food & drink Archives - Page 3 of 91

The Rise Eatery

June 28, 2020 Leave a Comment

It has been over 3 months since I have ate a proper meal at a restaurant! How crazy is that? The last sit down meal was at Do Chay with Avocado in March.

The Rise Eatery is an Asian-fusion restaurant inconspicuously located in the South Granville area, a block away from Kyo. The restaurant is located at the end of the shopping area so it’s a bit hidden.

The restaurant was about half full, with other reservations that night too. We had a server who was friendly, but slow and hard to flag him down at times.

Drinks: We started off with some drinks! Starting from the left, Jerky ordered the ‘Life’s a Peach’ which came with peach tea, peach puree, ginger ale, lime and rosemary.

In the center was my drink, Dark n’ Timmy. I’m a huge fan of ginger beer and this was delicious! The drink came with ginger beer, grapefruit juice, lime, vanilla, and a candied ginger. The grapefruit gave it some sweetness and rounded out the spicy flavour of the ginger.

The birthday boy Smores ordered a Lolliwood North, which came with bench 1775 sauvignon blanc, lychee liquor, elderflower soda, cranberry & orange-mango popsicle. The popsicle was a cute and unique addition!

Uni-Versal Pasta XO Edition: Smores has been here before and raved about this. After deciding between the pasta and the heart attack rice, I decided on the latter and regretted it because this was delicious! I had a bite (the first bite with a clean fork so no germ transmission going on here), and was in love.

This came with squid ink pasta, sea urchin cream, runny egg yolk, sauteed prawn, flying fish roe, and toasted seaweed. It reminded me of an elevated and fancy version of a mentaiko udon.

I couldn’t stop thinking about this dish the next day! I would definitely order this for myself next time because one bite was not enough.

Heart attack rice: My rice bowl came with grilled chicken, a runny egg, and chicken crackling cooked in chicken fat rice. I can definitely see where the name heart attack rice came from.

The rice bowl was delicious as well, although a bit oily but that’s to be expected. The grilled chicken was tender with a nice char flavour. So good! The chicken crackling was essentially deep fried chicken fat, which was too rich for me and my sensitive stomach so the fiance happily ate those pieces.

Shad thai: The only disappointing dish of the night. The sauteed fish noodles were very odd and not good… think of a springy, light fish ball but in noodle form. Some things should not be made into noodles, this is one of them.

The “noodles” came with a fish sauce, with a hint of sourness to it. The sauce was okay but the noodles were not good and ruined the dish. It also didn’t feel worth the $19 price.

Chicken seoul good: This was amazing! Korean style fried chicken with wild mushroom cream, truffle oil, and grated Parmesan. All of these things combined was a match made in heaven. The chicken was juicy and crunchy, and the mushroom cream and truffle oil went so well together.

The truffle oil scent was very aromatic too. The cherry on top was the melted parmesan. Sooo good.

All in all, we enjoyed our visit to The Rise Eatery. It’s a bit hidden at the end of South Granville, but very good (just don’t get the Shad Thai). They do Asian fusion very well and you won’t be disappointed with the uni pasta or fried chicken!

Cindy’s Palace

June 25, 2020 Leave a Comment

For Father’s Day, I suggested dim sum. Initially, I wanted to get Western Lake but they were open too late, and my dad had to go to work. I called a couple of other places such as Happy Valley, but the braniacs over there had a voicemail message saying they were open for takeout and then the line cut off so you can’t even order. *eye roll* and Wah Lun’s line was dead too.

So Cindy’s Palace was actually a 4th option, but it turned out to be pretty decent!

Surprisingly, I have not yet been to Cindy’s Palace. With so many dim sum options around this area, we always end up going somewhere else. I always forget this place exists actually.

Picking up the take out was not smooth. I placed the order at 9:40am, they told me to come in 20 minutes at 10:00am. I ended up waiting for 25 minutes until 10:25, which I was not pleased about because my dad had to leave the house at 11:00am. I told the owner this and she was understanding and did apologize, and I also heard her checking on my order in the kitchen a couple times which I appreciated.

