Afternoon tea at Hotel Vancouver

Occasion: My Christmas present to my mother - a girls' catch-up over tea (my sister was an extra beneficiary)
Location: Hotel Vancouver on West Georgia St in Vancouver
Edibles: chicken salad on toast; smoked salmon and caviar on toast; a ham, blue cheese and pear croissant; cucumber sandwiches; cinnamon scones; mincemeat pies; gingerbread stars with M&Ms; strawberries and clotted cream; Yule log chocolate cake

(pictured borrowed from Jess Q until I can upload my own)

Musings: It's been more than 10 years since we've had tea together, just the girls. The last time was at the Savoy in London; it was my mom's first time in Europe. Fond memories - we munched on sandwiches and sipped tea for almost four hours, chatting and soaking up the wonderful Englishness of it all.

The Hotel Vancouver's no Savoy, but they put on a nice tea. The room was very festively decorated, and they hired a live harpist to play Christmas carols.

The food was pretty good. I liked most of the savory choices, particularly the ham. The least successful was the cucumber - the bread was pretty dessicated, like they'd made them the day before and failed to keep them properly covered. My sister, a more forgiving soul, suggested they might have done it on purpose to better accompany the tea. My mom's favorite was the salmon. (Incidentally, I discovered that Allie has an absolutely dreadful palate, after she mistook the chicken salad for tuna, and the pear in the ham sandwich for a pickle.)

They provide one extra plate free of charge, so we got an extra of each of those four to share. I think that's a bit stingy as refills go, considering the tea costs some $50 per person. (At the Savoy, you can ask for as many extras as you like. It's not very classy but you can - as we did - skip breakfast and lunch and really tuck in.)

They gave a generous two scones per person, but I could only choke down half of one as they were cinnamon scones and that spice makes me gag. I liked the gingerbread cookie, but found the cake was cloyingly sweet. I was, in general, less enchanted by the sweets than the savories. But then again, I don't have much of a sweet tooth; you might feel differently.

As for the tea, we got two pots of a strawberry tea and it turned out to be a good primary choice - it was very delicate and did not interfere with the flavors of the food. Towards the end, we got a third pot of maple black. The maple was very interesting - it was smelled syrupy, but had no sweetness at all when tasted. Instead, it was dark and smoky.

Merry Christmas, and I hope you're all getting to spend some quality time with your family in the holiday rush!

Deadliest Catch

Airs on Discovery Channel on Tuesdays at 9:00

My brother was already an occasional watcher, but I got totally hooked on this show! Narrated by Discovery hunk Mike Rowe, it's just naturally action-packed and dramatic. (Did you know that fatalities for a season of crab-fishing average out to person a week?!) And it gets bonus awesome points for playing Bon Jovi during title credits.

As a family we watched something like 15-20 episodes during the long weekend Deadliest Catch marathon. Yes, we are a family of nerds.

We also love us some crab. Dungeness is great almost year-round in Vancouver, but Alaskan King crab season is truly legendary. The price for these monster crabs - live in tanks in most restaurants - dips below $20/lb, sometimes even below $15/lb, and Chinese restaurants do a particularly tasty preparation with tons of garlic called suan long. YUM!

Sha-lin Noodle House

Occasion: Post-figure-skating-practice and pre-women's hockey lunch
Location: Sha-lin Noodle House on W Broadway between Cambie and Ash
Edibles: stir-fried cutting noodles with tofu and vegetables; xa jiang dragging noodles; potstickers, half pork, half vegetarian (with a cabbage and carrot filling, like a cooked coleslaw); sautéed bok choi with garlic

Musings: Love this place!! Fresh noodles are among my favorite things to eat, and they do a really good variety of styles (and corresponding textures) at Sha-lin.

Cutting Noodles: The chef takes a block of refrigerated dough and uses a special triangular knife-tool thing to shave off noodles, shooting them straight into a pot of boiling water. Sort of like how you make spätzle, but with a much firmer, denser dough and much larger noodles. I really like the heft of these noodles, and they're excellent for stir-frying. The oily, fried noodles can be slippery little suckers - tricky to eat with chopsticks.

