Pizza Coming Soon

 As near as I can tell there will never be any pizza but we love the campy name and concept of this new Chinatown joint. They say that they serve Japanese snack food and while libations may be an equally important attraction, we enjoyed our snacks!

Located in the space that was recently Mitzie's (and used to be a Bino's at one time?), at the corner of Main and East Pender, the neighbourhood is colourful during the evening hours but perfectly safe.

Arriving early, as usual, we were seated immediately and started with a salad. Tomato Carpaccio is exactly what you would expect, thinly sliced tomato. Along with iceberg lettuce, radish etc and a Japanese-style sesame dressing, this was a nice clean and refreshing start.

I have to admit that the Blooming Onion was one of the main things that drew us to PCS. I saw it on the menu and was immediately sent into nostalgic visions of state fairs past. Certainly, one of the most unhealthy dishes possible that you could still call a vegetable, this battered and deep-fried onion is served with a mayo-based dipping sauce with some serious dill flavour. Admittedly, it just missed the mark a little bit for me as I had built it up into something else in my recollection. To me, there could have been more batter and there was a bit of burnt taste on some of the 'fingers'. Still it was a tasty dish and worth trying.

We were also intrigued by the idea of Periyaki Chicken and so we ordered half a bird. The chicken comes grilled with teriyaki and is served with house-made peri-peri sauce on the side and half a nicely charred lemon to squeeze over the top. All the pieces including the breast meat were nicely grilled and charred but remained tender and moist. The peri-peri sauce was very tasty. When combined, it's a very good mix of flavours that maybe you wouldn't expect to see together. We didn't get a whole lot of the teriyaki part however as it seemed to have been a little overwhelmed in the mix.

Finally, and though we are not big dessert people, we sampled and loved the Matcha Panacotta with Strawberries. This was smooth and tasty without being too sweet. The velvety pannacotta contrasted well with the nicely firm strawberries.

Service was upbeat and everyone seemed to be in a good mood. BTW, I can gauge the background music by how many songs I Shazam and how many albums I subsequently download (music I don't know obviously) and the answer is four. This tells us that I loved the cool jazz musical vibe including Yasuko Agawa, M'Du and the Dynamics. This was in contrast to the K-Pop that we listened to at lunch elsewhere today and that I did not Shazam or download (sorry K-Pop people). Tables have adequate separation or barriers and pandemic protocols are in place. You can have a safe and nice meal in a chic space.

Food                  3 out of 5

Comfort             4 out of 5

Service              4 out of 5

Value                 3 1/2 out of 5  

Potluck Hawker Eatery

As we pass between World Vegan Month (November 2020) and Veganuary (January 2021), I will not be returning to relentless carnivorism for the month of December, but I will be satisfying a few cravings that I have been feeling over the last couple of months. 

Put the word hawker in the name of your eatery or make any suggestion of street food and I am there. It is not really a long time part of our Canadian food culture but I really wish that it was, food trucks and the night market (closed due to the pandemic obviously) notwithstanding. Anyway, have a good read of the story of Potluck Hawker Eatery on their website and you will be hooked as I was. This is a place to check out immediately!

They call their cuisine Pan-Asian. So we started with Malaysia and Roti Canai. This was a small order (just needed a taste) and it was very flaky and tender. The curry dip really packed a nice wallop. We were off to an excellent start!

I am a great sucker for Laksa when it is on any menu but PHE offered the option of Mami Chicken Noodle Soup from the Philippines so we tried that. Mharie was impressed and told me that it very much represented what you might expect in her homeland. It was full of excellent egg noodles that must have had a good hit of turmeric in their structure to give them a deep yellow colour. The chicken was deep fried and cut up into manageable pieces. The ultimate in comforting is what you get when you combine the deep-fried meat with the rich broth. There were garlic chips and so many other smaller contributors to a wonderful dish.

We didn't do a good enough job combining the components of the Salted Egg Yolk Chicken Nasi Lemak as we should have but tended to eat things separately. The novel serving tray with sections sort of moved us to do that but you should eat this combining a taste of this with that or with rice to really appreciate the whole. That being said, we loved some of this and were a bit meh about other parts. The chicken again was excellent! The smallish convenient pieces were crispy and tender and I assume have been brined. The coconut rice was also coconutty and good. The salted egg yolk was not a salt-cured egg yolk ( and left me craving salted egg yolk) as we expected but a hard-boiled egg yolk served on top of an admittedly amazing house-made shallot sambal which was slightly spicy, shrimpy, sweet and rich! We would have liked a little more anchovy with our peanuts (luck of the scoop?).

