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Curiously Carmen

Archimallows – Homemade Gourmet Marshmallows

March 30, 2015

Hello everyone!

Archimallows is a pop-up marshmallow shop, with their kitchen located in South Vancouver. They’re probably best known for being the adorable pop-up stand at Pacific Center’s Holt Renfrew in Downtown Vancouver, but they do private functions all over town.
IMG_1914.JPGAt the social, Kyle had a small little table decorated with cute pieces of fake moss, fresh marshmallows in mason jars and white rice, finished off with polka dots! I LOVE POLKA DOTS, so naturally we were off to a great start. In fact, I’m wearing my polka dot printed PJs and have my polka dotted phone case to my left right now.

IMG_1915.JPGHis flavours rotate depending on the week. At the event I attended, he had dark chocolate salted caramel, lemon meringue, vanilla sprinkle, and cola float (pictured above).

After lightly torching the marshmallows, you have a selection of finishing it off with a quick dip in coca-cola or Bailey’s (yes, the alcohol). You can see the bowl of Bailey’s in the first picture, the cola is a bit hidden behind the marshmallows =)
IMG_1918.JPGHere is Kyle lightly torching the lemon meringue marshmallow. Each of the marshmallows are individually torched in front of your eyes!
IMG_1917.JPGAfter toasting, Kyle asked if I wanted to try it as a s’more… the answer was a 100 percent YES!

Oh man, this was heaven in a bite. The graham crackers were crunchy and had a light flavour to them, so that it did not steal the spotlight from the marshmallow. The lemon meringue had a slight lemon taste, but it wasn’t super sour. It was soft and melted in your mouth, but had a nice, thin crisp exterior.
IMG_1913.JPGVanilla sprinkles! Just like the lemon meringue, it tasted really fresh and the marshmallow was very soft. This was dipped in Bailey’s so it had a slight caramel taste to it, which enhanced the lightly torched exterior. There isn’t much Bailey’s on the marshmallow, it is definitely not enough to get you drunk if you’re worried about that.

IMG_1916.JPGKyle was also nice enough to make more s’mores for my friends and I! I had the salted caramel s’more, and it was probably my favourite flavour of the night. It came with dark chocolate flakes which were slightly melted due to them being torched. I liked how it was slightly salty and had a caramel taste, even before it was dipped into the Bailey’s!

My marshmallow experience before trying Archimallows went only as far as jumbo-puffs, or those generic store brand marshmallows. I got to try and see a whole new wide of fancy, quality marshmallows!

archimallows
Mini egg archimallows! Taken from their Instagram

The best bet to find Kyle and his pop up stand is at Holt Renfrew! If you’ve ever been there, you might recall seeing his stand right near the bridge/tunnel that connects Holts and Pacific Center. Next time I’m in the area (which is often considering I work closely), I am definitely going to try to find Archimallows!

Which flavour sounds the best to you? Dark chocolate salted caramel, lemon meringue, vanilla sprinkle, or cola float? Let me know in the comments down below!

Thanks for reading!

Carmen

Archimallows on Urbanspoon


Filed Under: dessert Tagged: bailey's, cola, delicious, dessert, food blogger, food porn, food review, foodie, homemade, lemon meringue, marshmallow, marshmallows, salted caramel, soda, sprinkle, vanilla, yummy

Kishimoto Japanese Restaurant

September 19, 2014

I have heard amazing things about Kishimoto, both from my friends and also online. I’ve always wanted to try it, but know that it’s a sushi hotspot and I do not really want to wait ages in line.. 🙁

Finally, one day, timing worked out and my boyfriend took me there to try it! I was very eager, and had extremely high expectations before even walking in the front door.
photo 1 (1)As always, finding parking along Commercial Drive was a hassle but we did find free street parking that day! Yay! Kishimoto is a relatively small restaurant, and adding to the popularity= long, expected wait times. We went around 5:30pm right after I got off work, because I knew if we went around 6-7pm we would have to wait.

