When I walked into Jamaica Pizza Jerk at lunchtime, there was only one other table occupied, but warm smiles greeted me all around the vibe was happy and mellow. I’m sure that the Bob Marley concert playing on the television did much to add to the ambiance, as did the colourful Caribbean decor…Even though Jerk Chicken must surely be the national dish, I was after the curry goat. Curry Goat is only available on Tuesdays and Fridays at Jamaican Pizza Jerk, so I ordered the chicken and even though I am not actually a chicken connoisseur, I was thrilled with this dish. Dark meat was very tender being so close to the bone and cooked to perfection. The sauce was thinner than I expected, but rich and flavorful. Rice cooked in coconut milk and spices and a tangy homemade coleslaw accompanied the meat.

Instead of goat, we also ordered cow’s foot. It came with a warning (that it was not to everyone’s taste), and a raised eyebrow but I was determined. When it appeared in front of me, smelling meaty and yes, a little bit barnyard-y, I was still confident in my ordering decision, but at some point midway I realized that I was eating much more rice and hot sauce than the strange, gelatinously textured hoof and I had to concede that maybe yes, this was not particularly to my taste. Luckily there was plenty of Red Stripe to wash it down.

Later I went back and had the goat. It’s toughish, as goat is, but the flavour of the curry is delicious and hot and I could eat it again and again, except I would still want to have the jerk chicken some of the times. And I still need to try the ackee and saltfish. Sigh, one of these days.

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Jamaica Pizza Jerk
2707 Commercial Drive, Vancouver

Around Vancouver in 52 Restaurants

A tour of South American restaurants wouldn’t be complete without what is (to my knowledge) the only Brazilian eatery in town, Samba Brazilian Steakhouse. They serve churrascaria de rodizio, Brazilian-style BBQ, in all you can eat meat dinner, complete with costumed waiters and salsa dancers. It’s gimmicky to say the least, but it can be a fun experience. Clearly meat-focused, you have your choice of steak, pork, chicken, ostrich, chicken hearts – and more – proffered at regular intervals on the end of a long serving skewer. There is also a ‘salad’ bar of veggies, prawns, fish, etc.

And then there are the drinks, any number of which come with an umbrella and of which you will no doubt need several of to get past the tourists and teenagers. It can be argued that all restaurants are trying to create an experience for the diner but with ‘theme restaurants’ the experience is what sells the food. If you’re in the mood for a pre-packaged party and a whole lotta meat, Samba may just have what you’re looking for.
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Samba
1122 Alberni Street, Vancouver

There are few things I love to eat more than dumplings so when Sherman put the word out for a Shanghainese dinner at The City Temple of Shanghai Restaurant, it didn’t take long for me to respond and a few days later Elaine, Kim, Sherman and I (with some other non-blogging guests) sat down to a feast. I’ve been to City Temple a couple of times before on the recommendation of fellow Foodist Nancy Wu and I was looking forward to the pillowy soft dumpling goodness that comes out of this Main Street hole the wall. When he made the reservation, Sherman also ordered us a Peking duck, so we had that to look forward to as well.

We ordered 2 types of dumplings, the duck (which comes in two dishes – the skin and the meat) and several other delicious sounding things  from the multicolored strips of menu tacked to the wall.

The duck (skin) was the first to arrive and I’m sad to say that it wasn’t amazing. Traditionally, it’s served with a crepe,  green onion, cucumber and hoisin sauce and here was no different. The skin was crispy and salty and I enjoyed it on its own but the crepes were cold and a little chewy, not to mention unmatched to the portion sizes of duck skin, meaning that there were a few mouthfuls of dry crepe for every bite of duck deliciousness. The duck meat was served stir-fried with lettuce wraps and this one I found to be very tasty.

But enough about the duck! We were here for the dumplings and they came in spades. We got two orders each of both pan-fried and xiao long bao, my favorite. Good, flavourful broth served nice and hot – they’re not as good as Lin’s but I’d been too long without an XLB fix so I can’t complain at all. The potstickers, however, were better and here you have some photos of both sides of them.

After that there were some tan tan noodles, fried noodles, and fried pork with rice cake that paled in comparison to the first part of the meal. Tan tan are some of my favorite flavours but they could have been stronger here and the fried pork I could have done without entirely.

I’ve been wanting to compile a xiao long bao database for a while now and I think I need to get on that, so I can correctly position City Temple in the mix. I’m sure I’ll be back, maybe just not before I get back to Lin’s and Peaceful.

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City Temple of Shanghai
3755 Main Street, Vancouver

Cash only.

Around Vancouver in 52 Restaurants

I heard about Mochikas Peruvian Cafe the other day and while I’m always on the lookout for new lunch spots,it was particularly timely while I explore Vancouver’s scant few South American restaurants. Nestled cozily inside an auto detailing shop (so you can get your car cleaned while you eat!), it can be a bit hard to spot but no less busy because of it. When we walked in for weekday lunch, a family of Latinos  were sharing a 2 L bottle of bubble-gum yellow Inca Kola along with their plates of chicken and rice.

