Szechuan Chongqing Restaurant (Robson)

Vancouver is one of the best cities that offers an extensive variety of international cuisines, and even with food from the same region, it can be dramatically different in its taste and cooking techniques. For example, regular Indian dishes have little resemblance to dosas from Southern India or Sri Lanka. Among all the cuisines available in Vancouver, Chinese food perhaps offers the most amazing diversity in its dishes based on its original regions the food comes from - Hongkong, Taiwan, Szechuan, Hunan, or the types of dishes - noodles, hotpot, congee, dim sum, etc. Perhaps because of the huge Cantonese population in Vancouver, Cantonese restaurants seem to dominate Chinese restaurants. Among the less dominant Mandarin restaurants in Vancouver, Szechuan food seems to be considered as the typical Mandarin food for some reason.

There are quite a few Szechuan restaurants scattered around the city, Szechuan Chongqing Restaurant being one of them. We tried its main location on Commercial Drive twice in the past, and none of those two dining experiences left extraordinary impression on us. They recently opened up a new location right on Robson and Jervis Street about two months ago. It is much smaller, and carries less extensive menu than its main location.

When we arrived the restaurant, there was exactly one person dining there during lunch hours on a Saturday in central downtown Vancouver. Not exactly a good sign. Their menu looks decent, however, each dish's market price is about 3 dollars more than I would expect to pay for Chinese food. We ordered Dan dan noodle with pork chops and Chongqing Chicken.

Food arrived fairly quickly, not surprising considering we were the only diners in the restaurant. A bowl of dan dan noodles in seemingly spicy broth came with a plate of pork chops. Finely chopped green onions were sprinkled on top. Of note, I find it weird to have pork chops as a side dish. It's like ordering dumplings and they throw in a side dish of smoked beef. Noodles were nice and chewy, and pork chops were delicious. Despite the heavy chili oil floating on the broth, the noodles were not Chongqing level spicy. The second dish, Chongqing Chicken, was brought to us five minutes after. It's diced, spicy chicken nested on a mat of fried spinach. After having the dan dan noodles, I find the taste of Chongqing chicken too salty for my liking, but it's otherwise tasty and spicy enough to be qualified as Szechuan food, though I had to wash down the heavy sodium taste with a can of diet coke.

I haven't been to Szechuan or Chongqing personally, but my grandfather grew up in Szechuan and he told me a lot about Szechuan and its local food. People in Szechuan have a relatively slow living pace - you would see many people walking around in the park, playing chess on the street or drinking tea during regular working hours. They enjoy low-key life and that kind of lifestyle is perfectly reflected in their local cuisine. Nothing is fancy, and nothing requires rare, expensive ingredients - unlike Cantonese cuisine often uses high quality seafood even in dim sum and congee. What makes Szechuan food outstanding is the diversity of its street food. Szechuan people have the ability of turning the most boring meal of the day, breakfast, into a gourmet feast. Randomly pick a street in Szechuan and walk down at 6 am in the morning, you would find a ton of food stands selling breakfast - all kinds of buns (meaty or sweet), dumplings, a variety of noodles (rice noodles, glass noodles, buckwheat, thick or thin handmade noodles, includng dan dan noodle), wonton soup, congee, pastries, etc etc. And they are incredibly cheap - for a good bowl of dan dan noodles, you wouldn't pay more than $1. So when I was growing up, Szechuan food represents the best street food that you could imagine. However, for some reason, Szechuan/Chongqing food suddenly rises up to restaurant level in Vancouver and you are expected to pay 10 times more than what it's worth. In Szechuan, people get up early, have a nice and cheap street breakfast, and get on with their slow-paced and low-key life. It has lost its authenticity and simplicity to its nature, when taken out of the original environment.

