Frommtron's Profile
First Time Visiting Vancouver -- Suggestions/Comments About Itinerary
Hi all,
Just wanted to thank you guys again and follow up with you.
Night 1 -- As I mentioned in the thread already, Bao Bei was our first stop. Great drinks. Solid food. All around it was the right choice over Tojo's. We do have excellent sushi in LA so I don't think we missed out on too much. The place reminded me a bit of Momofuku Noodle Bar in NYC, which my wife and I made our first stop many years ago. We had a few dishes. Standouts included the Dck wontons in consomme and the octopus salad.
Night 2 -- Vij's. I tempered expectations, but I needn't have worries. My only regret is that two people in a hotel can't reasonably try enough offerings. We had the chickpeas is star anise and date masala with grilled kale, jackfruit in black cardamom and cumin curry, and Rjasthani goat curry. All three dishes were quite elegant. After my first few bites, I thought I wanted the food to be more aggressive, but over the meal my palate started to pick up the subtle complexity to the food. The nod to Pacific Northwest ingredients was not overworked or forced as I've seen happen in high-end Indian restaurants. I think the place is a treasure.
Night 3 -- I chose to stick with La Quercia for the third night. My wife spent several months in Italy learning the language and cuisine. I thought this kind of slow food restaurant would be right up her alley. We opted for the 7 course tasting menu. We were killed with food. But it was all very good and I do like that each table experiences the menu a bit differently. I won't bore with the details, but we loved the meticulous, yet ultimately rustic, food. Not every dish blew us away, but the overall meal was wonderful. I know I wouldn't come back as I didn't find it to be a destination restaurant, but I'd kill to have that place in my neighborhood back home.
Night 4 -- On our last night, we just couldn't decide. We wanted izakaya, fine dining, maybe chinese, etc. It was our last night and our choices were too vast. We ended up deciding to limit our picks to where we had reservations already: Chambar and Boneta. We walked to Boneta because it seemed a little more adventurous to me, but upon seeing the room we decided it reminded us too much of another restaurant we were going to in Portland later in the trip. We canceled the reservations and walked to Chambar. Aside: Up until this point, we both thought Vancouver was exceedingly clean and polite. Maybe too clean. I kind of missed an urban edge to the place. Walking around Hastings and Pender at dusk as I got a bit lost certainly cured us of that notion. :)
Chambar is usually not the kind of place that I get too excited about. I knew I'd like it fine, but there does seem to be an after work, office crowd. But after walking through a few blocks of junkies and dealers that promised us we could score as much smack as we'd want, my wife was more than happy to see the well-heeled clientele. They sat us right next to the bathroom. Which isn't really a problem, but I think any place that even has a table that close to the head is making a mistake. The menu wasn't grabbing me, but both our appetizers were just lovely and our entrees were quite good. I had a bouillabaisse that wasn't a bouillabaisse at all. My initial disappointment melted, though. Great dish, whatever it is. My wife had a halibut presented three ways. Again, I saw it come out and thought it would be terrible. That trio concept was played out nearly a decade ago. But, it was really delicious. Each preparation was there for a reason and they were all executed perfectly. Cocktails were on point and the beer selection was excellent, too. We opted for the cheese plate for dessert, which was nice enough. We ended with a whiskey and maple liqueur because why not. In the end, we liked it enough to check out Cafe Medina on our way out of town the next morning.
Liquor stores were tough. We didn't have time to go to the better suggestions. I was able to score a bottle of Cinzano Orancio from the liquor store connected to our hotel. We don't have that down here and I'm looking forward to working up a couple of cocktails with it. There were a few other bottles that looked intriguing, but time was tight and luggage was already getting heavy. Besides, WOW liquor is expensive in Canada. I can't believe bars serve cocktails for less that $15 bucks at those costs.
So thanks again for all the suggestions. LOVED our time up in your fair city and will be back to try many of your suggestions in the future.
