Eating 1000 Meals

First time in a long time. Haven't been back since some poor service was received a year or so ago. We decided to give them another chance.

Had called ahead for a reservation. The guy answering the phone said there's no need for one, implying there would be plenty of tables. When we get there, there were more patrons than expected. We had to wait as the staff hurriedly scrambled a table together.

We then had to wait a fairly long time for the food to arrive and when it did, the servings were meagre. I'm in a beef dip groove so I ordered that. At $9, the beef dip is much smaller than that at the Firemen's Club and Moose's. Value for money? NO.

Service was slow. Will it be another year before we visit again? Probably, I'll be at 1000 meals by then.

Lost first softball game in our new league. Post game munchies at the Firemen's Club. The specials were a pitcher of beer (Okanagan Springs Pale Ale) for $10.75, chicken wings for $3.75/lb. (hot, teryaki, honey and BBQ). Had the beef dip ($8.50) with some mustard. It was good, better than Malone's.

Bonus points: Large screen TV.

Sometimes I have a craving for lox and bagel. I remember Max's deli on Oak St & 16th Ave, when there was more of a Jewish community in that area. Last time I was there, it appeared to be a hybrid Chinese/Jewish place serving both types of baked goods. This one is combined with Sushiya, I think, a place serving Japanese food and bagels. Cost of the lox & bagel was $6.29, although the cashier punched in a dime more and was a bit flustered when I advised him of his faux pas. The bagel contained capers, tomatoes, lox. Actually, it was pretty good.

Taking the escalators up to the Future Shop at the corner of Granville and Robson, I can see all 6 tables at the Cafe Crepe. I decided to try it, having been previously frustrated by the long line-ups at their south Granville location.

I decide on the uniquely named Hot Dog Parisien - a weiner on a baguette with bechamel sauce and ethamel cheese for $4.95. There was a choice of adding ketchup, mustard or mayonnaise. Now I'm not very good at multiple choices, so I picked mustard.

Not bad, the baguette was a bit hard to chew but I guess that is the essence of the thing. The chew is the thing. The mustard topping was a good choice but I must be more adventurous next time.

Personally, I would have marketed this as chaud chien.

It feels like going back in time, into the 1940s whenever I cross over the border into this quaint little town. The post office, the gas station, 'the church and the steeple, the laundry on the hill'.

That last bit is a line from Squeeze's Tempted (1981), in which writer Chris Difford shows his direct Ray Davies influence, especially the following lyrics from the Kinks' Village Green (1968), which kind of applies to Point Roberts -

Out in the country,
Far from all the soot and noise of the city,
There’s a village green.
It’s been a long time
Since I last set eyes on the church with the steeple
Down by the village green.
’twas there I met a girl called daisy
And kissed her by the old oak tree.
Although I loved my daisy,
I saw fame,
And so I left the village green.

I miss the village green,
And all the simple people.
I miss the village green,
The church, the clock, the steeple.
I miss the morning dew, fresh air and sunday school.

And now all the houses
Are rare antiquities.
American tourists flock to see the village green.
They snap their photographs and say gawd darn it,
Isn’t it a pretty scene?
And daisy’s married tom the grocer boy,
And now he owns a grocery.

I miss the village green,
And all the simple people.
I miss the village green,
The church, the clock, the steeple.
I miss the morning dew, fresh air and sunday school.

And I will return there,
And I’ll and daisy,
And we’ll sip tea, laugh,
And talk about the village green.
We will laugh and talk about the Village Green.

I digress. I'm flashing back to my music listening years and other songs which harken back another generation.

How this relates to Kiniski's Reef Tavern, I don't know. Probably nostalgia for a simpler time.

Had pints of Coors light $3.75, Alaska pale ale $4.75 and fish & chips $8.75.
Canadian dollars accepted at par.

Holding a playoff hockey pool in a bar & grill with lots of big screen TVs and gorgeous waitresses abound - what more can a die-hard hockey fan ask for? I'm already having visions of St Peter at the Gate.

I load up on New Jersey Devils players and also 2 pints of Sammy's Pale Ale and 2 glasses of basic Coors Lite from the regular season winner's pot. I also have the steak sandwich. All this for $27.22 plus $25 for the pool. A good time was had by all.