Overall, I would rate Szechuan Chongqing Restaurant decent. Worth a second try. Aside from Lin's Chinese Cuisine and Peaceful restaurant, Crystal mall is the place to go to if you are a hardcore Mandarin food lover. There are several inexpensive, friendly mandarin restaurants next to the mall that offer authentic dishes.

Szechuan Chongqing Restaurant (Robson)

One of the only passable pho places in downtown Vancouver just bit the dust for some unfathomable reason. Vinada opened just a little over a year ago at 1260 Robson (still turns up in Google) and by some whim of fate never seemed to get the customers. With the cost of rent in downtown, unless you have a runaway hit like the pizza bistro Nook, which opened up a few months back and has been packed since day one due to a combination of appealing hip atmosphere and classy, bistro-style original pizza creations, then you'll be gone with the wind within the year. I've seen it happen to innumerable restaurants in the few years I've been living in the West End. I'm sad to see Vinada go. They had a superb menu of different Vietnamese noodle dishes, at a reasonable price. Downtown needs more reasonably priced restaurants. $12 mains for lunch is not reasonable.

It did not take long for someone to renovate the space and replace them once they disappeared overnight a few weeks ago. They have been replaced by a smaller location of the Szechuan Chongqing Restaurant, which has a main location at Commercial and 12th Ave. It is one of the more well known outlets for spicy Szechuan food in Vancouver.

It was strange walking into the newly-redecorated space. Memories of Vinada lingered. The thin strip of space in the interior is spare but well decorated, with a little wall of statuettes. Nonetheless the atmosphere is a little cold and forbidding, closer to the atmosphere of a high-end bistro, which feels somewhat inappropriate for a traditional Szechuan restaurant.

Service is attentive and prompt, which is more than could be said of Vinada, where you had to go to the main counter to ask for the check. But I would gladly exchange quality of service for reliably cheap and good fare. The equation is reversed at Chongqing. The food seems good but overpriced and not up to the level of the service.

I sampled the Dan Dan Noodle ($7.75) and Chongqing Chicken ($11.95), the first a typical dish that can be found in many Chinese restaurants and the second one of the region's specialties.



The wheat noodles in the Dan Dan Noodle bowl had an excellent consistency: firm but very chewy and not rubbery in the slightest. The noodles lay calmly, well folded, floating in a pool of thin red broth that was more flavorful and less spicy than it gave on - spicy enough to scream Szechuan but not so much as to make you sweat bullets. The problem came when I dug deeper down to discover a massive blob of what had the excessive sweetness and thick consistency of peanut butter. A little peanut sauce would be fine, but the dish was completely overwhelmed by the peanut buttery sweetness, fairly ruining what started out as a well-balanced dish.

The bowl of noodles was accompanied by a side of deep-fried pork cutlets that were far better than feared and went superbly well with the noodles, despite apparently not being in the slightest a traditional accompaniment to this dish. I felt that it was a good idea to serve them on the side rather than in the broth, so that you can appreciate different levels of flavor and the different textures. The price is about fair, especially with the generous side of pork cutlets, but the dish needs a bit of work in terms of the peanut aspect. A sprinkling of chopped peanuts would have been a far better idea. I also thought it might have been better off with a sauce rather than a soup broth, which is unusual for the dish. It's supposed to be noodles, not soup with noodles.

The chicken dish came out nice and hot. What seemed at first to be far too much food to finish, even between two people, proved to be slightly insufficient to leave the restaurant stuffed. The chicken was very flavorful and spicy at first bite, but very quickly the degree to which it was oversalted became apparent. It was also way too oily. The overzealous salting backfired by turning what would have been a fine, subtle regional staple into a taste being pounded into your head with a jackhammer. The chicken rested on a bed of fried spinach - a creative proposition at first glimpse, but one that falls apart upon closer examination. Imagine the consistency of soggy salad that has been lying in vinegar for too long. What would have been entirely satisfactory at a lower price point was downright disappointing at $11.95.