Dragging Noodles: The chef REALLY develops some gluten by repeatedly stretching the dough, and then twisting it back on itself. Sort of like how pulled taffy is made. The noodles themselves are made by doubling up one fat rope of dough, stretching it out (thus reducing the thickness by half), and repeating until the strands are about the thinness of spaghetti. The trick to this method - not that I've mastered it or anything - is getting a really good, elastic texture of dough, or the strands will break before they're thin enough. I like these noodles with a ground meat and bean sauce known as xa jiang. (Sha-lin does a nice sauce, but my mom's version with Chinese pickles and diced shiitake mushrooms is truly spectacular.)

Pushing Noodles (which we did not have): The chef rolls and folds up a sheet of dough, and cuts the noodles by hand. Similar to the soba method, but the chef cuts away from himself instead of slicing, hence the name.

The potstickers were a real hit with Karen and Josie. Sha-lin makes theirs with a yeasty, risen dough, and develops a nice crispy, golden brown crust on the bottoms. The quality of the fillings could be improved, but it's hard to complain when you're in the middle of chowing down on a piping hot plateful.

If memory serves, four dishes plus two beers apiece came out to under $25 a person. Good stuff!

[Note: This will be the only other Vancouver post. I also took Karen and Josie to old favorites Sun Sui Wah and Tapastree, and met up with Emily at Adonia to pass off some extra hockey tickets, but you can check out my old reviews using the links. Back to NYC for the next post.]

Banana Leaf

Occasion: Post-curling (for Karen, Josie and me) dinner with my high school buds, Tania, Bryan, Warren and Bib
Location: Banana Leaf on W Broadway between Willow and Laurel in Vancouver (bananaleaf-vancouver.com)
Edibles: papaya salad, satay and roti canai for the table; curried tofu for Karen; a chicken dish for Josie; a beef dish for Bryan

Musings: Olympic madness!! With wait times from one to three(!) hours for restaurants on Granville Island, we escaped back into town to look for a place less accessible to tourists.

We settled on Banana Leaf. I'd been to it once before, and their delicious papaya salad really made an impression - lots of flavors and textures, with a zippy dressing. Also, at just $7, two orders were enough for the whole table to share.

The rest of the apps and mains are decent enough, objectively speaking; our extended tromping about in the cold and damp made everything extra tasty.

[Note: Go Canada! Our curling team, skipped by the superb Kevin Martin, a.k.a. the Old Bear, whomped Denmark 10-3.]

Han Ju

Occasion: Impromptu high school reunion (Fran and Dean, Elgent and Amy, Tony, Warren, Tania, Jason, Alfred, Bib, Marianne, and non-high school friends Sahoko and Doug and their little girl, Hiona)
Location: Han Ju Tofu Hot Pot on Capstan Way in Richmond
Edibles: Korean bbq beef on rice, with various sides piled on top

Musings: Not much to say about the food. It's cheap and decent enough. Note that it looks pretty substantial in the picture but the dish isn't very deep; more than one guy ordered a second dinner after mowing through his first.

The company was the main attraction. Most of these people I only get to see once every couple of years, if that. After dinner, we went to a Tim Horton's and spent hours reminiscing and poring over old yearbooks. As the sunscreen speech goes, "Work hard to bridge the gaps in geography and lifestyle, because the older you get, the more you need the people who knew you when you were young."

