This is an event I was invited to by the restaurant and its promoters. While these are my honest opinions about the food, you should probably know everything was on the house.

So a couple of weeks ago, Popcorn invited me to a menu tasting event at Prestons. I hadn’t been before but I’m always up for discovering new restaurants around town. The place was packed! A lot of usual suspects from the Vancouver food blogging community as well as some old friends I haven’t seen in awhile. No, seriously, there was probably about 100 people in the restaurant and there was enough social media in the room to get the event’s hashtag, #dineprestons, to trend.

Prestons is located in a heart of downtown Vancouver. The restaurant is a dimly lit, lounge-like space with black booths and bright pink accents on the walls. It’s a striking look, very modern and contemporary but I will admit I prefer a little bit more lighting. I’m all for atmosphere but it got to the point where I couldn’t see the menu without the help of the table’s candles.

The menu has a mix of West Coast flavors as well as a number of Asian and Mediterranean influences.

It was a fun event and I had a great time catching up with the familiar faces. The restaurant was a little crowded and moving around was difficult at times but the staff kept up quite well. We also had a heck of a lot of fun taking photo booth pictures with Facebox. These photo booth services have been popping up lately and I think they’re fantastic. They bring back all the fun of those actual photo booths before all those sticker picture machines made them so much sillier.

We started off with drinks including Granville Island lagers. The bar made some interesting cocktails as well but the line was long and fruity drinks aren’t really my bag so I just made repeat trips for beers instead.

This is the Crispy Chicken Karaage, which is fried chunks of garlic sake marinated chicken served with a spicy lime aioli and a miso cabbage slaw. I really prefer my chicken karaage crispier but there’s a lot of flavor in each piece and the slaw and lime freshens everything up.

This was my favorite dish of the night, the Mini Thai Red Curry which contains chicken, eggplant, peppers, red onions and steamed jasmine rice in a spicy coconut curry. The rice and sauce are wonderfully creamy like a risotto. There’s a little bit of a spicy kick but just enough heat to make it interesting. (Thanks to Lesley Chang for hand modeling dishes for me)

These beautiful pieces of pig are Sweet Hoisin and Ginger Glazed Pork Ribs. There’s a distinct, familiar Chinese flavor with the hoisin sauce that penetrates all of these flavorful, tender pork ribs. I could eat a million of these with some rice.

I was slightly disappointed with the Seared Shrimp and Vegetable Dumplings with Miso Vinaigrette. It’s not because they aren’t good but I’ve just had better. The ingredients might be fancier but I’ll take the potstickers at Hon’s. It might just be the texture as I think these things need to have a nice crunch in that wrapper, which I find you only get by broiling or roasting rather than pan searing.

I’ll tell you what did have a nice crunch – the fries in the Mini Poutine with Pulled Pork, Quebec cheese curds and Rickard’s Red Gravy. The fries are wonderfully crispy and the gravy mixed with the pulled pork is actually lighter than you would expect. Poutine is usually a mush messy but the crispy fries separate this from your usual mall food court fare.

This is a Tomato and Bocconcini Crostini. I can’t really remember much about it and I only had one so I can’t give much feedback.

The Dungeness Crab Cakes had big, meaty chunks of crab in them with a light, crispy coating. They were nice and moist on the inside but could use a little more seasoning.

If I’m honest, I was already rather full by the time I got to the Braised BBQ Pork Sliders with homemade BBQ sauce and gorgonzola coleslaw so that might have something to do with why I didn’t really enjoy them. The flavors didn’t really work together for me.

For dessert, we had these mini Matcha Creme Brulee. The combination of green tea in the custard isn’t something I would order myself but maybe just because I’m not big on desserts. Everyone else seemed to like them, though. I’m pretty sure Lesley had two.

The menu at Prestons is actually quite reasonably priced, comparable to the chain casual dining restaurants in town like Cactus Club and Earl’s. While not everything was a hit, nothing needed more than a little tweak in the right direction. The lunch menu in particular looked like a great value with lots of options in the roughly $15 range. I’ll definitely be back sometime to give Prestons a proper look on a regular day.

My friends and I have been wanting to go to Man Ri Sung for quite awhile now. I think it was brought up over 6 months ago but for some reason or another, we just never got around to it. Someone sent the picture of the ad to all of us and while I couldn’t read any of it, it wasn’t hard to convince me. I mean, the ad had me at “Duck Feast”. I mean, they could’ve just said they serve duck but feast tells me this is no ordinary meal, ye mortals. There’s even a mandatory two hour advance reservation for the feast so they can make sure they have ducks ready for you. As you can see in the picture above, they are not open on Wednesdays.

Speaking of terrible pictures, in my haste to get out the door that day, I forgot to bring a real camera so I only had my iPhone. That isn’t to say that the iPhone 4 isn’t a very good and capable camera…just that looking at some of these, I realize how I’m totally awful at using a shutter release that’s on a screen where I’m also using my fingers to poke at and focus. Doesn’t change the blog post…but just thought you should know that your eyes don’t need a new prescription.

Man Ri Sung occupies a small restaurant space near the Ackroyd Save-On-Foods in Richmond, which now apparently a Pricesmart. Sadly, this same spot was once one of my favorite restaurants in Richmond that served tan tan noodles (noodles with a meat and peanut soup) for only $1.99 a bowl and some equally incredible deals on lunch combos. It was decent food at a price that could not be beat anywhere in the city…a deal so good that in the early days, most people who knew about it wouldn’t tell anyone for fear that demand would either increase prices or wait times. For some reason or another, they moved and that new place isn’t around anymore either so I was hoping for something amazing would sprout from that location.

The restaurant seats maybe around 40 people, 50 tops. It’s recently renovated and clean but otherwise looks like every other Asian restaurant in town. It’s a little cramped but not too uncomfortable. The staff are friendly and quick but don’t speak English fluently. They get enough to do their job well but you’re going to have to make an effort here. Luckily, they sort of know people come for the duck feast so ordering isn’t a chore. Actually, now that I think about it, I don’t remember if they speak Korean or Mandarin. I assume since this is a Korean restaurant but there’s a lot of Chinese influence as well since this is a bit of a mash-up of Korean cuisine and Peking duck.