I sampled the Chongqing Chicken at the other Chongqing location, and if memory serves, they are prepared almost identically, serving up the same mixture of almost-goodness outweighed by gripes due to the completely inappropriate pricing. If this place fails, which appears to be the way the wind is blowing (a tumbleweed rolled by my table), then it will be no one's fault but their own for shooting for the stars without the proper equipment. Chinese restaurants with high price points thrive on the image of luxury, with huge dining rooms and big tables and big menus. The abbreviated menu at the Robson location would seem logically to have demanded a lowering of prices to cater to a more casual clientele, and failure to have thoroughly thought through their proposition may prove fatal. If they survive, it will be with the same opportunist nihilism that permits many execrable excuses for a restaurant to thrive by feeding overpriced slop to the tourists who flock down the nearby shopping blocks of Robson during the summer.

Another minor gripe was with the tea. The tea was watered down and had no flavor at all. I could barely tell whether it was supposed to be Jasmine or Pu-Erh. What does it say about a Chinese restaurant if they can't even brew a cup of Chinese tea?

Menya

A recent trend in Vancouver restaurants that has proven wildly successful is the ramen joint. Ramen, the traditional noodle of Japan, bears little resemblance in taste or form to the noodle staples of other nearby cultures. Vancouver has enough of a Japanese native population that it has seen one after another ramen joint appear in the last few years.

Unlike other types of food, for some reason there are no inauthentic ramen joints. By definition, if it's a ramen joint, it's authentic, at least here. Sushi joints here are a more uneven proposition, often being run by people with no interest in the craft. Ramen joints at least are a safe visit. You know that you'll be getting the real thing, created by someone who learned the craft in Japan.

I learned while on a brief visit to Tokyo many years ago that every ramen joint in Japan has their own secret recipe. I had a blast going around sampling all the different types of ramen. The recent proliferation of ramen joints in Vancouver allows you to have the authentic ramen-hopping experience minus the expensive plane ticket.

The kingpin of Vancouver ramen joints is Kintaro, at the corner of Denman and Robson. A veritable colony of ramen joints have mushroomed up in the immediate vicinity of Kintaro in the last few years. At present I count three others that started up over the last two years within a block of Kintaro (Motomachi, Benkei and Hokkaido, in that order), not to mention several Izakayas (Kingyo, Hapa, Guu, Gyoza King) and a hibachi joint (Zakkushi). A quick Google search reveals at least half a dozen here and there further on the outskirts of town. (There used to be one way out in Port Coquitlam, but I'm not sure it's still there after all these years.) I've never been so spoiled when it comes to Japanese food.

Menya at 491 West Broadway is one of the most recent entrants in the ramen race. Ramen tends to range between about $7 and $9, somewhat steep for a bowl of noodles. You can get a big bowl of pho at one of the dozens of pho joints throughout the city for a few bucks less, and it will be a considerably healthier meal. Ramen tends to be comparabily higher in sodium and fat.

Menya is not exempt from that gripe. I sampled their miso ramen today for lunch ($7.50), and it was typically competent in its production, with a few minus points. The pork on top was cold. It warmed up eventually when dunked in the broth, but still. Not enough picked bamboo shoots, too many sprouts - the same could be said of most of the ramen joints here. Broth good but not extraordinary. By no means a bad ramen. A very passable ramen. I prefer this tonkotsu miso ramen to that of Kintaro, famous for their big vats of boiling pork bone used to make the monstrously fatty dashi in their ramen. Kintaro comes in three fatty levels, and Menya miso ramen ranks about at the lower of the three. Imagine the heart-clogging monstrosity that is 'fat' Kintaro ramen.

Menya has three other varieties of ramen. The abbreviated selection is typical. Ramen joints focus on a few things, and do them well consistently.

They have a few curveballs on the menu - so-called "Jah-Jah-Men" and "Tan-Tan-Men", which are presumably mods of the mandarin dishes zha jiang mian and dan dan mian. I sampled the Jah-Jah-Men, and it was quite passable despite bearing little resemblance to the original recipe.

