Unfortunately, growing up as a kid, I only remember going to Wally’s on Kingsway once or twice. My family was never really into burgers, even though Wally’s was only a few minutes away from my house.

From SqueakyMarmot on Flickr

I’ve been told by people that Wally’s in its heyday had a pretty damn good burger. With it’s big neon sign, it was a landmark in the neighbourhood. After closing down about 2 years ago, a longtime fan of Wally’s, Gord Bemister, had recently purchased the rights to the name and recipes. He opened up a Wally’s concession stand at Cates Park in North Vancouver, which Kevin had blogged about here.

Last Tuesday, Gord and his family opened up a small restaurant at Killarney Market (located at 49th and Elliot and 2 units away from Columbus Restaurant). The actual place isn’t too big and only has counter seating along the walls and windows. Service was good and friendly as it was Gord and a woman (wife?) taking orders at the front counter. I also peered into the back and saw some teenagers at the back making the food. Maybe this is a family run business. Anyways after I made my order, I had to about 5 minutes for my food. Killed some time by checking out the signed sports memorabilia on the walls (Bobby Orr!).

For this visit, I had to settle for takeout since I needed to rush home to watch Kevin Martin’s rink win Canada yet another gold medal. Woo! (Sorry that I squashed the burger in the bag)

I got the Deluxe Chuck Wagon Combo ($9.50) with cheese and a fried egg. The Chuck Wagon burger ($5.25) has 2 patties while the Deluxe Chuck Wagon burger ($5.50) also comes with lettuce, tomato and onions. With my modifiers, total came up to ~$11 for the burger, fries and a fountain drink. The burger itself wasn’t all that expensive, but it’s the modifiers that get you.

While I didn’t get to try the burger right away, I munched on a few fries on the way home. While the bag had a LOT of fries, too bad they weren’t that great. Perhaps they needed to be fried a little bit more but they tasted a bit cold and mushy, definitely lacking that nice crispy texture. I had to put them in the oven when I got home. Next time I’ll upgrade to yam fries or onion rings.

The burger itself was huge! While $11 is a lot compared to one my favourties Burger Burger (here and here), the portions here make up for the cost. The patties were okay but I’m guessing they were frozen. However the fried egg (+$1.25) was the best part of the meal. It’s the best modifier you can get on a burger, hands down, with mushrooms (+$0.75) coming in second. The yolk with all the sauces made this burger extremely messy but oh so much better. Didn’t help that the burger was slightly squished. I regret getting cheese (+$0.75) instead of the mushrooms.

Overall the meal was okay. There are a better places further away but miles ahead of places like McDonalds. Quality has room for improvement as they have more time to iron out the kinks but you get a lot of food. I would probably come back just because it’s one of the few semi-decent burger joints in the area. However no harm in trying it out if you’re feeling nostalgic.

© JPhung for 604 Foodtography, 2010. | Permalink | 1 comment | Add to del.icio.us

WOW it’s been a while, hopefully you haven’t forgotten about 604Foodtography

A week before the Olympics began, I had some of my cousins from Los Angeles come up here for a few days. While the city was bustling and full of excitement, I became a tourist in my own city … not necessarily a bad thing since that meant eating out more!

They had several different requests on places and cuisines to eat. Aside from the Asian choices such as wonton noodles and dim sum, Slow had suggested on going to Araxi in Whistler. She’s a big fan of Hell’s Kitchen and Araxi just so happened to be the featured restaurant in the show’s most recent season.

After walking in, guess who was the first person we saw in the restaurant? Dave Levey! The winner of last’s seasons Hell’s Kitchen. What a coincidence eh?! I felt a little bit sorry for him though as he was at the appetizer station placed footsteps away from the door, constantly getting interrupted by guests while working. He didn’t look too happy there but he smiled for every person who approached him for a picture request. I was surprised that we was stuck at appies though.

Aside from their claim to fame, one interesting fact about the restaurant is that all ingredients are local, taken less than 100km away from the restaurant.

Since fine dining usually has smaller portions, I was looking forward to the bread (or the beavertails stand close by) to help fill me up. Here they combine common butter and olive oil together in the same dish. This was good although the bread was a little stale and would have been better had it been served warm.

Some of us had a glass of wine or beer, but The Penguin and Rye Bread had this: Fentiman’s Traditional Ginger Beer ($5.50). It contains less than .05% alcohol and if anyone is familiar with the dessert, it tastes like the syrup from Chinese boiled ginger milk.