Le Crocodile

Occasion: Celebratory dinner with the family, for my upcoming birthday and my brother's stellar LSAT score (congrats, kid!)
Location: Le Crocodile on Burrard at Smithe (lecrocodilerestaurant.com)
Edibles: I had three apps for my meal - foie gras terrine with toast points, a crabcake, and salmon three ways ("west coast" style, smoked, tartare), with tiramisu and a latte to finish; my sister had the halibut with beurre blanc sauce and linguine (no app); my brother started with the steak tartare and had the same halibut main; my mom started with the salmon trio, followed by escargots, followed by a prawn and scallop dish with angelhair pasta; my dad had half a dozen raw Kusshi oysters and a duck main course

Musings: The best French restaurant I know in Vancouver. The interior is small and intimate, with rich but understated colors. The waitstaff tends to be comprised of the career type; they are uniformly calm and capable. The food is high quality and incredibly consistent. And yet... it's rare that I have a completely satisfying experience here (which I demand at this price point).

For example, my dad still hasn't forgiven them the time they charged him twice the corkage fee quoted over the phone. That night, he gritted his teeth and shelled out $80 for the two bottles we brought, prevented from arguing with the manager by the presence of guests. I think my dad needs to get over it, but I also think that if a restaurant employee tell a customer something by mistake over the phone, the restaurant should honor the original statement, if only as a one-time exception.

For tonight, I e-mailed for a reservation at 7:00. They returned with a confirmation for 6:30. When we walked into the restaurant, it was more than half empty. If so, why not just give people the reservation they want? Le Crocodile does good business, but I doubt they turn every single table on a weeknight.

I ordered a cocktail, and my martini filled half the glass, no exaggeration. For looks alone, either mix a more generous drink or use a smaller glass. It also tasted terrible.

My mood definitely improved when the food started arriving. The foie terrine and crabcake are two old favorites, and they tasted as good as the first time I had them years ago. (The terrine really should be shared; it's a huge slab too rich for one person to finish, even by my greedy standards.) I also enjoyed my salmon trio, though I found the west coast one to be too sweet. I had a nibble of my brother's boldly seasoned tartare and one of my mom's buttery, garlicky escargots - both yummy.

The food at Le Crocodile is plated old-school; it's all very precise, ornate, sauced and garnished up the wazoo. The culmination was my dessert - a tiramisu painstakingly built in a chocolate demitasse cup, complete with tuile spoon.

It's nice for a special occasion but, for me, Le Crocodile just misses the mark for being a true top-flight restaurant.

St. Germain Bakery

Location: Oakridge Shopping Centre in Vancouver, among others

Best loaf of bread in the city.

I remember when there was only one out-of-the-way location (on Cambie, I think) and we would go especially for the bread. The three of us kids would eat half the thing in the car, ripping chunks off the fragrant, freshly-baked, sometimes still hot loaf. My mom would grumble about crumbs, but then even she would succumb and ask for a corner.

You now have to special-order a full loaf of their unsliced white bread, a weighty, ponderous column almost the length of your arm. (You can get smaller portions of pre-sliced bread any time.) It has a silky-fine crumb and is chewy and substantial in the mouth, yet somehow avoids being dense. When sliced thickly, toasted and slathered with butter, it's a superb breakfast. Or afternoon snack. Or a bite for whenever you happen to wander through the kitchen.

(They also do good repertoire of Chinese cakes and pastries.)

Tapastree [closed]

Occasion: Dinner with high school buds Tania, Warren, Bib and Alfred
Location: Tapastree on Robson off Denman (tapastree.ca)
Edibles: buttermilk fried chicken with aioli; flatiron steak with gorgonzola sauce; chicken livers with tomatoes, brandy and black pepper; duck confit with cranberry compote; lamb chops; tomato bocconcini avocado salad; grilled asparagus; ahi tuna with ponzu and Chinese mustard; wild mushrooms with goat cheese on toast; sticky toffee pudding; crème brûlée

Musings: I've been coming here for ages. Ages. So long, in fact, that most of my Vancouver friends refer to it as "my" tapas place. (It was originally Sylvia's, and her ex Ollie's before her, but I've been the most devoted over the years.) Sadly, many of the dishes I loved best are no longer on the menu - I'm still mourning the loss of those amazing fried oysters - but the new offerings are wonderful too.

I think we ordered all of their meat dishes. My favorite was probably the fried chicken, with the steak and lamb running a close race for second.

