Yaletown Archives - Page 5 of 5

In Brunch

Provence Marinaside Restaurant

January 4, 2011

LAgirl and I were meeting up for Brunch and she suggested we go to Provence in Yaletown. Since it was a Sunday, it was BRUNCH!

We headed over and you guessed it… there was a wait. We waited about 20 mins, but it didn’t feel too long since we went to a Starbucks for a bit.

LAgirl got the Two eggs any style ($14). She chose scrambled eggs with sausages. If you don’t want sausages, you can also choose bacon, smoked salmon or roasted vegetables. This dish also came with roasted potatoes, fruit and toasted baguette.

She said she liked this dish but she was not too fond of the sausage. She really loved the additional fruit to the dish and hasn’t seen this done anywhere else.

I ordered the Croque Monsieur Eggs Benedict ($14). It has poached eggs, black forest ham, gruyère, and sundried tomato butter on foccacia. This has probably been one of my all time favorite eggs benny dishes! The texture of all those ingredients on top of the foccacia were just amazing. The taste of the melted gruyere tasted SO GOOD!

I usually hate potatoes, but their roasted potatoes that came with the dish was really good and well seasoned.

They also give you 4 pieces of fruit as well. I loved it because eating the heavy potatoes and eggs benny, having the fruit there just gave your mouth a great refreshing taste afterwards.

Words of Wisdom:

Good for Brunch
Free 1 hour parking at Urban Fare for Provence Customers
There is also street meter parking

We Rate Provence Marinaside Restaurant:

Website: http://www.provencevancouver.com/marinaside/

Address:

1177 Marinaside Cres
Vancouver,BC

In Tapas

Raw Canvas

December 31, 2010

MedicalGiraffee is back to town and she had a GroupOn for Raw Canvas. The GroupOn came with 2 tasting plates, and 2 small canvases.

Raw Canvas is a tapas lounge, wine bar and art studio.

The restaurant is split up into 2 parts. A lounge area with long tables! It looks great for big groups and parties.

And then the other half is where all the painting begins! All you need to do is grab a coat, a canvas, and paints and you are set!

You get a plate thing for you to put your paint. If you like to layer your paints and don’t want things to smudge, you get hairdryers to dry the paintings. Also, its good if you want to bring your painting home. You really don’t want paint getting on your clothes or car.

These were the choices for the tasting menu. The tasting menu is $15 and comes with your choice of 3 items on the left side and 3 from the right. The left side has mostly meat and cheese, while the other are spreads, sauces, pickled items, nuts, and dried fruits.

MedicalGiraffe chose :

Hot Sopressata: italian style dry hot pepper salami
ile-aux-grues 5 year cheddar: moderately sharp with an outstanding depth of ﬂavour.
vintage 3 yr gouda: sharp and sweet, like good butterscotch
Matiz Fig Spread
Organic Almonds
Organic Aprocots

I chose the:

Rosette de Lyon: french salami made by granville island’s oyama
Brie de Meaux: vegetal, earthy flavour
Parrano: creamy, sweet ﬂavour of gouda. mellow, buttery, nutty
Kalamata Olives
Dijon Mustard
Cornichons

All the Tasting plates came with a bowl of bread. You can put your items from your tasting plate onto it.

I had a flight of white wine ( About $10). It had 3 types of white wine, but since I am not a wine expert, it all tasted the same to me. I chose white win because its sweeter than red.

MedicalGiraffe had one flight of red wine (About $10).

We stood there instead of setting at the tables because we wanted to paint and eat at the same time. It was quite hard resisting to eat a bit while we had paint on our hands. I have a feeling we ate quite a bit of paint.

This is what we made in the end. An abstract painting… and a weird cartoon painting ripped off from the internet.

Words of Wisdom:

Best to have reservations
Meter Parking on street
Not a place to go alone, best with a group. More people = more Fun

We rate Raw Canvas:

Website: http://www.raw-canvas.com/

Address:

1046 Hamilton St
Vancouver, BC

In Food Carts

PanDa Fresh Bakery

October 23, 2010

PanDa Fresh Bakery, is one of the new street carts that have opened up downtown. What makes this street cart super unique is that it’s on a bus! They specialize in croissants. Who doesn’t love croissants?

One day, I was driving on Pacific Blvd. and spotted PanDa Fresh Bakery! I was so excited that I had to tell M to stop the car and make a very sharp turn to turn on the street where PanDa Fresh Bakery is located. I am sure I was so excited that it really scared him. I’ve spent months wanting to try PanDa Fresh Bakery, but never had the time to pass by. Today was the day where I would be able to try the croissants that people were raving about!

Looking at their menu, I have never ever seen such unique croissants! They have savory croissants, dessert croissants and ICE CREAM croissants! I wanted to try everything! I felt like a kid in a candy store, but in this case, I suppose it looked like 2 grown-ups staring at a bus.

This is the window where you can order your croissants. They even have a little panda there. Reminds me of a toy I got at Ocean Park in Hong Kong. Don’t forget to keep your stamps!

After looking at the menu, I got the LAST Mac & Cheese ($6) of the day! You would think these 2 combinations would not work out very well, but it was AMAZING! I would highly recommend this to everyone. M loved it so much that he ate about 60% of it. I was a bit bitter about it because I wanted more.