Finally and the most amazing thing that we have eaten in a while; Krabby Patty Sando (Chili Crab Dip). If you can, picture me making the Mark Wiens "Wow" face! This is a limited time special "while supplies last" sandwich that is being served from Wednesday to Sunday and comes with a chili tomato egg swirl gravy for dipping. We ordered Malaysian Shaker Fries on the side which had a sugary spicy topping and very cool deep-fried curry leaves. It made even the fries something special.

But back to the amazing sandwich which was made with a quarter-pound of crab and not much else! I am not sure what holds this thing together as there was no evidence of anything but...crab! Deep-fried and served on a buttery "squishy" bun, we waffled between using the perfect dip and just luxuriating in the taste of crab. This was one of those food-related experiences in life that will stay with us for a long time!

Potluck Hawker Eatery is comfortable enough and does a good job with social distancing. It is chicly colourful with displays of the aforementioned Pan Asian products. Get yourself a Krabby Patty Sando while you can!

Food                    4 1/2 out of 5        

Comfort               4 out of 5

Service                4 out of 5

Value                   4 out of 5

Newton Pizza - Cloverdale

A few weeks ago, the Daily Hive ran an article about the best places to get Indian-style pizza in Vancouver and on the list was Newton Pizza. We decided to try them at the end of Vegetarian Awareness Month (October 2020) because frankly, an Indian Veggie Pizza sounded pretty good. NP has 3 locations and we ended up at Cloverdale. The White Rock location had run out of Korma sauce but Cloverdale had not (again, it pays to phone ahead). 

Newton Pizza in Cloverdale is a take-out only joint in a strip mall at the corner of 64th and 184th. So we ordered a couple of pizzas, a veggie lasagne and some wings for my dedicated carnivore partner.

I have to admit that looking at these pictures and writing this post a month after the actual chowing down of the pizza, that I am not sure 100% but I am pretty sure that it is the Veggie Korma that id shown above. While I admit that my preference is for the thin crust 00 flour pizzas with a minimum of toppings and cooked at 900 degrees in a wood-burning oven, this runs a pretty good second! There was good crust and a ton of cheese! Korma sauce is typically a mild yogurt sauce with cashews or almonds and spices. NP's version was pretty tasty!

For Mharie, we got the Butter Chicken Pizza which had the similar virtues of decent crust and lots of cheese. In this case, the chicken did not really taste like butter chicken but its mildness may have gotten buried by the cheese. Still a good pizza.

The Veggie Lasagna was pretty good also. I don't think it is referred to as Indian Lasagna but the fact that it was another vegetarian item that was available. If a vegetarian could live on cheese and noodles, this would be the way to go.

Finally, we got a 10-pack of wings. These were honey-garlic if I remember correctly. They were apparently OK but they won't be making it onto a Netflix documentary or anything. Service was friendly enough and our food was ready when they said it would be. Inside, the menus have been updated and everything is a dollar or two more than what they show on their website. They may have updated by now but out of date pricing on a website is problematic to me (I didn't complain about it though).

So Indian pizza! There is a lot on the menu to try (we should try their Indian food), vegetarian and otherwise and everything we had was at least decent.

Food                3 1/2 out of 5

Comfort           3 out of 5 (take out only)  

Service            3 out of 5 (Let's update website pricing)

Value.              3 1/2 out of 5  

Mila - World Vegan Month

I recently found out that Veganuary is a thing. So I will be taking the pledge to be a vegan for another month namely January 2021 because I believe that the whole vegan/vegetarian movement needs to be promoted as much as possible for the good of us all and future generations. For the record, I am not a full time vegan or vegetarian. I call myself a week-day vegetarian and I am not even very religious about that but I lean heavily towards plant-based living. This month (November or World Vegan Month) I am being a good vegan. Anyway, For a moment, thinking about Veganuary, I wondered how many more vegan restaurants or places with vegan options there are that we could visit! The good news is that new places seem to be popping up all the time and an example of that is Mila!

Mila is owned by the same people that own Virtuous Pie and Tomorrow Foods. They are located just around the corner from Virtuous Pie in Chinatown and as usual, we arrived unfashionably early and were seated for lunch right away. 

We have been comfortable dining out all along during the pandemic as restaurants apply social distancing rules and are even more comfortable now as mask-wearing becomes mandatory in all public spaces. Those concerned about their constitutional rights are probably still fuming that they can no longer smoke in restaurants and airplanes (are you old enough to remember that?) but where do your rights and the rights of others cross? Anyway...