Although not $1.99, the $58.95 duck feast is actually surprisingly good value since it’s meant to be split amongst four. It’s divided into three courses, which is slightly different from the usual two with Peking duck. Usually at Chinese restaurants, Peking duck is served first in a wrap dish with the crispy skin and then as…another wrap dish with the meat mixed with veggies, enveloped in lettuce leaves. At Man Ri Sung with the Korean interpretation of Peking duck, the first dish is a wrap but instead of just the skin, you get the meat of the entire duck.

The duck is carved tableside by Chef Lee (well, in our case, he had to do it further away because we were seated at one very long table), ensuring that each duck is prepared fresh. I’m sure pre-slicing them onto platters ahead of time would save a few minutes but then it wouldn’t be as tender and juicy. You can tell Chef Lee is dedicated to his craft and wants people to enjoy his food. Unfortunately, he doesn’t speak very much English but seems like a friendly enough guy. He said a few words and gave more than a few smiles at the end of the meal.

The duck meat is moist and rich. Being a duck, it’s going to have fat but the meat didn’t seem excessively fatty. There’s a thin layer between the lean meat and the crispy skin which just adds more flavor. You get a heck of a lot of meat as well. We had 12 people at the table and there were still a few pieces left when we got to the last courses…although none left by the end of the night.

Some assembly is required with this dish as while eating the meat by itself is probably already delicious, making these little pockets of awesomeness makes it even better. Take one of these wraps, slather on a little sweet hoisin sauce and stick a little green onion salad in there with your duck and there you have it.

These are just fantastic. I could’ve eaten this all day long. The sweetness of the sauce, the sharp, crisp bite of the green onions along with the tender meat is just a killer combination. I tried the same thing with a little hot sauce instead of the hoisin…also awesome.

Along with your duck wraps, you’ll have a table full of standard issue Korean side dishes. As is often the case, I wasn’t entirely sure if we just had dozens of different ones or a bunch of a few of them. From what I could tell, there were some marinated potatoes, kimchi, bean sprout salad and marinated seaweed. There may have been others…they were probably just camouflaged amongst the others.

The duck wings are included alongside the sliced of duck meat. I don’t think anyone else gave these a shot since they looked dried up and sinewy but I gave one a try. The tip of the wing was crisped to the point that the bones were brittle and crunchy enough to just eat. The meat on the other sections was chewy and almost impossible to tear off the bones. I don’t know what these were for but apparently not for eating. If I had teeth like a velociraptor, then I might’ve had a chance.

Next to arrive was the Japchae, which is a pan-fried potato noodle dish. It wasn’t bad. Nothing out of the ordinary here. The noodles were cooked well…I’ve had japchae where the noodles are just falling apart but this was pretty good. Not a whole lot of ingredients in there but we did just polish off a couple pounds of duck.

For the last dish, you have a choice between a duck hot pot or…duck gruel. Now, the “gruel” is usually called porridge or congee (“jook” if you Chinese). I’m not sure why they decided to go with the Oliver Twist word for it but whatever works, I guess. Since we had several orders at our table, we could try both.

The congee is a thick rice porridge made with brown rice, duck meat, green onion and red dates. It’s got a nice, slow-cooked flavor and nice bits of duck in there. The broth is darker and richer than I’m used to with most Chinese congee but delicious.

The hot pot is full of duck meat, veggies and what appear to be thick, hand-cut noodles simmering in a soup. Unfortunately, the noodles were a little too soft and overcooked but the soup was great. During a cold winter, this would be a perfect thing to have at the table.

Of the two, I think I’d prefer the “gruel” but if those noodles were nice and bouncy, it might’ve gone the other way.

I really can’t imagine anyone that wouldn’t like this meal at Man Ri Sung. Even with HST and tip, it still comes out to less than $20 a person and it’s just a ton of good food. It’s a fun, interesting and most importantly, delicious meal to share with some friends, maybe with a couple bottles of soju. It isn’t mind-blowing but you do get quality and quantity for a very good price. Unless you’re a nuts or a vegetarian, you really shouldn’t miss this one.

I always prefer to eat whatever the locals do when I’m traveling. There isn’t much point to eating food I can get at home so no matter what it is, I’ll give it a try. This has resulted in some really awesome experiences like in Italy, Japan, and France but other places haven’t fared as well. Because Puerto Rico is more or less some kind of United States territory, you don’t have to look far to find the usual American chains everywhere. It’s tempting to go with food that’s familiar with flavors you know you’ll enjoy but where’s the fun in that? I made it a point to find myself some sort of local restaurant and find out what food in Puerto Rico tastes like…since I had no idea what sorts of food were native to Puerto Rico.

Looking for a restaurant in an unfamiliar city can be quite a daunting task. I usually ask hotel staff (although that’s quite hit or miss as well) or a taxi driver but I rather just take note of busy places I come across and check out menus as I walk around. Since I was in quite a touristy area of San Juan with resort hotels and beaches in every direction, most of the restaurants nearby catered to a foreign crowd. I managed to find more Chinese, Japanese and Italian restaurants than anything that could be considered local. However, the one that I did find was endlessly busy, sometimes with a solid line out the door each of the four days that I was in Puerto Rico before my cruise so I thought it was worth a shot. With all those people inside, it can’t be terrible, can it?

Orozco’s Restaurant is located at 1126 Ashford Avenue in Condado, Puerto Rico, between a large cluster of resorts along the beach and small local shops. Yes, it’s quite a touristy location but still, many of the folks inside didn’t look like they’re from out of town and the menu featured some of the dishes I found on the internet after looking up what sort of food I should expect from this country. The atmosphere at Orozco’s is full of lively salsa music, baseball and subtitled popular Hollywood movies like Fast and Furious. There are daily happy hour specials on drinks as well as live music on the weekends. The wait staff was enthusiastic and friendly…but after that, it all went downhill.