A perfunctory udon dish and soba dish top off the brief menu. The sides are mostly typical with the exception of karashi takana, a small bowl of picked collard-like greens spiced up with red pepper. It was delectable, a refreshing change from the usual sides, and one of the best dishes of bitter greens I've ever had. At $1.50, it was a reasonable way of rounding off the meal in Korean style with a few bites of sides between bites of main. Although in an ideal world every ramen joint would include a side or two alongside the ramen, considering such a hefty pricetag for a bowl of noodles.

Menya has proven reliably popular, as have every one of the ramen joints that have opened up in Kintaro's wake. Menya's small but craftily designed space seems filled every day around the lunch hour. The benches made of massive polished tree stumps are a nice touch that give the space a unique character. Each ramen joint is a pleasure to visit because they put so much thought into designing their tiny spaces in a way that cleverly convinces you that being packed elbow to elbow at the same table with perfect strangers is part of the package - key to authenticity - not an uncomfortable invasion of personal space.

In short, Menya is a very decent ramen joint that is as reliable as any of the others in town. Don't expect anything out of the ordinary, just competently made ramen, and you won't be disappointed.

Taiwan Beef Noodle King

If Vancouver is good for one thing, it's ethnic restaurants, particularly Asian restaurants. I don't think I'd ever tasted authentic Chinese food before moving to Vancouver. So much of what passes for Chinese food in the US, where I lived before moving here, is nothing so much as a sad comment on how disinterested most Americans are in authenticity, quality cooking, other cultures, and the rest of the world in general. I myself was content with "Chinese Food" before becoming enlightened as to what that term really means.

And really, it means nothing. And a lot of things. There is no such thing as "Chinese food". Chinese food is, rather, an umbrella term for some of the most diverse and inventive cooking traditions in the world. Tibetian food could not be more different from Beijing food from Yunnan food from Shanghai food from Hong Kong food from Hunan food from Xinjiang food. Vancouver is the first place where I had a chance to taste the specificity buried in that vague term. In Vancouver, where the population is seemingly majority Asian, there is not only cognizance of the difference, the difference is lived and expected. The people who frequent the many dim sum joints that dot the city are not the same people who frequent the mandarin restaurants, and their taste buds are attuned differently.

Although I enjoy some dim sum, I have found over the years of experimentation that I gravitate towards Mandarin style cooking as opposed to Cantonese style cooking. My experience at restaurants of the Hong Kong tradition has been hit or miss at best. One of the most reliable restaurants in the city to experience this culture is Kirin on Alberni. At restaurants of the Mandarin persuasion such as Lin's and Peaceful (both within a few blocks of each other on Broadway between Cambie and Granville), however, my taste buds have rarely been happier.

Several days ago I had dinner at Congee Noodle House on Broadway at Main. This is the restaurant that several months ago introduced me to the wonderful world of congee. Congee, or rice gruel, is enjoyed in many parts of the world. It was the traditional food of peasants in Japan in the middle ages, and is still eaten in the Philippines, Burma, Taiwan, Indonesia and elsewhere. In China, my impression is that congee is a star dish primarily in the Cantonese-speaking areas.

Congee is a great dish on a number of levels. A $5 bowl is nutritive and filling and tasty, is quick to prepare, is reliably tasty in its various guises, is not greasy like much dim sum, and is authentic to a specific tradition without being excessively weird. Congee Noodle House is a great place to discover the Hong Kong vein of this tradition in Vancouver. There are a few other congee places in Vancouver, but the congee at a few of these restaurants I've sampled doesn't measure up to Congee Noodle House in any way - they are either watery or parsimonious with the filling.

