curiouslycarmen, Author at Curiously Carmen

Roger & Gallet Boutique Opening

December 18, 2015

A couple weeks ago, I was invited to the opening of the Roger & Gallet boutique. Roger & Gallet is a classic Paris-based company that has been around since 1862. This boutique marks the launch of their first store in Canada. The boutique is located inside The Bay by Pacific Center, in the beauty department. I loved how bright and happy everything was inside the store. Seriously, their decor, design, and branding is on point.
Apart from all the lovely and glorious scents, one thing that was new to me was the way that customers are able to sample the scents. Instead of spraying the scent on a sample sheet, you pick up the glass funnel to inhale the scent. By using the glass funnel, the perfume is desaturated, which helps to smell the entire aroma and scent.

My favourite scent that day was red ginger, pictured on the bottom left. Although the smell of ginger is usually associated with sickness (ginger tea for colds work wonders, everyone) or food, their red ginger scent also included sweet pomegranate, making it not as spicy smelling.
I love soap walls, or soap in general. What a beautiful and colourful soap wall they had! Each colour is a different scent.

The 100g soaps are $10 CAD each, and come with a travel box as well. Roger & Gallet soaps are 100% vegetable based and enriched with essential oils.

More products! I brought home the Fleur de Figuier ($40 CAD) scented hair/body oil on the bottom. It smelled amazing and consisted of grape, pomegranate, black currant, apricot and sweet almond oils.

I used it as a body moisturizer and conditioner for the ends of my hair. I could smell the product the whole evening, and it left a wonderful scent in my bedroom afterwards.
Soft pinks, so girly! This was an assortment of body lotions, soap, shower gel, and perfume. They do not carry any makeup products for now, rather focusing on body care products.
To end the post, here is a photo of a cute little wall decoration they have. Also, let’s take a moment to appreciate their wallpaper.

I had a lovely evening learning about the products! They are a lovely gift option, as the packaging is great while the products & scents are even better. You can also check out the products online at The Bay.

Thanks for reading!

Carmen

House of Tofu Soup

December 15, 2015

House of Tofu Soup has been on my list since the Spring time, but I wanted to wait for the cold and dreary weather to set in before having some comforting and hot Korean soup.

Well, unfortunately it’s that time of the year again where we all have to trade flip flops for boots, bundle up and bring our umbrellas everywhere. However, I always try to think positive which means that I’m finally able to try House of Tofu Soup.

I’ve heard from many people here that parking is nearly impossible, so we decided to come here for a really early dinner right after I got off work. The parking lot was definitely pretty cramped, fitting no more than probably 10 cars. I can’t imagine how hard it would be to park here during peak hours. Luckily, we got the last parking spot, which was a tight squeeze!

Banchan (Complementary Korean appetizer): An assortment of complementary appetizers. We both liked all of the banchan here and had no complaints.

The kimchi was pretty spicy, I would recommend that those who don’t like spice steer away from it. The mashed potatoes were creamy, while the seaweed and marinated veggies (???) were both crunchy and fresh. Great food to nibble on while waiting on the main dishes!
Beef tofu soup (regular spicy), $10: Originally, we were going to order two tofu soups but decided on sharing one since we wanted to try another dish as you’ll see after! We ordered the beef tofu soup with regular spice, and asked to have the egg fully cooked instead of cracked raw. The menu is really straightforward and you have the choice from picking either beef, pork, seafood, pork kimchi, or a mix. The levels of spice are rated from 1-5.

There was an abundance of silky tofu, egg, and beef. It was such a comforting dish with a bit of spice, and full of flavour. Next time, I would order a spice level 4 instead of 3. We didn’t want to risk the soup being extremely spicy since Korean cuisine is known for their spice! I’m glad we came here on a cold day because this definitely hit the spot.

The rice really filled us up as well, the picture above is 1/2 of the rice they served with the tofu soup.
The second thing we ordered was the seafood pancake. I found the pancake to be pretty oily, and my stomach is very sensitive to oily food but I had no stomach problems afterwards.

The pancake was packed full of seafood and onions/chives, while being crispy on the outside but soft inside. This was a really big portion and after eating the banchan and tofu soup, we took some back home and enjoyed it the next day.

House of Tofu Soup is definitely the place to go if you’re craving a nice, hot bowl of tofu soup (hence their name). We really enjoyed our visit here and will definitely come back when we want something warm and comforting.

Yay!

