food review Archives - Page 14 of 18

Red Wagon

June 11, 2014

Hi everyone!

The last time I’ve been to Red Wagon was almost three years ago, back when it was starting to gain traction and recognition. I remember my visit that time was average at best. I didn’t understand why people raved about this place so much! =P

So, after constantly driving by this place and seeing it lined up out the door and around the corner, I decided to try this place again last month with my two other friends for lunch!
We came on a weekday, a bit past 1pm so it wasn’t that busy. When we arrived, there was only the big 6 person round table so they told us to just sit there. Later on, a party of 6 actually came in and they had to wait for our table so we felt kind of bad. But we couldn’t really switch because the only empty tables were small, and would definitely not fit the three of us.

The three of us were also pretty hungry, and ended up ordering quite a lot of food that we all split!
We ordered the trucker ($12.50), which came with 2 eggs, 2 buttermilk pancakes, toast, home fries and a choice of bacon or sausage. The home fries were their style of hash browns, they were seasoned well and came with green onions which gave it a better flavour.

The toast and sausages were pretty standard, and you can ask them for a side of homemade jam. As for the pancakes, let’s get into them here:
Of course, you can’t go to Red Wagon without trying their famous pulled pork pancakes with Jack Daniels syrup ($13.50). The pancakes were cooked perfectly, in all their buttery, indulgent, and guilty goodness. Since it was made with buttermilk, they were really rich.

They were also very fluffy and had a nice texture. We ended up using all the JD syrup and dipped the remaining 1/4 of the pancakes with the regular syrup. As for the pulled pork, it was very juicy and tender with a slight barbeque taste to them.
We should have stopped here with the chorizo meatball sandwich with a side of fries ($13), but we didn’t. Out of all four dishes we ordered, this was my least favourite, but it wasn’t bad, either. I felt that the bread was very dry and hard to chew. The chorizo meatball was a bit dry as well.
Phew! After sharing those three dishes, we were all stuffed. However, their cute dessert chalkboard was advertising pie and ice cream, and we all wanted to try it. We actually ordered two of these, because we thought our other friend was going to join us but we ran out of time, so my friend ate one herself.

They had either apple or strawberry rhubarb (I believe it was $5, plus an extra $1 for ice cream). I would have preferred more strawberries over rhubard, the rhubarb made it taste a bit more tart. The vanilla ice cream made it taste a bit sweeter and went really well with the pie!

Our bill including tips came to $60. It was a pretty satisfying meal, but I’m not sure if I would want to wait in line during high peak hours for their food. My favourite was their pancakes due to their fluffiness. Service was also very friendly and attentive!

-Carmen

JOEY Bentall One, Downtown Van

May 15, 2014

I apologize for the lack of restaurant reviews lately. My summer semester started a week ago, and the assignments are already piling up! The good news is that one of my courses will be done in half the normal time, since it’s an intersession course, so I will have a lot more time once it is over. But for now, I am swamped with course assignments, starting my application process for co-op, work, and trying to squeeze in a social life still.

Hence, my attempt at squeezing in a social life results in this restaurant review. It was one of my childhood best friend’s birthday last week, so a small group of us converged over great food at Joey!
There are actually two JOEY restaurants on Burrard Street in downtown Vancouver. One is the actual JOEY Burrard, while the other is JOEY Bentall One. Bentall One is located a block away from Burrard skytrain.

I was a bit confused at first since my friend told me it was the Burrard location, but when I got there, it said Bentall One. Thankfully, I was at the right location! As always, the decor and ambiance was very fancy and lively.
Since I was running late due to my class, they decided to order an appy while waiting for me to arrive. They were also nice enough to save me a piece of the pesto shrimp flatbread, $14.50.

It was very doughy and loaded with a lot of ingredients on the top. They were also generous with the amount of shrimp. I was really considering ordering this as my main dish, but decided on getting something else.
I ordered the chicken souvlaki served with skinny fries, $14.50. I was surprised when the dish came out, because I was expecting it to be on a bed of rice, with a chicken skewer.