The other day, for the first time, we ordered something other than congee, and it turned out to be a big mistake. Notwithstanding the restaurant's nomenclature, let it be proclaimed forthwith that Congee Noodle House shall hereinafter foreshorten its name to Congee House, as its noodles are inedible. Let me count the ways in which the dish of pork noodles I ordered was disgusting. The wheat noodles were hard as shoelaces, but less savory. The broth was a black oil spill with, mysteriously, no taste at all. The saving grace was that, Proust-like, the pork brought back a flood of childhood memories of a dish I had forgotten in the meantime but whose unmistakable combination of rank beany sweetness with porkiness could apparently not be wiped from the olfactory area of my memory banks despite my best efforts to do so and the tide of many decades. Pork and beans is what it tasted like, and I don't mean that as a good thing.


I bring this up because last night we had the opportunity to dine at another authentically Chinese restaurant of a different tradition whose noodles were absolutely heavenly, and among the best I've sampled in Vancouver. Taiwan Beef Noodle King is a little hole in the wall buried in a miniscule, neglected strip of commercial property on the barren wasteland that is Oak Street between 70th Ave and 12th Ave.

So diminutive and unassuming are its proportions, in fact, that we almost missed it. The interior is bare and plain, the tables cheap Wal-Mart affairs. The menu is spare and to the point without being obfuscating with page after page of endless variation as is the case in other restaurants bigger, fancier, more expensive, and far less good. There are about 15 noodle dishes on the menu, each priced between $5.25 and $7.50.


I ordered the Wonton and Stewed Beef with Noodle in Soup at $7.50. It arrived quickly within 5 minutes and proved to be a big appetizing portion. We also ordered a side of spicy cucumbers and spicy wonton, and even after sharing those two dishes I was able to finish the big portion. It's a perfectly sized portion - just what you want to pay, a perfect value. Everything about this dish was a pleasure. The beef pieces were substantial and numerous, cooked to a perfection and savory. At some other restaurants I've been too, such as the Cambodian restaurant in Chinatown, the been noodle dish I ordered was inedible, the beef not so much animal meat as tasteless, fat-laden pieces of rubber. The noodles at Taiwan Beef Noodle King, quite unlike the careless, store-bought garbage I was served at Congee Noodle House, were thick and soft to the bite and uneven in shape - the trademark of the handmade noodle. Peaceful also makes their own noodles in house, and you can see them spinning the noodles out right behind you in the open kitchen. The wonton was delicious, with a thin but tight skin, and the broth was a heavenly balance, not too salty and not too sweet. A truly satisfying dish, and I suspect that the other noodle dishes are well worth the effort to sample over repeat visits.


This is the dish of spicy wonton we shared. It was perfect, the slight crunch of the green onions and the mild sour bite of the vinegar balancing out the red pepper spiciness to just the right level.


They had some funky Chinese soft drinks in the fridge to sample, and this apple soda drink was the perfect companion to the meal - quintessentially Chinese and down-to-earth and authentic in its artificial saccharine sweetness. (and don't worry, this one is "without chemical ingredients")

Overall, the visit was a very satisfying experience, doubly so due to the spontaneous discovery of the restaurant. How wonderful it is when a spontaneous find turns out to be a hidden treasure. To all the lovers of authentic Chinese noodles out there, I heartily recommend making the pilgrimage all the way into the middle of nowhere at least once to sample the handiwork at Taiwan Beef Noodle King. I only wish they were located closer to home so that I could visit more often.

Dimitriou's Jazz Alley (Seattle)

No combination is better than gourmet cuisine and music. I've always fantasized having a great meal, whilst listening to live music. In reality, unfortunately, just as a combo of a fancy restaurant and a nice view does not quite add up to quality food (Fraiche being one of a few exceptions), music bars tend to have just mediocre food with good or bad music. I've been to several restaurants with live music, such as The Cellar (a Jazz bar), Kino Cafe (flamenco shows) and Chai-East is East (Middle Eastern music performances), none of them serves food that exceeds my expectations.