Q Shi Q Japanese BBQ

December 12, 2015

When I first heard about Q Shi Q, I knew that I definitely had to try it. While trying to find a place to eat with a friend, I suddenly remembered this place and was so excited when he agreed to try it with me!
Q Shi Q opened its doors in late October, so it is still pretty new. It is located just on the border of Olympic Village, a walking distance from the pubs in OV and Earnest Ice Cream. Since this area is mostly industrial (for now), with an exception of new restaurants popping up here and there, it was really quiet in the evening and easy to find parking.

Q Shi Q was the only lit up building on the street, so I definitely knew I was at the right place. I’m predicting that over the coming years, this place will be populated with more restaurants and night life as Olympic Village continues to expand.
After finding parking effortlessly, I made my way into the restaurant. The exterior reminded me of a night club rather than a restaurant, as they had a small rope fence and waiting area.

I was greeted warmly by the owner, and this welcoming tone set the mood for the rest of the visit. Service was very friendly and welcoming, though our waitress was trying very hard to sell us certain items.
Pictured left is a cocktail made out of egg white, lemon peel, and ume (a type of delicious plum wine). The ume made it sweet and refreshing, but the lemon gave it a subtle sour taste as well.

Shouga soda, $2.50: It was very rich, strong and spicy, as ginger is supposed to be. At first sip, you are greeted with a strong blast of ginger that carries out throughout the drink. I drank this very slowly, and the potency of the ginger was lessened near the end of our meal as the ice cubes had melted.
Nana fries, $3: They have two types of fries, shio and nana fries. Shio fries are seasoned solely with sea salt, while nana fries are seasoned with 7 different spices. The fries arrived fresh and piping hot, and were absolutely delicious! I loved the seasonings, and there was a hint of spice as well.

These fries are a great alternative to your standard fries and I would recommend trying these! I would come back just for these fries. They start off salty, savoury, and spicy and end with a slight, well rounded hit of sweetness.
Lobster miso mayo skewer, $9.50: This was one of the daily specials that night, and came highly recommended by the server. The sauce tasted very well rounded and was slightly sweet and creamy, although there wasn’t any cream or dairy ingredients inside. I double checked because since I recently became lactose intolerant, so I have to be very careful and avoid dairy. =(

(Yes, I did a lab test which confirmed the intolerance, which can develop suddenly. Mine is bad so I have to be careful when I’m eating out now. Also, yes that means no more ice cream, cheesecake, cheese, etc unless I take pills but even those don’t help sometimes! Boo).
Skewers, any 5 for $11 (excluding specials): Q Shi Q has two standard flavours- oishii which is a blend of green onion, garlic, ginger, soy, lemon, and other things, and shio which is just sea salt. Pictured here are the oishii pork, oishii sirloin, kirashi sirlion, oishii chicken, and oishii tsukune.

While mid way through the pork skewer, I noticed that the pork was pretty pink in the middle so I stopped eating it. However, I decided to give them the benefit of the doubt. The lighting was pretty dark in there so maybe my eyes were playing tricks on me? But after the meal, I got a stomachache so it was probably from the under-cooked meat.

Other than that, the other skewers were pretty delicious and all had a nice hint of smokiness to them. My favourite was the oishii chicken, which was moist, juicy, and bursting with grilled and seasoned flavour. My least favourite was the oishii tsukune because it was a chicken ball skewer. It had a light and somewhat fluffy texture and did not have as much flavour as the oishii chicken.
Skewers, any 5 for $11 ( excluding specials): oishii salmon, two ponzu salmon, ebi fritter and broccoli

Just like the pork, I found the salmon to be undercooked. Some areas flaked off nicely and were a nice light pink but some parts in the middle did not look cooked. I ended up avoiding the areas that looked undercooked. Looking back, I’m not too sure why I didn’t just ask for them to grill it a bit more.

The ebi fritters were very small and had was composed of mostly batter instead of prawn. This was disappointing and I wouldn’t order this one again.

Considering the meat and two pieces of broccoli are the same price (any 5 skewers for $11), it is more worth it to get the meat. However, it is still important to eat veggies (says the girl who barely eats veggies) so we decided to order one broccoli skewer. It was fresh and crunchy, and tasted a lot better since it was grilled (can you tell I don’t like veggies?).

Matcha amasake parfait, $4: My friend ordered this for desert and was going to let me try some, but we were notified by our server that the rice pudding had cream and milk in it. However, my friend really enjoyed the dessert and said that the matcha was really strong and delicious!

All in all, we both enjoyed Q Shi Q except for that some meat might have been undercooked. The service was excellent, the atmosphere was great, and the food was very flavourful. It is a good place to hang out with friends and share some good skewers!
I took the boyfriend here the following week because I wanted him to try the nana fries! We ordered pretty much the same thing as my first visit.

