Eight and a Half is a lounge on Main and 8th. I came here a while ago for brunch, but haven’t been here for dinner yet.
Right now they are doing a dining package with Vaneats.ca, where you pay $15 for a flight of beer, an appetizer and a pizza. Not bad actually. I was browsing through the menu and you save about $10 or $15 dollars. I came here with M and Scarface to try the package and order a few items on the side.
The interior is loungey and has a large bar.
The flight of beer arrived featuring 2 types of Stanley Park Brewery’s beer.
The first 2, which are lighter in color is the Amber, which has a cleaner finish when you drink it. You don’t taste a lot of the hops either.
The other 2 darker beers is the Bruns. The flavour profile is supposed to contain distinctive dried fruit aromatics, complex chocolate, roasted nut and malt biscuit. I’m not a beer expert, but it paired nicely with the food.
Dungeness Crab Cakes is served with lemony yogurt, avocados, and arugula. This is a badass crab cake. Really good and there wasn’t a lot of filler that went into it. You could taste all the meat!
The other options for the package is the tortilla soup or the Baked Brie.
For our pizza, we chose the Wild Smoked Salmon thin crust pizza. It is topped with BC smoked salmon, creamy dill, capers, red onion, and craisins. Any bite that you get the smoked salmon is pretty awesome. We really didn’t like the crasins in this pizza because once its cooked in the oven, the crasins get very hard. For some reason, we were charged an extra dollar and a few cents for this choice. I’m not really sure why, but I’m not the type to argue.
When we finished the package, we were still hungry, so we ordered a few more items to complete the meal.
Steak Bites ($9.50) are gluten free, but I guess you can tell since there isn’t just meat and a salad. The steak bites were marinated in a chili rub and done to medium rare. It is accompanies by a creamy parmesan dip. The steak was very pepper and over spiced.
When we saw that the baked brie was part of the package, we knew we wanted it, but we could only choose one appetizer. So we ordered it separately.
Baked Brie ($8.50) is so amazing! It’s a filo wrapped brie with the sweetness of honey. When you cut into the brie, it just oozes out. Once you get it onto the bread, it’s just fantastic. We all loved this and you can’t say no to yummy cheese…unless your lactose intolerant.
Pacific Bacon Sliders ($12.50) contain mini beef patties, alder smoked bacon, pacific pepper cheddar, Dijon aioli, fresh corn salsa, tomatoes and pickles. Pretty good sliders.
Overall, the food was good, but not crazy amazing. By being able to use the use the dining package and ordering off the regular menu, I would definitely recommend getting the package because you save a good amount of money. Our regular items excluding the dining package items came to about $37 for 3 appetizers.
We Rate Eight and a Half Lounge:
Address:
151 E 8th Ave
Vancouver, BC
Website:
http://www.eightandahalf.ca/
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