Monthly Archives: December 2008

Dim Sum Disappoints from Floata

Posted on December 30, 2008 by | Leave a comment

floata-abalone-stickt-rice

Floata Dim Sum in Chinatown used to be an easy favorite for group lunches. Grab a couple of cars, grab a big table and then order one of everything. Beef balls, siu mai, har gow, crepes and sticky rice. A table of 6 could eat well for $15-$20 each. But then some people started dropping off and some of us started venturing farther afield to other (better, cheaper) dim sum establishments and so it’s been a while since I’ve been to Floata.

I was really hoping it would be like a return to an old favorite, but in the year or so since I’ve been there, it has gone downhill.

floata-dim-sum

We ordered all the usual favorites and they were ok. The beef balls were a little greasy. The siu mai and har gow were ok. The crepes (pork and shrimp) were probably as good as they’ve always been, but in the face of such overwhelming averageness, I was disappointed.

floata-crepes

We also ordered a couple of new dishes…at the top is an abalone and egg in sticky rice dish and pictured below was my favorite dish of the day, jellyfish and roast pork.

floata-roast-pork-and-jellyfish

 We ate way more than was good for us and split between 3 people, the bill ended up being almost $30 each, which is an outrageous price for mediocre dim sum. Some of the dishes like the jellyfish and the abalone were more on the expensive side ($6.75) which brought the price up, but even so the traditional “filler” dishes should have satisfied for a decent price.

I’m sure I’ll be back at some point, as Floata is still the best place I know of close to downtown (well, the best place that’s affordable and not Imperial). But I won’t be back in a hurry.

Floata Seafood on Urbanspoon
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Floata Dim Sum
400-180 Keefer Street, Vancouver, B.C.

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Urban Thai Serves it up Fresh and Fast

Posted on December 18, 2008 by | 1 Comment

urban-thai-curry-beef

One of my favorite places for a quick sit-down lunch in Yaletown is Urban Thai. A laminated menu full of lunch specials comes with rice and a spring roll for about $8. A variety of curries and ingredients make selecting difficult, but the curry beef (above) is a favorite.

urban-thai-spring-rolls

urban-thai-curry-chicken

The room is fairly large with cozy booths accented with beautiful Thai touches that would make for a nice lingering dinner, but the

For something a little different, the curried chicken lunch special comes with spring roll and rice and vegetables for a dollar more. Their Pad Thai is also delicious, with noodles and peanuts and shrimp.

Urban Thai Bistro on Urbanspoon
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Urban Thai
1119 Hamilton Street, Vancouver

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Jonker Street, a Vancouver Address

Posted on December 16, 2008 by | 1 Comment

laksa

A bowl of soup on a cold day is heavenly and I do like a good laksa once in a while. Laksa, is a spicy seafood and noodle soup from Malaysia, usually filled with vermicelli noodles, coconut milk, and assorted seafood with a dab of sambal chili paste on top for added heat. Heading into Jonker Street in Yaletown, I was most impressed when I saw their laksa ($8.90), with fish balls, slices of fish cake and prawns resting on a bed of bean sprouts. It didn’t quite deliver, however. The bowl was filled with large pieces of shellfish and fish cake which tasty a bit fishy and the noodles had a plastic feel to them, but the broth is exactly as oily and spicy as it needs to be.

The beef rendang  ($11.50 at lunch) smelled delicious and meaty and came served with jambori rice and salad and pappadum. The salad was fresh and coated in a tangy citrus dressing that complemented the main dish nicely, but the beef was a bit on the dry side and much too chewy. Beef rendang is cooked over a slow fire in coconut milk with aromatic spices and can be wonderfully tender. Pondok does a good one, and Jonker Street’s was flavoured well, but could have done with a little less cooking time.

Nevertheless, it is authentic Malaysian food for a reasonably good price. They have a good selection of dishes and even the drinks are exotic. I’ve had iced cincau ($2.80) , which is a grass jelly concoction served over ice. It’s a delicious coffee-esque drink without the caffeine and is strangely refreshing. Likewise, the iced lychee drink is a sweet favorite.

Jonker Street on Urbanspoon
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Jonker Street Restaurant
1128 Pacific Blvd., Vancouver

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Posh Sukiyaki is not Posh, but Tasty

Posted on December 14, 2008 by | 4 Comments

sukiyaki

With the economy taking a down turn, I’ve been searching out places with extra good value. A lot of hole-in-the-wall favorites have been seeing repeat business, but when you’re meeting friends sometimes you want to take it up a (small) notch.

Which is how I ended up at Posh Sukiyaki the other night. For $15 you get all the beef, pork and assorted exotic veggies you can slurp down. Throw in a couple of beers and some good company and you’ve got an excellent evening ahead of you.