We all started off with the Tastings of Oysters ($21.50 for 5). This consists of 5 different oysters dressed differentlywith ponzu pearls, trout caviar, cucumber relish, mignonette or dungeness crab meat. I don’t remember much about my cucumber relish but the ponzu pearls were recommended by our server. Rye had this one and said that it was “briny with a kick” from the ponzu pearls. If you choose to get individual oysters, they’re $3.25-$3.75 each.

While this may look like it, this is isn’t sushi. Rather, this is the Dungeness Crab Roll ($18.50). This is dungeness crab is wrapped with avocado, parsnip and yuba roll with a citrus mayonnaise, vanilla oil and parsnip chips. This was one of the dishes I couldn’t keep my eyes off of. These were very good! Very light but would have liked the crab flavour to come out more but other than that, no complaints with this dish.

This plate once had a Prime Beef Carpaccio ($18.50). Pepper crusted carpaccio with fresh horseradish, thinly sliced tongue salad and crostini. Everybody had finished it before I had a chance to take a picture of it. Oops.

I’ve heard people say that Araxi had some of the best scallops in British Columbia. As a province that is known for great seafood, this is quite a statement. Slow and Chris both ordered the Qualicum Beach Scallops ($36.50). They both said that the scallops were good, but the dressing was very rich. The dish also had chorizo sausage and they really enjoyed the chipole crust on them. The scallops themselves were a bit over done as the texture seemed a bit off, but generally they liked it.

This is the BC Prawn Risotto ($18.50). Unfortunately, this dish didn’t have too much in the flavour category. I was surprised at the amount of prawns in it though.

I had the Venison ($36.00). The meat was very tender and it wasn’t a skimpy good portion. Brownie points for that. There are some people that I know that do not enjoy the gamey taste of venison but I don’t mind it so much. While the taste was certainly noticeable here, it didn’t stop me from enjoying this dish.

Dungeness Crab ($18.50). Don’t remember anything about this dish and it doesn’t seem like it’s on the online menu.

Gnocchi, pronounced Nee-okkee, are little potato-like lumps ($28.50). The only way I can explain this is “pillowy” with a cheese like texture. This was devoured pretty quickly. One of the best dishes I tried here.

We got macaroons with the bill! Nice last touch to a meal.

Service for the most part was good, although there were a few instances here and there like taking away a plate that wasn’t finished and a period of time where nobody came to check up on us. When we got there (5:30) the dining room was practically empty but closer to 7:00 it was packed full. We were really fortunate to visit Whistler the same day as the torch! A couple of times during our dinner, some of us had went outside to check out the torch relay and to take a quick picture with the Olympic torch.

© JPhung for 604 Foodtography, 2010. | Permalink | 2 comments | Add to del.icio.us

Since this blog is focused on food, I won’t even get into discussing that side of things. What I do want to discuss is MUST EATS in Vancouver.

Good food doesn’t have to cost $50 per entree. It’s all subjective to the diner, and with that thought, it’s always hard to put together a TOP # LIST.

It’s 5am, I’m up early after having slept the whole day away after pulling a 16hr overtime shiift, so this is going to be a simple jotting down of my ideas.

You MUST eat Asian. Chinese is too focused of a category because I would be leaving out Japanese, Korean, Taiwanese, Indian, Vietnamese, Cambodian, Thai & etc. The city of Vancouver is literally a melting pot of cultures & their respective cuisines and that means we have nearly everything under the sun available here for you to sample and enjoy. Just throwing out some from the top of my head that I have enjoyed. Phnom Penh, Thai Son, No. 1 Beef Noodle, Taiwan Beef Noodle King, Sun Sui Wah, Shiang Garden, TangThai, Sawasdee Thai, Bool Chul Pan. If in doubt, go to Richmond.

You MUST eat West Coast. Loosely defined as a style of cuisine that incorporates everything great and wonderful about this side of the Pacific Ocean, it generally means you’re in for a wackload of seafood. Good seafood no less. One of the best and most revered would be The Cannery. Good luck trying to get a reservation though, they’re closing soon. West, Raincity Grill, Coast, Blue Water Cafe are also constantly talked about.

You MUST eat sushi. That means sushi, sashimi, tempura, etc. You can go for either really cheap (Samurai Sushi), medium (Zipang) or expensive (Tojo’s). There are far too many in between, but pretty much no matter where you go (or if you do your research), you won’t be bad off.