The thing that I was most anxious to try at Mila was their already famous Aburi Oishi Sushi. First Mharie and I both tentatively tasted a whole piece and speaking for myself, it exceeded my expectations! With the next piece, I broke it down to try to discover the secrets of the component parts.

The 'salmon' is smoked carrot. According to an interview that Vanfoodster did with the chef, the process is laborious and time-consuming but the result is amazing. I tried to coax information out of our sever but the only hint he would give me was powdered seaweed and vegan mayo!

Next up was Fish and Chips. In this case, the 'fish' was celeriac! What a great idea! It was both meaty and delicious, and the batter was perfect. Even the oil tasted a bit like good fish frying oil tastes as it 'matures.' Of course, the celery root didn't taste exactly like fish but that is the point and it still may be the best vegan version that we have tasted.! Served with a mango slaw that was great and Smashed Potatoes that had lots of crispy extremities! The tartar sauce also rocked.

Then there was the Smash Burger and more smashed potatoes. The server kindly had it cut into two for us to share which made it impossible to stand up but easy to check out the ingredients. Up until that moment, my favourite vegan burger, believe it or not, was from Bells and Whistles but this one is now top of my chart. The patty is made by their own Tomorrow Foods and is a combination of assorted beans and wheat protein and a rather long but unfrightening list of other things. The result was amazing in both taste and texture for a burger. Then they have proceeded to smash the burger into 2 thin patties, giving them an excellent burger crust. Decent basic add ons included tomatoes, iceberg lettuce, pickles and pretty impressive cheese which I would certainly have mistaken for American had I not known better. Well done Mila!

We don't do dessert very often but this dessert's description made me think it would be something from my Mother's kitchen which it very nearly was. This Lemon Custard Bar had a salted oat crust and a mixed berry compote. It was very refreshing and on the light side for dessert. It compared favourably to my Mother's version!

This is a sharp space and comfortable. Tables are separated by plexiglass and staff are masked. Everything you could ask for and excellent food as well. The menu offers a lot of other things that we would like to try making it, in our opinion, one of the top vegan joints in Vancouver, for sure.

Food                5 out of 5

Comfort           4 1/2 out of 5

Service            5 out of 5

Value               4 1/2 out of 5

Sy's Vegan - Abbotsford - World Vegan Month

Wha...? Vegan in Abbotsford, in a shopping mall food court, no less. I stumbled across Sy's Vegan Bistro by Googling "vegan in the Fraser Valley". The results were meagre but there was Sy's. Not always anxious to order food from a food court (except for Asian mall food courts which are a vastly different thing), we nonetheless decided to take SVB for a spin.

Sy's may serve mall food but it's pretty good mall food. They have a few burgers on the menu but no fries. They are using Beyond Meat patties and sausage which is fine but I can easily do that at home so we gave those items a miss in order to try some other things from their fairly extensive menu.

They have a few smaller sized dishes so we were able to try more than usual which we liked. The Mini Mex bowl gave us a taste of their house-made chilli with all the fixin's served over rice. The green sauce is a cilantro lime dressing (also house-made) which was quite good (as was the chilli). It is not a scary guacamole thing as I first thought!

Also, in small-sized take-home portions (or you can get them in 1/2 litre or 1-litre portions for take home) were Beat (sic) and Greens Borscht,

Mulligatawny Soup,

and more Chilli (the overlap was mine). All of these were full-on decent and comforting.

They serve perogies in a variety of arrangements (in a Canadian Bowl, with bratwurst, with curry etc.) but we tried them on their own with a house-made vegan mayo. Very good! 

Finally, we had the curiously named, Three Pea Salad (are the words peas and beans interchangeable?). This was another comforting dish with more of their tasty cilantro lime dressing. 

All in all, we liked Sy's Vegan. If you feel like a burger (they call them Vurgers) or a sausage on a bun, you can have it. There is also a kids menu. Lot's of cruelty-free/ planet friendly/ healthy choices if you happen to be hanging out at the mall (why would you be?) or actually shopping. Seeing vegan food available in Abbotsford gives me hope for the future.

Food                   3 1/2 out of 5

Service               4 out of 5 (they packed us a couple of soup samples in addition to our order!)

