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One Beaker

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Momofuku Milk Bar has seen better days. I’ve had it in Toronto and also my previous visit to New York at their East Village location. Since it was our first night in New York on this particular trip, I wanted to show my friends how delicious it was by ordering the cereal milk soft serve and the crack pie.

Since the Financial District does die down, the area was deserted, but Momofuku Milk Bar was still open. This particular location has a take out window.

Cereal Milk Soft Serve

This was a good portion to share with my friends, but it tasted really bad. It was reminiscent of the milk at the bottom of your cereal bowl. It was more tart and creamy like yogurt. Not sure what happened there. We’ve had this before, but this time it really tasted very different.

Crack Pie

The crack pie was the redeeming factor. It does look a bit different due to the while stuff on top. Back in 2012, they didn’t have that but they must have tweaked the recipe. It has a toasted oat crust and a delicious centre made of butter, sugar, brown sugar and cream.

Final Thoughts

Overall, the quality has definitely gone downhill. I don’t know if it was just this location or if its across the board, but I really didn’t like it enough to return.

We Rate Momofuku Milk Bar

Address:
110 Wall Street, New York

Website:
http://www.momofuku.com/restaurants/milk-bar/

chatime-burnaby-1

Chatime Burnaby finally opens up in the suburbs right on Kingsway and Royal Oak just steps away from Boiling Point. I’m a big fan of Chatime when they first opened a few locations around Metro Vancouver since their Roasted Milk Tea with Grass Jelly is freaking amazing.

KoreanGirl and I came here after dinner to get our Chatime fix and the line was half way out the door. We didn’t mind since there was nothing else to do for the day.

chatime-burnaby-2

The interior is spacious with a good amount of seats, but most people were getting their drink to go. We waited in line for 20 minutes and it was quite strange how slow it moved. Soon, the line built up so it was almost out the door. Some customers walked in and immediately walked out cause it looked like chaos.

Getting closer to the counter, you could see the bottleneck was near the cashier area with their under trained staff. The cashier was confused by most orders and there always seemed like there were 3 people around the ordering counter trying to figure out the next drink to make. Clearly large communication issues really held up the line.

Once we put in our order, it was another 10 minutes for our drinks. They almost gave us someone else’s order but we made sure it was ours before we grabbed it.

chatime-burnaby-3

My half sweet roasted milk tea with less ice was the most disgusting bubble tea I’ve had in a long time. The staff really rushed through the orders and didn’t take much care in making them.

My drink tasted overly sweet with lots of ice. I’ve had this drink over 10 times at various Chatime locations in Richmond and Vancouver and this was the first time it tasted terrible.

chatime-burnaby-4

I had high hopes for this location, but there seems to be more kinks they need to work out with training staff to be more efficient and improve accuracy of orders. I came a week after opening, so I thought any little kinks would be sorted. Clearly not. I would avoid this location for the next little while. I left pretty angry and it ruined my entire night. I’m usually pretty chill about everything but when the service and product both suck…theres nothing you can be happy about.

We Rate Chatime Burnaby

Address:
5216 Kingsway, Burnaby

Website:
http://www.ichatime.com/

Chatime Menu, Reviews, Photos, Location and Info - Zomato

41west-outer

I love exploring the brunch scene in Vancouver and I thought the best way to try new places would be to buy a Social Shopper deal. 4 people brunch for $36 fine dining brunch didn’t sound too bad.

41 West serves up modern French cuisine, but the interior didn’t really match the description of “fine dining”.

41west-bowl

At first glance, we were really not impressed. There was a bowl of an unknown substance that looked dirty. Also, the table was lined with 4 cloth napkins instead of a proper table cloth.

41west-coffee

Coffee arrived lukewarm and it wasn’t very warm after putting in milk and sugar.

Also, our iced water came with a tiny fleshy bit of lemon. It looked pretty disgusting and we wish they just didn’t add the lemon. At this point, all of us were not impressed and didn’t have much hope that it would get turned around.

41west-benny

Smoked Salmon Eggs Benedict ($13) has 2 poached eggs, smoked salmon, hash browns, with your choice of ham or sausage. My friend ordered it with sausages, but ham came instead. She didn’t mind and we were not going to fuss over this mistake. The dish was pretty meh.

41west-croque

Croissant Croque Monsieur ($12) has a croissant baked with ham and cheese and topped with béchamel sauce, with a green salad. The dish was ok, but the flavours felt flat.

41west-steak

Steak and eggs ($15) has grilled tenderloin with eggs, hash brown and toast. M asked for soft poached eggs but it turned out medium hard instead. The steak was small and looked a bit weird. M was unimpressed with the quality and flavours.

