in LA at the beginning of the year and this was even better than what I had down there. Not at all greasy like many tortilla soups, with crisp tortilla strips, big chunks of fresh avocado, and thinly sliced smoky wonderful strips of what I think is an ancho chile (my chile identification skills are woefully poor.). The flavour combinations are great - nothing gets lost in the spice as often happens, and you can really taste each ingredient. The bowl filled me up quite nicely. I managed to snag a couple bites of carne asada as well, which were fantastic - nice and juicy and perfectly seasoned.

The $20 I greased your palm with to say that is in the mail! Yeah - Mr Cat and I spotted the wild game night ad posted on the till when we were waiting for a table the other weekend. IIRC, it runs until Nov. 19th. We're making good progress on our quest to eat our way through the encyclopaedia of indigenous North American even-toed ungulates, but figured we'd stop by and try out the menu anyway. I shall report back after Operation Caribou, of course.

So much for the Cat family's attempt at budget-friendly dining - it seems like the closer we get to the start of our mega-mortgage, the more we eat out. Duh. Breakfast this morning at Seb's, my favourite rainy-day place. For once I managed to NOT have my usual (bacon and caramelized apple omelette), and had the green onions and ham scrambled eggs instead. Totally delicious, as always. Their free range eggs are great - the most wonderful dark golden yolks. Jam today was unidentifiable but amazingly good, as always. It tasted a bit blueberry/appley/curranty. Mr Cat had the turkey sausage, comme toujours, and replaced his breakfast potatoes with extra fruit. Seb's is a good place for social observation. On busy mornings they pack 'em in pretty tight, so you overhear a lot of conversations. We were there a few weeks ago and were sitting next to the loudest guy in the world who didn't stop talking for more than 2 seconds at a time. This morning we sat next to two guys having breakfast together who managed to not say a SINGLE word to each other the entire meal. Dinner last night at Coast. After my first meal ever there last Monday with a work crowd, I decided that Mr Cat HAD to try the place, so I took him there to apologize for dropping the ball on some concert tickets I was supposed to get. I called earlier in the evening hoping they still had some space, and they were totally accomodating. We were seated at the chef's community table which made for a totally delightful evening. Chef Sean showed us what was fresh that day, and we started with a tuna sashimi served alongside a king crab and asparagus roll. I opted for a scallop appetizer (fresh that day from the Baja) followed by another of the chef's teasers plates for dinner (calamari again, tiger prawn tempura, and chicken in phyllo), and Mr Cat had the salmon. All the dishes were simply exquisite - they really do fresh right at Coast. Watching chef at work was fascinating, and we also had a great view of the assembly process for a series of dishes for what I assume was a private party upstairs. Our dessert was off the charts! We had the special for the day, which was a pear and ginger cake with a chocolate caramel sauce. Not only did you get the cute little cake, but there was a small scoop of vanilla ice cream in an almond lace cup, a bit of chocolate truffle, and a chocolate/raspberry shard. God, it was good. Service all evening was wonderful - attentive, warm, helpful. We'll be back soon, and we're going to do one of the tasting menus next time. Lunch at the crepe place in Park Royal south. I had a roast chicken/paprioka crepe. Not as good as the Cafe Crepe ones (I looooooove the chicken and cheese crepe there), but very tasty nonetheless and filled with lots of fresh ingredients - lettuce, tomato, spinach. Yum.

Come to think of it, BCinBC, my unfortunate run-ins with the breakfast potatoes were likely not the fault of the poor spuds. It was probably the fact that every time I ate at Joe's I was in the grip of a severe hangover. Some sort of bad Pavlovian association going on there.

Re: Kerrisdale joints, which one is the one that's hidden away sort of behind the London Drugs - Ajisai, Shota, or something different? We stopped in there a few months back on a friend's recommendation and loved it. Some really neat dished on the menu, including all the stuff with "mountain potato".

Oh yeah, Blue Fox is awesome. Mr Cat and I took the HeliJet over to Victoria two winters ago as part of his Xmas pressie. I searched online for Victoria's best breakfasts and the Blue Fox came up. The HeliJet shuttle guy was nice enough to veer off his regular route and drop us there. Thanks to the ungodly hour at which the helicopter flies, we beat the line-up and enjoyed an amazing breakfast, including the "very fat French toast", and some really great coffee. As far as non-Sebs Vancouver places, people I know swear by Joe's Grill (one on 4th, one on Davie). I, personally, hate the place. The breakfast potatoes make me all grumbly and dopey.

I finally got around to checking out Coast last night. Only now, after almost a decade of living in Yaletown, have I accepted my inner yuppie and decided that it's okay to eat at all these slick joints lining my neighbourhood streets. Our original plan was to go to Diner, but the cash-only situation foiled us so we headed down the block. Settled on Coast as we were taking an out-of-town colleague for dinner and thought it would be a good West Coast culinary travelogue. No reso = no problem - we were seated at a cute and cozy booth near the chef's table and had great fun watching him work. Started with a round of cocktails, and then a bottle of the Mission Hill 2002 Cab Merlot. I have yet to taste a bad 2002 BC Merlot. What I liked most about Coast was the variety that was available on the menu. I was feeling a bit off so I figured I could handle 2 appetizer-sized plates, but because of the of "teaser" option on the menu, I ended up trying 5 different things. I started with the carpaccio, which is served with tete de moine and port-braised fig quarters. Our server suggested I wrap some cheese and carpaccio around a fig quarter and nosh on that. It was just fabulous! I followed that up with a selection of three items from the teaser menu - the Mediterranean calamari, a portobello mushroom and goat cheese potato gallette, and the wai lea tuna. All were delicious, but I particularly enjoyed the calamari. Cooked perfectly, with an olive oil/tomato/olive (and caper maybe?) dressing that I soaked up with a few bread bites. Each teaser is served in a small bowl, sort of Chinese restaurant soup/rice bowl-sized, and gives you the perfect amount of food. And all for the low price of 3 for $15. A similar teaser option is available for dessert - 3 small portions for $9. I shared with a co-worker - we ordered a Mayan vanilla bean creme brulee each, and a "chocolate peanut butter creation", which I snagged a bit of. The portions were more generous than I expected, much to my delight - I was thinking the CB would be the two-bite size but it ended up being about 2.5X big as I though. Extremely tasty, with a wonderfully delicate hint of vanilla. The chocolate peanut butter creation was pretty amazing too - think a high-class peanut butter cup topped with a dollop of fresh cream. The presentation of each dish was lovely - none of that over-the-top Rem Koolhaas artichecture crap where your food ends up looking like a bad game of Jenga, but simple and classy. Service was outstanding - attentive and helpful but not overbearing. All in all, a totally enjoyable night which worked out to around $55/head before tip. I will be going back later this week to take Mr Cat for a date, since I forgot to get American Analog Set tickets and it sold out and I am in the doghouse (a cat in the doghouse, egads!) Lunch at SFU's Highland Pub earlier that day. Ate the yam wedges with tamarind aioli again. Was sick all weekend so no dining out for the cat family. The antepenultimate resto on the list is Boffins in Sasaktoon, which I dined at on Thursday and is written up in the Saskatchewan thread. Off to try the Maui Grill in Port Moody for lunch tomorrow with Papa Cat. After its write-up in the paper a couple of weeks ago he's been itching to try it. He and his Lady Cat stopped by for some take-out the other weekend and loved it, so he's bringing me there for lunch. I will, of course, report back.