The veggie dishes aren't slouches, though. The wild mushroom dish is a perennial favorite, and though I was outvoted on the Japanese eggplant this particular dinner, I usually get that as well. The asparagus we did order was decent, but I thought it was a tad overpriced at $9.

A shocking revelation did take place at the end of the meal, when the waitress came to take our dessert orders. It happened almost by accident. In the course of ordering our fancy coffees, we were (or at least I was) aghast to discover that the kitchen does not stock full fat milk!! Just 2%!!

Horrors.

Okay. First, how can you claim to offer a decent after-dinner coffee without full fat milk? Second - and more chilling - how do you make your crème brûlée?!?! (Which, despite its name, contains no cream. The custard is made with milk.) I understand not getting it through your bulk supplier but there's a Safeway just across the street - why not keep a few litres in the walk-in?

I calmed down a little after a generous dose of sticky toffee pudding. A little.

Dairy scandal aside, our varied and delicious meal, bottle of white, dessert, tip and tax came out to $45 a person. Karen and Josie, I'm looking forward to taking you guys here in February! I may bring my own milk.

Adonia

Occasion: Tea with Jess (who I had possibly not seen since we graduated from high school)
Location: Adonia Tea House on W 41st Ave in Vancouver (adoniatea.com)
Edibles: I had the lobster bisque and peach tea; Jess had the carrot soup and English breakfast tea; we split a BLT to fill in the gaps

Musings: Charming, fussy and cosy, like the living room of a storybook English grandmother. I do slightly prefer the yuppie farmhouse vibe of Secret Garden Tea, but when Secret Garden told us it'd be 45 min. for a seat, we scooted around the corner and down the block to Adonia, where we were seated immediately.

My peach tea was thick and pulpy, more like a fruit pureé than a tea, but its sweet summery brightness was more than welcome on that chilly, grey Vancouver afternoon. My mom, knowing about my trials and tribulations with lobster stock, mentioned that Adonia had a good bisque, and that she might be able to get me the recipe if I liked it. (The owner is one of my many unofficial "aunties.") I did like it. It was flavorful and savory but not too boozy, as bisques can often be. I'll have to get my mom on that recipe's trail, pronto.

It was wonderful to catch up, Jess - let's not wait 10 years for the next one, eh?

Sun Sui Wah

Occasion: Dim sum with the family
Location: Sun Sui Wah on No. 3 Road in Richmond (sunsuiwah.com) [Note: another location in Vancouver proper]
Edibles: har gao; shu mai; fish congee; shrimp fun; pan-fried daikon cake; leaf tripe; spring rolls; rice with chicken and Chinese sausage; Chinese broccoli with oyster sauce; tapioca pudding; mango pudding; egg tarts (you eat with my mom, you leave the table groaning in pain)

Musings: My go-to dim sum place in Vancouver. They were one of the last restaurants in Vancouver to still have the little old ladies pushing the carts around; they've recently gone over to the dark side, a.k.a. the order form.

Sun Sui Wah's food is solid across the board, from the gringo favorites like shu mai to more obscure animal extremities and organs, should you feel more adventurous. The chicken rice, in particular, is not to be missed.

Sun Tung Kee [closed]

Occasion: Send-off dinner for me, right before my mom and brother took me to the airport
Location: Sun Tung Kee Hot Pot Restaurant on Alexandra Rd just off Kwantlen St in Richmond, a municipality of Greater Vancouver - Note: Sun Tung Kee is closed
Edibles: cilantro and thousand-year-old egg broth for cooking; fish paste; napa cabbage; taro; garlic chive dumplings; shrimp wontons; squid meatballs; pork meatballs; beef; chicken; tofu; mung bean and barley soup for dessert

Musings: Hot pot restaurants are all about the quality of their ingredients since they don't actually do any cooking; for the most part, food is brought to your table raw for you to cook in the broth.