I spent last Saturday night at Dimitriou's Jazz Alley, a renowned Jazz bar in downtown Seattle, hoping to experience something different from the ones that I've been to in Vancouver. It falls into the cliche music bar category - ordinary yet extremely overpriced Pacific Northwest seafood. As I stepped into the restaurant, its reputation spoke for itself - two-storey restaurants completely packed with people, at least 100 diners according to my estimation. Without a reservation a week ahead of time, I doubt you'd be able to find vacancy on a weekend like this.

After seated, my server, a lovely lady, showed up immediately with a wine menu and a dinner menu. I ordered a glass of Italian Pinot grigio to start off my meal, followed by Steamed Manila Clams with pancetta and leek as my appetizer and that night's special crab ravioli as my main.
The band presenting that night was Stanley Clarke band featuring Hiromi, an amazing female Japanese pianist.

Dishes came to my table fairly quickly, and the time gap in between two courses was just the right amount - long enough for savouring my last bite, yet not too long to bore off my appetite. Steamed clams were nice but not great, and the ravioli was nothing out of brilliance, even a bit too salty for my liking. What upset me was the portion and the price - three pieces of ravioli cost big, fat 30 dollars. For that price, they certainly did not taste like something worth $30. I passed on dessert and ordered another glass of local Syrah.

To my delight, both wines tasted deliciously, especially the Pinot Grigio, which partnered perfectly with clams. And glasses were filled 3/4 full ! Service was friendly and adequate. Music was fantastic, one of the best Jazz performances I've ever seen. Overall, everything about the restaurant was great except for their food.

That being said, I find it unfair to apply the same criteria of judgement to live music restaurants and regular restaurants, as people go there for the music, not solely for the cuisine. I guess it could be a good thing to have lower quality of the food, so not to steal the thunder from the show. The most economical way is to have dinner somewhere else and just order drinks during the show.

Two Chefs and a Table

I've always had a hard time finding a restaurant that's the real thing in Vancouver. So many restaurants are hyped, or regularly get high reviews in the 'best of' installments of the free weeklies, but seem completely undeserving of their fame. Hons the best Chinese restaurant in Vancouver? Did you just shoot up a large amount of heroin? How could anyone think that? Any random dim sum place is better than that place. Hons is the worst Chinese food I've ever had. This blog is the outlet of two cooking impaired persons who love trying out all the restaurants there are out there in Vancouver, and want to set the record straight about what's really good and what's not. We've got a few favorites nobody seems to talk about.

Two Cooks and a Table can safely be added to the small list of decent high-end eatery joints I've visited in Vancouver. The meal for two we had on Saturday night cost the same as the meal at refuel, but we left far more satisfied. Degree of Satisfaction is the quotient that most matters to us. Satisfaction having numerous facets, including ambiance, service, speed, food quality and value. I view the meal as an escalation of stimulation leading up to the climax of the main course. Amuse bouche should lead with a playful note to a small but creative opener that excites without overwhelming and shows off the creativity of the chef, leading to a slightly more large-scale opener that shows more heft and ambition and meatiness. The main that follows shouldn't feel like a disappointment after the openers. It should feel like everything was leading up to it, and you have room to spare to appreciate it, and it doesn't feel overwhelming or cloying or, conversely, too spare or slight. The dessert should be a small but sharp burst to wipe away what came before but that also shows creativity and doesn't disappoint. You still want excitement from the dessert.