I saw something on mofongo on nearly every menu in town…even some quasi-Chinese restaurants in the area. Mofongo is mashed plantains, which are then formed with a mold, deep-fried and then stuffed. On our waiter’s recommendation, I chose the roast pork ($10.95).

The wait was an excruciating hour and change. It wasn’t just the time wasted either. While Orozco’s has air conditioning, it isn’t very good since they leave the door open and the 35 degree heat outside trickles in, making the room gets quite warm. I would later find out this was par for the course and that everything in Puerto Rico just moves at a slower pace. I don’t think I waited less than 30 minutes for food at any restaurant and even at fast food places, you do a lot more standing around than in Canada or the US. I can deal with this with some other things but not at a restaurant. Why? Because if that’s the case, you have to go out to eat before you’re hungry or else it won’t get here until your stomach seriously grumbles and hates you. That’s just silly. Yes, the restaurant was full but it seemed like every table was tapping their feet waiting for their meal. Gordon Ramsay would’ve exploded.

When it did arrive, my mofongo didn’t look very appetizing. While they’re not going to get many points for presentation, I really could care less if it tastes delicious. Some of my favorite foods in the world aren’t exactly works of art. However, in this case, it looks the way it tastes. The plantains weren’t quite…finished. Not only do they manage to be chewy, which is as weird as complaining about chewy mashed potatoes, but they lack seasoning and tasted more like I should be laying down tiles with it rather than putting it in my mouth.
The pork didn’t seem very roasted at all and the only flavor that came through was salt. Making a killer roast pork doesn’t take much…a simple marinade or rub and some time in the oven and you’ve already got a decent product that stands up even if you make it in the morning. This was just terrible. Along with the awful fried plantain mash, this was probably one of the worst things I’ve ever eaten. After a few bites, I just had zero desire to eat any more of this. Since I barely touched it, I packed the rest intending to give it to one of the homeless guys outside. Who knows…maybe it’s delicious and I’m crazy but they were nowhere to be found when I left. Seems like they read my mind and even they didn’t want any part of this mofongo. I don’t know if I would enjoy this dish if it was made better with better ingredients but I do know that this was a terrible example of it. So terrible, in fact, that I probably wouldn’t bother trying it again unless it wasn’t my money.

Another dish at the table was the churrasco, which is a grilled 12-ounce skirt steak. For $14.95, it comes with two sides, which include rice and beans, fried potatoes, and fried plantains. Like the mofongo, this was also all kinds of awful. Medium rare means a pink center but this was more of a blue rare, which really doesn’t work with this cut of beef or with a steak this thin. The outside is seared well but past a thin layer, it was straight up raw.

Now I believe that if it isn’t at least slightly bloody, you’re murdering your steak and I enjoy the odd blue rare steak if it’s done well but this was just a result of poor cooking. I had no idea beef could be this flavorless. It wasn’t marinated at all and all kinds of chewy. It didn’t taste particularly fresh either. I later would hear that this restaurant was closed for a few days as a result of a refrigerator problem. I don’t know if that’s true but that would explain why nothing tasted very fresh but at the same time, none of us got food poisoning either.

The lone positive to come from Orozco’s is that they had cans of a decent local (I assume) light beer called Medalla for $2.00 each. It’s not spectacular but for two bucks, it’s nice and refreshing. Still, when I consider I could just go next door to a convenience store, get a six-pack and never have to visit this restaurant…I’d go with that option instead.

I’ve come to the conclusion that Orozco’s either had a REALLY off-night or that the traffic is a result of the many people they send into the surrounding streets handing out menus to tourists that don’t know better like me. I didn’t get sick but even though I was starving going in and had to wait an hour for my food, I had no appetite afterwards. Orozco’s has all the appearances of a great local place to eat but nothing during my visit gave me any reason to ever go there again. I’d sooner eat at the Burger King or Dunkin’ Donuts on the same block than experience this place again.

I feel like I should know when burgers became fancy because it had to have happened sometime in the 28 years I’ve been alive. When I was a kid, burgers were things that came from fast food chains or on occasion, family restaurants when you got tired of the chicken fingers or spaghetti. I can’t remember when this whole thing started but somewhere along the line, burgers became an option at more upscale restaurants where you should lay napkins across your lap and there’s more than one fork on the table. I’m not saying that’s a bad thing. Like with just about all food, nothing really matters other than whether or not it tastes good. If the ingredients and preparation justify the extra cost, I’m always more than willing to put on my fancy pants and give a gourmet version of our favorite backyard barbecue food a try as I have in the past many times. I’ve eaten some really awesome but often just silly burgers…some stuffed with fois gras and short ribs, some that were a ridiculous $60+, and recently, one made from kangaroo so how does Romer’s Burger Bar stack up?

I believe Romer’s has been open for about a year now in the trendy Kitsilano area of Vancouver. As you can see, the space looks like a modern sports bar with flat-screens on the wall and mood lighting everywhere. Obviously, this is no greasy spoon with chrome cushioned bar stools. At least the music is subdued (although strangely some songs are REALLY LOUD compared to others…MP3s not normalized maybe?) and there isn’t any of that obnoxious UNCE-UNCE-UNCE music like at some other similar establishments. Yes, you can be a hip restaurant without catering to the fist pumping crowd.

Because we had a party of 12, we were seated in the private party room downstairs, which has plenty of room to seat about 25-30 people comfortably. It’s an interesting room that has me thinking it’s some kind of mix of bank vault and recording studio. There’s fake safety deposit boxes on the walls and there’s a red chair in the hallway for no apparent reason.

As we were a large table, Romer’s said we had to order off a set menu. You have a choice of three different ones which are $18, $20 and $24 a person. I’m sure we could add whatever we wanted off the regular menu but we had to order the set meal, which was made up of three appetizers to share, a salad, a burger and fries. I don’t know how they would handle this with other parties but basically four people shared three appetizers, a salad, two baskets of fries and four burgers, which we sliced up so we could each try a quarter of all four.

We started with a Threesome ($7 off the menu)…get your minds out of the gutter…which was a platter of spicy kosher dills, warm roasted nuts and garlic green olives. You can actually order the pickles and nuts for $2 individually while the olives are $4.