Thanks for reading!

-Carmen

New Product! Prana Coconut Chips

December 7, 2015

Are you the same as me, and prefer savoury snacks over sweets? I would take a bag of chips or french fries over pastries any day. Although everyone I know prefers yam fries, I still like regular fries better because yam fries are sweeter than regular fries.

I love chips, but I try not to eat them often because it’s not healthy and my throat gets sore the next day if I eat anything more than a small handful! Which is why I was excited to try Prana’s new coconut chips and to see if they are a great savoury alternative to traditional chips.
For now, there are four flavours but they only launched last month, so I am predicting that there will be more flavours on the shelves over the next few months or even years.

The coconut chips are 100% organic, gluten-free, and non genetically modified. The only ingredients in the chips are coconut slices and seasoning (except for the classic, which only contains coconut slices). The boyfriend gladly helped with sampling as well, he thought that this was an interesting concept.

Prana Coconut Chips — A mixture of the different flavours!

Also, Flavours are named after popular dances around the world! Can we also take a minute to appreciate the lovely packaging and branding?
The first flavour we sampled was the sea salt & pepper, because I wanted to try the flavour that seemed the most savoury first. It was…very interesting?

I was expecting the chips to be completely dry, but they were slightly moist due to the coconut meat, which I didn’t mind. However, we both thought that the slight sweetness of the coconut chips didn’t go that well with the sea salt and pepper flavour.
After sampling the salt and pepper flavour, we tried the spicy chili next! The spicy chili, or jive, was my personal favourite.This flavour tasted more like your traditional chip since you don’t taste the sweet coconut, yet can feel the slightly moist but crunchy texture of the coconut meat.

Unlike the salt and pepper flavour, the subtle coconut taste went really well with the spicy chili by making it more rich and the spice less intense.
Third on the list was the barbecue flavour, or charleston! Again, the bbq flavour went really well with the coconut taste. This was the boyfriend’s favourite flavour because he loves anything barbecue.
Lastly, we tried the original, or classic flavour. This is just pure coconut slices with no other added ingredients. This one was nice and simple, and really showed the quality of the coconut!

All in all, the Prana coconut chips are a great healthy alternative to chips. I can eat more of these without feeling as guilty or wake up with a sore throat. Although I wouldn’t have the sea salt and pepper flavour again, I enjoyed the other three and will be munching on these in the weeks to come!

Thanks for reading!

Carmen

Press samples featured. Opinions are own.

Holiday Makeup ft. THEFACESHOP

December 4, 2015

In collaboration with the Canadian Beauty Bloggers Network and THEFACESHOP, I’ve created a simple holiday makeup look using their products. I can’t believe that it is already almost Christmas. I am so excited!

This was the first time that I’ve tried THEFACESHOP makeup products, I usually stick with their skincare products. With the five products that I used to create this look, I found the products to be really worth the price and will be taking a closer look at their makeup products next time I stop by a store. They are a great alternative to your everyday drugstore products.

Products:

Gelset smudgeproof auto liner in 04 – purple
Single shadow pot in glitter (GL01)
Freshian volumizing mascara in 01- curling
Single blush in br01
Face it lipstick in creamy matte (pk101)

After applying my foundation and lightly filling in my brows, I gently dusted the gold eyeshadow on my eyelids. Adding a bit more sparkle because I just love sparkle, I dabbed some onto the bottom inner corner of my eyes to make them pop as well.

Afterwards, I used the eyeliner to create a very simple winged liner. Although the shade is purple, it showed up more as a black shade on my skin and there was a hint of shimmer in certain lights. I decided to also line the bottom of my eye to create more dramatic and striking look, which is something I never do.

To finish off my eyes, I used two coats of mascara, which was more than enough! The mascara was very voluminous and I liked how it accentuated my lower lashes very nicely too.

I really liked the blush, which added some highlight to my non-existent cheekbones. It gave my skin a nice healthy burst of colour as well. Although this is a blush, it can definitely double as a highlighter as well.

I finished the look with some lipstick. I normally shy away from bright pink colours, but was pleasantly surprised at how it matched my skin. I’m glad I stepped out of my comfort zone!
There you have it! A very simple holiday makeup look with some glitter. I love holiday makup because it gives me an excuse to wear more glitter on my eyes. I actually wore some of the glitter eyeshadow to the office yesterday too. I was really tired and wanted to give my eyes a dash of shimmer.

Thanks for reading!

-Carmen