My meal started with the amuse bouche outlined below by Kweepo, which was a very nimble little bite, true to its nomeclature. My first opener was a broccoli soup with truffle oil and french croutons that felt traditional but still refined. You could taste that it was homemade, and not out of a can. The quantity was just right. A good light soup opener, though not extraordinary. The scallop opener that followed was delightful - an elegant line of six thin slices of scallops doused in a sauce and little chunks of red and green peppers and enough black pepper to turn its journey through my taste buds into a pleasant progression from sweet to spicy to scallopy. A fine little dish. The beef wellington main was excellently balanced. I'd never had the dish before, and it wasn't a bad experience. The beef inside the sweet and tasty pastry was not too raw yet still quite tender and fell apart nicely on the fork. The baby zucchini and baby carrots were delectable and fresh and complemented the beef well, and the cooked tomato was a nice touch, although it felt a tad too rustic and could have used a little dash of excitement and textural variety, be it a sauce or a puree, to counter the solidity of the beef and vegetables. The chocolate mousse that capped it was an elegant little ebony breast topped with a golden caramel nipple. My only gripe: It didn't look like an actual breast. By way of eccentric touch, a sprinkling of sea salt iced the top. The salty was spare enough to just barely enhance the sweetness.

Judged on the scale of escalation, my meal at Two Chefs and a Table peaked at the second opener, and plateaued or slightly dipped at the main, so it wasn't perfect, but it was still excellent. I must note that Kweepo's Mixed Grill was the best dish of the evening, a tidy presented perfect quantity, a finely balance triple combo assault of lamb and sausage and risotto that worked well together. Lamb was definitely too salty, though. Fraiche retains the title for Best Lamb in Vancouver, alongside The Afghan Horseman.

You sense that cooking is what this place is all about, and that is how it should be. This is not where people come to hang out and be seen. There is barely room for 20 people in the place. The restaurant is a little cave of corrugated steel in the middle of the most drug- and prostitute-infested block in the city of Vancouver. The mere act of braving the way to this place is a test of your fortitude and devotion to the culinary arts. The menu is small, changes on a weekly basis or thereabouts, showing a chef constantly thinking and coming up with new tastes. This is a cook's mind I can respect and would like to explore over some more visits.

Two Chefs and a Table

We actually came across Two Chefs and a Table in Gastown when we were in the neighborhood for a modern music concert at Ironworks earlier this year. We didn’t go in but decided to try it out some other time. And of course, we completely forgot about that, just as many other nice looking restaurants we ran across. Two days ago when I was searching restaurants for Animo’s Bon Voyage dinner, among all the fancy names we opted for TCAAT, judging by its online menu, we thought it’d be a good choice. It turns out that our dining experience there was fresh and satisfying.

Restaurant is located in the middle of a residential neighborhood, several blocks away from all the bar scenes and hip lounges/bars in central Gastown. Once stepped in, the first thing I noticed was their open kitchen, along with five small tables and one long table for large groups. Three chefs and one waiter are all guys. The entire décor is minimalism, and very, hmm, clean. In retrospect, during our two hours of dining, I constantly smelled floral aroma but couldn’t figure out where it came from. It is a small, intimate dining place, with capacity of 20 customers at maximum. Large windows allowed sunlight and twilight shining through in a lovely early summer evening in Vancouver.

I chose three courses from their menu, which updates on weekly basis, and Animo opted for a Chef’s choice of five-course set menu. He also picked wines for both of us, Sandhill Merlot to go with my red meat dishes. Amuse bouche was brought onto our table promptly - a small piece of homemade pastry topped with tomato and cheese, which was quite tasty.



Duck Pate was my first course - cranberry pate spread onto white bread, topped with mustard and caramelized pearl onion. It was so full of flavors, the sweet and sour caramelized onion and mustard compliments with the slightly pungent duck pate beautifully. I could taste each flavor separately on my palate, yet they mix with one another perfectly. Even a few minutes after swallowing, the mixture of delightful flavors still swirled around my mouth. Evening started off quite nicely, I thought.


Twenty minutes into our dinner, people started to show up, mostly with reservations. Restaurant seemed to be full by 8 pm. Mixed Grill, my second course, arrived after a good 15 minutes of waiting. Two slices of sausage, a small rack of roasted lamb and pureed potato mixed with oyster mushrooms. Both sausage and lamb tasted amazing, and the lamb was in particular exquisite - medium done, perfectly marinated. Sandhill Merlot was the excellent match for this dish.