To start with, Sun Tung Kee offers quality condiments. These include soy sauce, Asian bbq sauce, garlic sauce, sesame sauce, fresh cilantro, scallions and hot peppers. For special customers (like my mom), there's also a dish of XO sauce, a hot sauce with dried scallops, Chinese ham and cognac. They also offer seasonal live seafood like shrimp, certain fish, geoduck and Alaskan king crab. It's pricey but the absolute freshness is worth it.

The thing that really sets Sun Tung Kee apart is the quality of their beef. The difference between the usual hot pot beef and Sun Tung Kee beef is like the difference between cheesesteak "steak" and Peter Luger's steak. The beef was excellent, as always, but I noticed that the plates are about a third smaller (prices are the same). They also have a new recipe for their shrimp wontons that inexplicably includes bamboo and black wood ear fungus (not as gross as it sounds) in the filling. I liked their old wontons better.

Summer is a typically a slow season for hot pot restaurants, but the place was pretty empty even considering that. My mom theorized that Sun Tung Kee has lost a lot of business in the downturn to all-you-can-eat hot pot places nearby.

Flamingo

Occasion: Family dinner with my grandparents, my aunt, my cousins, my mom and my brother
Location: Flamingo Chinese Restaurant on Cambie between W 59th and W 60th Ave in Vancouver
Edibles: West Lake soup; taro duck; Chinese broccoli and beef; lobster in cream sauce with noodles; steamed tilapia; crispy chicken; tapioca pudding

Musings: We've been going to this restaurant for over twenty years. The menu has barely changed in all that time. So it's not the most sophisticated Chinese food Vancouver has to offer, but it's our neighborhood restaurant and it always feels good to come back. Upon our arrival, the manager (who we had seen rise from the waitstaff to his current position) came right over to greet my mom by name and take our order.

Everything tasted just as it should, just as it used to. (Well, with the exception of one meat pie dish, which the manager immediately whisked away and took off our bill.)

Restaurants will come and go but as long as the Flamingo is open for business, we will be there.

Golden Ocean

Occasion: Dim sum (the third time in a week!) with my mom, Amy and Sam
Location: Golden Ocean Seafood Restaurant on W 41st Ave at Maple St in Vancouver
Edibles: leaf tripe (omasum); stewed honeycomb tripe (reticulum) and beef lung; chicken feet; bbq pork buns; braised Chinese broccoli with oyster sauce; pork, fish and peanut congee; sesame balls

Musings: As you can see, we got some more unusual things this time around. I'm not a huge fan of lung or chicken feet, but I thought the leaf tripe was really well done. Strangely enough, with all the offal we ordered, the dish that stuck out the most was the sesame balls.

Sesame balls are usually the size of golf balls, or slightly larger, and filled with red bean paste or lotus paste. They serve a peculiar variation at Golden Ocean with no filling at all but fried for a longer time, until they're puffed up to the size of ostrich eggs. (I'm not kidding about the size.) The resulting hollow pastry has a thinner wall and is crispier than the standard. I've been to quite a few dim sums in my time but this is the first time I'd seen this. Dim sum innovation - go figure!

E Bei

Occasion: Dinner with Tania, Warren and Kim (well, a second dinner for Tania and Warren)
Location: E Bei Japanese on Granville at W 41st Ave in Vancouver
Edibles: California roll; chopped scallop roll; assorted sashimi (salmon, tuna, some kind of whitefish, tako octopus and hokkigai surf clam)

Musings: My brother and his friends love the late night all-you-can-eat at this place, which costs something like $10. The regular dinner hour all-you-can-eat will run you $23. Since you can only order it as a table, and Tania and Warren had already eaten, I just ordered à la carte.

The tuna and hokkigai sashimi were fantastic (though not as fantastic as the specimens pictured to the left - not my plate). The other pieces were fresh but not particularly memorable. The chopped scallop was a bit slimy, and both it and the California roll had too much rice. You definitely will not see particularly good knife skills or sushi-rolling technique here. But you get good value for your money.