41west-mousse

Dark Chocolate Espresso Mousse ($7.95) is light and airy, with a strong chocolate and coffee flavour combination. The redeeming factor of the meal were the desserts. The mousse was really good and it had a good flavour balance of espresso and chocolate.

41west-toffee

Warm Butterscotch Croissant Bread Pudding ($7.95) has a croissant baked with custard and butterscotch, topped with a warm dark chocolate sauce.

Overall, this brunch wasn’t very good and could use considerable amounts of improvement. Our group consensus was that we would all not return again. Service was poor and food was subpar. The only good part about the meal was dessert, but people usually don’t order dessert for brunch. I’m glad it came with the Social Shopper or else we would be very sad diners.

We rate 41 West Restaurant

Address:
2279 West 41st Avenue
Vancouver, BC

Website:
http://41westrestaurant.com/

41 West Restaurant on Urbanspoon

zabu-chicken-outer

I am always on the hunt for great Korean Fried Chicken and my friends are crazy about it too. We decided to go to Zabu Chicken on Robson Street close to Whole Foods. It’s always busy and seems to have a lively atmosphere, so we went.

As we arrived with a group of 4, we were immediately seated at a table of 2 with 4 chairs. We inquired if we could sit in their booths, but they said no as it was only for groups of 5 or more. A few minutes later, another group of 4 arrived and they were seated in the booth. We were a bit pissed off at this point because the server lied to us. As another table cleared, we decided to ask the server if we could sit at that table and they said no as it was reserved. We knew they were lying to us again because all the other reserved tables had a reserved sign on it. We didn’t even place our order yet, so moving us wouldn’t have been that big of a hassle. We were all really mad, but decided to stick it out since we were really here for the food.

Zabu-chicken-beer

Pitcher of Sapporo ($16.95) was pretty pricey, but you need beer to go with chicken. It’s just the Korean way.

Zabu-chicken-napkins

After talking to about 3 servers to get a few napkins, we finally got napkins. It was our tiny victory of our evening since most of requests were ignored. They didn’t even serve us water or side dishes as per usual. Side dishes are an essential part of eating at a Korean Restaurant. We drank beer for over an hour waiting for the food to arrive.

Zabu-chicken-soy

Soy Chicken Drumsticks (Large – $19.95) comes with 10 pieces, but our order came 5 pieces at a time. It seemed like their kitchen was slammed, so they could only do partial orders. The next 5 pieces came 20 minutes later as we gobbled these up really quickly.

The chicken was good, yummy sauce with the crunchy skin.

zabu-chicken-radish

We then asked a few servers for side dishes and they did come! We had pickled radish and shredded cabbage.

Zabu-chicken-side

Zabu-chicken-table

We also ordered some spicy wings but it never arrived. We inquired with the server and she told us it wasn’t put in. If we wanted them, we would need an additional 25 minutes. Clearly, we were not going to waste any more time here to wait for chicken with crappy service. So, we told them we would get our bill.

Zabu-chicken-tv

We spent a total of 1hr and 40minutes here to have 2 pitchers of beer and 10 chicken drumsticks. Majority of the time was waiting for the chicken drumsticks…all 10 pieces…I could have went to Church’s Chicken to have a better time than dining here.

We left hungry, so we decided to enjoy the rest of our evening at Guu and at Gyu Kaku, where they actually cared that we were dining with them.

We Rate Zabu Chicken:

Address:
1635 Robson Street
Vancouver, BC

Facebook:
http://www.facebook.com/ZabuChicken

Zabu Chicken on Urbanspoon

NewTown-outer

New Town Bakery is one of the must-visit places in Vancouver’s Chinatown according to  CNN. They have won multiple awards for their baked goods. New Town Bakery has been around since the 1980s serving Filipino and Chinese pastries. Their original location is in Chinatown, but they also have locations in Surrey and Richmond.

NewTown-bakery

The front of the restaurant is the bakery section and this area is very busy. They even have a numbering system just to keep things organized when people order.

NewTown-pastries

There’s a lot of options but most people order the egg tarts, steamed buns, pineapple buns, and their apple tarts.

NewTown-dining

At the back of the restaurant is the dining area where you can order full meals instead of the baked goods. Mags and I came here for lunch and ordered off their lunch menu.

NewTown-dimsum

Sui Mai ($4.25) comes with 4 pieces and consists of pork and shrimp. There’s a lot more pork than shrimp in these dumplings. It was ok, but not the best.

NewTown-milktea

Iced Milk Tea ($1 extra with purchase of set meal) pretty standard taste.

NewTown-noodle

Soy-Fried Flat Rice Noodles with Beef ($7.75) was a good portion size for lunch but it was super oily. The beef was tender and had a good flavour. You can probably share this among 2 people if you wanted to.

