restaurant Archives - Curiously Carmen

Fable Diner

November 14, 2016 5 Comments

Fable Diner is a new addition to the Mount Pleasant neighbourhood in Vancouver, aka my favourite neighbourhood in the city. The name may sound familiar to you because Fable Diner is the sister restaurant of Fable Kitchen, which is in Kitsilano.

My ex-coworkers really love going to Fable Kitchen, and wanted to try out Fable Diner. They all rave about the tomato soup. So, we had a reunion and decided to see how Fable Diner is!
Since we had a larger group, we tried to make reservations but unfortunately, were told that they don’t take them. Hopefully this will change soon, as the space was comfortable enough to hold larger parties. We were told to come a bit earlier to secure seats.

Everything worked out though as one of us called the restaurant earlier in the day to let them know, and they were setting up our table when the first few of us were arriving!

I would describe Fable Diner as a fancier, much cleaner and hipster version of your traditional diner. It is not greasy in there, and did not smell like oil. With that said, it is also more expensive than your classic diner!

Drink: I don’t remember what the drink was called and there isn’t a drink menu online. I do recall it was some sort of blueberry soda though. It was pretty good and sweet.
Peanut butter nutella milkshake: Again, sorry I don’t have the price as the drink menu isn’t currently posted online! Everyone expect me split this milkshake, and LOVED it. It was very creamy and rich, and they couldn’t stop raving about how good it was! It also came with some salted pretzels inside the whipped cream.
Roast duck pancakes, $14: We all decided to split this and see how it tasted. For $14, it is a bit pricey but the roast duck was cooked very well. It was flavourful and very tender. It’s a good appy to split with others!
Tomato soup bowl, $10: Again, almost everyone ordered this because it is a favourite of theirs back at Fable Kitchen. Everyone was happy when they tasted it, and it was the same recipe! I wanted to try it but this dish is the epitome of food death for me because of the high amount of dairy inside!

The boyfriend said that the tomato soup was very creamy and cheesy. It came with a delicious sourdough bread and melted cheese as well. Even though it looked small, the tomato soup was very creamy and filling.
FD Burger, $14: Finally, something I could actually eat! After checking with our amazing and friendly server that this did not have dairy in it, I decided to order this! The patty was cooked well done, and very juicy. It was served with a mayo-based sauce. The bun was also soft and fluffy, and lightly toasted.

I really enjoyed both the burger and fries. The fries were salty, crispy, and thick. If I were to come back, I would definitely order the FD burger again!

Pulled pork sandwich with tomato soup, $10: I didn’t try this, but I was told it was really good! Corn on the cob, $6: I didn’t try this either, but I was told it was really good. It came with a chili lime sauce and a couple pieces of fresh cilanto.

Overall, we really enjoyed our visit to Fable Diner! The service was top-notch and I would definitely give the service 5 stars. Very friendly, knowledgeable, and efficient. I wouldn’t really consider this place a classic diner, it is more of a modern revision and the higher prices reflect that.

But they are located at a prime location, and use fresh ingredients so better quality often means higher prices. However, don’t let that stop you from visiting this place because it is really good!

Yay!

The Green Moustache (Mini Rant)

March 19, 2016 2 Comments

Warning- Mini angry rant below! =(

What is with this place and having so many of their items unavailable? Are they not running a business? What do they expect customers to order? Not impressed at all.

The Green Moustache offers healthy, alternative eats but the thing that sold me to visit was their dairy free cheesecake, since I can’t eat dairy anymore but want my cheesecake!

For starters, after driving to their West side location (they also have one in Whistler) and meeting up with Vegan Buddy and another friend, I was so disappointed when I was told they didn’t have any cheesecake that day. Since we made the trip here already, we figured we might as well share some other items.

‘Hook’ smoothie, 12 oz $6.50: Cocoa, mint, goji berries, honey, banana and almond milk. They were out of the honey so they told us they substituted maple syrup instead. Not a big deal, but how do you run out of honey when that is one of the main ingredients in ALL your drinks, and you pride your smoothies on not using sugar?

This basically tasted like a dark chocolate banana smoothie, with hints of mint to it. I liked that it wasn’t too sweet.
Buddha bowl, $9.50: An assortment of healthy greens, quinoa, and rice. AGAIN, they didn’t have ripe avocado on hand so they gave us hummus instead. That was another disappointment since we both love avocado.

This bowl was filled with an abundance of fresh ingredients, and was really filling due to the brown rice. It had a combination of both sweet and savoury, and soft/crunchy textures.

Just to re-cap, each item we ordered so far has had an ingredient unavailable, or just the dish was entirely unavailable itself. Not impressed….
Raw chili, $9.95: The chili is served a bit chilled/room temperature, something that I found a bit odd. Unfortunately, we found a rubber band piece in our dish. When we asked about it, the staff apologized and said that this was their last bowl of chili so they wouldn’t be able to make us a new one. We came at 12:30 pm and it wasn’t even busy, yet this was your last bowl?