However, this wrap was really filling and delicious nonetheless. The chicken was grilled and had a hint of smokiness to it, while the other veggies and cheese inside tasted really fresh. The pita bread wrap was also very soft.
Friend’s lobster grilled cheese, with brie, cheddar, and and cocktail sauce $15. I had a bite of the sandwich, and really enjoyed the strong flavour of cheddar in it. The lobster was mixed inside with the warm cheddar and brie cheese.
Some of these I didn’t get a chance to taste, so I will unfortunately just have to give you guys the name and price. Ahi tuna tacos – $12.
Bacon cheddar burger, sub yam fries $15.25.
The 500 salad – organic quinoa, barley, watermelon radish, mint, tomatoes, avocado $13.50.
If the birthday girl wants to indulge in dessert, she is allowed to. She decided to order the molten lava chocolate souffle, $8.25. Yes, it looks and sounds as good as it tastes! Thick, warm dark chocolate slowly oozes out of the molten lava cake after you dig in. The chocolate was very creamy and smooth. Paired with the raspberry sauce and vanilla ice cream, it is seriously a match made in heaven.

As always, service was attentive despite the restaurant being relatively busy.

Wah Lun Chinese Restaurant, N. Burnaby

May 4, 2014

Once in awhile, I have sudden cravings for dim sum, or “yum cha” as Cantonese people call it. One of my favourite places to go for dim sum is Wah Lun, which is located in North Burnaby. I’ve never tried their dinner menu, but their dim sum is pretty decent.

One thing I like about this place is their ample parking. Even if their parking lot is full, there is a City of Burnaby parking lot located footsteps away from the restaurant, plus street parking!

We went around 1:30 pm, which is pretty late for dim sum so it was easy to find parking.
Am I the only one here that misses the dim sum carts? Funny story, when I was a child I would only want to go to the Chinese restaurants that had carts because I didn’t want to wait around for food.

But of course, as I grew up, I came to accept the fact that dim sum carts are a thing of the past, in this city at least. But at least the food is fresher this way, even if there’s a longer wait time! If you’ve never had dim sum before, they give you this menu, and you write down how much of each item you want.

Any small dish costs $3.15, medium $3.85, and large $4.15. Beside each dish, it will tell you what size it is. We ordered 5 dishes which came to $22.
Another childhood story of mine- Whenever our family went to dim sum, I would only eat dishes that had shrimp or prawn. To this day, I still love shrimp and prawns, throw them in any dish and I would most likely eat it!

So of course, I had to order a prawn dish this time as well. This was the rice flour roll with prawn and Chinese vegetables ($4.25). Wow, so weird saying that in English, I’m used to saying it in Cantonese… anyways. We really enjoyed the dish. The prawns were very juicy and flavourful, plus the greens inside were fresh and crunchy too. It also wasn’t too oily, and I love the dim sum soy sauce too. I’m pretty sure it’s a mix of soy sauce, sugar, and msg and goes really well with this dish!
The second dish that we ordered was the bean curd wrap with oyster sauce ($3.85). I was a bit hesitant to try this but it was good as well. It was very juicy, and came with some mixed vegetables inside that tasted really fresh. When you bit into it, the liquid oozed out and you could really taste the fresh veggies! However, we didn’t taste any oyster sauce. I didn’t even know that it was supposed to have oyster sauce until I looked at our receipt.
Can you tell I love prawns yet?! This is my absolute favourite dish to order at dim sum. When I got to choose one dish to order as a child with my family, I would always choose deep fried prawn spring rolls! Their deep fried prawn spring rolls with golden garlic ($4.15) are amazing. The batter is super crunchy, and the shrimp are very juicy and seasoned well. It also comes with some garlic, but not too much to make it overpowering or your mouth smell bad for the rest of the day.