NewTown-squid-fishballs

Curry Fish ball with Squid ($7.50) was a bit disgusting. The squid was not fresh and was very chewy. I struggled for a while trying to chew through the squid.  The onions, peppers and carrots tasted fresh. The fish balls was very bouncy and tasted ok. The sauce was a bit gelatinous and a tad salty.

NewTown-left

The entire meal was disgusting. This was everything that was leftover. I was so disappointed.

NewTown-bill

Overall, nothing was good about this lunch. Stay away from the meals and stick with the baked pastries.

We Rate New Town Bakery

Address:
148 East Pender Street Vancouver BC

Website:
http://newtownbakery.ca/

New Town Bakery & Restaurant 新城餅家餐室 on Urbanspoon

Thyme-to-Indulge-outer

Thyme to Indulge Catering has a little cute restaurant on Main Street. They are closed on Monday and Tuesdays, but they are open the rest of the week from 9am til 4pm serving breakfast and lunch.

They serve brunch on the weekend to showcase fresh local ingredients. I came here since it was voted one of the top brunch places according to a few websites.

Thyme-to-Indulge-sign

It was packed on a Saturday around 11am and there was a 30 minute line up for a table of 3. Since I do love brunch and I am still trying to find the best brunch in town, I convinced me friends to just wait because its supposed to be good.

Thyme-to-Indulge-inner

The interior is cozy. They seated us near the back of the bistro and the space was a bit cramped for the 3 of us sitting at a 2 person sized table. The service started out poorly as we were not give menus, no water, or a friendly welcome. It wasn’t until we approached a server that we finally got menus and water. My friends were pretty pissed off.

Thyme-to-Indulge-benny

Crab Cake Benedict ($14) has two locally farmed poached eggs, two dungeness crab cakes, fresh dill hollandaise sauce with parmesan breakfast potatoes and tomato provencal. They have had rave reviews on this particular item.

CanuckGirl ordered her egg soft poached, but unfortunately, one of the soft poached eggs had bits of shell in it, and the other was more like hard poached. She was not impressed with the eggs at all. She really enjoyed the potatoes.

Thyme-to-Indulge-sandwich

Pork Belly BLT ($13) has cured and sous-vide pork belly served with lettuce, tomato, sliced avocado, pickled cucumber and bacon aioli on a toasted house made brioche bun served with breakfast potatoes.

Thyme-to-Indulge-PorkBelly

The portion of the pork belly was pretty small. compared to the whole size of the bun. The pork belly did taste fantastic, but was pricey for $13. The potatoes that came with this dish was good.

Thyme-to-Indulge-hash

Corned Beef Hash ($13) has house cured beef brisket served with sautéed onions, peppers and kale, breakfast potatoes topped with two locally farmed poached eggs and house made hollandaise.

TaiwaneseGirl ordered her eggs soft poached, but it came back as hard poached eggs, so she got the kitchen to remake it. Sadly, the second time the dish came back, the eggs were super super soft poached that parts of the egg white were not cooked. She decided not to complain because by the time she got the 2nd dish, everyone else was done their meal.

Overall, it wasn’t a good experience. None of us left satisfied. I really wanted to love this place, but the poor service and the quality of the food did not meet our expectations.

We Rate Thyme to Indulge Bistro:

Address:
2858 Main Street
Vancouver, BC

Website:
http://www.thymetoindulgecatering.com/

Thyme To Indulge Catering on Urbanspoon

Taco Time

On Tuesdays, lines at the Taco Time in Pacific Centre gets quite long.

People want a quick and cheap lunch. I was doing some shopping at noon and needed a very very quick lunch before heading back to work. As I spent a large amount of money on clothes…I felt guilty, so a cheap lunch option was good to balance out my shopping.

Taco Time

Taco Tuesday! 99 cents for a soft or hard shelled taco. Tempting even though it’s not very good compared to all the other places Downtown.

Taco Time

I ordered 2 soft shell tacos and 2 hard shell tacos. It didn’t seem like a lot of food at the time, but after I ate all of this,  I was crazy full.

Taco Time

 Hard shell Taco has cheddar cheese, lettuce, and ground beef in the shell. I find they add a lot of salt and spices to the meat, so you will get thirsty.

Taco Time

Soft shell Taco has cheddar cheese, lettuce, and ground beef in the soft shell.

Both tacos are essentially the same, but I do prefer the hard taco for the added crunch.

Taco Time

Don’t forget the sauce! Mild sauce and then the spicy green one.

Taco Time

Don’t forget the Mexifries! Deep-fried tater tots! My childhood favourite.

