food & drink Archives - Page 89 of 115

Haroo Korean Restaurant

April 6, 2016

‘Harroooooo’ everyone!

Back in January, the boyfriend and I wanted to try a Korean place that we haven’t been before, and discovered Haroo. It is located in Richmond by Lansdowne Center, right beside Deer Garden.
Haroo wouldn’t have been that noticeable if it wasn’t for the giant bright signage they have on the corner. The restaurant itself is pretty small, but comfortable and cozy.
Most tables fit four people, so it would be a bit uncomfortable to eat here with a larger group. There were two waiters working, which I am assuming was the owner and his son.

We got the last table when we arrived on a weekend evening. I’m glad that we didn’t have to wait!
Banchan, free: The banchan here was a lot better than other Korean restaurants I’ve been to. They take it up a level and give you a side salad, which was so delicious! The veggies were really fresh and crunchy, and had some sort of sweet cranberry sauce.

I also really liked the sweet potatoes (left). The banchan here was prepared with quality and wasn’t just quickly prepared and thrown on the table.
Beef tofu soup (sundubu), $11.50: We wanted something warm and comforting, so decided to order the beef tofu soup to share. The portion here was smaller than we were used to, so that was a bit disappointing.

We ordered medium spice, but found the soup to be very bland and lacking flavour. Overall, we found this dish to be disappointing and wouldn’t order it again.
Seafood pancake, $18.95: Another must when going for Korean food (even though it’s super easy to make at home!). Out of all the Korean seafood pancakes I’ve tried in Vancouver, this was probably the best one I’ve had so far. If I’m craving seafood pancake, I know exactly where to go!

The pancake was super crunchy, I think they probably flash-deep fry it right before serving. It is seriously amazing. There is a very generous amount of seafood inside, and is bursting with flavour. The sweet dipping sauce just completes an already delicious pancake.

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I would definitely come back for the seafood pancake, but not for the tofu soup. Service was really fast and efficient as well. I would recommend trying the seafood pancake if you ever decide on trying Haroo!

Thanks for reading,

Carmen

Cat + Cafe = A visit to the Catfe

April 3, 2016

I got invited to the Catfe and seeing how popular it has been since opening two months ago in December, I decided to go and check it out!

Cat + cafe = catfe =^_^= There are many cat cafes in Asia, but Catfe is the first of its kind in Vancouver. In addition, all the cats at the Catfe are from the SPCA and are open for adoption. It’s a great way for potential pet owners to get a sense of what the cat’s personality is like, before adopting.
Of course, I forgot to bring my allergy pills! Yes, unfortunately I’ve been allergic to cats ever since I was a child. But cats are so cute! Luckily, my allergies only get really bad after two hours, so I just dealt with a itchy nose for the time being. My bad…

Catfe is located on the second level of Tinseltown. As you can tell from the picture, there is one main entrance (the full, clear glass door). The actual cafe where they serve food and where the cats are, are separated due to Vancouver’s health rules.

They have a LOT of cute cat themed merchandise for the cat lover in you! These would also make great gifts for those people in your life that have a huge affinity for cats. *insert heart eyes cat emoji here*
Vegan & gluten-free brownie, around $5: Many of their pastries are healthy and suitable for those with alternative diets. I ordered a brownie with peanut butter icing. The brownie was a bit on the dry side and lacked a chocolate flavour, but the peanut butter on top was delicious.

Let’s be honest here, you don’t come to Catfe for their food and drink. You come here to see the cute cats, so let’s enter the cat headquarters! I actually got pretty distracted by the cats and forgot about my brownie.

After washing my hands (a requirement before entering) and having a staff member go over all the rules with me (basically don’t be a jerk to the cats), I saw a big, brown sleepy cat on the counter, pictured on the top left. I am in awe at how he managed to snooze so deeply when there is so much going on around him. I wish I could do that too.

Many of the cats were sleeping when I went. Some were sleeping on the chairs, or in little shelves and boxes.

There was around seven cats when I visited Catfe. The number of cats vary each day, depending on if they have been adopted or not yet.
Here are some of the places for the cats to play. One of their entire wall is a wooden shelf for cats to crawl around in, or sleep in the holes.
They also have cat themed board games and children’s story books as well! It truly is a cat lover’s paradise here.
Hehe, a selfie with one of the sleepy cats. The chairs are cat themed too!
All in all, I think the Catfe is a great place for cat lovers. I wouldn’t recommend coming if you aren’t a fan of cats, because you are essentially paying $5 (with purchase from cafe) or $8 (no cafe purchase, just to see the cats) to see them.

Think of the Catfe as a cat shelter, but with average drinks/pastries, really cute interior design and better living conditions for the cats while they wait to be adopted.

Thanks for reading!

Carmen

Complementary media pass provided, I paid for the food. All opinions are own.

The Green Moustache (Mini Rant)

March 19, 2016

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 Avocado 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

Samsoonie Noodle & Rice

March 10, 2016

A few months ago, I was looking up different Korean restaurants around Metro Vancouver to eat at. I came across Samsoonie Noodle & Rice in Richmond, and it had pretty good reviews so the boyfriend and I went to try it one weekday evening!
I would say that Samsoonie is pretty hard to find if you’re not looking for it. It’s tucked away in a plaza, the last store hidden in the corner. We ended up driving past the whole plaza and found it when we drove around it for a second time.

It wasn’t too busy when we went there. Seating was comfortable and spacious. Considering that there was only one server working that night, service wasn’t too slow.
Banchan, free: Samsoonie only gave us two appetizer dishes, which is fine because we normally don’t finish everything anyways. Normally, places give four places but I’ve been to Korean restaurants that give up to 6!
Soft tofu hot pot, $8.99: My go to dish at Korean restaurants is the sundunbu, or tofu hot pot with choice of meat. This hot pot came with an average amount of seafood but a lot of soft tofu! I was so stuffed at the end of this meal, I didn’t even finish the rice!

I found that the soup was slightly bland compared to other places. It wasn’t too flavourful or spicy and didn’t have much depth. It wasn’t entirely terrible though, and I still felt satisfied after eating it.
Beef soft tofu hot pot, $8.99: I didn’t take a picture when it arrived because it looked the same as mine. Again, the soup broth wasn’t super flavourful but the boyfriend still enjoyed it.

There wasn’t much beef to the pot, but the beef itself was really soft and flavourful. It was the boyfriend’s favourite part of the dish, even if there wasn’t a large amount of it.
Seafood pancake, small, $9.55: The boyfriend wanted the large pancake but I knew that we would not be able to finish it. It would have just been a repeat of House of Tofu Soup, so I suggested we order the small.

The seafood pancake was delicious! It was nice and crispy on the outside, but soft on the inside. There was an average amount of seafood inside, but it was stuffed with leeks.

The spoon is there for comparison. It was the perfect size for us, the large would have been too much and we would have had to end up packing it up.

Overall, Samsoonie is a pretty decent restaurant but not one that I would crave again. I wish that the broth would have been more flavourful and less watery, but service was really friendly and seating was comfortable.

There are so many Korean options to choose from in Vancouver, so the food has to be super delicious to be able to compete with each other. I would prefer to go to Jong Ga or House of Tofu Soup, both in Korea Town.

Yay!

Thanks for reading!

Carmen

Coast Restaurant

March 6, 2016

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.

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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 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 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