To add to the disappointment, the chili was incredibly salty. It was hard to eat more than 2-3 spoonfuls at once because it was just too salty, even with the brown rice. We were glad that had the refreshing buddha bowl, and would alternate.

Eventually, we just gave up on eating this and packed it up – my friend came up with the idea to eat this with tortilla chips instead, which would probably taste better.
Chocolate walnut fudge brownie, $3.50: To make up for the rubber band and having so many items unavailable, we were offered a complementary brownie as an apology. We enjoyed the brownie, and I liked how it wasn’t that sweet and probably made with dark chocolate. It was sweetened with dates as well.

Although service was very friendly and knowledgeable, I’m not sure if I’ll return or recommend this place as I left disappointed at how many items were missing from our dish. It’s definitely not worth driving out to this area if you aren’t already here.

I understand that occasionally, restaurants will run out of certain items, which is totally understandable and fair. But judging from how many items were unavailable just shows disorganization from the establishment.

Thanks for reading,

Carmen

Coast Restaurant

March 6, 2016 4 Comments

Note: I wrote this review a year ago, last March. I came back here in May 2015 and didn’t really have a good experience, so I hesitated to put this review up. The service was really slow and un-attentive, while the food didn’t taste as good as the review I have written here below.

——

Back when I used to work in downtown, I had the pleasure of going to Coast for lunch. It was my second time here, and I suggested this place because I had a wonderful experience the first time I went. From the atmosphere to service to food, everything was exceptionally done (the second time I came which is what the review is based on, the third time was not good).

Originally, my cousin and I had plans to eat at Black & Blue for lunch, and I decided to read up on the menu before we went since I had a limited lunch break. I was a bit shocked at how abysmal the Zomato ratings were for that restaurant – I thought it was a good restaurant!

Since the Glowbal Group restaurants aren’t particularly cheap, we decided to be safe and go back to Coast, since it was good the last time we went. I was able to make a last minute reservation online without any problems.

The infamous circular oyster bar in the middle of the restaurant. I love the interior and ambiance of Coast. Some of the seating is a bit squishy and uncomfortable, especially during peak hours. You could be sitting almost shoulder to shoulder with the next table.
Sorry, I forgot what drink this was but it was one of their non-alcoholic cocktails. I tried to read their menu online, but none of the drinks there seemed to ring a bell so perhaps the menu changed.

I thought it was really refreshing, and wasn’t too sweet but had some strawberry pulp in it. If I was going to be picky, I would have liked it with less ice because I found that 1/2 the drink was ice.
My cousin and I decided to split all of our lunch items. We both weren’t that hungry since we had some light snacks before meeting up, so decided to split some items.

You can’t go to Coast without ordering their seafood.

First up on the left, was the spicy ahi tuna roll. For $12.95, it is a bit overpriced considering a lot of Japanese restaurants can serve this for half the price, but there is no denying that the quality was definitely there. The tuna was extremely fresh and melted in your mouth. It came flavoured with a mouth watering sesame yuzu sauce, and a hint of spice. There were small crunchy flakes on top which topped the cherry off in an amazing roll.
On the right, were the fish and chip cones. It came with cod tempura, greens, fresh tobiko, and rice wrapped in some sort of soy paper (???). Again, everything tasted delightfully fresh and the tempura was perfectly crunchy. I loved biting into the crunchy tobiko as well, which popped with flavour! The rice bed did a good job in filling me up as well.
Our last dish was the smoked salmon flatbread. Give me almost anything with smoked salmon and arugula, and I will eat it. Smoked salmon and arugula is probably one of my favourite combinations of food.

The flatbread was thicker than I expected, I was expecting some sort of thin crust pizza-variation for some reason. I’m not a fan of Neapolitan thin crust pizza (cue *GASP HOW COULD SHE?!* from everyone) so I liked this dough a lot more.

I came back here last May (see note above), and ordered this as well. Unfortunately, it was not as good as the flatbread was drenched in so much mayo that it we couldn’t taste anything else. This place isn’t as consistent as it used to be, so I’m unsure if I would come back especially since it’s not cheap dining.

Would have been a yay! but because of the second experience, it is a meh…

Thanks for reading!

Carmen

Jo Ju Hot Pot

October 9, 2015 Leave a Comment

The Heights neighbourhood has a plethora of cuisines to choose from… from the familiar to the more daring choices. However, the one thing that has been missing in that area is a bubble tea shop, ever since Pearl Drops closed down. I really miss that place. =(

So you could imagine my happiness when we were driving by this area and I saw a new restaurant signage indicating that they serve bubble tea! I was so excited that I messaged a couple of my friends right away to tell them LOL. Sadly, I kept forgetting the name of the restaurant although it was in the back of my mind the next week… I wanted to read reviews on it but I didn’t know the name and it did not show up on Zomato yet… ahhhh! The next time we drove by, I made a mental note to myself to remember the name. Jo. Ju. Jo ju. Jo ju hot pot….!!

