snacky_cat

I drove past around 5pmish on the way home today. Closed sign was in full effect, but not knowing the hours the place keeps, I have no idea whether being closed on a Monday at 5 is bad news or situation normal. I'll leave it to the Da Francesco dining posse to comment. Edited to add: Tuesday 5:47pm drive-by: Still closed.

Thanks all for the tips on Vij's waiting times. I relayed the info to Mr. Snacky_Cat, who has now decided that he wants fish on his birthday. Our pinned guide to previous threads notes that we haven't gone over the best-ofs for seafood yet, so here we go... Best seafood in Vancouver, non-Asian (no sashimi, no Kirin - Mr Cat wants a big hunk o' fish on his special day). C is the obvious choice, but that's where we did my birthday last July, so it's out of the question for the present party. Fish House in Stanley Park is on the list - it's in the Entertainment Book and I've always enjoyed meals there. Any other suggestions?

Our family's weekly Chinese dinner out (a bunch of Ukranian/French people with a weekly Chinese night. How Vancouver! ) has been rescheduled to a dim-sum lunch today. Since we usually tend to stick to the Floata and the Sun Sui Wah, I asked a co-worker for a recommendation and she came up with one that's not in this thread so far... Grand King Seafood, on West Broadway in the Holiday Inn/Tojo's zone. She had nothing but good things to say about it (ranked it just behind Kirin), and Googling dredged up tons of glowing reviews. I'm going to try to herd the group in that direction today so we can expand our horizons. Will report back with reconaissance data if successful.

Oh, don't get me started on the mindless herds of Stepho-bots that line up there all the time (is there some sort of wormhole linking Anton's and Stepho's across time and space? Is Anton Stepho's Italian cousin? Inquiring minds want to know!) Taki's Taverna, mere steps to the east, is basically as cheap, and is WAY tastier. They have some of the only hummous in town that I'll actually eat - the stuff is usually way too heavy on the boring old chick peas for my taste. We end up there every couple of months and always wonder why the sheeple over at Stepho's don't just go 5 metres down the block for better food at comparable prices with no wait. Baaaaaaaaaaaaaa.

What about later in the evening? How are waits around 8:30/9pm? The bar-at-West idea got me thinking about the progressive dinner concept. Start with drinks at West (can do you small plates at the bar? Maybe we could get in a few bites in there), go down the street to Vij's for dinner, then downtown for cake eating and champagne drinking with friends at Casa del Cat.

Tried that last time, Daddy-A, and no such luck Something about having to stand and wait in cramped little space inspires furious anger in Mr Cat. Maybe I'll just give him his present right before dinner so he's in a good mood, then do the liquor trick on top of that...

After much prodding, I was able to get Mr. Snacky_Cat to come up with a restaurant he wanted to go to for his birthday dinner (30!) - Vij's. We both love the food, but have rather different opinions re: the invariable wait... I love it - you get to throw back a bunch of drinks at the bar and nosh on all the free snacks your gut can handle. He hates it; granted his first and only experience with it was a Saturday night at 7:30, with its attendant 90min wait. So, we'll be there on a Friday night in a couple of weeks' time, and - since it his special day and all - will forego my usual 7:30 arrival and pakora-foraging in the lounge. So, what time is ideal to arrive and not have to worry too much about the wait? I was thinking 6:30 - the 5:30 waiting-for-the-doors-to-open crew will be finishing up, so the wait should be comparatively short, non? I should mention too that I refuse to go before 6. I have a bizarre aversion to early dinners (except when they are the French sort that start at 3pm and last until 11pm).

One of my favourites is one of the two ladies' stalls at Quattro on 4th in Vancouver. The larger stall has a "Chloe Washlet" by Toto (the Rolls Royce of the toilet world, according to my research) installed under the seat. As you enter the stall, you notice that a) the toilet seat has a bit of an odd shape to it and b) there is something that resembles a Nintendo controller stuck to the wall next to the toilet roll. Push a few buttons on the controller, and various little streams of water, er, marinate your rump roast. This particular stall sees multiple visits by female diners during one meal, for reasons which I will leave up to your imagination. Most confusing and slightly freaky? Kenka on St Marks Place in NYC. Their drink specials are so cheap that multiple visits to the washroom are a necessity here. There's a single room for guys and a single room for girls at the back of the restaurant, marked only by what I assume are the Japanese characters for male and female. If you plan on visiting the loo, you have to do some reconaissance for a few minutes to figure out which is which, or so I thought... Turns out when you actually get up to the doors, there are two tiny pieces of paper on each of the doors - Japanese line drawings of the male and female anatomy. If anyone else has been to this restaurant, you won't be surprised - all their menus and fresh sheets are illustrated with line drawing porn. Strange place.