I’m just not a fan of olives. I’ll eat them on…things but just not alone. I have the same issue with tomatoes, which I really don’t like eating by themselves but really enjoy as a complementary component of something bigger. I don’t pick them off of pizza or salads but I’m just not a fan of them alone so I skipped these. A few of my friends nibbled on a couple of them but none of us are big fans so I’m afraid I can’t really give an opinion here.

The nuts are a combination of peanuts, Brazil nuts, cashews, almonds and I think hazelnuts. They’re warm and toasty with a little kick of spice. I wouldn’t mind a little bit of salt in there but these were tasty and great for just munching on while you’re talking with your friends and drinking as you wait for your burgers.

Pickles are a little like olives for me in that I’ll eat them but on other stuff. I usually enjoy Korean or Japanese pickles but seldom your standard cucumber pickles. These were really good though with a nice crunch and a bit of a sour note before you get into that spiciness. You wouldn’t really know just by looking at them but these things can pack some decent heat. Not enough that you’ll be crying for milk but enough to keep things interesting. I grabbed a couple of these to enjoy with my burger later on…and I don’t even really like pickles!

Our second appetizer was a basket of sea salt and toasted pepper chicken wings ($9). They were just okay, really. It’s hard to make fried chicken not taste good and these were right on par. The outside is crisp and the meat is moist but I didn’t think there was anything particularly special about them. I will say that when you simply season something like this with salt and pepper, there really needs to be well seasoned or it becomes very plain and bland. I actually prefer my wings with no ridiculous sauces and just a good amount of salt and pepper but these were underseasoned and just average. I hope you get at least a dozen or a pound or something of these in a $9 order otherwise, you’re really better off at Phnom Penh.

Edamame is one of my favorite snack foods. I polished off a pound or two of these things a day when I was in Japan. They’re delicious, good for you and great with beer…three qualities that usually don’t go together. Our third starter was a dish of edamame in a sweet tamarind chili sauce ($5).

I actually really enjoyed the tamarind sauce, which is a little sweet and sour with a tiny bit of heat.

After we finished off our starters, we moved on to salads. I believe we got three different ones but I didn’t see the one at the end of the table and only tried the two closer to me. This is a wild baby arugula salad ($3 for a side portion) with shaved Parmesan and fresh squeezed lemon. I could swear there wasn’t any lemon in this and without that hit of sour freshness, the bitterness of the arugula is a little overwhelming with only the salty Reggiano cheese to fend it off. Luckily, together with the vine-ripened tomatoes of the second salad ($4), I balanced out the bitterness with the sweet, fresh tomatoes.

The burgers arrived on a long platter, sliced in half. All of the burgers at Romer’s are made with “all-natural Heritage Farms range-fed Angus beef, natural Fraser Valley pork, turkey, free-run chicken or wild salmon…” so I expected quality when it came to the patties. They also all feature the same brioche bun, which is as light and fluffy as they come. The brioche absorbs flavor without getting too mushy but personally, I like crispier, chibata-style sort of buns, lightly toasted since they have some substance and are solid enough to hold even the wettest parts of a burger together without getting soggy. I wish I knew about the option to use lettuce leaves instead of a bun. I would’ve gone for that since I always think there’s an excessive amount of bread with burgers.

I tried the Magic Mushroom ($11) first, which is a beef burger topped with portobello mushrooms, arugula, herb garlic Boursin cheese and caramelized onions. There was a real lack of mushrooms on the burger I split with my three friends sitting with me and we only found a couple of small strips of portobello in it. I mean, it’s there but there isn’t enough of it to make it a mushroom burger. I enjoyed the creamy cheese and the decently cooked burger patty, which was a slight bit past medium well (they don’t ask how you want your burgers cooked) but still quite juicy.

I don’t think I’ve ever ordered turkey as a burger. Mostly because I enjoy my meat slightly less cooked than most people and you just can’t do that with turkey. I’ve never thought lean meats work well in burgers as you really need that fat to moisten and flavor everything and the So Cal Turkey Burger ($10) is a good example. The turkey is a little on the dry side but unlike the Magic Mushroom burger, the toppings including avocado, tomatoes, watercress, and red onion are abundant, giving the burger a nice fresh crunch. The soft avocados fill in for the missing fat on the turkey. The burger isn’t lacking flavor but it’s light compared to the heavy handed, bacon and cheese covered everything else.

Speaking of bacon, it comes thick and crispy on the Rodeo Star ($11). Along with the Angus beef patty, the Rodeo Star comes with thick-sliced applewood bacon, red onions, vine-ripened tomatoes, horseradish, cilantro and barbecue sauce. The barbecue sauce tastes like the primary component of this burger…actually, it’s quite difficult to taste anything else over it which is too bad because I got a nice thick slice of crispy bacon in there. It would be better if the sauce wasn’t so sweet. It seems like it’s all sweet with a little smoke. I really could’ve used something to balance it out but it just drowns out all the other parts of the burger. What horseradish? Cilantro? Where? I enjoyed this one the least of the four.

This oozy concoction is the Wicked Deadly Cheeseburger ($11). Along with the five cheeses on top of the Angus beef burger, there isn’t a whole lot. Just some red onion, greens and some Russian tarragon dressing. The cheeses are drippy goodness and work great with the burger. I’m not quite sure which types of cheese are in there but whatever…they’ve all sort of melted together anyways. My only complain would be there isn’t quite enough cheese here. There’s a halfway decent amount but if you’re going to call something a Wicked Deadly Cheeseburger, I’d expect that thing to be just exploding with cheese. The flavors are all there and all good but some more intensity (maybe a little Roquefort or another blue cheese?) would’ve been nice.

After eating all that, I couldn’t really deal with the fries. I’ve heard good things about the various specialty flavored fries but the standard ones are just okay. They’re decently crispy but still slightly oily. We got a couple of the dips as well, such as the bacon mayo ($0.60) which I wasn’t too impressed with. Surprisingly it didn’t have much bacon flavor…even though I found several chunks of bacon in it. Some of my friends said the chipotle mayo was rather good but I was full enough at that point that I couldn’t be bothered to try it all the way on the other side of the room.

