snacky_cat

Addendum to my long-winded post above: the feta from McClennan Creek Dairy is exceptionally good. At this very moment, it is melting atop a Greek pizza in my oven. I ate a bit (ok, a small handful) as I was putting the pizza together, and it is really is fantastic. It comes vaccum-packed and, since it's not passing its time bobbing along in a sea of brine, the flavour of the cheese itself is much more prominent (unlike many fetas, which taste like they've spent several years in Davy Jones' locker.) Crumbles beautifully, and the cheese itself is less sharp/briney and more warm salty goat. Mmmmm... warm salty goat.....

There's a Pretzelmaker stand in the food court at Oakridge. It'll do in a pinch. Mamacat and I have been known to cross the border and visit Bellis Fair to stop at the Auntie Anne's Pretzels there - it is, for the most part, a crappy old mall food court staple, but they do make a very yummy soft pretzel which is dipped in butter, dredged in crushed almonds and served with a little pot of caramel. They also sell make-at-home mix, which, with a bit of tinkering, makes a fine soft pretzel at home with rather minimal fuss.

4/5 cardiologists. But that 5th cardiologist - I think I saw him at Fatburger

6 for me. I'm going to print out this list and stick it on the fridge, right next to the highlighter job I did on the index pages of the Entertainment Book. Mark - too bad you didn't have a great experience at Mouse and the Bean. I've always had great meals there (usually lunch), and particularly love their chicken quesdilla. They've changed up the menu a little bit, recently, and I've only been there once since. I'll have to go back for another recon mission. Hint for people who haven't been there before: bring a telescope. The menu, which is painted on round terra cotta plates, hangs above and behind the counter and has foiled my many attempts to read it. And my vision isn't particularly bad. Try out Tacos Mexico Rico next time - also on the list and just up the street. I order up a variety of their soft tacos, whose fillings range from carne asada to some kind of tongue. They're tiny enough that you can try every one on the menu for cheap like dirt. My favourite under-the-radar joint is Caffe Presto Panini on Hornby, whose virtues I have touted in the Entertainment Book and Hole in the Wall threads. Packed at lunch, quiet at dinner (with only one employee - cook and waiter in one - at night). He closes up when it gets quiet, which can be anywhere from 7-9pm, so don't go too late. Tasty variety of paninis on crispy, crusty rectangles of bread (my favourite is the asparagus and prosciutto) and nice, simple pasta accompaniments. If there's two of you, choose one pasta and one panini - chef will happily split the order for you and you get the best of both worlds. And LEAVE ROOM FOR DESSERT. They have what I consider THE BEST TIRAMISU IN THE CITY. Rich, liqueur-soaked, and served with a helping of tangy/sweet mascarpone sauce drizzled over top, with a bit of chocolate sauce too. If you put this tiramisu and the HSG's gingerbread pudding in a room together and turned the lights down low, you would combine the city's two best desserts into a love child SO tasty that it would instantly collapse into a singularity of extremely dense dessert perfection. You'd probably have to scrape (or lick) a bunch of chocolate and caramel sauce off the walls after the explosion. I'll help.