You MUST eat cheap. A decent bowl of pho w/ spring rolls can be had for $10. A twist on the boring hotdog is Japadog, with unique and novelty toppings for >$5. Forget McDonalds when you can have a full combo for $5 at Burger Burger. Sample different tacos at La Taqueria, Dona Cata or Salsa & Agave for >$10. Two slices of pizza + drink for $5 at either Uncle Fatih’s or Pizza Garden. Enjoy a piping hot poutine at Belgian Fries or Fritz.

You’re gonna thank me for these cheap eats when you realize you’re down to your last bills after spending all your money on those tickets for the Mens Hockey Final match. (Which by the way, if you have, you should really take me, your favorite blogger, to!)

Finally…

You MUST drink. Although Vancouver is generally regarded as a no fun city because of our strict liquor laws & hours due to our babysitting councillors, I hear rumors that these laws will be relaxed for the two weeks. The Europeans must be breathing a sigh of relief or else they’d be throwing a fit for not being able to drink past 3am or in public. Again, only rumors but I hope it’s true because we can’t expect to host a 2 week party for the world if we don’t lax, can we?

Metro Vancouver has many microbreweries, so many that I don’t even know all of them. Red Truck, Phillips, R&B, Steamworks & Granville Island Brewing come to mine. (*Technically GIB doesn’t brew in Vancouver anymore, but the seasonal brew is still from Granville Island!)

Gastown is probably your best bet to get drunk. Not only does this neighbourhood maintain an old-Vancouver charm with the brick buildings and cobblestone roads, it’s also home to The Alibi Room, Pourhouse, The Blarney Stone, Steamworks, Di6mond & The Irish Heather. All are fairly forward drinking establishments with a huge list of beers, cocktails and wines. As an added bonus, the Bavarian house will also be right at the edge of Gastown by the Waterfront station and you can bet the beer will be flowing nonstop there. Who wants to send some smokies & beer up to Whistler for me?

Checking out at 6am up here in Whistler with this first draft. Will be posted when I get a reliable connection.

© Kevin for 604 Foodtography, 2010. | Permalink | 1 comment | Add to del.icio.us

It all started when I would google restaurants to see if there was anything written about it on the internet. That’s how I came to read local Vancouver food blogs such as Chowtimes, Shermans, ImOnlyHereForTheFood, EatnAbout & many others. A full list of blogs that I currently read right now is available on the links page. Inspiration struck and I started taking pictures of food I made, food I ate. Uploading them to Facebook only generated 2am cravings from my friends, and some suggested I start writing about it.

From this humble little blog, I’ve been honored to attend exclusive foodie events.. gotten in touch with various public relations and media.

This is a pretty shoddy job for a one year anni post, but it’s all my overtime riddled mind can pump out right now.

© Kevin for 604 Foodtography, 2010. | Permalink | 2 comments | Add to del.icio.us

I don’t want to flood this blog with things unrelated to food, so I suggest that you bookmark and subscribe to my Tumblr if you’re curious as to what I’m doing up here. I do anticipate having posts about the local Whistler eateries though…and perhaps even some Vancouver ones as well. Yep, I’m gonna be in two places at once.

Also, I will constantly be uploading pictures to my Flickr set so keep checking that too!

Cheers.

© Kevin for 604 Foodtography, 2010. | Permalink | 1 comment | Add to del.icio.us

This post will be a double whammy feature, with both myself and Jeff providing the commentary. This is great for you AND me because he may cover things that I may have left out & vice versa. It also means you, the reader, have a hell of a lot more to read. Enjoy!

For ease of reading, Kevin’s thoughts will be in GREEN, and Jeff’s will be in BLUE.

Jeff was my company for the night, and also my notetaker. The first time I’ve ever had to resort to taking notes at a restaurant, mainly because of the sheer amount of food I knew we would be having and also because of the unfamiliar names we would undoubtedly happen upon.

He would have been totally lost without me.

Ben of Chowtimes invited me and some other bloggers for a tasting at TangThai downtown. He had already reviewed their first location on Broadway, and they contacted him for help with their newest endeavour into the competitive downtown core. His suggestion for a blogger dinner was taken into account and here we were on a weekday night.

Thank you to Sonia and Deo for inviting us and Ben for organizing this event. It was a pleasure meeting some of the top food bloggers Vancouver has to offer and the passion that these people have for food is unreal.

In attendance was Sherman (Shermans Food Adventures, you can see him just to the right in the below picture), Jenny & Ricky (Secret Eden), Mijune (Follow Me Foodie), Jeff and I (604 Foodtography), and Ben and Suanne (Chow Times).