Service was excellent. In some other restaurants, sitting in a private room means a member of the staff takes your order and then maybe checks in once in a blue moon. Our waitress stopped by every few minutes. She didn’t come by and ask if we needed anything every single time…that would be annoying but she would walk by every so often so that if we needed anything, she was there. Our food didn’t arrive right away but it did arrive quite quickly. It didn’t really matter since we were not in any particular hurry so we just sat around chatting without really noticing whether or not our food was slow. It really wasn’t…looking back at my pictures, our appetizers arrived about 15 minutes after we sat down and our burgers came 45 minutes later. Keep in mind that we had edamame, wings and salads in between so while our server apologized for the wait, I didn’t feel like that was necessary. However, it’s nice to know the restaurant cares enough to stress about those extra few minutes.

Our set menu was $20 a person and came out to roughly $30 after we were done (gratuity is automatic for large groups…and we paid for our friend who’s birthday it was). Individually, had you ordered everything that came on the set menu and split between 4 people, it’s roughly the same price ($78 / 4). That’s rather decent value for money as we got to try a lot of different things on the menu.

The burgers were cooked well and in general, while some of the items were underwhelming, nothing was necessarily bad. My only real criticism is that the individual toppings on each burger…there isn’t quite enough for the burger to really taste the way you think it will after reading the menu. The Magic Mushroom burger doesn’t quite have enough mushroom and the Wicked Deadly Cheeseburger isn’t as deadly as I would like. It’s not that they’re not good but those names just make you expect more.

I’m told I missed a few showstoppers at Romer’s like their donuts and the pork burger so I will definitely be back. Dare I say it? Even that vegetarian burger with the portobello mushrooms, grilled eggplant and roasted zucchini looks delicious! This is an impressive burger joint. You can tell a lot of planning, thought and attention to detail went into not only the food but just the whole place. I don’t think it’s quite “there” yet…I think there’s room for improvement but I’m certainly interested enough for a return visit.

Hoi An is a great example of a restaurant I wouldn’t have known of or gone to without the help of our friend the internet. That’s right, the internet is not just for funny cat videos and Rebecca Black covers. Despite working a block or two away for four years, like Dona Cata, I had never ventured in that direction until now. It seems I’m not the only one though. If you decide to go to Hoi An Cafe, you should probably know that it’s quite popular at the moment even though hot bowls of pho don’t really go well with sweltering summer heat. Our party of 10+ had a long table all to ourselves but many people were waiting outside for what seemed like ages for a spot in the small Vietnamese restaurant. Is it worth it?

Personally, I’ve never though of “pho restaurant” as synonymous with “clean”. In fact, many of them aren’t for people that use doilies. Pho Lan, for example, was known between my friends and I as “Dirty Pho” for the perpetually greasy tables and sticky floors. Actually, it’s quite a bit cleaner now than when I first started going there if you can believe that. No one goes for pho thinking they’re going to get three-star service…or even one-star service…but if you want a hot bowl of rare beefy goodness, those are the places you turn to first.

None of that is true about Hoi An. The walls are white and I’m almost sure that was the color they’re supposed to be. There’s modern looking paintings and LCD televisions on the wall rather than unidentified stains. The wait staff is friendly, quick, mostly got our orders right and we almost convinced a smitten Aaron Koo to use “The Naked Man” maneuver to possibly win one of them over. What’s most surprising is that I ordered something that wasn’t really on the menu (on the recommendations of…the internet) and instead of telling me to go to hell, they already knew what I was talking about and were happy to get the same thing for Greg and Stephen as well. What on earth was going on?! I don’t know about you but this seems like The Twilight Zone if no one gets my order completely wrong or charges for having nice days. We expect the grime and poor service because that’s usually where the best food is. Does Hoi An’s food match the smiles and cleanliness?

The menu isn’t quite as extensive as many other Vietnamese restaurants in town. There’s only a few different dishes and a small list of appetizers but really, no one orders half the stuff on the menu of other pho restaurants anyways so keeping it small probably works to their advantage.

The spring rolls looked more like the sort Chinese people never order at a Chinese restaurant and not the crispy fried tubes of goodness you usually find with pho.

The filling is actually quite nice and the wrapper is crispy but for $5.50 for 3, I’d rather have the usual kind of spring rolls I get at Happy Pho and the like. I saw another type of spring roll that had a whole shrimp in each and that looked like a much better dish. I’ll probably order that next time instead.

The popcorn chicken ($5.50) was something I expected from a Taiwanese bubble tea joint and tasted a lot like what I’d get at, for example, Twinkle 2. The chicken is coated with a layer of crispy, crunchy goodness and is juicy on the inside.

I would like a little more flavor…perhaps better seasoning right out of the deep fryer but as enjoyable as any other examples of the same dish.

The main event was this, a Hoi An Special Mi Quang ($7.75), which is pork and shrimp broth served with wide yellow rice noodles, pork, shrimp and mixed green herbs. However, this is a “#1 with #2 sauce”, which means the pork is sauteed and mixed with a sauce before it goes on top of the noodles.

It’s an interesting take on “dry pho”, similar to that of Phnom Penh or Pho Thai Hoa. The noodles are thick and wide but cooked to a nice bouncy al dente.

There’s also lots of bits of pork, four or five shrimp and mixed with crushed nuts, bean sprouts and various herbs which made for a lot of interesting flavors.

There’s already bean sprouts in the bowl so there’s no need to add more but we still got a plate of stuff we’re supposed to mix in with the noodles. I’m told the stuff that looks like chow mein on top is banana blossoms (really?), which have a strange, slightly bitter flavor to them and I didn’t really notice it after mixing it in with my dish since the bean sprouts provided enough crunch already. We noticed that there were mint leaves in the greens, which gave some bites shocks of refreshing flavor and it works really well in contrast with the savory, almost caramelized flavor of the pork and sauce. A rough chop of the mint would’ve been better, I think, to meld flavors a bit more instead of getting the odd bite with a whole leaf but still, interesting and delicious. Also, doesn’t that plate of greens look like the freshest, cleanest plate of veggies you’ve ever seen at a Vietnamese restaurant?

