coconut Archives - Curiously Carmen

{Food Truck Compilation} JJ’s Trucketeria, Guanaco, and Super Thai

February 3, 2015

Food truck invasion! I decided to compile these 3 food trucks into one post as they seemed like it would be three very short posts on their own. These places are a compilation of two visits with coworkers during the Street Food City festival, which was part of DOVF. But, most of these you can have without Dine Out Vancouver. I should have included Vij’s food truck in here as well, oops!

Guanaco is a Salvadorean cuisine food truck, I think it is the only one of its kind in Vancouver but correct me if I’m wrong. I wanted to take a walk around the food truck festival and my coworker decided to come with me as well!

I had already eaten, but I was in the mood for a small snack which is why I settled on this place. My first choice was The Reef food truck, but their Jamaican patties looked kinda gross in the warmer so after walking around three times, I decided to just come here. Ugh indecisiveness.

I ordered two of their snack sized tacos, chicken and chorizo. I felt like a small snack, and felt that $5 would be a reasonable price.

The chicken was tender, while all the vegetables were fresh and crunchy. I liked the addition of fresh onions and loads of cilantro! The taco shell was soft and doughy, with a bit extra powder.

DSC04610-300x168 — Photo credit: Blast Media

Super Thai: On that same day, my coworker ordered the chicken pad thai from Super Thai. I didn’t try any, but she was happy to offer her opinion on it.

She liked how it was warm and comforting on a cloudy day, and said it was pretty flavourful and not watery like other pad thai that she’s had.

However, near the end, a lot of the noodles started to annoyingly stick to the bottom of the take out box, and took too much effort to un-stick. Perhaps it’s the texture of the noodles that makes it do that.

She also thought it wasn’t worth the price she paid. I also think it’s worth nothing that they were sold out on half their menu items by 2 pm that day. I wanted to order the coconut curry rice but there was none left! =(

JJs-Trucketeria-1 — Picture from Follow Me Foodie

JJ’s Trucketeria: While I went to Vij’s, two of my coworkers ordered from JJ’s instead. Funny story, none of us actually knew the name of this place. I didn’t take a close look at the place, and my coworkers didn’t see a name on the truck.. so we just referred to it as the yellow food truck.

I’m not even sure how we figured out the name, LOL! As you can see from the picture, half the name is on the covering which you’re not able to see unless you’re far away, while the other part is covered with their menu.

Flipino BBQ pork, fried egg, and garlic rice. My coworkers were nice enough to share with me as the portion was too big for just one person. The meat was very tender and well seasoned, while the fried egg was cooked perfect and oozed onto the garlic rice.

My favourite part of this was the garlic rice! Although I only had a few bites, I loved the slight garlic flavour. This is perfect Asian comfort food on a rainy day.

Although, I would recommend having gum or mints handy due to the garlic rice.

That sums up my food truck adventures last month, including Vij’s Railway Express!

What are the names of your favourite food trucks? Better question, what is your opinion on food trucks- love ’em, or prefer a traditional sit down meal?

Thanks for reading!
-Carmen

Amato Gelato Cafe, Olympic Village

April 29, 2014

Funny fact, I always thought this place was called Mario’s Gelato until I tried to Urbanspoon it, and there were no results! So I decided to add/suggest the restaurant to Urbanspoon, and it showed me that a place known as “Amato Gelato Cafe” was already at this location.

After some research, Amato Gelato Cafe is the retail gelato shop owned by Mario’s Gelato. We noticed that with our latest visit, our gelato pints came with their company logo on it, while previous times, there was nothing. Weird. Anyways, after our mediocre and semi-disappointing visit to Ramen Sanpachi, we were feeling like dessert so we stopped by here. Before writing this, I was reading up on other reviews from this place. A blogger mentioned that she got in trouble for taking pictures in the store, which didn’t happen to me. That’s very strange, especially in our day and age where a significant portion of a restaurant’s marketing comes from their own customers. Perhaps they changed their policy.

Speaking of policy, Amato does not accept credit cards. There is a charge to use debit, so cash is the way to go! You also pay for your ice cream prior to choosing the flavours. There are also two more gelato display cases which aren’t pictured, which forms a bit of a “J” shape.
Whenever we come here, we always get the “to go” tub because we feel that it’s a better value. For $9, you get a lot more ice cream and you can bring it home to enjoy! I believe you can chose from 1 L or 500 ml, we went with 500 ml.

