Brunch at The Oakwood Canadian Bistro

There comes a time in your life when it really dawns on you that you’re growing up.  Or old.  This is that year for my high school friends and I as we’re all turning 30 this year.  “Luckily”, my birthday isn’t until the end of the year so as of now I’m still the youngest of the bunch and I take every opportunity to milk that 😉

For Cat’s 30th birthday, she originally wanted to have a celebratory dinner.  However one of us had plans the evening of, so it got changed to a brunch instead.

Cat got to pick the restaurant and she chose The Oakwood Canadian Bistro in Kitsilano.  They don’t take reservations so be prepared to wait.  For the 5 of us we waited 35 minutes at noon.

I picked the Open-faced Corned Beef sandwich, overeasy eggs, sauerkraut, dijon and home fries ($14).  First the good: it was LOADED with meat.  I mean, there was so much corned beef slices on there I could’ve easily made another sandwich.  It was pretty tasty and not overly salty as it could easily have been.

The bad: the bread was really dry.  And thick.  It was not very tasty to eat overall.  The eggs could’ve been runnier too…it was too well done for my liking.

The good again: The bread softened overnight (I packed it) and when I had it for lunch the next day it tasted much much better.

I ordered a side of Brioche muffins with maple butter ($5).  They were served fresh and warm and fluffy.  A bit savory, and the maple butter wasn’t overly sweet.  I was full from this so I had my sandwich packed to go.

East Side Mario’s

Sephora newly opened in Coquitlam and Pacific Centre and Wendy wanted to go.  It is a place where men were to be stranded, surrounded by females whom desires to be more perfect, and searching for the gaze of other stranded men for a feeling of sympathy and understanding.   I, on the other hand, thoroughly enjoy the drive to Coquitlam from Richmond.  It is an easy drive when the traffic is good and got me out of town to enjoy my days off.  This time, I planned that we were going to eat there as well.  East Side Mario’s was the destination to be reviewed.  I must apologize for the lighting of our pictures as we did not bring our trusty Fuji F30 camera but had to use the flashless camera from our HTC Dream devices (a great phone that could’ve had a better camera).

The internals of East Side Mario was particular dark but welcoming. The actual lighting of the restaurant was darker than what the photo suggests. It had the “Spaghetti Factory” feel to it but had better food.

We began with a drink.  Wendy ordered the Peach Bellini.  It went down smoothly and delighted our taste buds in doing so.  I did not drink more than few sips because I am a responsible driver (heh!).  I allowed Wendy to be the guinea pig for this concoction.

This Italian Wedding soup had a lot of flavors to it.  Wendy especially liked the tiny round pastas in the soup and the mini meatballs were very cute.  It was not particular salty, the parmesan cheese gratings were added later and it was very satisfactory.  The only thing that would improve it more was the temperature – it could’ve been warmer.

Calhoun’s Bakery Cafe

Continuing with the blueberry theme, on the same night we had dinner at Swiss Chalet, I urbanspooned to see what dessert places were close by.  Calhoun’s Bakery Cafe was a few blocks down so I decided on there.

It was a bit of a wet and drippy evening that day.  However it was a short walk.  We quickly came up to this big barnhouse looking building.

As this place was opened 24hrs, obviously there were quite a bit of students here with their laptops (doubt they’re actually doing homework/studying though….Facebook-stalk much?).  But it’s clear why it’s so popular with that crowd…open seating, fast, satisfying food, relatively ok prices.

I don’t quite remember but there’s a special order you do things here….I believe the logical choice would be to pay first then pick up your order.  There’s a sign that says if they’re not busy they’ll take the food to your table.

They have an assortment of wraps, pizza, salads, and custom-made gourmet sandwiches, much like another similar eatery called Max’s Bakery & Delicatessen.  I’ve heard good things about Calhoun’s prawn sandwich.  However it’s about $7-9 so it’ll probably be a while before I indulge in such an expensive sandwich.

Barefoot Kitchen – CLOSED

Pretty Sis read a review of Barefoot Kitchen in the Georgia Straight a while ago and had asked me to go with her. I happily obliged, as it was from the same people of Ichiro Japanese Restaurant, previously blogged about here and here.

As forewarned by a coworker, if you aren’t actually looking for the place, you might miss it, as it’s sort of located ‘underground’.  But it’s actually not bad finding it.  Now with the picture above you know what store it’s under!

It was pretty bright in there despite it being below sidewalk level.  The waitresses were very friendly.  The place got busier as the night went on.

I started with a virgin cocktail, the Grenadine Apple ($3.95) which consists of grenadine, apple juice, and shaved ice.  It was big and refreshing on a warm evening.  I enjoyed it.

Seventh Heaven Cafe 七重天

As we’ve said before, the staff of Boston Steakhouse has migrated to Seventh Heaven in Aberdeen. Not sure what the reason for the move was though.

Anyways, continuing with my HK-style Milk Tea craving as of late, Boyfriend took me to Seventh Heaven.

It has quite a unique decor.  It’s supposedly to be I guess 60’s style?  There’s jukeboxes and old Coca-Cola signs, but it’s quite weird in that there’s a mix of old Chinese and English style posters.  For instance, there’s posters of 50’s/60’s Chinese style girls, but also Casablanca, Marilyn Monroe posters.  A weird combination if you ask me.  The theme is almost there but not quite.

So we both ordered from the Afternoon Tea menu naturally.  Again they charge $1 for cold drinks.

Boyfriend had his favorite hot Almond Tea again, while obviously I had the cold milk tea.

But perhaps I should’ve ordered the hot one…it was so cold in the restaurant!!

Milk tea was decent but, once again, it’s no Alleluia.