There were also these crispy, black sesame (and puffed rice, I think?) crackers which we used to scoop bits of pork and nuts at the end. All that ordered the Mi Quang loved it. Aaron almost licked his bowl clean.

I can’t really compare it to the dry pho found elsewhere because those have a different variety of ingredients (liver, for example, is missing at Hoi An) but it’s a great bowl of noodles and you wouldn’t have to do much convincing to get me to come back for another.

We also had the usual ice coffee and lime sodas, which weren’t any different from the stuff we get elsewhere.

Hoi An is a bit of an anomaly as we expect pho restaurants to be the Asian equivalent of a greasy spoon diner. No frills and questionable cleanliness but good food. Hoi An, on the other hand, looks like it was opened yesterday and still has very good food. The appetizers I tried were either slightly disappointing or average but my Mi Quang was fantastic. Prices were roughly on par with other pho places but cleanliness, service and decor were all a notch above and the staff speak perfect English. Everything tasted fresh (none of the veggies had any sign of wilting and everything looked like it was washed) and prepared with care. Heck, the Mi Quang even looks quite nice in terms of presentation.

My only complaints are perhaps that there’s not much parking in the area and the restaurant is quite small so it might be frustrating to get a table. Also, Hoi An doesn’t have air conditioning at the moment but the ceiling fans and open doors keep the air moving inside so that it wasn’t much of a problem. Still…eating a steaming bowl of soup on a hot summer day might prove this to be a problem but otherwise, this is a great little Vietnamese restaurant…one that I’ll be going back to soon.

Pho has become such a staple food for the Vancouver diet. It’s simple, delicious and you’re seldom more than 5 minutes away from a place that makes a decent bowl. Despite the market being saturated with an almost excessive number of Vietnamese noodle places (I’ve seen three or four in the same complex before), it seems like a new one is popping up every week. Pho 99 isn’t actually new but it isn’t one of my more familiar pho places so I decided to give it a try. Unlike so many other places in this city, it’s actually open quite late. I believe this one on Alexandra Road in Richmond is open til at least midnight but I’ll go check and amend this later.

Pho 99 is actually a chain with five locations in the Lower Mainland and a couple more over the border in Washington. The inside is cleaner than most…although that’s not saying much considering how poorly maintained some pho places are. At Pho 99, you can place your arms on the table without them getting all greasy, the chairs only squeak a little bit and the floor looked like it was mopped at some point during that day so that’s already in the top 5% I’m sure.

The menu is…well, not only is it as thick as a very long children’s book but it’s confusing as well. Things are listed multiple times because of the combo deals and it’s all spread over several pages so figuring out what you can order with what can get a little tricky. Prices aren’t always listed next to menu items either for some reason and certain configurations of meats in your pho aren’t available with combos and…you get my point. However, the menu has all the usual things you’d expect from a good Vietnamese noodle house and the prices all seem in the reasonable range. The combo deals in particular are very good value, all of which are under $10.

For that price, you get a bowl of pho, an appetizer and a drink. That may not seem like much but consider that the bowl of pho is usual about $7 and the drink around $3, you’re basically getting a free appetizer out of the mix. The exact same order at our usual Dot Com Pho spots would be $15 easily.

The pho is the usual…tasty, warming and familiar. The broth isn’t as good as some other places I’ve been to but it’s got good flavor. I can’t tell for sure about how much MSG is in there but I didn’t notice it too much. The beef is tender, not too fatty even when you get flank and brisket and there’s a decent amount of it. A standard issue bowl of pho…nothing spectacular but it’ll do.

This is a lemon soda, which is probably the easiest drink in the world to make but we order it anyways. Again, nothing too exciting. Not super sweet like some other places make and the bottom wasn’t full of undissolved sugar so maybe better than average?

And these…are the chicken wings I got as part of the combo. Wow. These were much better than I thought they might be. Perfectly fried to a crispy golden brown on the outside and very, very juicy on the inside. They’re well seasoned with salt and pepper and delicious. They’re not quite on the same level as the ones at Phnom Penh but just super tasty and flavorful. They’re as good as the ones from Wu Tung at the Aberdeen Center food court and maybe with a little lime and white pepper for dip, they’d be even better.

Pho 99 isn’t the best pho place in the city but it’s a solid choice for a good meal and the combo deals are very good value for money. Order the wings!

I wasn’t aware there was such a thing as burnt ends on the menu the last time I went to Hog Shack. Actually, I don’t think it’s on the menu. It’s a sort of speakeasy item spoken of in hushed whispers on Twitter and I’m sure most people who visit aren’t aware that this sort of thing is even on the menu. They aren’t available all the time so food bloggers like myself are risking our own supplies by telling you folks but I guess that’s part of the job.

My encounter with Hog Shack’s burnt ends was actually entirely spontaneous. I was passing by Hog Shack one afternoon and the burnt ends just popped into my head. Hog Shack is one of the more active restaurant Twitter accounts around the city so confirmation that burnt ends were in fact available came quickly. “10 minutes.” the waitress said after taking my order and double checking that the off-the-menu dish hadn’t sold out in the 3 minutes it took me to get there after getting a response from the restaurant.

I first heard of burnt ends on Man vs. Food and it sounded like possibly the best thing in the world. See that face? That’s my face when they were cutting into these things. They’re basically the tips of brisket where fat has been melting and crisping up as the meat is smoked. If you’ve ever ordered cha siu and gotten the crispy end piece, that’s sort of a similar idea.

I don’t really know how to describe the burnt ends to someone that hasn’t tried it. Each piece tastes like an entire barbecue with many different flavors and textures. You have lean meat and fat fusing together over what I imagine is a long period of time, creating something different altogether. It’s juicy, fatty, smoky, sweet, and tangy. Just hold a piece in your mouth for a couple seconds without chewing and flavor just seems to seep and drip everywhere. The smokiness is actually quite intense. My hands still smell like I’d been cooking for hours. Great stuff…although probably not something you want to eat often or your arteries will scream.