M had the Turkey Dinner ($6), which had cranberry sauce, slice of turkey, mashed potatoes and stuffing. We were both not keen on the cranberry because even though it is a Thanksgiving tradition, it was a bit drippy and sour. I thought the stuffing was really good. I could just sit at a table all day and eat the mashed potatoes. I wonder what his secret is…

On to dessert! I had the Cheese Cake Croissant ($4). In the first picture, it does look like a stick of butter. I’m sure Paula Deen would LOVE a Croissant filled with butter. Anyways, the Cheesecake croissant has a slice of New York cheese cake and then a lady finger. At first it seemed weird how there was the lady finger in the croissant but it added a very nice crunchy texture to it. The cheese cake was not overly sweet.

M had the Banana Chocolate Croissant ($4), it had a banana cut in half and melted chocolate. He enjoyed it and I was happy he chose something that had fruit for once.

They also had a message board on their bus… so in my sneaky fashion, i stuck the business card on the board while his back was turned. Yeah! I’m a ninja.

Words of wisdom:

Arrive early to avoid disappointment
Keep track of new batches or flavours on their twitter
Mac and Cheese is a must!

Overall, I was pretty satisfied with the meal. It was the perfect size so I was not hungry or super stuffed. What I admire most about this street cart is their unique idea and imagination when it comes to making the fillings for the croissants. They made me think that a croissant could be so much more than just a very oily piece of bread. Kudos to Panda Fresh Bakery!

We rate Panda Fresh Bakery:

Find them on Pacific and Drake in Yaletown

In Three Beakers

Subeez Cafe

September 21, 2010

Subeez is apparently the #1 brunch restaurant in Yaletown. MedicalGiraffe suggested we go here.

We walked into Subeez and I could not be drawn by the crazy candleholders. It was covered in wax.

Looking at the menu, there are a lot of choices. So, we asked the waitress.

The entire décor where we sat was kinda industrial looking… a lot of metal. On the plus side, the bar is stocked.

We started off with our drinks. I ordered a cappuccino and MedicalGiraffe ordered a juice.

I ordered the Mushroom and Goat Cheese Benny ($11), which had two soft poached eggs, hollandaise, mushrooms, goat cheese, and fresh basil on an English mushroom. In addition there was a salad and hash browns.

The eggs were perfectly poached and when you cut the egg, yummy ooooey goooey yolk pours out. That is when you have the perfect benny.

MedicalGiraffe had the Huevos Rancheros ($11) which was a mixture of scrambled eggs, black beans, cheddar & jack cheese in a spinach tortilla. It is then topped with salsa, sour cream and with a side of hash browns. I know MedicalGiraffe didn’t take a liking to it.

Words of Wisdom:

Go for breakfast
Can’t go wrong with any of the eggs benny’s

Subeez is a good place to go for breakfast/lunch but I’m not sure about dinner. For $15, you can get some yummy breakfast to start off the day.

We rate Subeez:

Visit Subeez at http://www.subeez.com/

In Four Beakers

Rodney’s Oyster House

September 20, 2010

MedicalGiraffe and I went here because we both love oysters. Rodney’s Oyster House is really popular and has a great “low tide” option between 3pm to 6pm! $1.50 per oyster…who wouldn’t want that? (I guess if you don’t like oysters…then you probably wouldn’t like it).

The inner décor reminded me of the décor in a boat because of all the ropes and nets hanging inside. Even the exterior of the restaurant makes you think of the ocean with the white wooden panels. The ambiance was quite nice and what added a big PLUS was how friendly the staff was.

Their menu’s are even on a piece of wood. Very different from most restaurants I’ve been to.

We sat at the bar in front of the clam steamer contraption and had really good conversation with the Oyster Shucker man and the other guy in charge of making all the steamed mussels.

We started off with a glass bottle of Coke and a bottle of Keiths. All bottled and nothing super special.

We decided since its 3pm, we should get a dozen of the oysters from the low tide menu. We even watched the Oyster Shucker man prepare it. He even went step by step on how he goes about shucking them.

As we waited patiently, we got some bread with butter.

When the oysters arrived, it came with a whole platter of sauces – Worchester sauce, 2 types of Tabasco sauce, vodka pepper sauce, and 4 of their house sauces.

The low tide oysters were the Fanny Bay Oysters. Fanny Bay Oysters are from BC and they have firm meat, a mild brininess and a pronounced cucumber finish. I enjoyed them. We tried the different sauces on them as well.

The vodka pepper sauce was horrible in my opinion. It really just tasted like vodka.

The Worchester sauce, and the 2 Tabasco sauce are all the standard type of sauces to put on oysters. It’s really worth trying their house sauces for the unique taste, which you can’t buy from stores.

The sauces on the right side are quite mild and works their way to a sauce called “Back from Hell”. I reassure you, that sauce is hot and will leave a stinging sensation in your mouth even if you put a little tiny bit of it. If you have the will power to test it out for your self, why not.

As we were eating the oysters and talking to the Oyster Shucker Man, we got a lot of samples of the different types of oysters to see how oysters are really different. We had – kumamoto, stellar bay, some other one that I don’t remember. Some were creamy, some were really salty, and the other was sweet. 6 free oysters and we were really happy!

After eating a dozen and a half oysters, we decided to have the pan fried oysters, which apparently is one of their other specialties. I lost the picture of my camera, so I can’t show you but they were golden brown and had a nice nutty flavour to them. This dish came to about $10.

In total we spent around $40.

Rodney’s Oyster House is probably one of the best places to go to if you want to get your Oyster craving out of your system…or make you come back for more until you run out of money. Go between 3pm and 6pm because that is when you get most of the deals.

We rate Rodneys Oyster House: