food blogger Archives - Page 7 of 17

The Fish Counter

September 29, 2015

Before summer ended, I spent the afternoon with Gin exploring Main Street. Both of us had been wanting to try The Fish Counter for a long time, and couldn’t find a better time to check it off both of our lists.
The Fish Shop serves up sustainable seafood, and all products are Ocean Wise. The place reminded me of a cool, local seafood shop.

Since it was a nice and sunny day, the windows were all open and so was the patio. The sun was coming in, the air was fresh and warm – what more could you ask for?

It took us quite a while to decide on what to order as everything looked so delicious! We ended up splitting three items for lunch.

The first thing we ordered was the special that day, the Greek fish taco. This caught my eye because I am a HUGE fan of Greek food and I can’t pass down anything with tzatiki sauce. Seriously, I don’t normally tend to finish all my dipping sauces with my food but when it’s tzatiki sauce… I’ll gobble it up so fast before you know it was there!

Everything tasted really fresh but unfortunately, we both found this taco to be lacking in taste and very plain.

We were torn between the chowder and BC bouillabaisse, and ended up deciding on the latter. This soup was seriously amazing and was a seafood lover’s dream. There was an extremely generous amount of seafood – with every scoop we had, there was an abundance of fish, clams, shrimp, etc that came along with it.

We really enjoyed the soup and would order it again in a heart beat! I must warn you though, if you’re not a seafood lover, you might find this soup a bit too ‘fishy’ but we thought it was absolutely perfect.
The last thing we ordered was the crab and shrimp baguette, or pretty much a shrimp/crabcake baguette 😉 Again, all the ingredients were really fresh and the flavours went well together. The baguette was nice and soft too, while the side salad came with fresh and crunchy vegetables.

I would recommend squeezing a bit of lemon juice on top to further accentuate the flavours!

Since this place is mostly self serve, you clean up after yourself once you’re done eating.

Overall, we really enjoyed our first experience at The Fish Shop and I would recommend this place if you’re a seafood lover. All the ingredients they use are really fresh and the quality of the food is definitely there. Since the seating area is a bit limited, this would be a good place to order take out as well. The staff are also extremely nice and welcoming.

On the other side of the restaurant is their actual fish shop! We didn’t buy any seafood to bring home to cook that day, but the option is there for those who want to.

Thanks for reading!

-Carmen

Duotian Fish Soup Noodles Restaurant – Stingy restaurant =\

July 14, 2015

Hi everyone!!

Cheese and I decided to have lunch here one day because we were craving Hong Kong style iced lemon tea, and it was the closest place. I didn’t really have a good experience here last month, but I wanted to come back and give it another try.

I’m not sure I’l be back or not, their food isn’t that great because the restaurant is so incredibly cheap and stingy. There are definitely a lot better places, this place falls on the bottom for the make-your-own-noodle -soup combo category.

As I mentioned earlier, Cheese and I came here instead of our original plan at Sushi Uomo because we were craving HK style iced lemon tea. When our drinks came, the lemon slices were incredibly paper thin. The pictures don’t do it justice because you see the front of the lemon slice and not the side.

Because the lemon was so thin, our drinks did not taste authentic and tasted like plain sweet tea from McDonalds. It was pretty disappointing, and we ended up crushing our lemons completely to a pulp in order for it taste a tiny bit like HK lemon iced tea. Overall, it was pretty disappointing.

Continuing along to prove my point of how cheap they are, look at this french toast that my friend ordered. There was barely ANY custard in it, he felt like he was just eating two slices of bread.

There was also barely any syrup on the side, normally they provide a full small tin of syrup for you.

If there was an adequate amount of custard filling, the french toast would have been decent.
Cheese ordered the pumpkin and tomato fish soup with rice noodles, beef balls, and sliced beef.
I ordered my usual century egg and parsley soup with vermicelli, beef balls, and fish balls. I wanted cuttlefish but they were out. =(

The broth was lighter and more watery than I was used to, but the flavour was still good.

Overall, Duotian is pretty meh and I wouldn’t come back unless I was stuck in the area and REALLY, REALLY craving noodle soup. Cattle Cafe and Deer Garden are much better, and they are less cheap with their ingredients.

Have you been here? What did you think of it?

Thanks for reading!

Carmen

Applebee’s – Roadtrip to the USA!

July 10, 2015

Hi readers!

Call us crazy, but some friends and I made the trip down to USA for some good ol’ indulgence in cheap American food. Yes, we drove all the way there just to eat, but ended up wandering around Bellingham after as well! I’ve only ever driven by Bellingham or went to Bellis Fair, so it was nice to go around and explore the rest of the city.

We headed down shortly after rush hour ended, and following an adventure at the US border, we were off to Applebee’s!

To start off, I decided to get a strawberry lemonade. I was quite tired that day and needed some sugar for energy! The lemonade was very tart and sour, because the strawberry syrup was at the bottom. Give the drink a good stir and it will taste a lot better.

This drink also came with fresh strawberries! I ordered a couple of these during our visit as they have unlimited refills.
Originally, we were going to go to Olive Garden but found out that Applebee’s was having a promotion! One appetizer, and two entrees for twenty dollars – so cheap! You could never get that sort of price and portion in Canada.

The boyfriend and I shared the deal, while my two friends got the same deal but the ‘upgraded’ version.

Pictured above was both of our appetizers which we all shared – boneless wings and onion rings. The boneless wings were very juicy, flavourful, and had a nice crispy exterior! They were delicious! I believe my friends ordered this with BBQ sauce. As for the onion rings, they were gigantic and very fresh and crunchy.

Both appetizers were very satisfying and it was a great start to our meal.

I ordered the chicken strips and fries. Again, the chicken strips were fresh and had a crunchy batter, just like our appies. They were also well seasoned and juicy. The fries were a bit too salty and I didn’t end up eating all of them.

The boyfriend ordered the cheeseburger. The onion and bacon were already inside the patty, which is why the burger looks pretty plain. He enjoyed the burger a lot.

As I mentioned above, my two friends decided to upgrade and get the $25 special instead of the $20. Cheese ordered the macaroni and cheese, which came with some bread and chicken strips.

He was in love at first bite! The mac and cheese was incredibly creamy, and full of garlic and herb flavour. The chicken strips were the same as the ones I ordered. He wanted to finish the mac and cheese, but it was so rich and creamy that he had to pack some leftovers.

Cocoa ordered the chicken steak and prawn with potatoes. Oh mannnn… I had a bite of her chicken and I was in LOVE. The garlic butter slowly melted and encompassed the chicken, and was so delicious! It was very juicy, bursting with flavour, and had a slightly grilled taste to it.

I wish I had ordered this instead and will probably get this the next time I’m at Applebee’s!

We were all very satisfied and stuffed after our meal at Applebee’s. We couldn’t believe how little we paid, yet how much food we got in return.

What is your favourite American chain restaurant?

Thanks for reading!

-Carmen

Richmond Night Market 2015 – Part 2/2

June 28, 2015

Hi everyone!

Continuing part 2 of my trip to the nightmarket with some friends a few weeks ago! Here is part 1 if you missed it =)

As we were walking around, I noticed a stand from Mogu Street Eats. I’ve read about their food truck and heard great things about it, and my friend said that she saw it on The Food Network. So, my other friend decided to get the chicken karage and see if it was actually that good!

Honestly, it didn’t look too appetizing to me because the batter looked pretty old and it looked pretty oily. He insisted that I try it and my opinion was right – it was soaked and dripping in oil.

It’s probably prepared better at their actual food cart because there’s no way that this chicken could get such great reviews.

The nightmarket was almost closing, and we saw that some places were beginning to offer closing specials (they weren’t super good deals though so no point waiting to come later). Decided to ask this stand if they were offering any closing specials, and they said no, but offered us a cheaper price.

After some negotiation, we settled on a price we were both happy with (sorry forgot what it was)! We got the lamb, prawn, and chicken skewer.

The chicken skewer was still a bit raw inside, so I didn’t eat it because I didn’t want to risk feeling sick afterwards. The prawn was also slightly raw too =( If they were both cooked fully, it would have been pretty delicious as the seasoning was great!

The last thing I got was a mango shaved ice!

The mangoes tasted really fresh and ripe. Drizzled with condensed milk, it tasted heavenly!

The ice cream tasted very cheap and like ‘cardboard’ to quote my friend. It wasn’t exactly the best quality ice cream, you could definitely taste the lack of quality in it.

As for the shaved ice, it was just crushed ice with no flavour because well… it was just crushed ice LOL. I was expecting something like this, but maybe this is a different style. There was more ice than toppings, so it was hard to combine the ice with the mango/condensed milk/ice cream to make it taste better.

Overall, this dish was definitely not worth the price.

——

Richmond Night Market 2015 – Part 1/2

June 24, 2015

Hi everyone!

Last year, I wrote a post on the Richmond Night Market so I thought I would do one again this year. That post received quite a few views, so I figured that you readers like to hear what’s good/bad at the nightmarket!

There are two nightmarkets in Richmond, this is the one by River Rock Casino (the more popular one to go to). There is free parking, but the lot was apparently ‘full’ so we drove around the area for a good 15-20 minutes looking for parking. But when we actually walked across the parking lot, half the lot was empty so I’m not sure why they said it was ‘full’. =.=”

Admission to enter the nightmarket is $2.75 per person. You can buy a booklet with 10 entry stamps and skip the long line ups if you think you’ll be coming here often though! Even though the line was long, we waited under ten minutes.

I took a picture of the booth at the top, followed by what we ordered underneath. All the food here is cash only! Although it is street food, it’s not exactly cheap.
The boyfriend loves his takoyaki, and quickly set off looking for a takoyaki stand! While I was in line for squid, he came back with this!

We enjoyed the flavours of the takoyaki. It was well seasoned, tasted fresh, and came with a generous amount of flakes and sauce on top!
While he is obsessed with takoyaki, I am obsessed with squid and a trip to the nightmarket is not complete without some grilled squid.

I ordered the ‘signature’ squid, which had a salty but sweet aftertaste. The squid was nice and crunchy, with a hint of smokiness from the grill.

My friend ordered the ‘garlic lovers’ squid, which I liked more than the signature. The flavours felt more rounded and I liked the strong garlic taste, compared to the sweet aftertaste that I had with the signature. They were both delicious, but my personal preference was the garlic lovers.

My friend, who came here a few weeks before us, said not to get the bubble waffle from the ‘orange stand’, so we went to this place instead LOL.

Although the wait time was pretty long, it was worth it. The bubble waffle was nice and puffy, with a crisp exterior and soft interior.

Thanks for reading! I felt that this would be too long of a post if I included all the food we tried, so stay tuned for part 2 =)

-Carmen

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