I've got about 2 weeks' worth of eating to catch up on here. Highlights include, in reverse chronological order: Dinner tonight was at the Grand View Szechuan restaurant, which is the establishment formerly known as the New Grand View. I was slightly disappointed that they did not elect to go with my suggestion of calling it the New New Grand View. To add to my disappointment, the hot towel machine appears to have been lost in the move from Broadway up to Fraser & 26th, so no more indvidually-wrapped steaming washcloths with your oranges and fortune cookies. Oh well, the menu's still the same and they brought the funny little coloured lamps with them. Forgot to ask about the new delivery radius. My bad. Food tastes same. Had soem yummy aspargus in black bean sauce - nice, crunchy bright green asparagus. No floppy stalks here. Stuffed a bunch of cheese in my mouth at McClennan Creek Dairy's family fun day today. I probably should have washed my hands after petting the goats and before eating the cheese, but ingesting goat molecules seems to have done me no harm. I suppose they keep their goats quite clean. Their little shop is worth checking out - they had about 10 or 12 different types of goat cheese available, including a yummy rinded goat cheese with an ash goat stamped on the top. I was boring and bought some feta and some black pepper chevre, though there were many other exotic things to be had. An excellent stop if you are hungry for cheese and are out Abbotsford way. Our day also took us to Wisbey's Veggies, which is open at long last. A great source for wonderful local produce (inclduing purple cauliflower!) at good prices. They had some nice homegrown herbs too, including lovage, which I've never even heard of. Really nice sage too, which I will pick up next time I do fried sage leaves (grab sage leaf in tongs, dip into hot oil for a couple of seconds, drain a bit on paper towel, serve over whatever - sautéed pears with blue cheese and fried sage = wonderful starter.). We also stopped at The Ye Olde Little Country Heritage Shoppe and General Old-time Happy Family Fun Store. I can't remember exactly what it's called, but it's some permutation of the above and is on No. 5 Rd. in Abbotsford. Lots of free range frozen chicken and pork products, and a whole display fridge full of Little Qualicum Dairy cheeses. The Yalumba tasting at the Hammie on Tuesday was great. Fine company, in the form of several eGulleteers (and my Mom, who we peer pressured into joining the forum and who should be appearing shortly as mamacat), and great food and wine. We tried the Viognier with a wonderful vichyoisse, rich with mussels and saffron. We drank another round of the Viognier for the Channel 4 camera guy and had to do a couple of takes toasting Shaw TV. I hope he wasn't scared of us. Crazy foodies. Tried a very alcoholic (and good) Grenache paired with a stuffed round o' veal, and an excellent Cabernet Sauvignon with a bit of duck on Cambonzola polenta. Polenta never had it so good. The Cab Sauv was the undisputed winner of the evening. I won two bottles of vino for getting the grand prize trivia question right (What was the wine rep's last name?), one of which Deborah and Ling and I demolished the next night while scarfing down some fantastic homemade Deborah cake, and one of which was consumed with last night's steak. Mamacat, Deborah and I hung around post-tasting to pack away some appetizers and a portion of GBP. Sunday was my birthday. Hooray for birthdays! We started our day at Seb's Market Café. It was our first visit, and we will be back many times. I had the omelette with caramelized apple and bacon, which was to die for. Great combination of flavours, and a wonderful, perfect, fluffy omelette. Great artisan bread toasts with homemade preserves (of undetermined flavour, but I suspect some combination fo cranberry and apple) on the side, and one of the few portions of breakfast potatoes I've actually liked. Normally breakfast potatoes make me want to crawl back into bed again after eating them, but these were great. Crispy, but with none of the grease cesspools that are murder on those hangover breakfast mornings. Mr. Cat had their eggs benedict, which are served on fluffy country biscuits. Fantastic. Good coffee too. As much as we like to eat our breakfasts at the local Melriche's, I loathe their coffee. It tastes sharp, and sort of skunky. I didn't eat lunch so as to leave room for dinner at Parkside. We were all Parkside virgins, and just like Seb's, we will be back. Again and again. And again. Having planned ahead and having left a void in my tummy, I was the only one of the 5 of us who ate all the 3 courses. There is no room for restraint when it comes to birthday dinners. Started with a prawn and scallop tortellini in a lobster bisque - wonderful. Virtually the whole table went for the venison tenderloin medallions for the main. Again, fantastic. And a round of ducle de leche caramel flans for dessert. I had packed away a fair amount of wine so the extent of my commentary on this meal is "Yum. It was awesome. YUM. Fantastic". Nice cozy, unpretentious spot, and top-notch service. A few days before that was a birthday dinner for Papacat at Memphis Blues. Neither health violations nor fear of a clogged artery can keep my Dad away from this place. 6 of us made a pathetic attempt at the Elvis Platter, and there were enough leftovers to be shared between 3 households (and amply, I might add.) When I'm actually at the restaurant, I poke at the sausage for a bit, eat a bit of chicken, and a few slabs of cornbread. I think the food always tastes better the next day, when you're picking it out of the takeout container straight out of the fridge. The grease has congealed so you're absolved of the psychological scarring that comes with ingesting glistening torrents of animal fat, and there's just some kind of primal pleasure associated with clandestinely snacking in the glow of the open refridgerator door. I think that about wraps it up. I was stuck in Detroit, which is a cultural and gastronomic hellhole, so I missed the C luncheon and the Microbrew tasting (shakes fist in general direction of Detroit).

