sweetgeorgia

Beyond Robson

Ahh, breakfast this morning was a potato focaccia from Terra Breads factory (on East 5th) on the way to the Vancouver Guild meeting. All those simple carbs are running straight through my bloodstream and I’m in a food kind of mood right now.

We are lucky to have a pretty extensive Vancouver blog here called Beyond Robson that details all the inner goings on of the city in terms of music, art, food and generally cool stuff. But when visitors come to Vancouver, it’s hard to refer them to a site like that because they’ll have no idea how to decipher it. It also tends to be a bit political in it’s reviews and opinions and so, is kind of more for locals. So, when people say they are coming to Vancouver, I send them a list of my most favourite restaurants and places in Vancouver.

The Foundation Eatery
2301 Main St., Vancouver, BC
http://www.foodvancouver.com/restaurant-review.php?restaurant=508
Vegetarian, but amazing. The very best nachos (and guacamole) in Vancouver (served after 5pm). Ask marirob… they went twice.

Chambar
562 Beatty Street, Crosstown, Vancouver BC
http://www.chambar.com/
Belgian beer and food. Mussels Congolese… really really good. It seems like it might be a bit pretentious, but the restaurant is really quite casual. “Crosstown” is just outside of Gastown, near downtown.

Grub on Main
4328 Main Street, Vancouver
http://grubonmain.ca/
One of the newest restaurants on Main street. Everything is super fresh… and they make a random vegan dessert every day which is remarkably good. That photo to the left… Prohibition Punch in old-school punch bowls with melamine ladles. A combination of Pimm’s lime syrup, ginger beer, cucumber, strawberries, bitters and apple slices… perfect for a warm sunny afternoon on Main Street.

Sweet Revenge
4160 Main Street, Vancouver
http://www.sweet-revenge.ca/main.html
For late night dessert!

Dragon Ball Tea House
1007 W King Edward, Vancouver
http://www.dinehere.ca/restaurant.asp?r=300
This place is good for late night bubble tea cravings… you’ll have to wait your turn though.

Finch’s Tea & Coffee House
353 West Pender, Vancouver
http://www.dinehere.ca/restaurant.asp?r=808
This is my absolute favourite café in Vancouver. I’ve written about it many times here… They make really wonderful baguette sandwiches and fresh soup every day. Masala chai tea. Everything is made fresh, so sometimes the lunch lineups can be long and frustrating (since they always run out of seating too)… but I think it’s worth it. This is just outside Gastown, so if you are visiting old historic downtown Vancouver, this might fit in…

Slickity Jim’s Chat & Chew
2513 Main Street, Vancouver
http://www.vancouverplus.ca/portal/profile.do?profileID=671929
Mostly brunch/breakfast things. During the weekdays that you’ll be here, it most likely will be easy to get in. On the weekends, the lineup is insane.

People emailing me about Vancouver usually want to visit yarn stores too, so the ones that I send them to are Three Bags Full, Urban Yarns, and Maiwa’s new yarn store on Granville Island at the Net Loft.

This summer, the Vancouver Art Gallery is also showing a pretty massive exhibit, “Vermeer, Rembrandt and the Golden Age of Dutch Art” which includes a single Vermeer painting and over one hundred pieces of artwork from the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. If you’re in Vancouver sometime before September 13th, this is worthy of at least one visit. I’ve been twice already and it’s still not enough to absorb all of the work. The detail and skill in some of the works is inconceivable.

And sort of related, is the Saturday Circus that meets outside of the Vancouver Art Gallery on Saturdays… I found Christa Giles, local knitwear designer and knitting instructor, there teaching people the art of hooping this past weekend!

And there are a few newer-to-me places where I would take my empty stomach on any night of the week:

Jang Mo Jib
1719 Robson St, Vancouver
http://tamarindandthyme.wordpress.com/2008/06/19/korean-food-at-jang-mo-jib/
Handmade Korean dumplings. Hot pot that is to die for.