So although it was annoying, her service made up for it which is rare because Chinese restaurants are notorious for bad service.

Bean curd wrap: Ordering bean curd wrap is always a hit or miss for us. We were relieved that the bean curd wrap here was delicious! The filling was not dense as opposed to other restaurants. In addition, there was a decent portion of meat and veggies, and the sauce was not gooey.

Deep fried pork ball: The deep fried pork balls were delicious, and my favourite of the morning. They were fresh and piping hot, even after a car ride. The outside was crunchy, and a mix of sweet and salty.

Beef flour roll: The beef flour rolls were plump, containing a decent amount of beef and some kind of crunchy vegetable inside (daikon?). No complaints here.

Beef tendon: I’m actually not a fan of beef tendon but my dad likes it, so this dish was for him. He had no complaints about it.

Sticky rice wrap: The sticky rice wrap was delicious! The rice was very flavourful and there was a decent amount of filling inside.

All in all, I was very impressed with Cindy’s Palace. Despite the hiccup in the beginning with the take out delay, the owner was apologetic about it and the food ended up being very fresh and tasty. I would definitely come back!

Samurai Sushi – Cambie

June 22, 2020 Leave a Comment

Samurai Sushi is a classic in Vancouver, known for their super cheap ginormous rolls. I’ve had take-out here many times for family gatherings over the years, but have yet to write a review on it which I found a bit surprising!

It’s been awhile since I’ve had Samurai Sushi, I want to say maybe at least a year? I totally underestimated how big their normal rolls were. I remembered that their house rolls were huge, so we only placed a half order, but the normal rolls were GINORMOUS!

This ended up being our lunch and dinner because the pieces were so big with so much rice.

House roll: The house roll is what Samurai is known for. They were the size of my palm! Taste-wise, the salmon, tuna, avocado and tamago were fresh and yummy, but the imitation crab meat wasn’t. The crab meat, which took up majority of the roll, was a bit dry.

Salmon roll: The salmon roll was decent, with no complaints. The salmon pieces were quite big.

Negitoro roll: No complaints about the negitoro roll either.

Here is my palm for comparison. I wasn’t joking when I said the house roll was huge!

California roll: This doesn’t look that big, but this is one of our large plates that normally serve steak. So yeah, it was actually really big. Again, the imitation crab meat was a bit on the dry side but the avocado was ripe.

Spicy tuna roll: There was so much food that I didn’t end up trying the spicy tuna roll. The fiance enjoyed it though, and said the tuna tasted fresh.

Scallop roll: We were quite impressed with the scallop roll! The roll was bursting with scallop. In addition, the scallops tasted very fresh too.

Overall, Samurai Sushi is a major bang for your buck restaurant. Sushi rolls do not get bigger or cheaper than this. It is all about quantity here so if you want large, filling portions of sushi, come here!

I feel like most Chinese or Asian people in Vancouver have been here or have had takeout at large family gatherings. If you know, you know 😉

Riddim & Spice

June 19, 2020 Leave a Comment

Another day, another delivery review to keep this little spot on the internet going and to make sure my writing skills are still being exercised. The fiance and I were in a mood to try something different and new. While looking online for local Black restaurants to support, I came across a plethora of Jamaican food.

We’ve had Jamaican food about 5-6 years ago at Lions Den Cafe which I never wrote a review on. I remember that my jerk chicken was delicious but it was cold inside and thinking they microwaved it. Apart from that, 8-9 years ago, I used to frequent The Patty Shop which is a very tiny hole in the wall serving Jamaican patties. I went there multiple times but don’t go to that area as much anymore. I had forgotten completely about that shop but now I want to go back and see if the Jamaican patties were as good as I remembered!

Anyways, after taking a look at Jamaican restaurants available for delivery, we placed an order for Riddim and Spice. Their restaurant is located on Commercial Drive.