Our kitchen has had a mysterious stink about it for the last few days (which we finally vanquished tonight after much scrubbing of EVERYTHING in sight, as well as a massive dump of expired things. NASTY!), so we have been eating out whenever possible. Lunch today was at Go Fish with dear Papa. I had the catch o' the day - red spring salmon - on greens and it was lovely. The salmon was grilled to perfection - a little crispy thanks to the glaze on the outside, and soft and moist inside - and was the cutest shade of, uh, salmon pink. Dad had his usual halibut and chips and I swear I've never had the same chips twice at that place. I've been a few times, usually a month or so apart, and the fries seem to be completely different every time. Today they tasted almost like cassava fries, with a much different texture than the usual. They had that foamy/crispy cassava feel to them. Oh well, I liked 'em enough to steal a good number from Dad's plate. Yesterday's dinner was Vera Burgers!!!. Mr Cat and I stopped by the Denman St locale on our peregrinatiosn through the West End. He was eyeing Fatburger but when I explained that one Kingburger contained pretty much my weekly fat intake, he relented and we hit Vera's. I had the turkey burger, he had the lamb, and they were yummy as usual. Monday lunch was Matzusushi, my favourite cheap Japanese place in Burnaby and a common entry on my last-3-restos list. They were out of asparagus so I had to go without my beloved asparagus roll. They do it up right there - one long thick spear of asparagus, ensconced in a light, crispy tempura batter. At this littl eplace, the food comes right from the fryer to your tabel, so the tempura is still hot when you bite into it. Sunday breakfast at Melriche's in Yaletown. The usual breakfast sandwich for me. I guess they were in a generous mood since it seemed to have twice the egg as usual. In my opinion, this is the greatest breakfast ever. You can hold it one hand and eat and turn the pages of the paper at the same time. All breakfast food should be so portable. The only way they coudl make it better woudl be to put it on a stick. Saturday dinner at Chili Pepper House, whose virtues I extolled in the Chinese Take-out thread. Saturday breakfast at Uprising Breads. I like their muffins, but beware of the low-fat muffins. When you peel the muffin paper off, half the muffin goes with it. That's probably why it's low-fat - it's nothing to do with the ingredients, it's the fact that you end up with 1/3 less muffin to eat. I prefer Sen5es muffins - they may be tiny, but there's none of that wretched muffin paper business to deal with. Stupid muffin paper. I'm going to sniff around the kitchen now and check the status of Operation StinkBeGone 2005.

I LOVE the mushroom guy. A friend of mine makes an amazing pasta sauce that uses nothing but butter, one of the mushroom guys' assorted-bags-o'-fungus, and some seasoning. Goes great over gnocchi. The West End market begins this Saturday, June 18th, at Nelson Park. Despite this being mere blocks from my place, I've yet to go. I'll try and stop by this weekend to check out the vendors.

One of my favourite toddler pasttimes was sitting on the countertop next to the spice cabinet and sniffing my way through the whole rack. I think my fate was sealed from that moment.

And T and T has a wonderful policy of discounting all the unsold deli/sushi items by 50% when closing time approaches. I've gone by around 8:30 and reaped a massive bounty for mere pocket change.

It's not the Chili Pepper House, is it? Chinese-Indian hybrid on Kingsway at Rupert? That's one of our favourite places to go - the food is great and the fortune cookies have little Chinese lessons inside them. Last weekend I learned "I am a lawyer". Right on! Our last meal there was veggie pakoras, haaji prawns, Manchurian chicken and hakka style sweet chow mein. All the dishes were awesome, especially the pakoras. Instead of the dough balls with a few unidentifiable vegetable shreds that most places turn out, these are bigger-than-a-golf-ball sized balls of nothing but veggie. Cabbage, carrot, onion, even little chunks of broccoli. When you slice one open it's impossible to understand how these things maintain their structural integrity during cooking - there is no sign of dough anywhere. Delicious. And served with an amazing spicy sauce that is a complete mystery to me. Mr Cat also likes it because they bring all the entrees at the same time. Staggered serving is one of his great pet peeves.