Overall, nothing fancy and does the trick of filling up your empty stomach. For 99 cents, you can’t go wrong.

Website: http://www.tacotimecanada.com/

Taco Time on Urbanspoon

Bossam Delivery Pohang

While in Pohang, we decided to order in some bossam. Bossam, is steamed pork wrapped in leaves and other ingredients. Imagine it like the Korean version of peking duck.

We found Flower Pig in a directory and decided to try it out. They only use local Korean pigs and the restaurant is open till 1am. We ordered around 6pm and took about an hour for them to prepare and deliver the meal.

Bossam Delivery Pohang

We ordered a large order of bossam and it was definitely enough for 5 people. All the component was there to begin wrapping those slices of steamed pork.

Bossam Delivery Pohang

It also came with free cold noodles. It was quite large but it wasn’t very good. The noodles were damp and seemed like very random ingredients were thrown in.

Bossam Delivery Pohang

The steamed pork had a lot of slices.

Bossam Delivery Pohang

We had some carrots, lettuce, sesame leaves, peppers and sliced garlic.

Bossam Delivery Pohang

These were salted shrimp, marinated onions, red sauce and some kinda of unidentified liquid.

Bossam Delivery Pohang

We also had a large box of kimchi. There was so much that we didn’t make a large dent into it.

Bossam Delivery Pohang

With the ingredients, you kinda just throw it together to suit your tastebuds.

The restaurant that we ordered from wasn’t very good. The bossam would have been much better if we had it grilled to have a little bit more of a crunch. Next time, I’d probably just have it at a restaurant or make it at home. Delivery is never the same unless you know a good place.

Friend's BBQ Restaurant

Friend’s BBQ Restaurant is a new restaurant in the former location of Mui Garden on North Road. We came here thinking it would be a BBQ place where we could grill our own meats. Unfortunately, that’s not the case. They specialize in HK style food similar to Mui Garden but has an emphasis on the BBQ meats like crispy roasted pork or BBQ duck.

Friend's BBQ Restaurant

As we entered, a majority of the decor was the same as Mui Garden but a few little changes here and there. When we sat down, we immediately knew the place was going to be bad. Even though the restaurant was fairly empty, we had a really hard time flagging down a server to take our order. They all congregated by the cashier and one of the managers were eating in the hallway near the kitchen and washrooms. We thought this was a strange sight.

When one of the servers finally took our order, they forgot all the drinks that we ordered. So, we had to get another server to grab us our drinks. Instead of getting the drinks, they gave us a receipt… and the drinks came about 10 minutes later. The food took another 45 minutes to arrive. All we ordered were BBQ meats that are already cooked….so we were very confused why putting rice on a plate and chopping up BBQ meat would take that long.

Friend's BBQ Restaurant

Daily Soup came with our order of 3 BBQ meats on rice. It was a nice touch since it makes it more of a complete meal. The soup was good and had lots of beef and radish inside.

Friend's BBQ Restaurant

3 BBQ meats on rice ($8.50) took 45 minutes to arrive. By 8pm, they only had 3 meats left so we had no options to choose from. We really wanted BBQ Roasted Pork or BBQ Duck, but that wasn’t available. We had the BBQ Pork, Soy Chicken and Ribs. The quality of meats were passable, but not as delicious as some other places in town. It was a bit tough and riddled with lots of bones. Rice was very dry. I would still say T&T has better BBQ meats.

Friend's BBQ Restaurant

Red Bean Soup came at the end of the meal. It wasn’t very sweet, which I liked.

Overall, the prices are decent and the amount that you get will surely fill you up. I usually can handle crappy service, but the service was down right BAD. The servers took inaccurate orders, food took too long to arrive, and very inattentive. When we wanted to grab the bill to pay, none of the servers turned around from the cashiers area. We decided to go up and pay. As we paid with debt, the machine declined the card. Then we tried credit card and it declined the card too. The machine flashed “Cannot connect to base”. The server said the machine worked fine and didn’t believe us that it was the machine. So we just paid cash and left. With so many restaurants in the area, you can go elsewhere.

Words of Wisdom:

  • Quality not as good as Mui Garden
  • Horrible service
  • Decent prices and set meals
  • Not open on Wednesdays

We rate Friend’s BBQ Restaurant

Address: 
4327 North Road
Burnaby, BC

Friend's BBQ Restaurant 老友記燒臘菜館 on Urbanspoon

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I was in the area and my coworkers wanted to grab some lunch close by. We tried going to Congee Noodle King, but they were packed! All the tables were taken, so we settle on Kishu River Japanese.