You can also pick up to three flavours, which is what we usually do. It always takes me a long time to decide which flavour I want, and the staff are generally really patient with sampling.

However, I do find that they do not really know their products well, because when you ask them questions, they look really confused.
The first flavour we decided on getting that night was the rolo! It came with a caramel gelato base, with rolo chocolate chunks inside. We were hoping to get white chocolate raspberry, but they didn’t have that flavour that night so we settled with this.

There was a light caramel taste, nothing too strong. It was not as rich and sweet as I expected it to be for a gelato. The star of the show were the rolo chunks inside the ice cream, which had caramel inside!
The second flavour we got was the strawberry cheesecake. Please excuse my ugly pictures, it was tricky trying to capture it properly since it came in a pint! This one was my favourite out of the three flavours we got that night. It was very rich and indulgent, which is what I’m going for in gelato. There was a strong, thick, cheesecake flavour to it. It would have been nice to have included some actual strawberries in there, but I enjoyed the richness and creaminess to this gelato nonetheless.
The third flavour was the coconut, one of the boyfriend’s favourite! We order this flavour every time because it tastes so good and rich. There is a strong coconut taste to it, but also very, very rich and creamy. The coconut gelato has a very smoother texture to it, more so than the other flavours.

From what we’ve tried from our multiple visits, Amato offers decent gelato at a decent price. The flavours we tried had a smooth texture to it, and was very soft and nice to scoop.

-Carmen

Island Girl Hawaii Lip Gloss Review

February 20, 2014

Hello readers!

It’s been awhile since I’ve done a makeup review. These days, I haven’t really been wearing much makeup except for eyeliner, and I kinda wanted to take a picture of the product I’m reviewing.

The product I am reviewing today is the Island Girl Hawaii Lip Gloss, which is infused with real flowers. Hands down, this is my favourite lip gloss of all time! It just sucks because I’m pretty sure you can only purchase it in Hawaii. My cousins went back this Summer and bought me the whole set, which made me so happy!

Non sticky: Most lip glosses are often really sticky, which bugs me to no end. My hair is also pretty long, so whenever my lip gloss sticks, my hair clings onto it, and smudges it off or ends up on my hair strands (Ugh, so annoying). This lip gloss, even though it’s super glossy, does not stick at all! I think it’s because the ingredients are water-based, but I’m not too sure, it just really works.

Long lasting: This lip gloss is also really long lasting. I love that I don’t have to constantly apply this over and over again. You also apply the lip gloss via a roller ball. The roller ball also prevents you from over applying so that your lips don’t look oily, and also for the scent to be stronger. I usually dab the lip gloss in three spots on my bottom lip, then purse my lips. I find that this way makes the gloss last longer, as opposed to you putting it all over your lips.

Gloss: As I mentioned before, this lip gloss is really glossy which I love. I usually put this on top of my lipstick if I feel like I want a shine to my lips. It’s also deeply hydrating and moisturizing. Usually, I apply lip balm before my lipstick, but when I’m wearing this product, lip balm isn’t necessary.

Scent/taste: Scent usually isn’t that important to me, but this is just the cherry on top of the perfect lip gloss. Their scents are amazing. My favourite one is the raspberry. The set also comes with pineapple, cherry, coconut, and tropical fruit which smell really nice as well. They also have real flowers infused inside, which adds to the wonderful scent too. Apart from the wonderful scent, it has a wonderful taste as well, though I don’t recommend eating this straight from the tube (although it’s tempting). My favourite scent as I mentioned above was their raspberry one. The others also have a good taste as well. Most lip glosses I use have this really artificial or bitter taste to it, so I appreciate that this one tastes and smells good.

Packaging: The quality of the packaging is great as well. The tubes itself are made out of glass, while the lid is plastic. Since the glass is clear, you can see the real flowers inside which is aesthetically pleasing. On top of the lid, there is a sticker which contains the scent and taste. Each flavour also has it’s own flower colour- for example, the pineapple flavour comes with green, yellow, and white flowers. The coconut flavour comes with magenta, purple, and white flowers. So pretty!