I stopped by the Vista d'Oro open house today to check out their new Farmgate shop, and it looks like a decent place for those in the Langley-ish area (4th and 208th). They've got a freezer full of Kiwi Pie co. meat pies, a good selection of C crackers and salts/herbs, and a nice little cheese selection, including some adorable buttons of chevre with rind for $3/ea. While the selection of gourmet warehouse-style products is good but small, Farmgate really shines in its stock of potted herbs. They had a ton of plants for sale, some of which I'd never even heard of, and they had some nice heirloom tomatoes as well. I am hopeless in the garden, but for those of you who are capable of raising a plant successfully, I would recommend a visit.

You should check out the new "wine store" at the Dufferin. It's the most ghetto private wine store I've ever seen, however it happens to be within staggering distance of my back door so I end up there more often than I'd like to admit. Why in god's name did they decide to knock down the busiest and best karaoke joint in town to erect this monstrosity is beyond me, especially when you could already get a few decent bottles of wine from the cold beer and wine room off the main pub. The place is perpetually under-stocked and looks like something that would be attached to a prison. It makes me cringe just thinking about it. Their sign is even more laughable - it promises in-store events and tastings. Yeah, riiiiiiight.

I wonder if it's the old Vong's space they're moving into? I used to love their jade chicken. Tonight is Ukranians-go-for-Chinese night in the Cat family so perhaps I'll request one last hurrah at the old New Grand View so we can bid adieu to the weird ivy climbing up the window and the beloved always-empty free parking lot. What are they gonna call the new joint? The New New Grand View? The New Fraser View?

Say what you like about the product, the folks running Churrolicious are sweethearts. They filled Captain Churro's massive order on Monday in a flash, despite it being past their closing time (as an aside, since they're right next to Elwood's, where I drank a away a good portion of my university career, they should re-open at 1:30am for an hour. Churros are up at the top of the list of foods that taste awesome when drunk.) A bunch of us stopped by there yesterday after a drinking session at the aforementioned Elwood's, all 6 of us bearing the free churro coupons. They happily hooked us up with our 12 freebies, and we coughed up the ~$8 for another 12 with sauce. We were taking them to party so she put the sauces in little to-go cups for us, to prevent soggy churro syndrome. They were great, and they stayed nice and crispy until the last one was eaten at the party an hour or so later. And I could eat that dulce de leche with a spoon. Mmm. So they're not as good as the Spanish kind. They're a fun cheap (6 of 'em cost less than one really crappy one at GM Place does!) little treat and I hope they do well there. God knows we'll be there after every Elwoods meal. PS-Today is their grand opening so print a ocupon off the webpage and stop by if you're in the neighbourhood.

Go to the far stall - the one with the thing that looks like a Nintendo controller stuck to the wall - and experience the finest in Japanese toilet hygiene technology!

I will annotate Fanny Bay's recommendation of Quattro on 4th with the statement that they have the single most entertaining ladies' room anywhere in this city.

We should break out the frosted white eyeshadow and white lipstick and pay the Hyperbole -oops, I mean Superlative - Lounge a visit when it opens! Any other closet former mods want to bust out the Lambrettas for a trip? Ha.

In the "filling a niche that probably doesn't exist" category, I give you Café Borandsi. I spotted this today as I was heading down North Rd near Lougheed Skytrain station. I gather it opened relatively recently, because last time I looked that place was a fireplace store. What struck me first was the fact that their sign uses the Mistral font rather prominently. This font verily SCREAMS "crappy", and I am quite convinced that no business using it in their logo has survived beyond 6 months. Except, perhaps, for some exotic massage parlours. Next was the description of the restaurant - a "fusion board games café". I have to give credit to the guy who came up with that - it is one of the few word combinations in the English language that return absolutely ZERO results when used as a Google query. Anyway, I understand the principle (go, eat food, play some games) but I can't get past their slogan. Fusion board games cafe. Jeez. I'll have the Parcheesi-stuffed ravioli, please. I'll give them the last word, though. from the one internet page I could find describing the place... "Strong recommendation to any that would like to experience a healthy and relaxing form of entertainment."

I can get up to preantepenultimate, but after that, I'm lost. Speaking of which, my preantepenultimate dining experience was Annapurna. That place is SO tasty, it's easy to forget that you're eating vegetarian. We had bhartha, malai kofta, aloo gobi and matar paneer, and enjoyed the lot of them. Annapurna is one of those rare Indian restaurants where you're not left with weird orangey-red oil pools floating around in the dishes after you scoop all the good stuff out. Plus, when they bring out the little dish of fennel seeds with your bill, ALL of the seeds were the candy-coated kind.