Before the meal began, Sonia and Deo (the owners) came out to personally greet us. From outside (1st picture) you can see they have an upstairs portion of the restaurant. Unfortunately, they were still waiting for some furniture to arrive so it wasn’t open for public yet. They did let us upstairs to take a look. From up there, there’s a nice eagle eyes view of the space downstairs, and you can even peek into the kitchen a bit. The space does hold a commanding view of the street below, and I foresee it being extremely busy up there come summertime.

The inside is beautifully decorated with Thai statues, sculptures and other pieces of art.

Menus? Where we’re going, we don’t need menus.
We didn’t need them because Sonia would be our host, chef & server tonight. She had free reign to bring out anything, as she felt strongly about her food and wanted to let it speak for itself.

Sonia also wanted us to try some of her new dishes before they were put on the menu. Nothing wrong with being a guinea pig at times I suppose.

It is however a really pretty menu. The back page showed all the different spices that are commonly used in Thai cuisine. At this time of writing, they now have a liquor license so some Singha beer would be good to go with whatever you order. Not that I would have had one were they available when we went, cause I’m still on that cleanse. Sigh.

How long do you think Kevin can go without alcohol? Think he can last until July?

One of my pet peeves is that exotic cuisines are frequently watered down to suit all tastes. This could be either the spicy level, or even the flavors are watered down. My thoughts are that if you are bringing foreign food to Vancouver, you should bring the real thing. Don’t pussy around and try to appeal to the masses, remain true to the food and the customers will come. I liked that the 5 star rating said “Welcome to Thailand! ”. Kind of cheeky, but it’s appreciated.

1. Prawn Skirt (prawns, pork, crab meat, and water chestnut) $8.95/4

We started off with something familiar, spring rolls. These were packed to the brim with ingredients though, it was really surprising. Full of meat and more meat, the water chestnuts familiar crunchiness and sweet flavor provided the counterbalance. Real crab meat was used, but it was shredded up so it was hard to tell it was in there.

These were quite tasty. The crab seemed to have been overpowered by the other flavours but a good start to the meal. Crispy without being oily, just like how mom makes them.

2. Satay Chicken & Beef w/ peanut sauce $13.50/8

The others will probably say something like the peanut sauce wasn’t true peanut sauce, but I found it okay. The satays both had a strong curry taste to them though, which is something I’m not too familiar with for satays.

Sonia had mentioned that Thai satay is a little different from the more popular Malaysian satay. One of the differences is the addition of turmeric as you can see, gives off a yellowish colour to the food. I was only able to try the beef satay and it was okay. The peanut sauce looks different than what I’m used to, but I didn’t think anything of it. Perhaps this was the Thai version of the sauce?

3. Tom Kha Kai (spicy chicken coconut milk soup) $3.95

This soup was deceiving. It looks harmless sitting there, all white and innocent, but the hidden spice lingered long after the last sip. Delicious!

This was good. REALLY good. Pieces of chicken and peppers compliment the broth nicely. This was deceivingly spicy. HOWEVER, I vaguely remember Sonia telling Ben that this was made to be more spicy than usual. I wrote it down somewhere but Kevin has the notes. If you’re afraid of this being too spicy, double check with the server. This is too good of a dish to pass up on because it might be too spicy.

After the appetizers and soups were taken away, we were given some rice to accompany the main dishes that would be coming out shortly.

4. Pla Rad Prik (fried tilapia with spicy, sweet and sour sauce) $15.95

Please note that the giant cockatiel garnish is not usually served with this dish, obviously Sonia was looking to impress us. While it was a nice touch, it wasn’t necessary. I would never want to lead a reader astray into thinking that they could order the same dish and receive it exactly like they saw on this blog.

I believe we all agreed that the fish was a tad overfried. If that was the purpose, then yes, it was fine. It not, then that took away from this. I only had a little of this and from what I remember, it was okay. Nothing impressive, nothing bad.

Most of my friends know that aside from a few exceptions, I do NOT eat fish. Well, basically it’s just Asian styled fish that I refuse to eat (sashimi excluded). I’m not exactly sure how my displeasure for fish started though. That being said, I did try some of this. Because of my lack of experience with fish, I can’t really comment too much on it. It seemed a bit overdone but we were told it’s supposed to be prepared like that. The sauce was really good though, excellent on top of some rice.

5. Stuffed Squid w/ Green Curry

Oh what a delight this was. This was something new the kitchen had made and we were the first ones to try it out. Talk about faith in themselves!