Kishu River Japanese

No one was eating here during lunch and this place smelled pretty funky. There was a very unhygienic odor lingering but it smelled very stale. This was the first sign that something didn’t seem right.

Kishu River Japanese

As we sat down to order, we saw a makeshift office complete with a fax machine in the corner. This seemed weird too. We made our order and there was only 1 server and 1 cook. With 5 bento boxes ordered, this took about 40 minutes to prepare. The restaurant was not full at all. At this point, we were very scared, hungry and annoyed. We didn’t have much time to eat, so we just decide to get it to-go.

Kishu River Japanese

Bento Box F ($10.95) unagi don, salmon roll (6pcs), tuna and salmon sashimi, salad and fruits. Comes with miso soup too.

The description sounded great, when I opened my box, I was scared. The salmon rolls were falling apart, the salad looked old, the unagi (eel) was so small and not fresh at all. Plus, if I’m paying over $10 for lunch, it better me good.

Kishu River Japanese

The tuna sashimi pieces were large but the salmon was so minimal. The quality of sashimi was quite poor. It was icy and just defrosted.

Overall, I have nothing good to say about this place. The service was horrible, the food was barely edible, and everyone was pissed off.

We Rate Kishu River Japanese Restaurant

Address:
3339 Kingsway Street
Vancouver, BC

Kishu River Japanese Restaurant on Urbanspoon

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The Pork Belly Beer House is a Korean restaurant just off of Robson Street close to Safeway. It looks shady on the inside and outside, but it quite popular with Koreans. It gets quite packed in the evening since you can eat all the pork belly and side dishes for under $20.

The last time I was at Pork Belly Beer House, we had a mediocre all you can eat pork belly. We decided to come back to celebrate new jobs with friends and eat meat. For $16, you get pork belly, bulgogi, salad, rice, soup, kimchi, pop and sauces.

One of the biggest changes was that you can’t cook your own meat anymore. 🙁 Due to fire regulations and their inability to provide proper ventilation in the restaurant, the meat comes to you already cooked.

This was very disappointing because the point of Korean BBQ is cooking your own meat to your liking. We were not impressed because I like my Pork Belly crispy. We asked them to bring a few other dishes on the crispier side, but that never happened.

The pork belly is poor in quality and there is more fat than meat. What I hated the most about this pre-cooked option is that when you are half way done the plate of meat, it all goes cold.

The bulgogi was just lightly seasoned beef and grilled. Nothing amazing about it.

The food is just passable, but is only a good place for people who want a lot of food and drink. The meat is quite fatty, so make sure you don’t come here too often! Make sure you have a Korean with you since it’s easier to communicate with the servers to ensure you get what you order.

We rate Pork Belly Beer House:

Address:
Robson Street/West End
841 Bidwell Street
Vancouver, BC V6G

Pork Belly Beer House on Urbanspoon

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Miss Lee Cafe has several locations around Korea. Kirby and I were in Myeong-Dong and stumbled upon this location. I was a very rainy day, so we decided to chill out here before finding more food. Miss Lee Cafe specializes in boxed lunches, drinks and desserts.

Miss Lee Cafe was made famous by Korean reality show – We Got Married featuring Yonghwa from CN Blue and Seohyun from SNSD.

What makes this cafe very unique are the hundred and hundreds of love messages scattered throughout the restaurant. It’s a very popular place for couples to dine at during dates. Also, for all the fan-girls that come here because “we got married” featured this cafe.

You can grab a pen, a paper, and a twist tie to create your note. It can be about your friends, loved ones, or whoever.

Here is a shot of a few of them. I have no idea what they say, but I think it must be about love.

This location has a few floors and it’s also self-serve. You order at the counter, grab an electronic device and wait for it to buzz. Once it buzzes, you can walk back to the counter to pick up your order.

Five Taste Sherbert has canned pineapple, cherry tomatoes, kiwis, banana, almonds, peanuts, raisins, and canned peaches over ice. Looks pretty, tastes horrible! Do Koreans not have a variety of fruit? or does this cafe just suck that badly?

The combinations of nuts and fruit did not blend well together, nor were they very fresh. Kirby and I had a very hard time trying to finish this item.

Once the fruits were devoured, this is what was underneath. Gross ice and tomato tasting water.

It also came with some snacks on the side. They tasted very stale. I usually don’t notice stale snacks, but this was VERY stale.

The overall quality in their items are very poor and I would never ever return. The concept is very cool, but with all the cafes in Korea, you can skip this place.