Every time I try to post in this thread, something awful happens and my post gets eaten. Tonight was the weekly Ukranian-family-goes-out-for-Chinese-food night; this week's destination was the always tasty Connie's Cook House on W. 4th. We had the chicken and corn soup, beef and black bean chow mein, dry garlic spare ribs, tangerine peel chicken and vegetarian mui sui. Everything was completely delicious as per usual, and I ate probably half the plate of the ribs. They should have these in bars instead of peanuts. I know I'd drink about 10x as much beer if that were the case. Mmmm... bar pork... Back to Connie's. It's a great place, and we've never had a bad dish in the many years we've been going there. Last night Mr Cat and I hit Il Nido for a Entertainment coupon night out. We loved it, and will definitely be back there again. The kitchen was sending out little amuse bouches to all the tables - crêpes wrapped around bocconcini and lovely fresh asparagus - which made a nice start to the evening (I'm a grad student. "Free food" is possibly the most beautiful phrase in the English language.) On the waiter's recommendation, we drank the 2002 Bodegas Castano Hecula - a budget-concious red that impressed us both. When Mr Cat asked for the name of the wine again (we kept morphing Hecula into Hercules), the waiter brought the label by for us to pictorially memorize and dropped off a card with the name written on it. It has thus been added to our pantheon of reds to drink around Chez Cat. We both had pasta - Mr Cat went for the spaghettini in a light cream sauce with figs and prosciutto (I stole a bite - delicious!) and I had the tagliatelle with oyster mushrooms and slow-roasted Italian sausage. It was ridiculously good, and our most awesome waiter overheard me when I said I liked to re-parmesan my pasta halfway through, so when I hit the halfway mark in the tagliatelle, he came over, parmesan spoon in hand. We shared a torte di limone for dessert, and left very full and very, very, very pleased. I can't remember precisely what the antepenultimate meal out I had was for certain; I think it might have been sushi at lunch on Wednesday. Once a week I'll meet up with my Dad for lunch, and we usually go to Matzusushi in Coquitlam (it's in a funny little strip mall on the northeast corner of Lougheed and North Rd.) It used to be a Fujiya until it broke ranks or something and went rogue. Half of the place is a Japanese supermarket, the other half is a restaurant. All manner of sushi, sashimi and hot dishes are on the menu. You order and pay at the counter, then they'll bring your tray round to you when it's ready. There's more free tea than you can shake a stick at, and their sushi is great. The crab in the spider rolls is always hot out of the ol' fry vat, and they make an awesome potato korroke (I think korroke must be a Japanese corruption of croquette, for that's what these things are.) A plate of yakisoba for Dad, two potato korrokes, a spider roll and a rainbow roll will set you back about $14 or 20. Bargain.

I have been a blades-down disciple since the day I was told the most likely apocryphal tale of a man who -whil attending a wake at someone's home - tripped over an open dishwasher door, fell onto the blades-up knives, and expired right there on top of the Jet-Dry slot.

We hopped into the "lazy self-indulgent yuppie" mobile (a silver VW, of course) and left the confines of Yaletown for Round 2 at Pan-o-Pan. (Heh, while we do drive a VW and we do live in Yuppie-ville, neither Mr Cat nor myself are anything close to yuppie. We're just a couple of scruffy indie rockers who have infiltrated Yaletown and are performing reconaissance for a Tokion magazine photo essay on "small dogs and those snobby kids from highschool that hated on you who own them". Anyway, we didn't feel like to going to Nester's for the ass-tillionth time (we have enough Nester Value Points to rival the GDP of some small island nations), so we went to Pan-o-Pan to try their prêt-a-manger stuff. We picked up two wild salmon cakes ($6.75 each, and they are HUGE!) and some saffron smashed potatos ($3.50 for a tub, which yielded 4 servings). Both purchases tasted great and were had for a good price. It's basically deluxe homemade food, but you don't have to hand over your firstborn as payment like you do at LilyKate. The salmon cakes were massive and delicious - great flaky consistency (heavy on the beautifully pink salmon, light on the breadcrumbs), with nice flavours, including a hint of lemon zest. The saffron taters were also delicious - with their cute yellow colour and wonderful saffron aroma I have dubbed them Irish bouillabaisse. They'd go beautifully with any fish dish, and Marta also suggested pairing them with the osso bucco. We had some asparagus on the side (the pink, yellow and green made for a cute plate), and were absolutely stuffed. Now I must go back to my yuppieville reconaissance. I think I'm going to go check out the Mystic Tanned PR chicks dining at Glowbal.

