Beaucoup Bakery & Cafe

I’ve heard a lot about Beaucoup Bakery & Cafe, especially in magazines.  However it wasn’t until recently when GRock’s friend started working there as a baker that I’ve succumbed to lots more praises and recommendations from GRock. The final nail in the coffin was when GRock showed me a picture of this magical looking poached plum tart that they had for the Fall season.  I had to have it, so finally I made a date with Miz Brown Sugar, C-Dizzle, and Erin to visit the bakery for a sugar coma fest.

There are a ton of baked goods to choose from obviously, but they have a pretty extensive cafe menu too.  We were instructed by GRock to arrive no later than 10:45am on a Friday for the best selection.

And it was a wise decision, as we saw that the store was constantly busy.  We were lucky though that their signature item the Almond Croissant was still plentiful even by the time we left, as were a lot of their other goodies.

Miz Brown Sugar is vegan so all she had was a latte (every baked good has eggs in it).  She was very excited about the latte art.

Since we arrived so early, I hadn’t had a chance to eat breakfast yet.  Neither had C-Dizzle and she quickly hopped to it and ordered a Brioche with Duck Prosciutto, Rillette Mayo, Red Oak Lettuce, Candied Walnuts & Apple ($9.5, not pictured).  I was originally just here for the sweets, but once she unwrapped her sandwich, I knew I had to get one too.  So I picked the Cheese Scone with Porchetta & Smoked Cheddar ($9.5, pictured above).

Sunway Restaurant 三味

It’s been a while huh.  Not gonna lie it’s been a busy busy summer for sure.  Hopefully I’ll get back to the groove of blogging again~  Here goes!

My good good friend Jon and I were trying to decide on a place for dinner.  At first we were going to go back to West Lake but once we got to Empire Centre, I remembered Sunway, and I’ve always wanted to try their Salt & Pepper chicken, so there we went!

They have probably the cheapest Salt & Pepper Chicken around, at only $4.50.  It was hella good.  Fresh, large gobs of juicy, moist, succulent white meat.  The deep-fried basil leaves were really really good too.  It was absolutely delicious.  Again I must emphasize, these were LARGE PIECES of actual meat, not skin or batter.  A must try/order/eat!!!

Another this we ordered was the Beef Roll.  It seems like it was deep-fried which meant it was really really good also.  The pastry part was flaky, and there was a lot of meat in it.  It could’ve been wrapped a bit better though.  But again, a must order.

Dine Out Vancouver 2010: hidden Tasting Bar and Social Lounge

Dine Out Vancouver was good to me this year.  I haven’t had a big miss and I’ve had the opportunity to hang out with new friends and have new, interesting conversations.  Good times.  Good times indeed.

My next out was to hidden Tasting Bar and Social Lounge on Robson, inside the Westin Grand.

As the name suggests, this is a lounge/bar type setting.  It’s pretty small, just one long corridor but plenty of tables.  The bar is at the entrance.

The menu here is $18, which was an absolutely great deal.

We all chose the Pacific Poutine with halibut cheeks, qualicum cheese curds, crispy yukon golds and lemon hollandaise.

At first, a fish poutine sounded off to us, but intriguing at the same time to be honest.

Wow did we ever enjoy it.  Halibut cheeks were awesome, tender and moist.  The poutine was made with a mix of yam and regular potato fries, which were a nice treat.  I always loved yam fries~!

The hollandaise sauce was tangy and a nice touch.  The cheese curds were nicely melted.  I hate it when the curds in a poutine don’t melt.

I don’t believe this is in their regular menu which is a shame, ’cause I would gladly order it again.

My companions had the Chicken and Waffles which was fried fraser valley chicken and cheddar waffles served with an apple/jack gravy.

From what I heard, the chicken was good.  Even though it was made from chicken thigh, it still managed to stay moist and flavorful.

The cheese waffles however, were a miss.  They were dry and crumbly, not really cheddar-y either.  If only it was more moist and fluffy, it would’ve been better.

Vancouver Olympics 2010 Eats Around Town 2

I didn’t end up posting the next day after all…but here’s the rest of it.

The next day I visited Granville Island with Pretty Sis.  She wanted to visit The House of Switzerland (not really a house, just Bridges Restaurant offering a few Swiss menu choices), I wanted to visit Atlantic Canada House.

First up House of Switzerland.  They had the bistro option or the restaurant option.  However you needed to make reservations in advance for the restaurant option, and the lineup for the bistro was around 45min-1 hour.  We ended up not doing that.

Instead, we lined up at the front where they had a tasting of Raclette Cheese on bread for $8.  Now $8 is a lot but we actually didn’t feel too badly about it because the way it was prepared, we didn’t think we would see or be able to experience it again here in Vancouver.

What they do is, the heat up half a wheel of the Raclette cheese under an interesting burner.  Once the cheese is melted, they slide the cheese out and spread it onto slices of bread.  It is served with pickled small pearl onions and mini pickles.  See the video below!

No.1 Shanghai Cuisine 滬上 – CLOSED

There are many types of Chinese cuisine. Tonight, we explored another venue for Shanghain-nese food in the great plains of Richmond. This place calls itself “Number One Shanghai Cuisine”. I don’t know about you guys, but I sure want to find out if in fact they are “number one”!

I must say, however, that the parking availabililty there is TERRIBLE.  There was probably less than 50 parking spots for the entire strip mall (right beside Aberdeen Centre).  There was an incident where a middle-aged Chinese man driving a Silver Mercedez C300 ( i will refer to the driver as the ‘crazy dude’) that wanted to ‘save’ a spot for his friends by attempting to occupy BOTH parking spots (front and back parking spaces) by parking his car in BETWEEN the two spots.  Needless to say, when Wendy was trying to back in, the crazy dude backed up even further to prevent us from going in.  Even when the parking lot attendant saw the incident and told the crazy dude that he can’t ‘reserve’ spots, he continued to backup.  So Wendy’s dad and I got out of the car, the guy quickly gave up and moved back into his original spot – allowing Wendy to park.  Honestly, what sane man will try to save his buddies a parking spot in this fashion while a car is actively trying to get in there?  Worst of all, he thought it was perfectly fine.  I thought I have seen most of the crazies on the road centered in the vicinity of the Alderbridge/Hazelbridge area but this won takes the cake.  Why do these people insist in continuing to cement the fact that Chinese are bad drivers?  We’ve got people that probably bought their driving licences under the table (or could only pass the test in Sunshine Coast like my aunt), driving massive European branded vehicles going at 40KPH on the fast lane through highways, changing lanes when they didn’t mean to, braking out of nowhere when it’s past midnight on a major road, never showing appreciation when you allow them to budge in, so on.  Seriously…  /rant.  On with the review.

Here is the internal view:

A bunch of chinese families and a LCD screen decorate the place.  The restaurant is quite clean and spacious (probably until we walk into the kitchen) and it was a comfortable place to eat nevertheless.

We ordered a set meal ($62) and we added a ‘DF Fish Fillet w Se’.  Please allow me to decipher: Deep Fried Fish Filet with Seaweed.

Since there are a quite a bit of dishes, I will only provide a brief comment for common items, while the special items will receive some deeper thought.

On the receipt, this dish was called “Comb 2 Cold Dish”.  I am very confident that it meant Combo 2 Cold Dish.  It comprised of some vegetarian offerings (foreground) and some ‘salty chicken’.  The veggie part was great but the chicken was ‘too skinny’, as Wendy’s mom would say.  The chicken definitely did lack some meat but overall, a good start to the meal.