Words of Wisdom:

  • Just don’t eat here…go inside and take a few pictures and leave
  • Food is very very terrible

We Rate Miss Lee Cafe:

Address:
Jung-gu, Seoul 199-1 Euljiro 2

Website:

http://www.missleecafe.com/


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Heading to the airport for a red-eye flight to Korea makes a person skip dinner. We headed off to Ocean Empire at the airport for a quick dinner before our flight. We didn’t know what to choose since there were a good amount of options available. We eventually chose Ocean Empire because they were serving congee. We’ve been eating so much dim sum that we thought this would be a healthier option.

We ordered a variety of different congees and some side dishes.

Chinese donut wrapped in rice roll with soy sauce was disgusting. It wasn’t very fresh and the donut was a bit stale.

Fried Noodles was cold and was lacking in flavour.

Radish Cake was hot, but wasn’t very impressive tasting. It didn’t have a lot of ingredients embedded inside either.

All the differing congees that we ordered basically sucked. It had minimal flavour and is essentially fast food congee. They just dump in the ingredients you want in a generic congee soup.

Overall, I was not impressed by the quality at all. It was barely passable and the attitude of the staff was horrible. The cashier seemed like he was always yelling at the cooks to be quiet.

Words of Wisdom:

  • Just don’t eat here unless you’re desperate
We Rate Ocean Empire:

Address:
Arrivals, Level 5, Terminal 1, Hong Kong International Airport,
Chek Lap Kok, Hong Kong

Website:

http://www.oceanempire.com.hk/eng/p1_3.asp


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Relish Gastropub and Bar has buck-a-shuck oysters from 3 -6PM everyday, plus $3 beer specials. This really enticed KoreanGirl, Mandu and I to dine here.

I’ve been here several years ago and it has changed a lot! It use to be really large and was always packed for dinner. I also remembered they had some pretty awesome food back then too. I always wanted to make a return trip and now was the chance to do so over some oysters with the girls.

Their beer/wine specials are listed on a big chalkboard.

Bottle of Moosehead ($3) tasted good and it had a light and crisp taste.

Buck-a-Shuck Oysters ($1 each) were very tiny! Mandu had a look of terror on her face as it arrived.

They were also not shucked very well as there were bits of shell inside.

There are also a few vinaigrette sauces you can put on top.

Overall, the experience was quite poor. I would never return again for the oysters. I would go chill and relax with some beer, but I would never order oysters again. They were also very understaffed. Our host, server, and oyster shucker was the same person. We did have to wait for a long time for it to arrive too.

If you are looking for buck-a-shuck oysters in Vancouver, there are tons of other alternative places to go to.

Words of Wisdom:

  • $3 daily beer specials
  • Daily wine specials
  • Loungy atmosphere
  • Do not order the oysters

We Rate Relish Gastropub and Bar: 

Address:
888 Nelson St
Vancouver, BC

Website:
http://www.relishthepub.com/

Relish Gastropub & Bar on Urbanspoon


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Yet again, I had no idea where to eat lunch, so I headed down and randomly found Ebi Ten. They have Japanese fast food, which I don’t know what that means…but they are known for their decent dons. They are quite affordable and under $10. Good for a quick cheap lunch.

The inside does have a few chairs, but mosts for groups of 2’s. There is one table of 4, but during peak hours it might be occupied.

All meals are well priced. You can upgrade into a combo and get miso soup or a can of pop.

Ebi Ten Plate (Combo – $9.40) comes with assorted tempura, california roll, chicken teriyaki with salad and mayo.

With the upgrade to a combo, I chose the miso soup instead of the pop. Just trying to be a bit healthier.

Miso soup was alright, nothing special here.

The assorted tempura tasted good, very fresh and the batter has a nice crunch to it. The vegetables and ebi were cooked perfectly too.

California roll came with 8 pieces. I was not a fan of it. They were constructed poorly and you can see the avocado was going a bit brown.

Chicken Teriyaki with salad and mayo was pretty disgusting. I just really don’t like mayo with my salad. it really didn’t seem like salad at all. Also, the leaves were wilted and not fresh.

I think I probably chose the wrong dish to have here since most people were ordering the bowl items instead. Best to stay away from the Ebi Ten Plate.

Words of Wisdom:

  • Under $10
  • Go with the bowl items or specials
  • Do not get Ebi Ten Plate
  • Poorly constructed sushi
We Rate Ebi Ten: 

Address:
388 Robson St
Vancouver, BC
Ebi-Ten (Robson) on Urbanspoon

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The Mac Shack is a brand new restaurant that opened up in Kerrisdale. They specialize in none other than Mac & Cheese! I love comfort food, so I got my friends to drive 40 mins from Coquitlam to try this place. Crazy, but sometimes its needed. I heard great stuff and I needed to see for myself if it is really good.

After a long drive, M, Scarface and BusanGirl were ready for the mass amounts of Mac & Cheese!