235 E. Broadway (b/w Main and Kingsway). Go! Eat! Enjoy! I have just returned from my fridge, where I tucked into some of the leftover lemon hummous. This is the best hummous ever. I usually hate the stuff - it's way too chick pea-y - but this stuff? I could eat it forever! Or at least until Mr. Cat throws me out of the house for stinking like garlic.

So finally, after many many months of "I've gotta go there"s, I made it to Pan-o-Pan Catering. I had read nothing but glowing reviews of the place and was eager to try out their Ikea-style appetizers (some assembly required), because, let's face it, I am l-a-z-y. Pan-o-Pan sells little appetizer foundations, like puff pastry rounds, crostini, and these awesome little cups made out of wonton wrappers or tortillas (which, as I found out, stand up nicely on their own on a plate despite being round. Fabulous!). They also sell a mouth-watering variety of things to spread on the rounds or squirt into the cups, from roasted beet and goat cheese mousse to a great stilton and port spread. Two steps to a perfect, fuss-free appy (you can add a 3rd step of a garnish if you really want to take it to the proverbial next level.) Mr. Snacky_cat's 30th birthday was this past Friday, so we stopped by that afternoon to pick up some appetizer fixins to accompany the evening's drinks. It's a cute, bright little spot on the north side of Brodway, in the little triangle formed by Main and Kingsway. They even have parking behind the shop, which is completely endearing for me - she who never carries enough change for the meter. Pan-o-Pan is run by husband and wife Winston and Marta - she handles the food side, he does the business side, or so says their website. They were both in that day and gave a cheery hello. Mr. Snacky_c and I immediately began gawking over absolutely everything with extreme delight, and Marta offered us "a taste". With drool verily flying off our lips, we shook our heads "yes. The "taste" ended up being a little platter with 2 each of 4 different insta-appies - different bases filled with different mousses. We tried a roasted beet and goat cheese cream on a puff pastry round first - great pink colour, and the hint of orange in the mousse went deliciously with the candied hazelnut Marta used as a garnish. Next up was wild mushroom white truffle mousse in a wonton wrapper cup. Even Mr. Cat, mushroom-hater that he is, loved it. I think the next offering was stilton and port cream in a cup, but I was so busy drooling over everything my note-taking skills faded a bit. We finsihed off with smokey tomato cream in a tortilla crisp, which Mr Cat decided needed to be purchased immediately. We ended up leaving there with 1 bag of tortilla cups (about an inch in diameter, there were about 24 or so in the bag) for $2.50, a cone of smokey tomato cream ($7.00, the whole cone filled the whole bag of tortilla cups VERY amply), a bag of crostini ($2.50, 36 or so), and a tub of lemon hummous ($4.50 for a good deli-sized container). We also left with a desire to return as soon as possibel to eat our way through the rest of the menu, which includes such take-away goodness as osso buco, duck confit, and buffalo stew, handmade gnocchi in a rainbow of colours and flavours (butternut squash sage, purple yam and pear, wild mushroom, roasted garlic, the list goes on...), braised veal shank sauce, salad dressings in little plastic squeeze bottles, dessert sauces, homemade chocolates, flavoured oils, etc..... I cannot put into words how awesome this place is. For $9.50, you can turn out 2 dozen delicous little appetizers in about 5 minutes. The food is amazing, the selection is great, the prices are cheap, I COULD GO ON FOR HOURS. They're open Tuesday-Saturday, 12-6pm. If you're throwing yourself any kind of party, do yourself a favour and stop by here. Heck, do yourself a favour and stop by anyway - there really is something for everyone here.

Mr Cat and I often end up at Moodyville's for breakfast on the weekend. It's in the heritage building at the corner of 1st and Lonsdale, and does a great all-day breakfast (good news for those of us who never eat breakfast before 10am!). It's a cute little pokey old diner with typical diner fare - the 2 eggs/meat/toast/tater breakfast with endless coffee, cheeseburgers, BLTs, etc.... It's not going to win any culinary awards, but it's cheap, cheerful, and the food is better than the usual greasy spoon.