At first glance, I thought the green quarters (just left of the bottom center) were tomatillos, or even heirloom tomatoes. Turns out they were figs! I’ve never had figs in a cooked dish before so that was nice. They were a pretty neutral flavour. See the little pea like thing scattered around?? At first we thought they were peas, but then what kind of steroid peas are these? I avoided eating one till someone did, and they commented that it was very bitter.  We found out that they were in fact, baby figs. Figs & baby figs, I like the creative use of non conventional ingredients like this.

The green curry was delicious. Didn’t find it too spicy but like the sauce with the fish, great with some rice. In fact, after the squid was all gone, some people had taken this dish just to get some of the curry.

Not entirely sure what was stuffed inside the squid, but I can guess that there was pork & some vegetables. This was a hit for me, and I hope they put this onto the regular menu, if they haven’t already done so.

The curry wasn’t the only good part of the dish for me. I’ve never had a stuff squid before but this was very good. I have no idea what was inside though.

6. Nua Pad Thakhai (beef with lemongrass and vegetables) $13.95

Again, deceiving! Doesn’t look too spicy but for me, at least, this was the spiciest of everything we had. It was good though, really had a nice kick of spice that didn’t overpower the other flavours, the lemongrass especially.

With Asian cuisine, some dishes must be served with rice. This is one of them. Rice is great with spicy or saucy dishes. A lot of the others had actually stopped eating this dish to preserve their tastebuds for other dishes. Oh well, more for me!

7. Fried Eggplant and Basa Fish $??

This was the second dish that they were testing out. Deep fried eggplant slices with deep fried basa fish chunks. Not sure what the sauce is on top, but it was a curry of some sort. The mildest dish we had, I would like this to be added to the regular menu as well. The slices of eggplant could be thicker, as it wasn’t clearly evident from tasting it that it was indeed, eggplant.

This was a good dish. I enjoyed the breaded eggplant although I agree that the slices could have been bigger. Again I had some of the fish but I’m not going to comment on that.

I think it was around this time when we noticed that the restaurant was FULL! Imagine that, on a Wednesday night and they had a full house.

8. Herb Chicken BBQ w/ Thai Sauce (1/2 order) $??

Choosing not to comment on this because I don’t remember anything about it.

This was not on the menu. The chicken was a bit dry. Nothing really special in my mind. It is a good match with the sauce though. It would come to $16.95 I think.

9. Pad Thai Krung Tep (rice noodle dish w/ a tamarind-based sauce) $12.95

Traditional pad thai is supposed to be brown in color since it’s made with a tamarind sauce. The pad thai that you may be more familiar with is most likely reddish, and that’s a result of the westernization and bastardization! Not to put down this, but I think it was just a matter of timing. If this had come out earlier or even first to open our appetites, it would have been a lot better than at the end because the flavors were completely lost on us as our tastebuds were overwhelmed at this point.

At first, it was confusing why this pad tasted so differently than the ones available throughout the city. Then we realized that what Vancouverites are accustomed to isn’t actually traditional pad thai.

This dish came at the end and I agree, it would have been better earlier. The texture was good but the flavour was lacking.

See the first entry under noodles, the description says “contemporary Pad Thai sauce“. Compared to “traditional“. You know what’s up…

10. Cashew Chicken (cashew nuts, crispy chillies & vegetables) $12.95

When this came, we all quietly thought to ourselves “gwai lo dish“. Well all of us except Mijune.. heh. There were quite a bit of them around us too! It’s funny how Chinese people will think “This is our dish, they took it from us!” but really, it’s not ours. We just happen to have used the same ingredient, they just prepare it differently.

An Asian dish with a westernized spin. I didn’t mind this dish but it wasn’t something I had to have. If you’re the type of person to order this type of dish normally, you might enjoy it.

11. Thai Tea Pudding w/ sponge cake & whipping cream $5.95

I love Thai Tea and I know for a fact that Jeff does too. As such, I was a bit apprehensive about it being in a pudding form.

I didn’t have to worry that much though, as this was awesome! The sponge cake was a little chewy, perhaps it had been left out for a while? Not a big deal though, gobbled this up like no tomorrow. This was also not on the regular menu, but it should be!!

If you’re in Southern California and a fan of Vietnamese food, I highly recommend getting some REAL Vietnamese food. There is so much competition down there that quality is a must to succeed. The reason why I mention this is because down there,  thai tea is a common sight in Vietnamese restaurants . It’s rich and creamy, similar to milk tea. Unfortunately, it’s rare to find thai tea in Vancouver prepared like that.