First Time Visiting Vancouver -- Suggestions/Comments About Itinerary
Sorry for the post blitz, but I keep forgetting to ask about a great liquor store/bottle shop. You guys get some great stuff up here that isn't always available in the US.
First Time Visiting Vancouver -- Suggestions/Comments About Itinerary
Hawksworth may need to happen for us. I really like the look of West and it seems like at one time Hawksworth (the chef) was what made that place special. Thanks waylman and philx.
First Time Visiting Vancouver -- Suggestions/Comments About Itinerary
He he he! If all it took was talking then my wife would already be head over heels for the gamut of Chinese cuisine. She'll eat it, but she'd choose nearly anything else over it. She did enjoy Bao Bei at least.
First Time Visiting Vancouver -- Suggestions/Comments About Itinerary
UPDATE --
Thanks for all the great replies.
So, we just weren't feeling Tojo's last night. We thought it would be better to go someplace with great cocktails and a more lively scene. We decided on Bao Bei. Food was quite nice. Portion sizes made it feel a little like dim sum re-worked for dinner and I got a chance to get something remotely Chinese on this trip. We both really enjoyed ourselves. The space was great, the cocktails were expertly made (loved the Handsome Benny--basically a reworked Red Hook), and the food was pretty good. We chatted up the bartender and got some great recs for restaurants, cocktail bars, and stuff to do in town.
Will be trying Vij's shortly . . .
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Vij's Restaurant
1480 11th Ave W, Vancouver, BC V6H1L1, CA
First Time Visiting Vancouver -- Suggestions/Comments About Itinerary
Hi Grayelf: Yeah, I'm from LA. Should have mentioned that. We do have exemplary Chinese food, but I've heard the Cantonese restaurants of Vancouver in particular are not to be missed. Bao Bei was only begrudgingly added to our list because it wasn't the usual Sichuan dive I take her out to.
I did try to mix up the neighborhoods a bit so we can check out the town more. I'll definitely look into La Buca and thanks for fair warning on Blue Water Cafe. West seemed more my style if I'm going to splurge anyway.
Hi Sam: I'll take those suggestions for a better sushi restaurant, especially if Tojo's is regarded as average these days.
Hi Islandgirl: Thanks for the tip on Kirin for a more sane dim sum location. Did you not like Boneta or is Chambar just flat-out superior?
Thanks again, everyone.
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La Buca Restaurant
4025 MacDonald St, Vancouver, BC V6L2N8, CA
First Time Visiting Vancouver -- Suggestions/Comments About Itinerary
My wife and I are excited to finally get a chance to visit Vancouver and will be in town for 4 nights, 3 full days, and until about lunch time on the fourth day.
I've done some research on the boards and using some Vancouver press and have come up with the following tentative plan. Am I missing a gem? Headed for an overhyped, mediocre place?
Night 1 -- Tojo's: Seems like a great place to end on a travel day. Bao Bei is another option for us if we aren't feeling like full-on omokase madness.
Night 2 -- Vij's: I'm hoping it's a revelation. We were happy, but a bit underwhelmed by Tantra in NYC. That was the last high-end, fusion Indian restaurant we tried.
Night 3 -- La Quercia OR L'Abattoir.
Night 4 -- Chambar OR Boneta
I'd LOVE to get out to Richmond for some top-end Cantonese. Unfortunately, my wife's one and only flaw is a general lack of enthusiasm for Chinese food. I know. It makes no sense at all. I love her anyway. I do think I could convince her to do dim sum one morning. Any suggestions?
We are also skipping the truly high-end stuff (other than maybe Tojo's). Should we squeeze Blue Water Cafe or West in at the expense of one of the more casual places?
Thanks for any help!
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Vij's Restaurant
1480 11th Ave W, Vancouver, BC V6H1L1, CA
La Quercia
3689 West 4th Avenue, Vancouver, BC V6R1P2, CA
Foodie Wedding
Hi DLG42,
I don't post on these boards anymore, but I stumbled across you post and thought I'd reply. I'll try and answer you questions as they were asked.