Instead of Mother's Day brunch in town, we're taking Snacky_Cat Momma down to Bellingham for a burrito dinner at Casa Que Pasa. We'll probably stop in LaConner before that, and have some lunch at the little Native-run fish shack on the channel - really good chowder and great fish tacos made with a bannock-y/fry bread-y like thing.

Mr Snacky_Cat and I can be found at the Yaletown Melriche's virtually every weekend morning (and by morning I mean, uh, noon-ish). The primary attraction is that it's cheap like dirt (breakfast and coffee for 2 with tax runs about $12-$14), and if you get a big booth you can sit around and read the weekend papers for a couple hours. Sadly, there is no Hollandaise to be had, but they have awesome pancakes (apple cinammon is my favourite) which can also be had by the half-order, and their breakfast quesadilla is pretty tasty and healthy-looking. Their breakfast sandwich is super-yummy too, and easy to eat while you're reading the paper PHAT next door has great baked goods for breakfast (see the earlier thread on the dangers of their ultimate chocolate croissant), but skip the eggs dishes. We both had "benny-like things" a couple of weeks back and they were served lukewarm, despite the fact that we were the only customers. And Mr SnackyC, who is an egg-poaching guru (I will rent him out if anybody needs a brunch chef...), took great offense at the fact that the eggs were poached in those little containers that turn them into pucks, rather than free-hand.

We often hit the Floata, in the giant complex at Keefer and something (Columbia?) in Chinatown. It can seat 1000, so bring your friends. It's carts, with menus (pictorial! Phew) available if the carts aren't rolling with what you want. Cheap, cheerful, and you get to wander around Chinatown to work off all those bao afterwards Oh - free parking too when you park in the garage attached to the complex. Bring your ticket in and they'll stamp it when you pay your bill.

Lest we forget Port Moody, fine dining wasteland and suburb of my youth, Pajo's in Rocky Point Park serves up tasty fish and chips in newspaper cones and provides Tri-Cities teenagers with gainful summer employment and severe cases of fryer grease-induced acne. It's so waterfront it even has a boat launch.

Umami is a fantastic little place, "little" being the operative word. I think if we were to do a dinner there, we'd have to go in 3 shifts The tuna spring rolls have got to be one of my favourite dishes in town and I agree - the place has a great selection of wines. It's less "wines by the glass" and more "wines by the bowl" - they were pretty generous with the pours on my last visit. I second Stephen's motion and encourage all eGulleters to try this little gem out. The plates are perfect for sharing so even if you're not in the mood for a massive dinner (though let's face it, who on this board isn't?) it's a great place to stop in for a glass of wine and a quick bite.

Hey, that's only $0.15 per gram of fat! Woo hoo!

Heh heh.. the In'n'Out burger is mostly onion. There's one outlet around Sunset and Highland in West Hollywood that I find myself at several times a year, and Mr Snacky Cat will attest to the fact that I stink like onion for a day or so after every visit.

Heh, if I have any chocolate stain remainders, I fear they're just going to get worse after tonight's "all things Belgian chocolate" dessert. Maybe I should wear a brown outfit out tonight.

It's open - we stopped there last night for some gelato on the way home from a Chinese food outing. I was rather surprised, however, to discover that they were out of my usual choice, tartufo, AND my backup choice, strawberry champagne sorbetto. Never in all the years I've been going there have they been out of tartufo! Damn, yo. Under pressure I cracked and went for rocky road and spent the car ride home with a big chocolate ring around my mouth.

C'mon, fess up kids. There have to be more than 2 of us. If you don't pipe up, Lee and I are going to start posting about our airline dining experiences, little plastic knives and all!

Wisbey's is great! I like driving out Chilliwack way on sunny days in summer (they have the BEST Value Village around), and I always stop at Wisbey's to pick up veggies. They've got great homemade cheese bread there too. Any idea where you can pick up that bread in the off-season? My Mum was looking for some the other week but Wisbey's hadn't opened their main stand for the season yet.

I like the Sushi Cafe on Granville, too. I often stop there for a sunomono salad and a roll of some sort, along with about a hundred glasses of the free green tea. For a nice treat (especially on a sunny day), head to the Gallery Cafe at the art gallery. It's cafeteria/catering style (grab a tray, choose your entree from the display case, they heat it up), and the features menu changes daily. They have great salads and paninis, and massive portions of at least 10 or 12 desserts on any given day. Lunch and a glass of wine will set you back $11-$14 depending on your meal.