I loved the interior, very nice and modern. When we arrived, this place was packed for a Friday night. All the tables were taken up, and we were super lucky to grab a seat since a group was just leaving.

If you know what you want, you can totally build your own! They also have soup and grilled cheese.

They have a few signature items that you can choose from too. There are 3 different sizes to choose from – Regular, Ultimate and Jumbo.

They also have healthier alternatives and desserts too.

After we ordered, we were given a number and just waited at the table.

Tabasco, salt and pepper are waiting at your table.

Green Tea ($1) it was the mighty leaf tea. Not bad. Since the line up was so long, it was hard to get a refill of water since I didn’t want to butt in.

Pop ($1.50) and Water ($1)

We then spent 35 minutes waiting for our orders to arrive. It was a busy night so it was understandable! As time kept going by, we noticed people that were behind us in line already got their food and was finishing up. We tried ignoring it and watched every dish go to other tables. As the restaurant started to empty out, we were wondering where our order was. We asked the waitress where our order was and it seemed like they just started on our dishes.

Creamy Pesto Chicken Mac (Regular – $7) has mozzarella, provalone, chicken, and basil pesto sauce. Since I had the coupon for following them a while back, I gave it to BusanGirl to redeem since it’s only usable on regular sizes. She thought this dish was ok and nothing amazing. 

She’s not a picky eater, but we all agreed it was not Mac and Cheese material. The cheese was just on top of the mac and cheese and none was integrated between the pasta. Even by looking at the image, it doesn’t look remotely what ooey gooey should be similar to. The chicken was dry even though there wasn’t a lot of it in the dish. Seemed more like a badly executed pasta dish.

The Ultimate (Ultimate -$16) has bacon, bell peppers, brocolli, mushrooms, chicken, chorizo, shrimp with mozzarella and gruyere cheese.

Even though it looks huge, Scarface did not like this dish either, he said that there was more meat in a hotdog than there was in this dish. Similar with the previous dish, there needed to be more cheese integrated throughout the dish to call it mac and cheese. The cheese yet again was just on the top.

The Brooklyn (Ultimate -$13) has blue cheese, AAA shirloin steak, caramalized onions, mushrooms with balsamic. M was disappointed in the disproportion between his dish and Scarface’s dish. As you can tell, the Ultimate has more noodles coming out of the pan and this one is kinda missing a large chunk from the bottom left.

M usually likes most dishes when there is meat, but he was probably the most disappointed out of everyone. There was no strong taste of blue cheese, the AAA sirloin steak were 3 thin slices of tasteless meat and the caramelized onion was nowhere in the dish. There was no cheese integrated throughout the dish and there was only the layer of cheese on the top. It wasn’t even gooey either, it was cold and hard. At one point he found a vegetable in it too when there isn’t supposed to be greens.

Bacon Cheese Burger Mac (Ultimate – $12) it has cheddar, monterey cheese with beef and bacon. Out of the other 2 Ultimate sized dishes we ordered, it was the smallest of them all. The cheese on top was warm, but the cheese was hard. You can tell from the picture as well. I saw them broiling it, perhaps they lift it there too long?

Similar to all the other dishes we received, minimal cheese throughout the dish, minimal ingredients inside.

Overall, all four of us left the restaurant with unsatisfied stomachs. Since they are quite new, I do have faith that the consistency in their quality will improve over time. Looking at other people’s photos, they look so much yummier than my photos. I think I just went during a super super busy night and thats where everything went wrong. I love their concept of their restaurant and I love Mac & Cheese in general, but this visit wasn’t good.

Words of Wisdom:

  • Avoid peak hours
  • Free parking near the residential area
  • Price and quality don’t seem to match
  • Not very saucy mac & cheese
  • Wait few months till they have perfected their execution and consistency

We Rate The Mac Shack: 
Address:
5395 West Boulevard
Vancouver, BC V6M

Website:

http://www.themacshack.ca/

The Mac Shack on Urbanspoon

Nuba Cafe opened up at the renovated Waldorf Hotel on Hastings. They serve up delicious Lebanese food.

When we arrived, the place was packed. The hostess greeted us and we had to wait a 5 minutes for a table, so they told us to wait at the bar. They had lots of reservations, but the only table available was a table at the back of the restaurant beside the back exit to the hotel. It seemed like the most out of place table in the entire restaurant. We still didn’t mind since we were looking forward to the meal.

Looking around, it is a beautiful venue and it was quite lively at night.

At a later point in the night, all the lights get dimmer to set the mood.

Mexican Cola ($4) is similar to the usual coca-cola, but made with cane sugar. The old school bottle made it fun to drink!