Cheese was helping me on a project one evening in August, so I suggested that we go try that place out before working!
After parking at one of the many free parking lots in this neighbourhood close by, we arrived at the restaurant. It wasn’t really busy, as you can tell from my picture above. We were seated pretty quickly and service throughout our visit was quick and friendly.

The restaurant was pretty clean and simple, most of the furniture there seemed pretty new. It was also pretty spacious and didn’t feel too cramped, with lots of natural light coming through the big windows.
I really did not like the design of the menu, and I felt that the pictures looked very inaccurate.. as if they took it from the internet. Furthermore, Cinnamon had visited this place before me and sent me some pictures, which looked nothing like the menu pictures! So, a word of advice… don’t order based on the menu pictures!

I ordered the seafood hot pot, which came with a bowl of rice on the side.

The broth did not have much depth and was pretty plain, but it wasn’t bad either. It was pretty average. It came with an egg, some shrimp, fish balls, and a mussle which I found on the bottom. You could definitely tell that the shrimp came frozen and did not have a bounce to it.

However, the portion was pretty big. I came in the restaurant really hungry, but left really full from this dish! If you are just moderately hungry, I don’t believe that you’ll need the rice bowl.
The egg came poached and hard, probably due to the hot temperature of the soup. If you’re not a big fan of hard poached eggs, I would recommend that you let them know or it will come out as a hard poached egg.

I also ordered it with medium spice, you can kind of see the spice in the picture. I didn’t find it spicy at all though.
Cheese ordered the signature BBQ meat on rice, but sadly, he thought it was disappointing. There was nothing special about this, you could easily cook this at home for a lot cheaper.

Originally, we were going to try the bubble tea but were too full after our meals to think about ordering a drink!

Overall, the food at JoJu Hot Pot is mediocre at best but it does fill you up. I know that they’re new, so I’m willing to come back another time to see if they have improved. There is not much special about their food, nor is it bad.. it’s just very plain, mediocre, and boring.

In a place like The Heights where there are plenty of restaurants to choose from, or just Vancouver in general, this is definitely nothing special or worth driving out for. It would be a place to go to if you were in the area, and definitely not a place where you would be craving.

Thanks for reading!

-Carmen

The Flying Pig (Gastown)

May 25, 2015 1 Comment

Hi everyone,

So after an expensive lesson learned not to order the main dishes at The Flying Pig, I was back with Shell for famous happy hour but at their Gastown location in February (sorry for late post =p) .

If their service at the Olympic Village location wasn’t spectacular, I probably would have been less inclined to try this chain again!
Originally, we were told that there was a 30 minute wait, but luckily someone just left and we were seated in less than 10 minutes! We saw some empty tables, but were told that happy hour was only served at the bar area. Seating was a bit cramped, as I found with the Olympic Village location as well.

Shell and I decided to share some cheap happy hour appetizers. The first thing that arrived was the truffle mac and cheese. It looked very plain, with barely any traces of veggies or meat but hey, you’re only paying $5 so don’t expect much. With that said, I was so shocked at how amazingly delicious this mac and cheese was. I don’t know what they put it in but it was amazing!!!!

Smooth, creamy, cheesy, with just the right amount of herbs and bursting with flavour… I knew I had made a good decision giving The Flying Pig a second chance.

Next came our smoked salmon and arugula salad, $7. This had a strong and fresh lemon taste to it, and I enjoyed this dish as well. The only complaint I would have about it was that it was quite small. Shell and I split this in half and it was over in one bite =(

This pulled pork poutine does not look appetizing from the picture, but it was. I ordered this with the boyfriend at the Olympic Village location, which was one of the highlights of our meal. At this location, it was no different. There was a generous amount of pulled pork, which was tender and flavourful.

The poutine came slathered with a generous amount of gravy and cheese itself, yummmm. The fries itself were standard, but this dish was delicious nonetheless.
After finishing those delicious dishes, we decided to order one more appy which was the short rib croquette. We had been eyeing this from the customer sitting next to us, and he told us it was really good.

Oh man, was the short rib croquette delicious. The batter was super fresh and crunchy on the outside, but the short rib inside was soft and delicious. It reminded me of a takoyaki.. except deep fried. The short rib was mixed in along with what I’m guessing mashed sweet potato and herb filler? It was very soft and had a creamy mashed potato texture inside.
Oh right, Shell and I each ordered a glass of wine too! It was $4 a glass which is pretty cheap, but it is any type of red or white wine.

This happy hour trip to The Flying Pig restored my faith in them! They have delicious appetizers but you’ve been warned about their not-so-stellar main courses.

Have you been here for happy hour? How did you like it?

-Carmen