The early bird catches the worm, or so they say. Dropped by Kimono Sushi, grabbed the end seat on the counter and requested to change the medium screen TV to ROB-tv. They handed me the remote. I pressed channel 58. Gold at $624! Wow! Oil at $71!

Another guy comes in and requests TSN soccer. The Vietnamese maitre'd starts changing the channel then realizes that I was there first, so he tells the new guy that I had made my request first and would have to wait. The new guy then requests a channel change after 10 minutes. I'm thinking too bad - I 'm going to watch a complete ticker cycle, no matter how long that took.

After ordering the Seafood don buri for $9-ish, the maitre'd tells me to change the channel in 10 minutes. What gall! I'm thoroughly pissed. I guess it's a guy thing, a territorial thing - whoever has the remote is king. I realized that maybe I shouldn't control the remote like when we were kids in front of the tv but I don't know, shouldn't the early bird get the worm (in this case, the major chunk of TV time?)

The food, oh yeah, was okay. This is a Vietnamese-run Japanese sushi restaurant, after all.

Pho Hoa started in 1983 in San Jose. It's now part of a huge international franchise chain. This one on 49 & Oak, next to Cyclone Taylors' figure skate store, has been around awhile.

Being a culinary adventurist, I ordered the#15 pho - Vietnamese noodles with tendon, flank, steak, fatty flank, tripe - $6.04. It was listed as regular size on the menu, but when it arrived, although quickly, it was actually quite small. Your basic Asian fast food.

I generally hate food fairs. Hard to find seats. No time to truly enjoy the food. Plastic trays, plastic forks, etc.

But there are surprises. One such surprise was Bali Thai -serving Indonesian/Thai food.

I had a 2-item lunch. Catfish and green curry chicken over a plate of saffron rice ($5.95). It was very good and deeply satisfying.

00:00 Finished errands, just need a small meal.
02:00 Waiting in line, while a McWorker takes my order on his hi tech gadget.
03:00 Hand receipt to McServer, Filet- o-Fish combo meal ($5.34) arrives within the minute.
13:00 Eat fries, eat filet, drink coke, finish meal, that's why they call it fast food.
Food is edible, no need to cough up a horgie today.

Next door to the All You Can Eat Ebei Restaurant, this is one of two restaurants, sitting kitty corner to each other on this busy intersection in Vancouver's Kerrisdale. This one specializes in an abalone dish, while the other one in hot pot.

And it's also my candidate for best meal of the year.

Six dishes were served - shrimps lightly cooked with a spicy sauce, shark fin soup, crispily fried spicy crab, (shell crispy enough to eat), fish in a pot and a dish containing abalone, mushroom, sea cucumber, bok choy. Heavenly.

Definitely have to try again.

The first time we tried this place was for a family dinner. It was classy looking then and a grand piano dominated the room. The last time I was here was with my brother. It was all hustle and bustle. We decided to go here again only because No 9 had too much of a lineup.

What was once a classy place, is now a run of the mill Hong Kong Style restaurant. A piano still sits in a corner, no longer dominating the room.

Today, the food was pedestrian. Had the seafood ramen noodle in soup ($6.25) and coffee.

The space is made for dinners, lunchtime is too much hustle and bustle. It's all about the quick turnover now; no time to luxuriate and have good discussions about technology, religion and last week's episode of Desperate Housewives.

Martini's was the place we would go for our post-game meals, whether it was hockey, football or softball. Their phone number was on my speed dial on my first cell phone. That old phone is lying around somewhere, discarded to the confines of history. An eventual museum piece.

Mike, the waiter who's no longer there, always had a table ready for us. We were the steak sandwich and coffee guys. That's what we always had, even at 1am in the morning. That's all we would order, even though pizza might have been their specialty.

Went back there last night after our change of rinks. It felt like going home. Although the decor has changed some, it still felt homey. There was a good vibe, a familiar ambience.

We had plenty of good times and good food here before. This time, it was no exception. Had the steak sandwich ($9.45), but ordered Keith's Indian Pale ale ($4.35) instead of my usual coffee.

I felt satisfied even though the price may have increased, the music too loud, the print on the menu too small, I wasn't going to complain.