I’d have to admit that I could’ve ordered a different main course, as the main was another five generous portions of the same lamb racks, sided with grilled carrots, baby zucchini and potatoes. Lamb this round was just as good, but a bit too salty for my liking. I am not sure if I am just accustomed to normally pretentious, tiny portions of bistro food, but five pieces were too much of red meat to handle. I wound up giving three of them to Animo, who had already been stuffed with his own Beef Wellington. Even so, I feel hesitant complaining about their generous portions ($19 dollars for five decent sized lamb rack was a definitely no-find). They could eliminate two racks and add a bit more sauce or greens with a two-dollar lowered price.

Overall our dining experience was delightful – good food, friendly service and cozy atmosphere. It costs us almost as the same as what we had at Refuel, but with much better quantity and higher quality. It is still expensive, if asking me, but given choice, I’d much rather spend $120 at Two Chefs and a Table than any other so called bistros. Evidently it also serves brunch and lunch, so one of these days I’d love to come back to try out their seemingly delicious brunch menu.

Refuel

Even a few days after dining at Refuel, I am still traumatized by my dining experience in a supposedly a high-end fusion bistro on trendy West 4th ave in Vancouver. When it comes to fine dining, I always try to avoid downtown, yaletown or West 4th ave, where there seems to be a huge crowd of fancy restaurants with not-so-fancy-tasting food. All the good restaurants that I've been to are mostly scattered around corners of low-key neighborhoods, Fraiche, Harambe, Tojo's and etc. There are certainly some nice restaurants in downtown Vancouver, but the majority I've visited are more for people to hang out and feel important. That's mainly why those fancy schmancy restaurants are able to survive in a city like Vancouver - people go for the ambiance, the view, the music, the crowd, instead of the quality food. It seems to me that as long as a restaurant locates near water or has a nice view, it will survive and make a fortune regardless of the quality of food it serves. This blog serves as a decent outlet for us to identify and hence protest those overpriced, terrible cooking and pretentious restaurants, such as Burgoo.

Refuel is a restaurant with the most inconsistent cooking I've ever encountered. As a high-end restaurant as it is claimed, they do not serve complimentary bread and butter as pre-meal snacks. Snacks and drinks came real quick, literally within five minutes after ordering. Animo picked a glass of rather divine Australian Cabernet Sauvignon for me. Sauteed nettles, radish & chili was boring tasting, and fois gras croquette was a nice try. Appetizers arrived 15 minutes later, a plate of sliced soppressata and three slices of homemade bread with butter for Animo and wild leek risotto for myself. The risotto tasted heavenly, I thought to myself, it's a good indicator that main dishes would be just as good. Little did I know that risotto was the only thing that I can recall eating without a cringe on my face. Animo ordered a $20.5 pork which wound up to be six thin slices of pork, consisting 1/4 of fat, nesting on a pile of tasteless veggies. My main dish was a pure disaster - buttermilk fried chicken with gravy, coleslaw and jalapeno biscuit. I can't imagine that a professional bistro chef would mess up the one dish that requires minimum cooking skills. Three gigantic chunks of fried chick were mostly fat and skin. It was inedible. Whoever comes up with this recipe would be shot. It is the most expensive and disgusting tasting fried chicken I've ever had in my entire life. Therefore, after spending two hours at Refuel, mostly waiting for our food though, we left unsatisfied, angry and violated, with more than $120 dollars ripped out of our pockets.

But that's just a typical restaurant meal in Vancouver if you want to have something "nice". And that was just a random Thursday night dine-out. Restaurants seek out every single opportunities to rip people off, such as diluting alcoholic drinks by filling glasses up using ice-cubes. On special occasions, including Valentine's Day and New Year's Eve, they would offer multiple-course set menus, they are nothing more than regular dishes bundled up for even pricier prices.