This is the sort of food that makes vegetarians cover their eyes in horror but for those of us that appreciate the fact that animals are delicious, this is…well, this is why meat is awesome. An order of burnt ends with two sides will only set you back $16. Yes, I got coleslaw and yam fries to go with my burnt ends and if you care about how that stuff tastes, then read my previous review…but this post is all about the burnt ends. There’s no other way to say it…this is pornography. Pornography for carnivores.

I dare someone to make raw vegan food that looks this delicious.

This is a restaurant opening (or rather…re-opening?) event so it is not a good indication of service or value since I did not have to pay for any of the food or drinks. This isn’t really a review…just a quick, fun post after some drunken debauchery.

I received an invite to an opening event for one of the newer restaurants under the Gyoza King banner, G-Be Izakaya, located at the Grand Villa Casino in Burnaby. Little did I know the trouble we’d be getting into later on but hey, fun is usually more fun if you don’t see it coming.

G-Be isn’t a particularly large restaurant, probably around 10 tables for 4 and a large long table down the middle. However, that didn’t stop them from stuffing the place full of people. Getting inside was a struggle already as we were packed like sardines around the long table that the servers were using to set down plates of food. The kitchen staff seemed undermanned and overwhelmed by the number of guests in house and struggled to get food out quick enough to satisfy the masses. Seriously, food barely touched the table before it was all snatched by a flurry of chopsticks (and…er…sometimes fingers…by some people) and often, plates barely made it out the kitchen door before they were empty.

The decor is a sort of modern take on Japanese decor with solid woods, lots of black, bare lights and origami hanging from the ceiling.

The first thing on the table was fresh, homemade tofu, which tasted light and fresh. I liked it even though, as a carnivore, tofu isn’t my thing.

There were several types of roll around, including these that were covered with a thin layer of fish on top. The rice was a little loose and everything was slightly mushy but flavorful.

These were a sort of savory cream puff with little puffs of pastry filled with various seafood and sauces. I tried a couple and…well, they didn’t work for me at first but they’re great after several beers and bottles of sake.

The one thing there was plenty of was slices of rare beef, which flowed out of the kitchen at a steady rate but still snatched up quickly as soon as it’s set on the table.

I don’t know what was special about this beef but it was perfectly cooked and simply dressed with a bit of a syrupy reduction. The beef slices were tender and delicious.

The night was a bit of a gong show. This is what the table looked like most of the night…empty. I mean, I eventually ditched my plate and just went with chopsticks and then…well, we gave up entirely on trying to get at the food and instead raided the open bar. With a crowd full of Twitter personalities and food bloggers like Kevin of 604foodtography mixed with a flurry of alcohol is just a recipe for disaster…which may or may not have ended up with us drawing various gonads with sharpies on a drunk guy sleeping while we settled down with bubble tea afterwards.

I tried enough that I enjoyed to go back to G-Be Izakaya some other time when it isn’t overflowing with people and short on food so I’ll reserve any real judgement for another time.

I was only able to make it to a few of the CCFCC 2011 events because I had a load of scheduling conflicts (the President’s Ball was at the same time as Game 7 of the Stanley Cup Finals…) but I’m glad I managed to get to the ones I did. I didn’t get downtown to ride the Canada Line with everyone else but since lunch at The Rain Flower Restaurant was located in Richmond, I made it in time for the Dragon Feast of the Century. No, we didn’t eat any dragons. Yes, I was a bit disappointed at that too.

Usually at these events, I’m seated with other members of the local media, most of whom I’m pretty familiar with by now but this time, I found myself at a table full of young chefs from Vancouver Community College. It was an interesting time. We shared some laughs and talked food. However, I was surprised at how much each of them refused to eat. I thought that chef’s would at least have a taste of everything to give it a shot. Weirds me out a little that people working in the food industry would not eat fish or crab…but I digress.

I’m not really familiar with the “15 Dragon Chefs” but according to the CCFCC, they are:

Chef Chi Ling Tam –Executive Chef of Golden Swan Seafood Restaurant
Chef Wing Kuen Wu – Executive Chef of Rain Flower Seafood Restaurant
Chef Tony Luk – Executive Chef of Jade Seafood Restaurant
Chef Sam Leung – Executive Chef at Dynasty Seafood Restaurant
Chef Mike Kin On Li –Executive Chef at Imperial Seafood Restaurant
Chef Kent Wong –Head Chef of Imperial Seafood Restaurant
Chef Henry Yu—Executive chef at Dragon View Seafood Restaurant
Chef Ho Lim Cho – Executive of Floata Seafood Restaurant
Chef Garley Leung – Master Dim Sum Chef Dynasty Seafood Restaurant
Chef Jian Ming Lai –Dim Sum Head Chef, Rain Flower Seafood Restaurant
Chef Peter Chen –Dim Sum Head Chef, Golden Swan Seafood Restaurant
Chef Siu Kuen Wong –Chef, Shiang Garden Restaurant
Chef Chun Ming Huang –Executive Sous Chef, Shiang Garden Seafood Restaurant
Chef Patrick Mo –Executive Chef, Black Sheep Pub & Restaurant

Our first course for lunch was an appetizer plate with a duo of drunken squab breast and Nanjing style arctic char. The white balls with black dots are dragon fruit…very sweet and delicate tasting. The arctic char is left pink, almost raw in the center and served cold. Almost everyone at the table agreed it was delicious along with the drunken squab breast, which had quite an intense amount of alcohol in it and also served cold.

Crab and lobster for lunch?! Sign me up! The next course was a dungeness crab and lobster in jade purse. A jade purse is a vegetable leaf holding the lobster and crab meat together, letting all those juices intermingle and soak in. It’s hard to not make crab or lobster taste good but this was another exceptional dish with loads of flavor in there. My only complaint was that the temperature was a bit tepid but since they were serving 30-40 tables at the same time, I can understand.