Topped off with the red rice vinegar sauce, this dish is amazing despite how bad it is for you! I’m also not sure why it’s called “golden” garlic, probably because Chinese people really like the word “gold” judging by how many places have the world “gold” in it, so it sounds more appetizing.
Next dish that came was the sticky rice wrap ($4.15). Honestly, on the menu it doesn’t sound that appetizing but let me tell you, it is really good! Sticky rice wrap is usually composed of glutinous rice, steamed inside a lotus leaf wrap, which brings more flavour to the rice.

Inside, there is usually pork, chicken, salted egg, mushrooms, and Chinese sausage. When I unwrapped the leaf, I was greeted by steam and a delicious aroma of the combination of rice and the leaf wrap. At first bite, it was bursting with flavour and came with a generous amount of lean meat and Chinese sausage.
The last dish we ordered was the pan fried radish cake with Chinese sausage ($3.85). It had a slight crispiness to it which is a good sign. It had a very soft texture on the inside, and was filled with tiny pieces of Chinese sausage. Yum!

Overall, we enjoyed our dim sum at Wah Lun. Their dishes taste fresh and are bursting, (or should I say steaming?) with flavour. My favourites would have to be the deep fried prawn spring roll and sticky rice wrap because it brings me back to my childhood. Service here is also attentive, and they are well staffed!

Ramen Sanpachi

April 19, 2014

People say it’s hard to mess up ramen because it’s just broth, and noodles but there’s much more to it. The broth should be made from good ingredients and from scratch, or it’s not going to taste good.

My visit to Ramen Sanpachi fell short, and I was disappointed with the broth and questioned it’s authenticity.
We decided to come here since the boyfriend has been here before and he liked it. We found meter parking pretty easily. I was a bit confused because in the picture, it looks like Sanpachi is the smaller restaurant on the left, right?

But turns out, the right side is part of the restaurant too… talk about change in style. I thought it was two different restaurants, but when I read the hirigana on Google street view (what basic Japanese I know came in handy, heh), it was the same place! Weird.
We were expecting it to be busy since it was Friday evening, but there were only two other tables. When we first came in, I noticed a sign advertising their “Taiwanese beef noodles”… I saw that as a warning sign to its “authenticity” but I decided to overlook it.

I also read reviews on Urbanspoon that this place wasn’t authentic, because one of the servers asked if they could speak Chinese to the customer because it was easier.
Here is the ramen menu. They have a story on their background, where they started in Japan and expanded internationally. Their miso broth is their specialty, and to this day, only the family knows exactly what is in the broth.

A couple of the ramen dishes on the right let you chose the type of soup base you wait (miso, shoyu, shio, yatai, spicy), and come with more cha-shu pork for an extra $3 which I have never seen before at other ramen joints.
This is where the semi-disappointment begins. I settled on ordering the shio ramen because I wanted a saltier and rich broth. The first thing I noticed was how clear the broth looked, when I’m used to having creamy, and rich broth with my shio ramen. Although Benkei cheaps out on the pieces of meat they give you, they have their broth made really well and I never realized it until I came here.

This broth lacked the creamy richness associated with shio ramen. It was also too salty to be tasty. The redeeming qualities about this ramen was that the ramen noodles were cooked al-dente, and their cha-shu pork was lean and there was more than what we got at Benkei . The boyfriend joked that I should have gotten the noodles that came with a stick of butter, to make it more creamy and rich.
The boyfriend got the cha shu ramen with miso broth ($13). I was secretly glad he ordered the miso broth since, as I mentioned above, it was their specialty and maybe it’s only the shio broth that was disappointing? His soup tasted better, and wasn’t as salty as mine. It also had more taste. His ramen came with a lot more cha shu, which was lean and well-cut as well unlike the paper thin ones we got at Benkei . If I had known beforehand, I would have ordered the miso broth since it tasted better than mine.

I have yet to figure out if Sanpachi is authentic or not, because some of the other reviews on Urbanspoon say that the chef is from Japan. After this experience, I think I will just eat at the ramen joints on the West End, at least I know I won’t be disappointed there.