Book Kyung Ban Jeoum
1638 Robson, Vancouver
http://chowhound.chow.com/topics/515627
It has the Korean version of my beloved Za Jiang Mein. Wheat noodles smothered in black bean sauce and onions. It’s item number one on the menu and rings up under $7. I could eat this every day of my life, happily.

Motomachi Shokudo
740 Denman Street, Vancouver
http://www.beyondrobson.com/restaurants/2009/02/motomachi_shokudo/
If you can’t wait in the line up for ramen at Kintaro on Denman, go to Motomachi. It’s run by the same people… just a little bit more upscale and organic.

I’m off to find some dinner now before tonight’s spinning class…

San Diego and the all fish taco diet

Before we can even think about the trade show, yarn stuff, crocheting or weaving… we have to talk about the fish tacos. Having never been to San Diego, I was unaware (but quickly learned — thank you, Mari!) that the signature dish of the area is fish tacos. And by an incredible stroke of luck, my $17/night hostel was located a block away from (what is claimed to be) the home of the world’s best fish taco. South Beach Bar & Grille is located in Ocean Beach, a little old school beach community just a little northwest of downtown San Diego. The small, palm tree-lined streets are punctuated by smoke shops, body piercing parlours, Irish bars, and of course, surf shops.

I loved this spot. My day rate at the hostel cost less than the breakfast at the Hyatt hotel. It cost less than one day of parking at the hotel. I had a room designed with six bunks, but I was the only one in the room for three nights… so it was like getting a private room plus private shower. I would come back to this hostel in a heartbeat. Along with free towels (unusual at hostels, I found) and free Wifi, the hostel would serve a free, hot buffet with all the eggs and flapjacks you could eat. I’d get my coffee and walk the two blocks to the beach every morning, letting the sun and the sound of surf clear my head for the day. The residents were warm and friendly… and just very real. And no matter what I did in the daytime, I’d always come back to OB for dinner…

On Thursday afternoon, before I started my five hour drive from San Diego to Los Angeles (not the smartest thing, I know, but I had to get to the Unwind anniversary party), I bumped into this undeniably awesome taco shop in Mission Hills called Lucha Libre Taco Shop. Eating mahi tacos in a shop with hot pink walls and zebra striped chairs with luchador masks embroidered to them… it’s a completely perfect combination. And they have a bathroom painted entirely in metallic silver with mirrors on the ceiling… take your photo there and you can post it to their myspace page. Hah.

In the Starbucks line up on Saturday morning at TNNA, I bumped into Chris Bylsma and she recommended the Tin Fish across the street from the San Diego Convention Center, just outside the Gas Lamp district. She said it was so good she ate there twice in one day!

I think I’ve always associated tacos with the kind of small, crispy hard shell that is awkward and messy to eat… the fillings of the taco end up everwhere except your mouth. But these are light, soft tortillas, doubled up for strength and topped with a fresh, grilled piece of fish, a pile of shredded cabbage, salsa and white sauce. They are just fresh, light but filling. The grilled ones never make you feel weighted down. Mari wondered if they put butter in the rice because it’s so addictive.

I’ve been home for three nights and I miss my fish tacos.

Confessions of an ex-foodie

I have a confession to make. I don’t cook.

It’s not that I don’t know how or don’t like to cook, I just don’t… It’s a time/energy issue. When I leave the office, the last thing I want to do is spend an hour or more making dinner. I love cooking and have more cookbooks and foodie magazines than I do knitting and spinning books. _Impossible, I know!_ But nearly every day, my husband and I have dinner at various cafés or restaurants nearby. It’s $5 bowls of pho (Vietnamese Beef Noodle Soup), $3 bowls of congee (rice porridge with stuff in it), $5 Malaysian curry from [Hawkers' Delight](http://nancyland.blogspot.com/2005/09/hawkers-delight-main-st.html) on Main Street, or a huge piece (we split) of Sicilian lasagna from the Brioche Bakery across from my office. It’s _easy_.