Temperature was much more of a problem with the next dish, a braised Fraser Valley duck breast, empress style. The duck is served on beds of tofu with a mix of mushrooms. Unfortunately, the duck breast was cold and dry along with the tofu and mushrooms so it wasn’t particularly pleasant. The duck tasted alright and the mushrooms were earthy and crunchy but all together, it didn’t work.

This is called a tenderloin teaser in filigree cup. It’s chunks of beef served with asparagus, peppers and pineapple…classic flavor combos, lightening up the richness and peppery beef with fruity sweetness and crunch.

The next dish was this yin yang steamed eggplant, which did not win over many people at our table even though many of us said we love eggplant. Ours was a bit overdone and mushy, the outer skin was quite tough and overall, everything was a little too salty. Like a couple previous dishes, it might’ve been better if there was a bit more heat.

Our last course was a seafood siu bang, which literally translates as seafood roasted biscuit. The pastry was light and crispy, filled with a creamy, mayo-like sauce and chunks of seafood. I didn’t get much seafood in mine but it was warm, toasty and actually quite good.

Dessert was a longevity date cake, a sort of jello-like dish with a light, fruity flavor with a hint of tea. We all enjoyed it but thought it could’ve been better. Personally, I would love to see someone do a modern take on this stuff…maybe serving it warm with a cookie and some vanilla ice cream like a sort of Asian apple pie.

It was a good lunch at The Rain Flower but I was a little put off by how much they were charging people for drinks, even $3-4 for generic bottled water or regular Chinese tea. I know we’re eating courtesy of the conference but I don’t ever remember paying $5 for a pot of tea.

Looking forward to next year. I’ll mark the days off my calendar when I find out when CCFCC 2012 is.

I was lucky enough to receive an invitation to the Canadian Culinary Federation conference this year, a week long event full of seminars with esteemed chefs as speakers and receptions featuring some great food. Unfortunately, there were a couple of scheduling conflicts with the Vancouver Canucks playoff run so I couldn’t go to everything but I did get the chance to taste some amazing dishes and meet some interesting people in the industry.

The first thing you see when you get in the door is a massive ice sculpture. There were actually several large ice sculpture but only this one dispensed X-four vodka. No seriously…it was a giant block of ice with a tap in it. Now that’s a pretty extravagant way to keep your drinks frosty.

I started with some of the lighter offerings around the room. Can’t go wrong with freshly shucked raw oysters!

There were two different tables with assortments of cheese.

I only tried the plate from the Youth Team Canada, which is a Qualicum goat’s cheese, braised organic cippolini onions, mulled tomato and micro-greens with a salt and vinegar cracker and emulsified chimichurri. Everything on the plate works well together with sweet, sour, creamy, crunchy, mild, sharp and all kinds of textures…plus it’s a good looking plate as well. It’s paired with a Fraser Valley apple cider Tom Collins, which I thought had a strange gingery taste to it.

From Ontario, this is a pan-fried potato and goat cheese perogy with sauteed shiitake mushrooms, candied double smoked bacon and scallion cream. While I enjoyed the mushrooms, I found the perogy very bland and under seasoned. Unfortunate since I absolutely love cheese and potato perogies.

Another cool idea that fell a little short was this…pulled pork muffin. No, seriously…Alberta’s entry was pulled pork in a pinto cornmeal muffin topped with a maple butter cream frosting and smoked chipotle crackle. Now, I’ve had bacon cheesecake so I’m no stranger to mixing sweet with savory but I was just not impressed here. I didn’t really get the pulled pork part of it (there’s a tiny little chunk in the center) so it was just like a sweet, cornmeal muffin to me. I just didn’t understand what the intention of this dish was, I guess.

I did enjoy the Alberta Amber’s Brewing Company Sap Vampire Maple Lagera Simple, though. I don’t know why they can’t just call it “beer” either.

Saskatchewan came with a mustard cured duck bacon, Lac La Ronge wild rice and barley galette with carmine jewel cherry preserve. The duck was slightly tough but tasted okay. The rice, however, was a little too bland even with the salty duck on top of it.

Representing the Okanagan was a juniper cured venison bresadla with arugula and crispy shallots. I love cured meat and this is a good way to enjoy it but the venison is a tad dry for me. I would’ve preferred more of the cured prosciutto texture.

It’s hard to go wrong with putting anything on your macaroni and cheese, especially something as awesome as lobster. Prince Edward Island prepared a creamy mac and cheese, full of great little crunchy, overbaked pieces of melty cheese and a few chunks of succulent lobster. Not particularly creative but no complaints about the flavor.

Manitoba describes their dish as Manitoban smoked goldeye terrine with beet and goat cheese puree and sauteed pickerel cheeks, micro greens and a flax seed vinaigrette. The pickerel cheek was cooked nicely and seasoned well but the smoked goldeye terrine was tepid and lacked flavor. Absolutely stone cold but maybe it was just mine but I didn’t go back to try again.

I spoke to many people at the event and mostly everyone agreed that the best dish was from Quebec. This is a quail stuffed with fiddleheads, wrapped in boar bacon with celeriac and apple puree. The quail is tender and juicy and I don’t even really know what fiddleheads are but oh man, the stuffing inside the quail is just delicious. Mixed with the creamy puree and this is just a fantastic dish. I had seconds and probably could’ve had room for another if I didn’t try just about everything in the room. I’m sure I missed a couple but it was a busy night and a couple tables shut down before the end of it.

I’m not much a dessert guy but even I had to try the dish from BC, a hazelnut s’more with Philadelphia Cream Cheese and Christie graham crumbs, dark chocolate and marshmallows. Alone it would’ve been a very good dessert already, full of chocolate and hazelnut flavor…rich and velvety but paired with a Canterbury iced hazelnut coffee sealed the deal.

And I’m not even much of a coffee drinker. I’m much more into tea so fortunately for me, there was a big spread of various teas from Silk Road Tea in Victoria. I had an iced tea that I could swear tasted of ginger but didn’t have any in it and an oolong tea that was perfect for winding down after sampling so many different dishes.

Fantastic event put on by the CCFCC and while there were a few dishes that fell flat, there were a few that were flat out amazing. Someone call Quebec and tell them to ship me some more of that quail.