Comfort              3 out of 5 (mall food court)

Value                  4 out of 5

Do Chay Saigon Vegetarian - Yaletown - World Vegan Month

So many restaurants to try, so little time. Mharie will tell you that when we find a place that we really love, that truly rises above the rest, that we should go back to every week, that I will say, "Well, I already wrote something about them. I want to go to someplace new!" Even our all-time favourite, Dosanko, we have only been to twice. How sad! The exception to the rule is when a great restaurant opens a second location. Then on a technicality, we can go to the new location and I can write something about a new place! The point being, our favourite vegan/vegetarian place in Metro-Vancouver has opened up on Hamilton Street in Yaletown, Do Chay Saigon Vegetarian.

We did that thing that we always do, namely arrived unfashionably early and avoided crowds and line ups and were seated right away and socially distant. Again, I find myself wishing that I was in the plexiglass business these days as tables were safely isolated from each other.

We started with an appetizer that was not on the menu at the Kingsway location, Black Truffle Tofu. I was a little concerned as sometimes, truffle can be overwhelming but the chef had a delicate hand. These crispy, lightly deep-fried tofu pieces were gently scented with truffle, ginger and scallion with a sweetish soy sauce. Very nice!

There is nothing too exotic about Crispy Spring Rolls but these were certainly excellent. A large mustard green leaf, as well as basil and mint, were on the side that could be used to wrap the spring roll pieces for a different taste with each bite.

Next up was Black Garlic Eggplant. This was a rice bowl topped with braised and garlicky eggplant, some crispy tofu pieces, yo choy and some chilis. A nicely well balanced and comforting dish. 

Lastly, we had the Vegan Verm, a noodle bowl. There was a bit of overlap as another spring roll was featured here. That was not a bad thing but unintentional. Most impressive was a nice mix of mushrooms namely wood ear, oyster and king oyster with a hint of lemongrass and some peanuts. Loved this. The bowl was colourful with herbs, tomato and salad greens. All of this including tax and tips came to only $64. Another bonus of vegan food is that you can lunch in a higher-end restaurant for less as you are not paying for a $50 steak or other expensive pieces of meat.

Do Chay remains our favourite vegan / vegetarian restaurant in Metro Vancouver. Good cruelty-free food, very nice service and comfortable pleasant environs add up to a wonderful experience.

Food                    5 out of 5

Service                5 out of 5

Comfort               5 out of 5 

Value                   5 out of 5

Veggie Bob's - Fort Langley - World Vegan Month

Veggie Bob's could easily be called Vegan Bob's although I think Veggie kind of rolls off the tongue a little better. That being said, there is nothing on the web site menu that is not labelled vegan. I suppose they reserve the right to serve an egg if they decided to. Located on the main drive of Fort Langley just as you arrive in town, I expect that Veggie Bob's has been around for a while. Obviously, I should have asked.

We opted for take-out as lately our pandemic numbers are growing more alarming but there is outside seating and they are decently spaced out and masked up inside. We would have felt fine about dining in.

The menu at VB leans Mexican but their most notable achievement are house-made sausages based on wheat kernels, beans, peppers herbs etc. They are frankly pretty good and kudos to VB for not relying on Beyond Meat products (not that that would be such a terrible thing). They show up in a series of dogs (or sausage on a bun if you prefer) of which we tried the Mac and Cheeze Sausage Bun. Served on a regular (whole wheat) hot dog bun and with house-made vegan cheeze, it was not too bad. The sausage was the highlight with a meaty texture and taste. The cheeze could use some perking up but that seems to be the way with vegan cheeze.

The Cravin' Asian Wrap struck us as a little more adventurous than some other menu items and was tasty enough but not a huge home run. Described on the menu as being filled with rice and sweet potatoes, it was actually heavy on the greens with some nice textured Asian veggies and a mayo-based sauce. Flour tortillas do not blow my mind either. It was again, tasty enough but a little on the pricy side at $12.95. I don't mention prices too often here but I would expect a little more for that price.

The Chilli Planet Bowl was actually pretty good. It was a little too messy to try to plate at home, so we happily ate it from its take-out container. The chilli itself was OK but not surprising (could have used a little smokiness) but the toppings brought it up a level. Again the house-made cheeze, guac and cashew crema were a credit to their made from scratch formula.

We ordered a cupcake too but that got left out of our order so we have a credit waiting for us. It's a nice rustic room with cool old mismatched chairs and tables. They are currently most of the way through renovations (I assume). If you want to eat in and they are on top of the social distancing/ hand sanitizing/mask-wearing thing. The service was friendly and pretty quick. Above all, vegan food gets a little harder to find as you move out the Valley and Veggie Bob's fills an important niche. While the food was not staggering, it was decent and we would try them again.

Food                    3 out of 5

Comfort               3 1/2 out of 5

Service                 4 out of 5

Value                    3 out of 5