1. Union fees, security fees, parking fees: Those came to about $1700 for us. That was in 2007 though.
2. Surprises: They always pop up. But I found Patina did a very nice job staying near our initial estimate. Even after we committed to the contract, we continued to make alterations and were able to cut costs.
3. I'm not comfortable divulging our overall budget, but if you're looking for a similar wedding in NYC you'd be paying double, at least. The Founder's Room rental fee is doubly wonderful because you do not need to pay for the kitchen set-up since the Founder's Room has a full restaurant kitchen. For our wedding they also were offering the Blue Ribbon Garden for an additional $1. So the ceremony can be outdoors in the garden and the reception can move into the Founder's Room. Have one of the Patina reps walk you through a very early proposal and see if all the estimates are in your general range. If so, you should be fine as their estimate proved reliable.
4. Someone else brought up parking. I think it would be kind of tacky to ask your guests pay for parking, but you can offer complimentary valet parking to your guests. All they need to do is drive up to the Patina valet and they will be taken care of. This is especially nice for older guests that may have a hard time moving around. In 2007, this was $12 per car. You can even budget in a tip and let your guests know that's been taken care of, too. Alternatively, you could offer complimentary self-parking (oxymoron?) at a price of $8 (in 2007, of course). Guests needed to arrive after 4 PM in order to get those prices as daytime parking has different rates.
I'll respond to the food issue most people brought up. I've been to Patina catered events plenty of times. And they have been pretty average every time. Certainly not the horror stories some posters experienced (all at the Descanso Gardens it seems), but just okay. I wouldn't have been happy at all with that food. The food at the wedding was not in the same league as those buffets. It was simply put, very good. Our main course was a wild striped bass with sauteed pea tendrils and a tangerine sauce . . . that we cribbed from the Sunday Suppers at Lucques cookbook. Our runner-up for a pasta course was taken from a Mario Batali cookbook using fresh pasta. I bring this up only to illustrate that Patina, a very fine restaurant in its own right, was really excited to prepare recipes that we provided to them for our tasting. The chef came out and thanked us for giving them a reason to roll out fresh pasta.
There are a ton of incredible caterers in LA and some really awesome venues. So it's not the only game in town, but we loved our day at Disney Hall and were very satisfied with Patina when cooking out of their home base.
Hope that helps and congratulations on the wedding. Good luck zeroing in on your location.
Place to buy good tonic?
British Food Shop
27601 Forbes Road #19
Laguna Niguel CA 92677
1-949-582-9546
It's Sunday so I can't call to confirm, but any good British shop for expats *should* carry Schweppes "Indian Tonic Water", which is a leagues better than the garbage they sell here. If they don't, I'm sure a bit of convincing ought to get them to reconsider.
Personally, I think Q Tonic is the tops and the others don't come close. Whole Foods carries this.
Hansen's was a good choice (also at Whole Foods) but it doesn't taste any better than Schweppes to me. It's just not HFCS.
Eastside/Westside Maple Bacon Standoff?
I love your posts when you focus on value in a positive sense. I think it's an important element to include when reporting on the dining scene.
But there is something to be said for paying a little extra for an item made with the highest quality ingredients. Since these items still follow the law of diminishing returns, it becomes exponentially more expensive to make small, yet appreciated, improvements. Amandine's croissants are great and I consider them a cheap thrill. But the biscuit at Huckleberry is a completely different item.
To wit, I can certainly still get a $5 drink. It'll be Wild Turkey on the rocks. But if I want a Manhattan made with Michter's Rye, Carpano Antica Sweet Vermouth, House-made cherry vanilla bitters, and a Luxardo Marasca Cherry mixed by a bartender who takes the time to make the drink properly, I'm going to have to pay more. If the bar is also in one of the highest rent districts in the city then it's really going to get expensive.
And sometimes it's worth the indulgence.