Weaknesses: Over time, I found that the flowers start to wilt inside and not look as fresh as they did before (which shows that they’re fresh I guess?). Also, when it’s about to run out, it takes a bit of time for the product to reach the rollerball. Since I always apply lipstick before I wear this, the rollerball also became stained with my red lipstick but that’s just my own fault.

Next time you’re in Hawaii, give these products a try! The box set I have was around $15 USD. They are sold at the ABC store. Don’t be alarmed though, the quality of this product is really good even if they’re sold at the convenience store! I can’t wait until I go to Hawaii to buy more of these as gifts. They’re definitely a must buy, since I’m pretty sure you can’t buy them elsewhere.

Sawasdee Thai

February 10, 2014

Hi everyone!

Thai cuisine always seems to be lacking in popularity, especially in Vancouver. Indeed, there are just as delicious Thai restaurants as there are with other Asian cuisines, but for some reason, I never really hear anyone talk about going to Thai food, which really is a shame!

We came across Sawasdee Thai on Urbanspoon and we were sold immediately due to its high rating and convenient location. So off we went!

Sawasdee Thai is located on Main Street. We decided to go a bit later, just because we thought it would be super busy on a Friday night and didn’t want to wait in line there. The restaurant really stands out from the rest of the restaurants on the block.

When we got there at 8:30pm, we expected it to be quiet and were worried that it was even closed! We went in and were taken by surprise by the fact that the restaurant was completely full, with 2 parties of 4 still waiting to eat! The host asked us if we had a reservation which we didn’t, and I was worried we wouldn’t get a table. However, after 5 minutes, another lady sat us down. Yay!

The door is completely filled with awards which we took as a great and welcoming sign. We sat down, and impressed at how fast the servers were with getting our water and menu despite it being super busy in there.

When we were ready to order, the sever was quick to come to our aid. I really appreciated this because often, when you go to restaurants, servers ignore you when they’re busy, but these guys were really nice and efficient.

Our food came really fast, which was pleasantly surprising. For our appetizer, we ordered Stuffed Chicken Wings ($8.95). We ordered this because it sounded interesting – “de-boned chicken wings stuffed with bean thread noodles, mushroom, and carrot”. I wondered how a stuffed chicken wing would taste….

I instantly fell in love with the flavour of the chicken wings. The noodles were what made this dish stand out, otherwise it would have tasted like normal chicken wings.

The spices in the noodles were really good. I liked how they were generous with the noodles, but not so much that it ruins the actual chicken itself (see picture on the right-bottom is the chicken, clear stuff on top are the noodles/carrots/etc).

The sauce was also light and mild, which is good for an appetizer. It also tasted super fresh!

Next up, was our green coconut curry with chicken (12.95). We ordered a side of coconut rice since it does not come with any sides. There was an abundance of wonderful exotic Thai spices mixed intricately with rich, creamy, coconut milk and chicken breasts.

I loved that it was equal parts spicy, yet creamy, rich, and sweet at the same time. They also give you a LOT of quality, white meat chicken in the curry as well. With every spoonful of goodness you scoop, comes at least 3 pieces of chicken on your small spoon, until the very end of the dish (usually the first couple of spoonfuls the chicken would be gone).

The bamboo shoots that came with the dish were also really soft and sweet. The basil leaf that came on top of the dish was also a really nice addition and detail to our curry. The side of coconut rice (2.95) was also steamed perfectly, and had a generous amount of coconut milk with it.

Our final dish was their pad thai with tamarind sauce (11.95). I am not a big fan of pad thai to be honest, but I thought it tasted pretty good. The flavours were really accentuated and lively, you could really taste the tamarind sauce. There was also a generous portion of prawns that came with the dish. I was really hoping to try dessert but there was no way I could have eaten more there!

Conclusion: Overall, we had an excellent experience at Sawasdee Thai. The staff was very accommodating and managed to fit us in even though the restaurant was packed and we had no reservation. Service was friendly, quick, and efficient. I would highly recommend coming here as long as you make a reservation.

What are some delicious Thai places that you’ve been to in the Lower Mainland? Any thoughts? Let me know!

-Carmen