On the rare occasion that we do cook, we (read “he”) make Ma-Po Tofu and corn soup. Ah yes. Super healthy, eh! But this weekend, I decided to crack open my [new cookbook](http://www.laregalade.com/main/cookbooks.htm) from [La Regalade](http://www.laregalade.com/) and make their Beef Bourguinon (Jen G, if you are reading this, you are not allowed to buy this cookbook for yourself). You will recall last year when the DH made us [Anthony Bourdain's version of this dish](http://blog.sweetgeorgiayarns.com/2004/10/boys_in_the_kitchen/). This is mine:

Whereas the Bourdain version was made in the dutch oven on the stove, Alain Rayé’s version is made by braising in the oven for about 2 1/2 hours. The potatoes are baked in heavy cream alongside in the oven for the last one hour of cooking. So simple. So easy. I just might do it again.

For those of you who want to taste the real deal, make yourselves a reservation at [La Regalade](http://www.laregalade.com/) in West Vancouver. Oh, and make a day out of it and visit the [Knit & Stitch Shoppe](http://www.knit-n-stitch.com) too!

Knitting over lunch

Inspired by [others](http://www.froggyknits.com/weblog/archives/000174.html) who take time to knit over lunch, I had myself a leisurely 36-minute lunch break today… I cast on for the Ribby Cardi last night (while watching [yet another ten-year-old Jet Li kung fu movie](http://imdb.com/title/tt0108593/)) and so that’s what I worked on at lunch.

I \**gasp*\* didn’t swatch for this. The pattern gauge is 19 sts to 4″ and I believe the last time I swatched this yarn (for the never-did-happen Rebecca Cable Sweater), it gave me 18 or 19 sts. So, I’m knitting dangerously. If I do get 18 sts instead of 19, it will just be a little roomier. I’m making the 2×2x3×1 ribbed version, so that should also help cinch it in a bit!

Oh, but now for the important part.

Lunch was at Finch’s again… I found myself a south-facing window seat and had their divine blue brie and prosciutto baguette with today’s soup — a portobello and field mushroom soup with cabernet sauvignon and black peppercorn. This café gets gorgeous light, even on a dreary and rainy day like today.

Perfect Tomato Soup

I had lunch at the new-ish coffee shop/café called “Finch’s Coffee & Tea House” (hours: 9 to 6 Monday to Friday, 10 to 4 Saturday). For Vancouverites, it’s located at the corner of Pender and Homer opposite the mid-century modern furniture shop and only a block away from my office. Being a corner café, it has two floor-to-ceiling windows that are almost always fogged up (hey, this is Vancouver) and has lovely, tiny square tables on risers by the window. Perfect for watching our [local](http://vancouver.cbc.ca/westend/stories.html) [aggressive](http://www.avi.org/node/view/780) [panhandlers](http://www.avi.org/node/view/710).

Lunch was a baguette with Blue Brie, tomatoes, lettuce and prociutto with olive oil and balsamic vinegar served on a sheet of butcher paper. You can never say “no” to things that have “blue” and “brie” together… and hey, you can indulge when you only eat barely half the sandwich! The lovely thing about the butcher paper is you can wrap up the rest of your baguette a la Subway style.

The soups at Finch’s are made fresh daily. So fresh, that the last two times I attempted to have lunch there the response was “sorry, the soup’s not ready yet” and “sorry, we’ve run out of soup”. They say that they try to time it so the soup is ready at 12 noon. Successful today, the soup was the most perfect tomato with chunks of fresh, tender-crisp zucchini, chickpeas, rosemary, basil and olive oil. Perfectly sweet, not at all sour… and just fresh, fresh, fresh.

They also make a mushroom, yogurt and black pepper soup as well as a (I think) cream of celery. I think I’ll have to go back.