This pudding is the closest thing I’ve ever had in Vancouver that reminds me of the real thing (in pudding form no less). Delicious! It goes well with or without the whipped cream and while the sponge cake didn’t add to the dish, it didn’t take away from it either. I could eat a tub of this. A bathtub. (Okay, maybe I’m getting carried away now but I really love thai tea).

12. Tapioca pudding w/ jack fruit & coconut meat $??

This was a total blah. First off it came to us just a bit above room temperature, which was strange for a tapioca dessert. It would usually be served either hot or cold. The other thing about it was that…it was salty. Not just a pinch of salt salty, but salty like the ocean (okay, exaggeration).

I asked Sonia if it was supposed to be salty and she said yes, she likes it a bit salty and she was the one who added the salt. She did admit that she hadn’t tasted it before bringing it out, so perhaps that’s the reason why it was so salty. A disappointment our last dish had to be this one that left a sour salty taste in our mouths.

This dish was…different. Like Kevin had said, Sonia made this based on her preferences. While I understand the concept of adding salt to bring out the sweetness, this would a bit too much for many. While some may like this, perhaps it would have been better if the dish was served cold or hot but the lukewarm temperature did not help.

I was thoroughly impressed by Sonia and her food, majority of them were thumbs up from me. I observed the rest of the restaurant, and the servers seemed calm and attentive, which is always great for us, the customers. Here’s hoping that things will only improve from here on. Some things can still be tweaked, and you can bet that they will be after reading like 5 different “reviews”. The portions are generous and so don’t be too alarmed by the price point ($12~/entrees) as you should really be sharing them.

Hopefully they will have more help available in the summer months when that area (Denman at Robson) gets very busy. A full restaurant on a weeknight in January? I can only imagine how busy this place will be later on. Good service (not just our table) with authentic dishes makes this place one of the better choices in Vancouver if you’re ever in the mood for Thai.

Thank you Sonia & Deo for allowing us to try your food, and also to Ben for giving us the opportunity to partake in this dinner! Food is a labor of love, and there was plenty of it here.

Click to read
Chow Times
Follow Me Foodie
My Secret Eden
Sherman’s Food Adventures

Disclosure: cmp.ly/1 – This dinner was on the house. There was no expectation to review or blog about it, I am doing this solely because I want to.

© JPhung for 604 Foodtography, 2010. | Permalink | 1 comment | Add to del.icio.us

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Kingsway is a busy street, stretching from Vancouver to Burnaby and you will find no shortage of eats of all kinds. Most of the Korean joints seem to be in Burnaby though, so it’s a little rare to find this one a couple blocks away from Knight in Vancouver. From the outside, it isn’t really flashy and doesn’t catch the eyes attention. I would have driven past not noticing it if we weren’t looking for it.

Margo and I arrived just before 10 after she came to pick me up, then consequently made me drive the rest of the way. Really, I know it’s just cause she doesn’t like to drive in Vancouver, I mean she even gets lost in her own city, Richmond. =p

Bright fluorescent lights beam down in the room, providing a stark contrast from the dark gloomy night outside. Inside it feels warm, inviting, and the server was quick to attend to us. There were two other tables, one was a couple sitting behind us and the other was two families sitting in the rooms.

Having read such good things about the seolleongtang, I knew I would be getting it. The last time I remember having a good ox bone soup was at Wang Ga Ma in Coquitlam, near the H-mart. Now I just had to decide what I wanted in it. Should I be boring and just get sliced beef? Boring… I needed some excitement, so I went for the Tripe, Tongue & Spleen w/ Flour noodle. A question about the Hangul spelling, why is it spelled differently? It seems there is no standard spelling and that people interpret it and spell it differently. Case in point is that Googling it will turn up “seolleongtang” but the menu here says “sul lung tang“.

While we waited for our orders, a bunch of banchan came out to keep us waiting. The usual suspects were here, kimchi, seaweed, potatoes, bean sprouts, and daikon. The potatoes were excellent, as was the kimchi. Home made for sure, and rated an 7.5/10 on my spice scale. 10 means I’m crying by the way.  We were also served our rice in metal bowls, which I love because it keeps it hot for that much longer.

Coarse sea salt was provided on the table for the soup and other uses, but I found I didn’t need it nor want to add any to the soup when it came.

I enjoyed the creamy broth-soup that can only be made from ox bones, cooked for several hours or even a whole day to extract all the wonderful flavors from the bone and its marrow.  A slight off-white and cloudy appearance is the norm, and is usually accompanied by green onions, rice, and side dishes. Most of the items were at the bottom, covered by the white thin vermicelli like noodles.