San Marzano or 6 in 1 canned Tomatoes
If you really need them to be from Italy, watch out for this brand:
http://www.thenibble.com/REVIEWS/main/vegetables/san-marzano-tomatoes.asp
I don't actually mind that they are grown in the US. They are great as are the Muir Glen tomatoes. But I'm sure that dishonest labeling lets them get away with charging an extra buck per can.
*Quiet* place for drinks in Santa Monica?
There is no quieter place than Pacific Dining Car. Dead quiet usually.
Burger at O'Hara's in Westwood>>> Philly West's
Funny. I just had my first Philly West burger yesterday. I'm not going to compare it to Father's Office burger because they just aren't even trying to be the same thing, but it was pretty damn good and at around $5, it was a great value. The fries are really good, too.
I'd pay you $5 for the priviledge of not having to go to any of the bars in Westwood north of Wilshire.
Have any Chowhound Faves Broken Your Heart
1. Pretension is a word that has been thrown around so much on this board and others that I find it's lost meaning to me. It seems to fill in for "I think the place was overpriced and I didn't like 'X' about the place."
2. I can also totally see "precious" applying to Clementine. I don't find it so but I can get that perspective, to be sure.
3. LA food prices can be sickening when you go to place like Portland, OR (although totally on par and even cheaper in some cases than NYC). Clementine isn't cheap.
4. You had a bad meal there, which always sucks.
But the place is not trying to serve refined food. It's trying to do justice to comforting Americana classics. That's as humble a mission as any. The prices they charge don't have much to do with that. You say that you've had some very good items there so I'm not sure what gives.
If it's the prices, you can't expect to find a restaurant in such a high rent district that serves food using very high-quality ingredients for which the proprietors pay a premium and then to have them turn around and sell it at a minimum profit/loss.
The place can get crowded. The service can range between great, down-to-earth friendly and negligent space cadet. The parking is still crappy even with the construction on SM Blvd. done. But I don't think they overcharge given the quality of their ingredients, the fact that everything is made in-house, and that they are located in one of the highest rent areas of the city. It's BH prices because they are 3-4 blocks away from BH.
Best Indian Food in Santa Monica/West Side?
It's the same as it was 5 years ago, IMO.
Kogi - Good food, but is it worth the wait? [pics]
"No food (IMHO) is worth watiing in line that long for. Too many other great places in town that deserve the business and are more reasonable with their customers."
-- Mr. Shankly
I agree. Well, mostly. I'm sure there *could* be food good enough to wait an hour for. It's just not Kogi.
Santa Monica Seafood
I agree with all of that, and I do like Safe and Save a lot. I also happen to like SMS for what it is, too.
Black cod is ALWAYS hit or miss for me. I don't know what it is but even stuff that's looked good has been so-so when I had it on the plate. I'm no Eric Ripert but I can cook a fillet of cod just fine. I just find that one hard to judge.
need ground duck
Any place that carries it and also has a proper meat counter will grind it for you. I think 99 Ranch in Van Nuys should do it. Any Whole Foods should do it.
Kogi - Good food, but is it worth the wait? [pics]
HI Dommy,
I haven't tried the sliders but I hear they use sweet Hawaiian rolls. Is that what they used? Sounds a bit too delicate to support even a slider properly.
I also think that the consistency might not be there with Kogi. At the truck I found the kalbi to be good, the pork to be very good, but the chicken wasn't happening that night. It was kind of dry and the tofu actually had more flavor, if you can believe that.
I do think that the best part of the experience is seeing who turns out to the truck. It's as random a cross-section of the city as I've ever seen at a food venue. Pretty cool to watch.
The Brig location does not usually have much of a line when I've been there.
Santa Monica Seafood
I didn't know that they didn't fabricate the fish on-site until a poster above mentioned it. I think that's huge. They could really move from good to great if they did that and minded the trays the fish sit on better.