I'm half Ukranian and half French (which means I like drinking, garlic and butter in no particular order), and once a year I'll make homemade perogies. I usually do this when I want something from Mr Snacky Cat - homemade perogies are quite persuasive (not unlike their cousin the kolachy). It's a horrendous ordeal, mostly because Prairie farmhouse kitchens and Yaletown condos exist at opposite ends of the counterspace continuum. Anyway, the key to the homemade pyrohy is boil them all when you make your massive batch. Serve that night's allotment boiled, with sour cream and Mr. Talent's onion and onion oil/butter combo on top (browned bread crumbs and/or bacon bits are popular toppings too). Freeze the rest. For subsequent servings, thaw them out, then fry them in a bit of oil (onion oil for bonus Ukranian points). Nothing beats fried, reheated homemade varenyky. As for the sausage debate, my family is rather fond of Marchyshyn's Home Meat Market on 101st St in Edmonton. We still own a random chunk of the neighbourhood, so whichever family member has to pay the annual duty visit to the lot is absolutely required to bring back a bunch of rings. I'm pretty sure if you didn't, you'd be disowned. Anyway, it's pretty awesome stuff. Be warned, though, they never have enough packing boxes so stop at the Staples on the way and either buy a stink-proof box, or just check the sausage on the plane. I have yet to work up the courage to bring a box of it on board.

If I get hooked on those croissants, that's what people are going to be saying about my a$$.

We had breakfast there too this morning, 11ish. I had a corn muffin and my other half had a blueberry muffin, of which I managed to steal a few bites. Both of them were super-tasty (and huge), and the coffee was great too. I observed all of the croissants from a distance. I think if I even occupied the same airspace as one of those, I would get fat. They do look really good, though, and I think I will try the nutella banana croissant as soon as I can find 3 people who will share it with me Thanks for pointing out how good this place was - we had spotted it a few weeks ago on our way to breakfast at Melriches. There was a massively obese woman sitting out front and we had a cruel but hearty laugh at her ironic placement under the PHAT sign. We are evil.

Ohhhh... good idea for a topic. We buy the book every year and use it primarily for dining, but you do tend to fall into a bit of a rut and use the same coupons year after year without bothering to try something new. There are a few coupons that we use up fairly quickly every year, mostly in the name of big family dinners: Kobe, Las Margaritas, Lombardo's, New Grand View, Pepitas, Cafe Presto Panini and Hell's Kitchen all disappear pretty quickly. The Indian restaurant coupons go pretty quickly too, as do the various Thai places. We were thinking about Il Nido last week but ended up staying home. On Shellback's recommendation, though, I will definitely try it out in the next few weeks.

I consider myself most fortunate to have not experienced anything remotely close to the dinner party horrors described in this thread. I'm only 25 though, so I'm sure it's simply a matter of time... The worst meal I have ever had occasion to eat occurred during a 10th grade camping expedition. As a brief aside, this was the single worst outdoors experience I have ever had in my entire short life, and, 9 years after the fact, I am still loathe to even look at a a canoe or a tent. I digress. The students in our class were paired up for the trip, with each pair manning their own canoe, sleeping in their own tent, and providing their own meal. I partnered up with my good friend Karen, who happened to be a vegetarian. I packed our beverages for the trip, she handled the food. I will save myself several hours of typing and omit the wilderness horrors we encountered on our way to the campsite, suffice to say that by the time the dinner hour rolled around, I was looking forward to whatever it was that Karen had concealed under the foil wrapped containers she was carrying. Our teacher chaperone set up a small portable propane barbecue on a nearby boulder, and supported the setup with a large piece of plywood that was lying around the campground. Being that the BBQ was so small, only one pair's meal could be cooked at a time. The teacher set the BBQ alight, loaded the first meal on, and turned her attention back to the rambunctious teenageers. About 5 minutes into the cooking process, one of the students pointed in the direction of the BBQ and asked "Should it be on fire like that?". Apparently Teach had forgotten to set the BBQ on its little BBQ legs and had instead set it directly on the plywood. The large vent hole in the bottom provided direct access to the plywood, and the BBQ and plywood sheet were now alight. Given that said BBQ was attached to a propane cylinder, Teach though it prudent that the BBQ should be taken as far away from the students as possible. All 20 students were treated to the sight of our chaperone, who upon recollection really can't have been much older than 25 or so, sporting oven mitts and clutching a flaming BBQ, all the while shreiking "GET AWAY FROM THE FLAMES! GET AWAY FROM THE FLAMES!". She ran down the beach, and with the strength of an Olympic discus thower, she hurled the flaming grill into the ocean. Needless to say, those poor students lost their dinner and the rest of us had to dine on uncooked fare. I ate what Karen had brought - veggie weiners and a mix of cauliflower, broccoli and carrot chunks with Italian dressing - and retired to our tent to experience the worst indigestion I have ever had the misfortune to sit through. I have not gone camping since then, but my fear of veggie cuisine and raw vegeatbles has subsided to the point where I can function normally. I am still petirifed of lighting BBQs, however.