Ningtu Restaurant

Occasion: Brunch with my mom (my brother, a fellow night owl, couldn't drag himself out of bed)
Location: Ningtu Restaurant on Kingsway between Gladstone and E 29th Ave in Vancouver
Edibles: broth noodles with chicken and baby bok choi; sautéed nian gao (rice cake); sesame rolls with pork and pickle filling (sort of a Chinese sloppy joe); yu tiao (deep-fried breadsticks); hot soy milk (sweet for me, savory for my mom)

Musings: A nice alternative to dim sum. I love this restaurant and always try to go at least once when I'm in town. This occasion was no different - I was so happy with the food I was making little pleased hums throughout the meal. Highly recommended.

Original Tandoori King

Occasion: Dinner with my mom and brother
Location: Original Tandoori King on E 65th Ave at Fraser in Vancouver [Note: there's another restaurant on Fraser itself that's called Tandoori King - don't be fooled]
Edibles: chicken tikka masala; lamb korma; eggplant bhartha; palak paneer; sides of garlic nan and pulao rice (all spellings are theirs)

Musings: Came home absolutely stuffed! The food was delicious as always, though their prices have gone up since I was there last ($3 per meat dish and $2 per veggie dish). The consistency is worth mentioning - I've been to this restaurant about 15 times and have never had a bad meal. Everything is richly spiced, and you can tell they use quality ingredients. Highly recommended.

Red Star

Occasion: Dim sum with my mom and her friends
Location: Red Star Seafood Restaurant on Granville between W 66th and W 67 Ave in Vancouver
Edibles: lots of the same classics from the Flushing dim sum outing - shrimp fun; shu mai; har gao; pork and thousand-year-old egg congee; steamed daikon cake (what can I say, I'm a creature of habit), plus a few new items - Chinese broccoli sauteed with garlic; ma lai cake; green tea jelly

Musings: A couple of pluses and a bunch of minuses. This place doesn't hold a candle to my favorite Vancouver dim sum place, Sun Sui Wah in Richmond.

Plus: 1) The shu mai and har gao were huge - easily the size of two in almost any other restaurant. 2) The ma lai cake was delicate and fluffy. Yum.

Minus: 1) The shrimp fun had pungent garlic chives (a.k.a. Chinese chives) in them, an herb I never acquired a taste for. 2) The pork in the congee seemed a little off. 3) The green tea jelly was just weird. 4) No ladies with the carts; you order off a menu.

Vancouver City Guide

(Current as of Mar 2018)

LUNCH / BRUNCH:

• Slickity Jim's. Eclectic diner vibe. Apparently this is one of Moby's favorite restaurants.
• Paul's Omelettery
• Red Wagon. Go early to avoid the lineup.
• Meat & Bread. Their porchetta sandwich has bits of crackling in it. Need I say more?

CHINESE:

• Non-dim-sum Chinese brunch: Ningtu. Get the sesame rolls with minced pork filling. Their tea-smoked duck, while not strictly a brunch item, is also amazing; it's available as a whole or a half duck.
• Dim sum: My personal favorite is Sun Sui Wah
• Hand-made noodles: Sha-lin Noodle House
• Dive-y Hong Kong cafe, cheap and casual: Angel
• All-you-can-eat hot pot: Fatty Cow

INDIAN:

• Traditional: Tandoori Raj (f/k/a Original Tandoori King). Love the lamb korma and eggplant bhartha. Their takeout portions are significantly more generous, so this is a good option for a night in with a growler of microbrew.
• Fancy: Vij's Rangoli. All the great flavors and creativity, with less fuss than at the flagship restaurant.

JAPANESE:

• Cheap, generous portions: Samurai (Fraser location only)
• Izakaya: Zakkushi
• Izakaya: Guu
• Fancy sushi + izakaya: Kingyo

CAMBODIAN / VIETNAMESE:

• Phnom Penh. For the brave, the deep-fried frog legs are amazing. For the less brave, the butter beef is too. And the chicken wings, for everyone (the lemon dipping sauce really makes this dish).