Young Coconut ($6.50) is a real coconut that is brought to your table. The juice is very sweet and crisp! You even get a small spoon to scoop out the coconut meat to eat.

Fruit et Feta with chicken($9.50 +$4) has Macedonian feta, dried nuts and apricots with organic greens and a red wine pomegranate vinaigrette. I added on chicken for an additional $4. I have to say, I was quite disappointed by the size of the skewer…and for $4…quite a rip off! The salad did get me quite full since it was filled with lots of dried fruits and nuts!

Here is where the dining experience started to take a turn for the worse.

As I got my entree, M’s Lamb stew never arrived. We thought that the lamb stew would take a bit longer since salads are so much faster to prepare. I thought I would wait till he got his entree, but since he’s a gentleman, he told me to go ahead and start. I was hungry, so I didn’t mind. Half way though my salad, I dropped my fork, so I thought I would wave down a waitress to get me a new one. I tried flagging them a few times but no one seemed to notice us. I shrugged it off and just took M’s fork since his food didn’t arrive yet.

I ate the salad pretty slowly for 40 minutes but still no sign of the entree. We thought this was particularly strange, so we tried yet again to flag down the waitress. A few of them passed us by and we saw our waitress tend to a few tables 2/3 times…and she didn’t even once stop by our table to ask how we were doing.

Now it was an hour later, I was close to finishing my dish and the waitress finally see our hands up. We ask what the status of M’s entree was and she said she did not hear us ordering the lamb strew. She felt bad and asked us if we still wanted it, M politely declined since there was no point since I was almost done my dish. She told us we should of totally flagged her down. (We tried!!!! Oh god! We really tried hard!). She even offered the dish free of charge, but we declined again since we had to go. She said the music in the room was quite loud and she also didn’t hear an order at another table.

I don’t completely blame her since it was a busy night, but it would be good to repeat customers orders just in case you didn’t hear anything, also check up on them. Plus, isn’t it strange that 2 people walk into a restaurant and order 2 drinks and a salad? We’re asian, but we aren’t that cheap.

To compensate us, they didn’t charge us for the coconut drink. It was nice of them, but still left us feeling bitter. In the end, I spent $24 eating a salad, drinking drinks, flaggin down waitresses, and watching M get hungry & frustrated. This might have just been my asian side, but I thought they should have compensated us for the whole meal.

Thanks Nuba, you ruined a perfectly good date for us. You may have good food, but you ruined our night.

Do keep in mind that this is probably those rare occurrences that happen, so I’m sure it doesn’t happen every night.

Words of Wisdom:

  • Special Menu’s every month
  • Make reservations in advanced and ask to be seated by the booths near the window
  • More expensive than the other Nuba locations

We Rate Nuba Waldorf: 

Address:

1489 E Hastings St
Vancouver, BC V5L

Website:
www.waldorfhotel.com/nuba/
Nuba (Waldorf Hotel) on Urbanspoon

I’ve been on a Fish & Chips hunt this Summer whenever I happen to pass by a place. While I was on Granville Island, I decided to try out Celine’s Fish & Chips. Its been here for a long long time and I thought it really couldn’t be that bad. I had it many years ago, but I totally forgot what it tasted like.

When I approached this place to order, I was a bit shocked at the way they communicated with customers. They didn’t seem very happy and the only thing they said was “$16 dolla”. The wait for my dish was quite long too, which was funny since there wasn’t a lot of people lining up.  A few other people ordered after me and the serve was also cold to them as well.

Sample Platter ($16) was quite expensive. It has a few onion rings, fries, calamari, one small fried oyster, one small fried prawn, and a small piece of cod. I was very disappointed in this platter. The majority of this plate was onion rings and fries. All the seafood items were quite small.

The onion rings were heavily breaded with batter and it felt like you were eating more of the batter than the onion. The fries were also soggy and pretty bland. The cod was pretty good, but it was a small piece and also heavily coated with batter. I had to remove the batter to get a good taste of the cod. The prawn and the oyster were both mediocre and did not seem very fresh. Quite ironic because they are located on Granville Island. The only item that saved this patter was the fried calamari. It had a nicely seasoned light batter that surrounded it, so you can really taste the squid.

Overall, major disappointment. If they can’t get a platter right..I wouldn’t imagine the fish & chips to be good either. The food is quite greasy as well. I will never order from here again.

Words of Wisdom:

  • Self Serve napkins and condiments
  • Overpriced
  • Greasier than normal
  • Horrible onion rings and fries
  • Bad service

We Rate Celine’s Fish & Chips: 

Address:
109 – 1689 Johnston Street
Vancouver, BC
Celine's Fish and Chips on Urbanspoon