New menu items at A & W (New Westminster)

A & W has been slowly revamping their menu at certain locations with slightly more “upscale” fast food offerings like yam fries and veggie burgers as well as adding actual dishware for dine-in to compliment their traditional frosted glass mugs.  Their latest additions are various grilled cheese sandwiches and poutines which I set out to inspect.  When I eat fast food burgers I go out of my way to pick A&W due to their beef now being hormone, antibiotic, and even preservative free, plus the fact you can choose a whole wheat bun at no cost (hopefully they take the health consciousness a step further and cut down on the ridiculous amounts of sodium they use).  I picked the New Westminster Skytrain location, somewhere I eat fairly regularly and normally I find their staff quite friendly and have never had issues.  Today was a different story with some horrendous service but I won’t get into it and will give them benefit of the doubt, assuming it was a new staff member.  The place is clean and never so busy that you have much of a wait for your order, and the addition of an optional self serve kiosk for ordering and payment makes things even faster.

For the grilled cheese sandwich ($4.25) you first choose your bread from white or whole wheat, then two types of cheeses (they have mozarella, Balderson cheddar, and processed Armstrong jalapeno cheddar), an optional (free) slice of tomato, and whether you would like bacon for an additional 75 cents.  Each sandwich comes with a pickle spear as well.  I had cheddar and jalapeno havarti on whole wheat with a slice of tomato.  With the cheese being of the single thins variety two types are just the right amount, and the jalapeno really had a nice bite to it.  The tomato was a large slice and very fresh, and I found the bread had just enough butter on the outside so it wasn’t too greasy.  Really enjoyable and I think the price point is pretty fair.

They have a few new types of meal-size poutines now to compliment their classic one.  One was a cheddar bacon, one was a “works” poutine that seemed to be along the lines of a stuffed baked potato with its choice of toppings, and then this monstrosity.  The Korean BBQ Poutine ($7.95).  Traditional A & W french fries with cheese curds, breaded chicken slices, and iceberg lettuce, all smothered with Korean style BBQ sauce.  The idea sounded fairly unappetizing but I gave it a go for fun, and I have to say I can’t see anybody ordering this more than once after the initial “fun” factor has worn off.  To be fair the outside areas with minimal sauce weren’t too bad, but once I got to the middle and bottom parts the sauce was just way too overpowering.  It’s thick and molasses-ey, both sweet and spicy.  Not bad as far as BBQ sauces go, but as a gravy substitute it just doesn’t work.

Secret item “Triple Triple” at Triple O’s

For White Spot’s 85th anniversary, Triple O’s offered a secret menu item called the Triple Triple.  Why is it secret?  Because it’s not mentioned on their menu board…you have to be in the know to know to order it 😉

This is what they have to say about it:

It is “Triple Os biggest burger yet- a ¾ lb burger made with triple beef patties, triple cheese, lettuce, tomato and Triple “O” sauce topped with triple dills.”

We’ve recently received some vouchers to try them out (normally $14.95 for the combo) and here’s our opinion:

It was one humongous burger for sure.  I had to take out one patty and leave it aside.  In the end, we both thought there was way too much meat and cheese.  It made the burger overbearing and not really enjoyable to be honest.  The patties themselves were also extremely salty.  Hitman had the urge to drink water the rest of the night because of it.

I’ll stick to my Monty Mushroom.

Bourbon St Grill

If you’ve been by the new Richmond Center food court, you’ve probably been accosted by the hawkers at Bourbon Street Grill.  Apparently it’s a franchise, and Coquitlam Center got theirs first, but for Wendy and I it was a new experience and based on their friendly staff and abundant samples we picked it as the first place to try in the food court.  But there are many other interesting choices for future visits, including a Korean BBQ joint with burgers too, and a really modern looking Japanese place that serves takoyaki and other street food as well as noodle and sushi dishes.   There’s too many interesting places to list here, so I’ll get to the review at hand:

The concept is based on Southern USA Cajun/Creole style cooking, so think comfort food.  The staff there are awesome, and don’t be shy to ask for samples of whatever catches your eye before you buy.

This is a sample of their meat dishes, including Cajun Chicken, Blackened Shrimp and Blackened Fish.

New at McDonalds! Plus a Giveaway!!

I’m sure McDonald’s is a guilty pleasure for a lot of people.  I personally enjoy them once in a while (perhaps more than once~!) and I honestly have no ill-will towards them.  After all, you KNOW what you are putting into your body when you go there.  And as long as you indulge within reason and logic, I really see no harm in visiting McD’s!

They’re recently released quite a few menu items that I really enjoyed.  2 of them are limited edition so you better get them quick if you want to try them.

First of the limited edition items is the Apple Crisp McFlurry.  Boy was this good.  I really didn’t think I would enjoy it that much since I’m really not a big fan of apple and cinnamon.  But this had ingredients such as granola and some crispy rice-bits along with bite-sized, real (albeit likely heavily processed) apple cinnamon chunks.

The small is still quite big for me.  I recommend freezing the uneaten portions for another time~!  It may not be soft-serve anymore but still very very good.

Also, I found that this really isn’t that readily available at McD locations so hopefully you will get a chance to try this out!!

Wings Pub & Grill on Kingsway

L and I felt like wings and beer after a swim.  Actually, we went swimming just so we can have wings and beer afterwards.  She lives really close to Wings, and her place has a pool, 1+1=2!

We didn’t realize it was the first night of the restart of UFC though, so basically when we went in, we didn’t have much choice for seating.  We ended up sitting out in the patio even though it was raining since we were both in skirts and didn’t feel like sitting on a bar stool.

For anyone that this matters to, the Kingsway location actually allows smoking in their patio seating.  Good thing we went early so we weren’t bombarded too much.

They have pretty reasonable beer prices.  A glass of domestic was only $3.90.

Their Yam Fries ($6.95) were really really good.  Fat, long pieces, crispy, and there were lots.  A lot of other places serve short, stubby, broken off pieces, so this was a really really nice change.  They were served with a red pepper aioli.

Bucket for the main event~