Their weekend menu is posted online and looks a little more comprehensive but lunch features empanadas (beef or chicken), duck or chicken wraps with spices and rice, mini butifarras (a ham sandwich on a soft roll) and assorted lunch specials of pollo a la brasa (chicken served with french fries or rice, Peruvian hot sauce, & fresh green salad with cilantro/garlic dressing).

We couldn’t find room for the pollo a la brasa (or the stomach for Inca Kola) but we ordered one of everything else. The empanadas came out first with a side of homemade hot sauce, fresh and picante and delicious. Admittedly, I was starving, so I probably would have scarfed instant noodles as fast as that pocket of pastry and meat disappeared, but they were fragrant and did a great job of tying me over until the duck wrap and sandwiches arrived. The wrap was flavourful and would make a great grab-and-go lunch but the butifarras are what I’d go back for. White bread and ham is not normally something I’d find remarkable, but in this Peruvian version, the flavours come together for a tasty lunch.

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Mochikas Peruvian Cafe

1696 West 5th Avenue at Pine Street
(inside Platinum Touch Auto Spa)

To make the chili rellenos, wash the poblano peppers (as many as you want to serve…probably 2 medium-sized peppers per person) and cut a little “window” in them, for stuffing. Pull out all the seeds, so they’re clean inside and then make some rice – about 1 cup per 4 peppers, depending on the size. It’s possible to add ground beef as well but we made a vegetarian version. Preheat the oven to 350.

In the meantime, start making the soup by dicing a medium onion and 5 or 6 cloves of garlic and sauteing them until the onions are translucent.  Purée 10 medium size tomatoes, adding a small can of salsa and then the onion and garlic mix. When it’s a consistent texture, transfer the whole lot to a stock pot.  Add 1/2 L of chicken stock, 1/2 tsp of chili powder (we used chipotle), a dash of cumin, a dash of sage and some salt to taste. Bring to a boil, then simmer for 15-20 minutes (or keep warm until the chili rellenos are done).

When the rice is ready, scoop as much as possible into each pepper and top with some salsa verde and Mexican cheese. Pop them in the oven for about 45 minutes until the peppers are soft and tender.

Garnish the soup with some fresh avocado pieces, crushed tortilla chips and some shredded/crumbled cheese. And make sure to serve with plenty of Negra Modelos and tequila of course.

Salud!

I was going to write about Baru Cafe next, for a South America fusion feel, but it’s been 2 months since I wrote about Peru and I was at Cobre for an event during the Vancouver Playhouse International Wine Festival (itself a long time ago) so here we go with that one.

I don’t love Cobre (or Baru either, for that matter). South America is a big place and it seems like a chef that tries to take on “a style of cooking that blends the passion of Argentina, with the exuberance of Cuba, the sultriness of Brazil and the joy of Mexico” is up for an impossible task. To top it off, I don’t like the way they deconstruct ceviche and spread the fish across the plate, and I think their most recommended item – chicken taquitos - is greasier and heavier than it needs to be.

But for the wine fest, they pulled out all the stops and created a five course menu paired with Argentine Familia Zuccardi wine.

There was pan roasted sablefish with serrano ham wrapped in melon which was tasty, if not particularly Latin. This was followed  by a prawn ceviche in coconut milk with mango and fruit pieces mixed in. These were paired with the Zuccardi Serie A Chardonnay Viognier and the Santa Julia Organica Torrontes wines. The ceviche was interesting – and I was happy to note, not deconstructed – and reminiscent of Brazil or humid coastlines.

For the next course, the wines were the Santa Julia Magna (the best blend each year) that in 2008 brought out notes of chocolate, black fruit and dirt and the Q Malbec, which was sweeter and redolent of cherry and plum. Both brought out the richness of the Yarrow Meadows duck breast and chicaron – the skin removed and re-fried. This turned out to be my favourite dish of the evening.

The next wines were even better – a 2006 Zuccardi Q Tempranillo and a 2006 Zuccardi Zeta – positioning black fruit and spice in the first against more cherry in the latter but the pork tenderloin didn’t stand up the the flavour as well as it could have. Fortunately, there was goat milk panna cotta and a Malamado Viognier. Literally translated as “bad lover”, it’s a play on words meant to invoke the tango and its sad, romantic stories and finishing the evening with bitter-sweetness.

The duck (as well as the wild prawn ceviche) is available on their regular menu, so you don’t have to wait for next year’s wine fest.

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Cobre
52 Powell Street, Vancouver

Dim Sum at Jade Dynasty found us ordering the usual assortment of items; sui mai, har gaw, taro cake, etc. until someone noticed the sign on the wall advertising snake soup. I don’t think there was any doubt in anyone’s mind that we were going to order it, but I for one was wishing it wasn’t 11 in the morning.