Santa Monica Seafood
There's out of your way and then there's spending the evening hours after work fighting through some of the nation's worst traffic to score the best branzino you can find in the city. If that's your thing then I actually think that's awesome. I seriously commend you.
But you mention value, and that has a lot to do with SMS for people (like me) -- you simply have to consider the effort required to get your hands on an everyday foodstuff that spoils nearly immediately. Will I do that kind of driving to procure my food? On the weekend, sure. For things like chicken and meat that can stay in my fridge a couple of days or anything for my pantry, absolutely. Fish, you eat the day you buy it or you might as well buy the frozen stuff from Trader Joe's.
Now if there was a place on the westside that had the combination of selection and quality that SMS has, people would be going there instead. Alas, there isn't.
Safe and Save has very high quality fish, but the selection is awful. 99 Ranch has a really wide range of fish but the quality is really inconsistent.
While I'm with you that I don't get SMS as a chowhound destination to drive across the city for, it is certainly a very good neighborhood fish market with a lot of high quality offerings.
Santa Monica Seafood
Tsukiji it's not. But Santa Monica Seafood is not horrible by any means. It's a good neighborhood fish market that beats most of the other options in the area.
In their old location, I could kind of understand some of their practices -- no live seafood (bivalves excluded) and very little in the way of whole fish. However, they don't have any excuse for not stepping up their game in the new location. They've already started carrying live lobster (although at a higher price and smaller on average than 99 Ranch) and they even had some Santa Barbara prawns out the other day (although not in a tank like you'll find at 99 Ranch). I'm hopeful that they start carrying a much wider variety of whole fish and that they start to process the fish at the retail location.
I've defintiely got some stinkers there (which can really suck at $20/lb.) but I've also got some wonderful fish there as well. They are, as ciaolette said, the only show in [this part of] town for a lot of stuff.
In short, don't drive down from the valley or anything to get here but if you live in the area and are picking up some fish for dinner, you can't really do better.
Good Pizza Delivery in Santa Monica (not Domino's)?
Can I ask when the last time anyone actually ordered from SM Pizza Kitchen? I used to work nearby and ate there a couple of times. It was really bad but your recs usually never steer me wrong. This was about 6 years ago and I never went back after I left that job.
Were they great and are now awful? Were they awful and are now great?
I'm not a fan of Dagwood's either. I find their toppings to be subpar compared to other places in the area.
I think Joe's on Broadway is actually pretty delicious and Abbot's is great. I just end up calling those places on the rare occasion that I order pizza.
Popped my Bay City cherry....
Right. A few minutes MAX and everything is great. I just wouldn't keep if sitting around for hours and by the next day you might as well just put it on a new roll.
Popped my Bay City cherry....
:) Well, sort of. Any longer than 10 minutes and it's bread pudding . . . in a really bad way.
Popped my Bay City cherry....
Hmmm. Could be the reason I like my second half better than the first!
However, if you are lucky enough to get a sandwich made with a loaf fresh out of the oven, dive in immediately. The crust is nice and crispy rather than chewy.
Either way, certainly one of the treasures of the westside.
Popped my Bay City cherry....
I often park at the Vons across the street. Sometimes they have a security guard during peak hours, but then you can get a spot by the Denny's. It's half a block away but that Bay Cities lot is tough to take sometimes.
Popped my Bay City cherry....
This is precisely why I very respectfully disagree with Dommy's preferred method of consumption. By the time you let the sandwich "rest," it's just sogged out.
I look at it this way, sometimes you get the fresh bread and the sandwich is truly divine. Sometimes you get the bread that's been sitting for a bit and it's got a little too much chew. then it's just very good. Them's the breaks.
I suppose you could buy a fresh loaf and have then make a sandwich from the warm bread, but I think they'd club you to death with your bread. Or at the very least the sandwich would end up costing more than it's already substantial amount.
Chilaquiles at Pepy's Galley in Mar Vista
Damn, I'm so envious, man. Enjoy!
I'd be interested to get your take on Pepy's chilaquiles.