FRENCH:

• Bistro: Café Salade de Fruits
• Bistro: Absinthe
• Fancy: Le Crocodile. The decor is starting to look really dated but the food is solid.

ITALIAN:

• Tavola (f/k/a Tapastree)
• Fancy Neapolitan pizza: Nicli Antica Pizzeria
• Ludica has an entire wall of board games for you to play.

SPANISH / TAPAS:

• Sardine Can. Do not miss out on the sherry-cream mushrooms.
• España is on the fancier side and can get pricey but the food is great.

MIDDLE EASTERN:

• Jamjar. They usually have several seasonal flavors of hummus. A good option for brunch too.

MEXICAN / TACOS:

• La Taqueria. My favorite ones are the carnitas and the lengua.

WEST COAST:

• Fable. Farm to table.
• Flying Pig. Has a great happy hour.

VEGETARIAN:

• MeeT. I am a total carnivore - but SO addicted to their quinoa, sweet potato and kale salad. With a cup of the house chili, it makes for a pretty substantial meal.

SEAFOOD:

• Crab: Dungeness is great almost year-round in Vancouver, but Alaskan King crab season is truly legendary. The price for these monster crabs - live in tanks in most restaurants - dips below $20/lb, sometimes even below $15/lb, and Chinese restaurants do a particularly tasty preparation with tons of garlic called suan long. YUM!
• Geoduck: A weird-looking but delicious creature in the clam family. It's delicious simply sliced and blanched, in a dipping sauce of soy and scallions. (The cleaning and prepping is tricky so best not attempt to cook it yourself if you have no experience with it.)
• Like eating with your hands? Holy Crab
• Best salmon burger in the city: Tipper

FOR THE VIEW:

• In a park (warning: these are a tad tourist-y): Stanley Park's Teahouse or QE Park's Seasons
• A little further out: Beach House or Salmon House (unaffiliated) in West Vancouver. Enjoy a scenic drive over the Lions Gate Bridge on your way to dinner.

AFTERNOON TEA:

• Your great aunt's parlor: Adonia 
• Rustic farmhouse: Secret Garden

SWEETS AND PASTRIES:

• Purebread. A veritable orgy of baked goods. Your sweet tooth will thank you. Your waistline, maybe not so much.
• Earnest Ice Cream. I like to try the limited edition flavors, but their Tahitian Vanilla has a wonderfully restrained purity.
• Aphrodite's Pie Shop. Their strawberry-rhubarb is my favorite.
• Cheesecake Etc. They're open late, so it's a good place to catch up with old friends. My favorite thing to order is a frozen slice of the classic cheesecake with extra strawberry sauce.
• Lucky's Doughnuts / 49th Parallel Coffeehouse. Get the espresso milkshake if it's in season.
• New Town Bakery. Famous apple tarts and other Asian pastries.

MISC:

• Activity / market: Granville Island Public Market. There is an artisan sake maker, and local micro-distillery called Liberty on Granville Island.
• Kitchenwares: Gourmet Warehouse
• Dried fruits and nuts: Ayoub's

BARS:

• Main St, preppy: Portland Craft
• Main St, microbrew: Brassneck. Of the three Main Street micros, I like Brassneck's beer and selection the best. They have all the standards but I love them for their sours and seasonal fruit-infused beers.
• Main St, microbrew: 33 Acres. Their beer is a bit hoppy for my taste but their cider is divine.
• Gastown, wine: Salt - note: yes, the only entrance is off "Blood Alley"
• Gastown, whiskey: Shebeen
• Olympic Village, beer: Craft. Very deep beer menu and decent food. Can get a bit noisy in the converted warehouse space, and multiple rounds of drinks can add up to a painful bill.
• Cambie or Commercial, Belgian: BierCraft. They have Delirium Tremens on tap.
• Broadway or Commercial, nerdy: Storm Crow. A sci-fi fan's wet dream.
• Canucks games and cheap chicken wings: Original Joe's (half price on Tues); The Pint ($4/lb on Wed)