JJ’s Restaurant

After looking at There’s Always Room Food Blog, it looked like a great place to go for dinner. It’s cheap affordable and best of all it’s a restaurant run by VCC culinary students.

I’ve always heard great things about dining in culinary schools, so it was time to go!

It was pretty hard navigating our way into the restaurant, we walked around the whole building until we realized it wasn’t on the main floor, it’s was on the 2nd floor.

The location of the dinning room was quite random, but when you walk inside, you enter this very homey elegant dining setting.

For dinner, a 3 course set menu is $24. You get your choice of appetizer, entree and dessert. The choices were SO delicious sounding that it took us a while to figure out what we wanted. Our plan of attack was to share everything so we get a sense of a majority of the menu.

We started off with a coke for myself and a pina colada for CandiedZen. Her Pina Colada could have use a bit more pineapple, but over all still decent.

Before our items came to the table, the gave us a small tasting of bruchetta , cream cheese, smoked salmon and balsamic.

This was so delicious! Anything with cream cheese and smoked salmon are mouth watering.

Next was the bread and butter!

For one of our appetizers, we got the Buttermilk Fried Chicken. On the sides, it came with a shallot cabbage coleslaw and mango.

This was a very interesting take on fried chicken. We both kinda expected there to be a drumstick in there. Everything tasted delicious. No complaints.

Next appetizer was the Wild Mushroom Risotto, with saffron butter, balsamico and a parmesan crisp. This was well made and one of the best risottos I have ever had. CandiedZen agreed as well because she usually hates risotto…but she loved this dish!

On to our mains… We got the Duck breast with confit, truffle gnocchi, root vegetables and bell pepper essence. THe duck was prepared nicely and the outside was crispy and salt to complement the oily meaty inners.

Next main was the roasted lamb sirloin with bacon fond potatoes, grilled asparagus and other vegetables. We liked how the lamb was rolled up and in the center was some nice aromatic herbs.

Before our desserts came, they have us another small tasting. it had walnuts, Chestnut, cream fraiche, cranberries and raisins.  The chestnut we found didn’t work out too well with this.

For dessert we got the Orange Creme Brulee, with pistachio biscotti, grand marnier soaked orange.

Very good Brulee and it was more of a custard, which was nice!

Our last dessert was the Hazelnut chocolate cake with caramel ice cream, chocolate dacquoise. It was also good, but at the point we were STUFFED! All the components of this dish worked together really well.

All the waiters, bartenders, and cooks are part of the culinary school. It is required for their program to work at JJ’s Restaurant. In order for the program to prepare them for the restaurant environment, they must do this. Our waiter was very friendly and super nice!

Words of Wisdom:

• Should get reservations for dinner since it’s a small place and can get busy
• Good 3 course meal for $24
• Lunch is also super affordable

We rate JJ’s Restaurant:

Address:

250 W Pender St
Vancouver, BC