No doubt some of the cost savings come from the do-it-yourself approach. They provide the sukiyaki base – soya sauce, water and mirin – with some cabbage and the heat and you add in what you’d like. We started with the trays of thinly sliced pork and beef, added to the soup until they were just cooked and then dipped, as is customary, in a separate dish of raw egg. The idea is that the egg cools down the cooked item a bit before you put it in your mouth, as well as searing a bit of the yolk to food.

veggies

Once we were through a couple of trays of meat, we decided to tuck into some veggies, some familiar, others very new to us.

We had tofu, konjac tofu (a sort of tofu pasta), bamboo shoots, green beans, rice cake, white yam, bok choy, tomatos, bean sprouts, vermicelli noodles, winter melon, black fungus, shiitake mushrooms, and chrysanthemum leaves.

After the meat, some of my favorites were the black fungus, konjac tofu, vermicelli noodles and rice cake, although it all started to taste like sukiyaki sauce after a while.

fungus

It took several attempts to get the exact right cooking time for each type of veggie. I bit into a too hard piece of white yam n0t long before searing my tongue on a piece of winter melon that had been heating up for a little too long, but doing all the cooking ourselves, I didn’t really have anyone to blame.

Thanks to my lovely dining companions for doing such an excellent job of stirring the soup:

sarah-warren

Hours later we left, both our stomachs and wallets full.

Posh (Kitsilano) on Urbanspoon
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Posh
1788 W Broadway

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Gojo Little Africa Cafe

Posted on December 11, 2008 by | 2 Comments

honey-wine

I had the pleasure of meeting up with Raul the other night to check out the new Ethiopian place on the Drive, Gojo Little Africa Cafe.

We ordered the doro alicha ($12.50) because the doro wat is only available on weekends, but the chicken and veggies in butter sauce flavoured with ginger, rosemary and jalapeno in the alicha were exquisite.
doro-alicha

We also ordered the vegetarian combo ($11.95) which comes with cabbage, yatikilt wat (green beans, carrots, bell peppers and onions sauteed in garlic and tomoatos), spinach and miser wat (spicy red lentils) laid out on injera.

veg-combo

Everything was tasty. I would have preferred a but more spices in the doro alicha, but the inerja was perfectly soft and the journey from starving to very full of delicious bites of stew was pleasing in the extreme.

I also had honey wine (mead) to drink which was something new for me, and which I enjoyed thoroughly. Cloudy greeny-gold and somewhat foamy, it didn’t really look like wine (and technically it isn’t: no grapes), but it did taste like something resembling a sweet wine cooler and was the perfect accompaniment to washing down bits of inerja bread.

Gojo is such a cute little place. There is a traditional Ethiopian sitting area with rough-hewn wooden chairs and a thatched faux roof over the bar. The rest of decor is simple but appropriate; framed photographs of Ethiopia and t-shirts under glass for tablecloths. I liked it. It felt cosy and comfortable and the service was likewise warm and casual.

It was empty the whole time we were there (late-ish on a Thursday night) which I hope is not indicative of its popularity.

Gojo Little Africa on Urbanspoon
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Gojo Little Africa Cafe
2838 Commercial Drive (@12th Ave), Vancouver

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Happy Valley Dim Sum Makes Me Happy…and Very Full

Posted on December 6, 2008 by | 5 Comments

har-gow-with-scallops

I have an announcement to make. I have a new favorite dim sum place.

I seem to be getting farther and farther out of town for dim sum, which is as it should be, and this one I had to actually rent a car for, so I had high expectations. Happy Valley Seafood Restaurant is way out on Broadway (for me), but so worth the trek.

There is no cart service, so I read off the list of delicacies to my dining companions and there was some consternation about the amount of food we were ordering, but we pushed on, confident in our appetite and stretchy pants.

We had ordered several of the traditional dim sum dishes; BBQ pork buns, crispy deep fried squid, sticky rice wrapped in lotus leaves and beef balls (below) and as we started sampling there were happy sounds all around.

dim-sum

The deep-fried squid was particularly good here, as was another favorite of mine, the braised eggplant with pureed shrimp paste. The huge portions of siu mai disappeared quickly, tasty and not too greasy. They were near perfect.

siu-mai

I passed on the green onion pancake and spring rolls because I wanted to save room for some of the more non-traditional items like clams in black bean sauce and har gow (shrimp dumplings) with dried shredded scallop on top (pictured top), pork cheek with tofu, beef shortrib with pumpkin and taro paste in bird’s nest.

And with the exception of the bland tasting taro paste, I was not disappointed. I’ve not had clams at dim sum before, but they were exquisite (if somewhat difficult to pry from their shells with chopsticks) in their black bean sauce and I had far too many of them than was good for me.

Actually, I had way more of everything than was good for me and then I had to go home and have a nap. But it was so very good and ended up only being only $15 each for 5 VERY stuffed people.

The place was bustling on a Saturday lunch, but the service was still decent. As soon as my pants fit again, I’ll be back.

Happy Valley Seafood Restaurant on Urbanspoon

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Happy Valley Seafood Restaurant
3432 East Broadway, Vancouver

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