A bowl full of green onions.  I used more than half of it…did I mention I like green onions?

Tongue! It was only till later that I realized that I had inadvertently ordered one of Shermans favorite things, tongue.

Margo had the Soondubu w/ Seafood. Oooo this was spicy since Margo requested that it be super spicy. I think there was a LOT of tofu in here and also an egg, which she broke the yolk of. <Nelson Muntz> HA HA. </Nelson Muntz>. Note that the soondubu link is to MaangChi, a very exceptional resource for all Korean food, shown to me by Andrea.

When our bowls were cleared away, she brought out some Sikhye for us. It’s a traditional dessert made from pouring malt water onto cooked rice and letting it ferment, to change the starch in the rice into sugar. Sometimes ginger and sugar can be added, but it’s just as good without flavoring.

At $8 each for dinner, considering the amount of food we had, that’s a pretty wicked deal. We both put down $10, feeling that it was worth way more for what we had just ate and so it was only right that we do so. Revisit? Yes.

The menu is scanned and up at Urbanspoon, follow this link to view it.

© Kevin for 604 Foodtography, 2010. | Permalink | 1 comment | Add to del.icio.us

Sorry, the map isn’t sitting exactly where I want to be, so just drag it to your left slightly.

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Borandsi Cafe is literally a dodgeball throw away. Well, I think I could probably throw that far. It’s just across the street and slightly north of Honey’s Bistro. The location of it is completely unexpected, since it sits right beside a brake & muffler shop. Now I know some places have strange or out of the ordinary locations, (Tenku Budanyaki comes to mind, it’s in the middle of a parking lot!) but this probably takes the cake.

The interior is decidedly modern and very clean cut. Big couches that are low to the ground with equally low tables are situated by the windows. My initial feel and thoughts were that this would be a GREAT place to hang out with friends and just chill out, enjoy a couple drinks & desserts. There are also pastries available.

In fact, Borandsi Cafe has obviously had the foresight for that and have a big collection of board games and the like to keep you entertained if your friends are boring. To rent the games, it’s $3.50/hr per person, which you can pay for at the end. There were two tables that had games, one had Jenga and the other some board game. Sounds good, and if I had money I probably would. I mean, just think about it, even though it’s a cheap hourly rate, these games were one time purchases, and so they can quickly make their money back and more on it. At least for LAN places, you know they have to pay for the internet connection. Oh well, definitely not putting the games idea down, it’s quite thought out actually.

So who’s down for a game of RISK, LOTR style? =d

We weren’t here to play games though, we were here to get ICE FRAKES! The menu isn’t too descriptive, which makes me think that this place gets by solely on word of mouth. There was 7 of us, so we ordered two Large Specials ($12.95) + add. Rice Cake ($1). What makes these ICE FRAKES special is the way they’re served.

Yes, your eyes are not fooling you. This is a 1L glass measuring cup!! It’s filled to the brim with ingredients. Here’s what I remember was on it..

Ice flakes, red bean, condensed milk, kiwi, grapes, peach, bananas, frozen strawberries, rice cake (mochi), tapioca pearls, green tea ice cream, and topped off with chocolate sauce & some Fruit Loops. I’m probably missing something like another fruit but it’s still an impressive amount of ingredients. This is best shared with some friends obviously. I loveeeed it, chock full of stuff, but the only thing I would ask of them is that the ice flakes be finer, some of them were quite chunky.

If this is the large, you’re probably thinking what the mediums are. They’re the same but just served in 250mL cups instead.

I’m coming back for sure, but probably not till the summer when these will be killlller. Almost don’t want to tell you all about this place, but it deserves to be recognized. Thanks Julia. Think of this as me blowing up your spot, a la Vancouver is Awesome.

PS. I posted the picture as part of my 365 project (a picture a day) on my Tumblr. Follow me and I will too.

© Kevin for 604 Foodtography, 2010. | Permalink | 3 comments | Add to del.icio.us

We walked inside and it was veeeery dark and dim, definite signs of a drinking-forward establishment. There was also only another table of two inside, so was this a bad sign? Who knows, it was nearly 7pm..maybe the drinking and chicken wing eating occurs later on around 9? We were quickly seated all the way in the back, given two menus and a small tray of what seemed to be, old stale popcorn. I tried one and yep, it was. Our little corner was dark, only one light above the table. Definitely felt sketch, but apparently that’s what most of these hof’s are like in Korea.