Walking in, you will see signs everywhere instructing guests to wait until they’re seated, no sitting down until all the guests have arrived, etc etc. Just shows how busy it gets! We waited around 5 minutes for the server to clear the table for us. Smooth sailing so far!
photo 3 (1)My boyfriend has been here before, and said that their tuna tataki ($11.95)  is a must order. So, of course, being the curious food blogger I am, I had to give it a try. When the server put down the plate, I thought that she had mistaken our order cause all I saw were onions. The tuna tataki was actually under all the onions and roasted garlic. I was in love at first bite.

The tuna was incredibly soft, and melted in your mouth. It had a slightly grilled taste to it. Adding the onions, roasted dry garlic, and ponzu sauce, it was absolute perfection. My favourite dish of the night.
photo 2 (2)I knew that Kishimoto specialized in intricate plating techniques, so I was quite eager to see how our dishes would be plated! Here is the negitoro roll, chopped scallop roll ($4.95), and wild salmon nigiri ($3.00). I thought that the chopped scallop roll tasted pretty average. I really liked the negitoro roll since the tuna tasted very fresh, and had a lot of flavour.

The wild salmon nigiri also had a great, fresh, and juicy flavour to it as well. I ordered one piece of salmon nigiri, turns out that one order is actually equal to three pieces! I really enjoyed the sushi rice, it was cooked perfectly and had that distinct delicious sushi rice taste to it. Definitely worth the $3 since you get three pieces of nigiri! The “flower” art at the bottom was composed of daikon (type of carrot) sheets, edamame beans, and ginger. The candle seen at the top picture was a real candle, wrapped around a daikon sheet. Pretty interesting concept! I wonder if anyone has accidentally lit their daikon on fire…. Knowing how clumsy I am, I’m surprised I didn’t knock it over…
photo 1 (2)Up next, was our salmon oshisushi ($12.95). Oshisushi is a type of sushi made by placing all the ingredients into a box and pressing it together, hence the rectangular shape. The salmon oshisushi came with creamy sauce, crushed black peper, jalapenos, and salmon sashimi. After it is pressed, it then gets lightly torched. I enjoyed the salmon oshisushi as well, but found that after a few pieces, it was a bit too heavy for me due to the creamy sauce. I ended up requesting for a lemon slice, where I then lightly squeezed the juice onto the remaining pieces. I found that cut a bit of the cream heaviness out. Oshisushi = oishi 😉 If you know some Japanese haha…
jigvfyThe second oshisushi we ordered was the ebi ($12.95). This one came with cooked prawn, basil, pesto, creamy sauce, and crushed black pepper. Just like the salmon oshisushi, I found that it was a bit heavy to eat though I did enjoy the pesto sauce. There was a slightly grilled taste to these as well. I ended up drizzling a bit of lemon juice to this one as well. For those who have tried Kishimoto’s oshisushi, did you find that it was a bit on the heavy side due to the cream?
photo 4 (1)

I noticed that all their desserts were made in-restaurant, so I wanted to give it a try. We ordered the house-made strawberry sorbet, which came with condensed milk topping and served with a cute wooden spoon! Our waitress informed us that it was still frozen, and to wait a few minutes before digging in.  There was a very strong strawberry flavour to the sorbet! Adding the condensed milk on top, the dessert was sooo gooood. There were also bits of strawberry seeds in the dessert as well!

All in all, I did enjoy my visit to Kishimoto and left satisfied. Service was a bit slow at some points, since they had a full house. I noticed that it got busy around 6pm so I’m glad we had an early dinner. I highly recommend trying the tuna tataki here! What were your favourites?

-Carmen

PS. Stay tuned for some delicious Seattle eats next week! 😉

Kishimoto Japanese Kitchen & Sushi Bar on Urbanspoon


Filed Under: food & drink, japanese Tagged: dessert, dinner, food blogger, food lover, food review, foodie, healthy eating, homemade, japan, japanese cooking, japanese cuisine, japanese culture, oishi, salmon, sashimi, sorbet, strawberry, sushi, tuna, vancouver

Hello!

Hi and welcome to Curiously Carmen! I am Carmen, the girl behind the blog. You can read more about me here!

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