A play-by-play brief of a 10 course meal plus dessert at Kirin - Vancouver downtown location.

Having sampled this set meal many times, I have become extremely picky. Remember this will set you back roughly $250, so you want to get value for your food.

Service is good - they give you a special wipe right off the bat.

1) Kirin Special Cold Cut Platter
Jellyfish crunchy, chicken bony, vegetable made to look like meat item

2) Deep Fried Shrimp Wrapped Crab Claw
Shrimp wrapping was too chewy. As this is a set dinner, appears it's been sitting around.

3) Hot and Sour Soup
Served in bowls with shrimp by waiter, not too spicy.

4) Peking Duck - with Chinese Pancake Wrapping
Quite good although there were some fatty slices. No choice in selection of duck piece as waiter served it.

5) Minced Duck Meat in Lettuce Wrap
OK, but should let patrons wrap the minced meat in lettuce themselves.
Waiters probably used fork and spoon to place lettuce on plate, then scooped the minced duck meat onto the lettuce. You hope. (This ain't Subway and the waiters ain't lettuce wrap artists.)

6) Honey Ginger Beef
Bit too sweet, but nice and tender. Heard this week that ginger kills cancer, so it's a must eat.

7) Mixed Vegetable with Bean Cake
Tofu was good, can't remember the vegetable.

8) Crispy Skinned Chicken
White meat too dry, been sitting around. Shrimp chips fried hour earlier? Saw waiter bringing it out earlier out of sequential order, but he quickly returned it to the kitchen.

9) Yang Chow Fried Rice
Individually served by the waiter, thereby controlling the amount eaten. Rice too mushy.

10) E-Fu Noodles with tender scallions
See above, portion rather small, amount eaten controlled by restaurant.

Dessert - crispy sesame ball or mango pudding
Never liked the former, the latter, in my opinion, is the only good Chinese dessert.

Meal was OK, good not great. Service was good.

Yikes! I wake up and it's 1:00pm. Wait a minute! It's Daylight Savings Time. Spring forward, fall back. It's actually 2:00pm.

I spring forward to change my clock, then fall back onto my Sealy Posturepedic. An hour later...I awaken again, realizing that although I had missed breakfast and lunch, I could still have dunch - that third mini-meal of the day between lunch and dinner, well familar to Kirstie Alley.

I need coffee, I need dunch. OK, let's go to Tim Horton's. I grab a Province and race off to the No 3 Road location, where everyone is finishing off their dunch.

I remember it's still Roll Up the Rim so I order the combo - BLT sandwich, large coffee and a donut, all for $5.82. I reflect - geez, I'm so easily influenced by the heavy advertising blitz from Tim Horton's. I have surrendered to the Gods of advertising.

The contest is making me a coffee addict and so is the Sudoku puzzle I'm working on. The Province will start running one soon. Today, there's an article by Jonathan McDonald on how addictive Sudoku is. (Aside: I remember playing hockey with him. We were the two smallest guys on the team. That was a few years ago.)

(Daylight Savings) Time was ticking down and I could only finish one Sudoku puzzle while the rolled-up rim revealed I should replay. Gotta do it again tomorrow.

After a long 4 hour meeting, my head was spinning, my stomach growling. I leave to take to the freeway when I spot this restaurant, which I had heard good things about, although it wasn't necessarily about the food.

I get shown to my table by a hostess with Lisa Loeb glasses and a nice sweater. I'm thinking DD - due diligence, that is - so I request a table with good lighting so I can pore over the technical engineering report and all the associated costs.

It's 3pm and the restaurant is still fairly full. Lots of young waitresses hustling around busily.
Of course, with my luck, the waiter shows up and takes my order. I order a pint of Honey lager ($5.49)and the Beef Dip ($10.99) with fries.

The lager is good but that pint seems kind of small. The fries here are short skinny things and was ok. But I must comment on the Beef Dip.

It seems like the God of Salt has been following me cause the dip was extremely salty. Seems more a ploy to sell more beer than to kill a slug, although the salt content could have killed a dozen slugs.

The service was good as I mentioned the saltiness and they seemed ready to take it back or to replace the sauce. I declined.

I know they're opening up another one, so I give them one more try before I pass judgement. Or the salt.