Jerk chicken: The jerk chicken was a bit disappointing in that there was no spice at all. The chicken was moist, tender and fell off the bone but it lacked the spicy kick I was expecting. Instead, the chicken was more on the sweet side with a sweet chili glaze on top or something. It was flavourful and would have been good if the dish wasn’t called jerk chicken, but I was expecting some spice to it.

The jerk chicken also came with some rice and salad. The rice was fluffy, and cooked with herbs, and was subtly spicy. It was different than other rice I’ve had before but it was good. The salad was nothing special, just a side of greenery for health.

Fried red snapper fish: The second main dish we ordered was a fried fish. The fish was seasoned well but we found it to be very salty. I only took a few bites because it was so salty! The portion of fish was also a bit small, it probably could have used another filet.

This dish also came with the salad and rice, no complaints about that.

Jamaican patties: We ordered a chicken patty, and a beef patty. However, it seemed like they messed up and gave us two beef patties as it didn’t seem look like chicken.

I will leave you to figure out if these are 2 different patties are the same… We ordered beef and chicken but they both look like beef? (See above pic)

The patties were alright, I remember them being better at The Patty Shop. The outside crust was flakey and buttery. But there wasn’t much filling so the patty was quite flat, instead of being plump and filled.

Overall, we found Riddim and Spice to be meh and was expecting better. Nothing too great happening here. I’m no authentic Jamaican food expert but I feel like there are other places in town that are better.

Jenjudan – Two Visits

June 16, 2020 Leave a Comment

Jenjudan was recommended to me by Jerky (No, he is not a jerk, I give nicknames based on my friend’s favorite foods and he loves the Korean BBQ jerky from Costco haha). With so many bubble tea places popping up, it is honestly so hard to keep track of!

But I’m glad Jerky introduced Jenjudan and it has quickly rose to one of my new favourites. These are 2 reviews based on delivery.

Lactose intolerant pals, you will be happy to hear that Jenjudan offers soy milk replacement! There are so many places that don’t offer this so I jump at the chance when I see it. This also shows that they care about their customers needs.

Brown sugar pearl milk: This is such a treat for me because so many places don’t offer soy milk replacement. The drink was absolutely delicious. The pearls were caramelized from being cooked in the brown sugar. In addition, they had a soft and chewy texture. I’d definitely order this again!

So many places out there (Blackball, Xing Fu Tang, Ding Tea, to name a few) have such small portions. I was happy that this was not the case here, the size was pretty big.

Lemon chrysanthemum tea: Since the fiance wasn’t feeling like having caffeine or ordering the same drink as me, he settled on this drink. Even though my brown sugar pearl milk was delicious, this was even more delicious!

You could really taste the quality in the tea. There was a fragrant, floral aroma to it as well. The lemon flavour was faint but went really well with the chrysanthemum tea.

One of our favorite bubble tea drinks is Sharetea’s lemon aloe vera, which is hard to beat. But I’d say that this drink was comparable, if not even better than one of our favourites!

We enjoyed our first visit so much that we ordered again a couple of weeks later. I was a bit disappointed to see that they were not clear cups, #foodbloggerproblems! I wanted to show you readers what the drink looked like but we will have to make do with this. I took a picture of the top so at least you can see a bit of the drink.

Thai milk tea: The Thai milk tea was alright, but we had better at Bai Bua. For that reason, the fiance would prefer to stick with the other drinks.

Brown sugar pudding with pearls: I ordered this with soy milk again and it was delicious, although not completely dairy-free because there was pudding inside.

The pudding made the drink even more creamy, while the brown sugar gave it a smooth, rich caramel taste. In addition, the pearls were soft and chewy.

I am more of a pearl lover than pudding lover, so I would probably just order the brown sugar pearl but it was nice to try the pudding!

All in all, I’d highly recommend Jenjudan. The drinks are made with quality, there are soy milk options, and the portions are decent.

A bonus is that they are environmentally friendly with their plant based straws, I’ve never seen that at bubble tea places!