Ellie quickly glanced at the menu and suggested that we go to Honey’s bistro, as both Pete & her had thought I meant that place when I told them I wanted yangnyeom chicken. They both said that the place was quite pricey and the other was better..so we should just go.  They reasoned that we had just sat down and hadn’t even ordered nor received water so it should be okay. It seems so rude and all..but that’s exactly what we did. The guy didn’t even come by to check on us once nor did I see any sign of him when we left.. haha.

So, a short drive north along North Rd. to Honey’s Bistro.  If there wasn’t Korean shows playing on the TVs or any signs around, you’d think you walked into a Western restaurant. The interior resembled a cottage or a lodge restaurant you would find up in the mountains where snow bunnies would unwind after a long day on the slopes. Oh how I want to go snowboarding.. oops, getting off topic here.

Like at Mexican Chicken, we were also given popcorn with the menus. At least these weren’t stale. So does anyone have an answer for why popcorn is given, and is this the norm in Korea?

Prices were cheaper here, but not by much as they’ve upped their prices which you can see by the stickers. Since I was about blind as a bat with what to order, knowing only that I wanted chicken wings and I wanted them pretty damn soon, Ellie ordered for us and Pete ordered for their half of the table. Of course, we had to get the yangnyeom chicken.

We ordered the 12 piece mixed ($13.85) + sauce for $1 to share between Ellie, Ty and myself. At first glance, the chicken didn’t look impressive. It just looked like a big blob of sweet & sour pork..but with chicken instead. A quick lick taste test and it confirmed we hadn’t been duped. The flavor of the sauce acts slow, but once it grabs hold of your tongue, it doesn’t let go. First it starts off slowly, with a tinge of sweetness but then the spice sneaks in from the back and clobbers your tongue numb and useless.

Enough bout the flavor, you can tell I liked it a lot. On the plate was an assortment of drumsticks, wings, and thighs. All were quite generous sizes. Something about the exterior coating of the wings (sans sauce) seemed better than the regular pub grub style of wings. Not sure why, I’ll have to order them without sauce next time to find out why. Oh yes, you get a side dish of pickled daikon, which you can keep getting refills of. Just an accompaniment and something to cleanse your palate I suppose.

Pork and vegetables fried with kimchi.. decent, couldn’t really taste if it was spicy or not by the time I got to this because my tongue had given up on tasting by then.

anddd .some other stuff that Pete ordered. I only know that the one on the right is Kimchi Fried Rice.

With some googling, I found some recipes that I will keep in mind to try out one day. Or perhaps, you can try it and bring me a sample.

Take Thou Food – Chicken Wings w/ Korean Marinade && Viet World Kitchen – Yangnyeom Dak

For reference, this is what a hof in Korea is like. Pretty much similar in terms of what we got..except the price of course.

The Daily Kimchi – Korean Fried Chicken Hof (as a bonus, this blogger is based in Vancouver!!)

This won’t be the last of Korean posts…stay tuned.

© Kevin for 604 Foodtography, 2010. | Permalink | 3 comments | Add to del.icio.us

I had a long break between class and my clinic, so I took the time to enjoy a slow lunch by myself at the closest Red Robin at Robson & Thurlow in Downtown Vancouver.

Eating alone…has its pros. You are 99.9% guaranteed a seat and it’s a fairly quick process. I didn’t get the nice corner seats where I could have a nice view of the street, but mine was okay, it was a nice sunny day, something that this Vancouver winter has had far too many… where’s the cold and snow?

Mmmmm so I ordered the Royal Red Robin Burger (This is the aristocrat of all burgers because we crown it with a fresh fried egg. Also, topped with three strips of hickory-smoked bacon, American cheese, crisp lettuce, tomatoes and mayo.) Was it good? Yeaaaa their burgers are always decent for a chain restaurant. Bacon was chewy, nien. Cheese was melty. Lettuce was crisp like Subway. Patty was juicy and actually dripped. To be honest I didn’t taste the egg much, it neither added nor subtracted to the burger…

No refill on the fries for me as I’m trying to be a bit more careful with my portions. Small meals, many times a day over big meals, couple times a day. My server was extremely attentive and friendly, which is strange because I didn’t have to pay for a single thing. I find that usually when a server gets wind that you have a coupon or are getting something for free, their quality of service lowers a bit. Why is that?

© Kevin for 604 Foodtography, 2010. | Permalink | 8 comments | Add to del.icio.us