Read my separate review at Benkei here 🙂

-Carmen

Tomokazu (Late night AYCE)

April 18, 2014

My friends and I wanted late night AYCE one night, and decided to come here. I came here a few years back and it was decent as far as AYCE goes, so we decided to come back. Overall, our visit was pleasant. We found out from trial and error which AYCE foods to order, and which to stray away from. If you want to save you and your tastebuds the hassle, keep reading on!

The restaurant is not brightly lit at all, as you can see from this picture. We actually parked at the wrong restaurant initially, because there was a Korean/Japanese restaurant on the second level two blocks down Broadway. I thought that they had just changed the exterior and added Korean food to their offering, but nope.
We came for the late night AYCE. For those who don’t know, some AYCE restaurants offer a discounted rate if you go after a certain time. For Tomokazu, it was 9:30. Their late night AYCE menu isn’t as extensive as their regular menu, but it’s cheaper!
Here are the first four dishes that came, starting with the salmon and tuna sashimi. As expected, the sashimi pieces were pretty small and did not taste super fresh, but still passable. The tuna pieces in particular were really tiny, like tiny mini erasers.

There is also a limit of 6 pieces of EACH sashimi that you could order per round (max 12 per round). I forgot about the miso soup and it turned cold, when I drank it it tasted pretty watery. You could tell that the spinach gomae had been in the fridge the whole day, but it was still pretty tasty due to the rich peanut butter sauce. The spinach itself did not taste bad either, it was pretty juicy. I ended up ordering 2 more orders of this because I liked how juicy and refreshing the chilled spinach was.

I laughed when the salmon teriyaki came because it was so thin, but it was cooked well and decent.
Next came our rolls, which were pretty good! The salmon maki tasted like a regular roll you would order at a restaurant. The chopped scallop cone had a generous portion of scallop, we were all pretty impressed.

We ordered one seafood cone because we were curious, and it was pretty good as well! It came with cooked salmon and mayo. The beside it was the BC Roll , I’m not a fan of salmon skin but my friends liked it. Next was the Tomokazu special roll which we ordered because my friend is very adventurous and has a “why not” attitude when it comes to ordering. We were glad that we ordered it since it was very tasty!

We agreed that this plate alone was worth the money, because when you go to restaurants, cones are around $4 each!
All of these plates were so good! The agedashi tofu was very crispy, I’m pretty sure it was made fresh which is rare for AYCE! I didn’t try the seafood and oyster motoyakis, but my friends both loved it. It was very cheesy, and the seafood one came with a lot of salmon. I loved the chicken karage. It was crispy, well seasoned, and cooked well. We ordered a lot of them afterwards too. The korean BBQ pork was really good as well. It was seasoned and grilled perfectly and cut into small strips.
But wait, there’s more! The hokkigai tasted pretty chewy and rubbery to me, so I probably wouldn’t order this again. The beef teriyaki was very sweet, but towards the end, the remaining beef was very mushy and looked like stew. The BBQ chicken wing was good according to my friend, I was too busy eating the rest of the chicken karage to try this. Finally, the gyoza which my friend thought tasted pretty good (At this point, I was stuffed and wanted to save room for jello).
After drinking more tea and resting, we were ready to stuff ourselves with jello! My friend noted that some places keep their jello with the seafood, so it ends up tasting like fishy jello. He was happy when he found out this was not the case here. However, I noticed that some restaurants keep their jello out for so long that the edges of the jello become kinda hard and dry, but this was not the case either. It was pretty decent jello!

Overall, we had a great experience at AYCE. I personally came with low expectations because it’s AYCE, you can’t expect supreme quality when you’re getting as much food as you possibly can.

Service was average, the workers didn’t really come to top our tea or anything, but it was fine. We ended up staying for more than 1.5 hours (the maximum time limit), but they let us sit and digest our food until they closed.

-Carmen