It came dressed in ginger and garlic and onion, beautifully decorated with chrysanthemum petals but with all the spices in the soup, it could have been anything. In this case, snake tastes like chicken if the chicken is stewed in ginger and garlic.

The rest of the dim sum was passable, but the xiaolongbao were a bit limp which is what I judge everything by so I likely won’t be back in a hurry.

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Jade Dynasty
137 Pender Street, Vancouver

Around Vancouver in 52 Restaurants > Americas > Peru/Colombia

They say that if you go to dinner with food bloggers, you can be sure to be eating cold food. I don’t know about that, but when I was late for a dinner with fellow food bloggers Kim, Elaine, Annie, Mijune, Jessica, I just headed for the table with all the cameras on it. They were gathering El Inka Latin Deli in Burnaby to sample some Peruvian/Colombian fare and the timing fit in perfectly with my project of reviewing restaurants in a “world tour” kind of format.

There was fried cassava, tamales with olive and chicken and BBQ beef heart to start, with a mouth-puckering pickled hot sauce that I put on everything. Kim, who lived in Panama for a lot of his life, did the ordering and I was grateful to him for pulling out the specialties. The first courses were devoured and then came fried seafood, sausage and pork rind and a fried whole tilapia fish on fried plantain with coconut rice. Latin food is heavy in starches and fried foods and this dinner was no different although a token salad of lettuce, tomato and avocado did serve as a bit of a palate cleanser.

The tamales were quite good and we learned from Kim that they are almost always made with cornmeal here, but in Panama they are actually made by grinding whole corn kernels, which makes for a much smoother finish. I was looking forward to the beef heart and it had some nice flavours in it, but the favorite dish ended up being the picada criolla, a bowl of pork chop, pork sausages, fried plantain, fried cassava and potato, although the fried cassava and red onion relish that seemed to accompany every dish did get a bit tired by the end of the meal. At some point we ordered a chicha morada drink which translates as “purple” something. And so it was. It arrived at our table in a pitcher with the explanation that its colour comes from purple Peruvian. The rest of the flavours in the drink (pineapple, clove and unfortunately a lot of sugar) must have been handed down from Inca mix-masters resulting in a concoction somewhere between Christmas and Kool-Aid. I quite liked it but after dinner we were offered some mazamorra morada – purple corn pudding similar to the drink – that I liked even better.

Some of the dishes weren’t to my taste (the tilapia in particular I could have done without) but mostly the food was prepared well and offered an authentic look at a culture that can be hard to find in places like Baru and Cobre. The Spanish telenovelas playing on the TV just added to the authentic experience.

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El Inka Latin Deli
3826 Sunset Street, Burnaby

2AQ

You know those little shells you pick up on the beach, in tide pools? I ate some. Not the shells, that is, but the periwinkles. The unsung heroes festival at Blue Water Cafe & Raw Bar was created to “avoid species that are over-fished, or fished in ways that damage ocean beds or cause unnecessary by-catch, by introducing diners to new experiences and flavours using species found in abundance.” That I have had everything else on the menu before probably says something about my eating habits, but the sea snails and aioli caught my eye and I was determined to try them.

Let me just say that these guys are probably safe from extinction from over-fishing. Not because they don’t taste good (what doesn’t taste good smothered in aioli?) but because they’re so darn hard to eat. You have to pry the meat out of each tiny shell with a little toothpick. I was bored before I got full. Glad I tried them though, and the rest of the Unsung Heroes menu is pretty tasty (and easier to eat) if you get a chance to go next year.

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Blue Water Cafe & Raw Bar
1095 Hamilton Street, Vancouver

When I posted about El Rinconcito, Kim had a couple more places for me to try, so as soon as the Olympics were over, I headed over to Victoria Drive to check out El Caracol. Admittedly, this one has been on my list for a while (since I first drove past it on my way to Doña Cata) and now that I finally made it in, I’ll be back for sure. Specialties from across Central America dot the menu, from Mexico, El Salvador, and Honduras.

I started off with an avocado milkshake, creamy and rich without being sweet. I don’t have much of a sweet tooth, so I’ll definitely have this again (although next time I might check out what the “oat” flavour is all about). The photos on the menu are deceiving – or at least they were to my tired, end of week eyes – because I ordered the Honduran tacos AND the sopa de mariscos (seafood soup) and it turns out they’re both huge. You’re set for a great, cheap dinner here if you’re starving, but if you’re not a big eater you might want to scale back a bit. The tacos – ground beef, tomato and red onion on a hard corn tortilla – were flavourful and tasty but the soup was a marvel. It had mussels, fish, prawns and a crab leg in a fragrant broth with Mexican rice on the side, as well as a stack of tortillas (although how you’re supposed to wrap soup in a tortilla is beyond me). I was so full I could hardly move, but I was still able to have a last look at the menu and plan for my next visit.

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El Caracol
5190 Victoria Drive, Vancouver