Dutch Wooden Shoe Cafe: Pannekoeks? Pannekoeken!

Exterior of Dutch Wooden Shoe Cafe

I've wanted to try DeDutch for a while now, but Google told me that there's a better and less expensive place for brunch that's owned by the same people - Dutch Wooden Shoe Cafe. They're located on Cambie St. and 16th Ave. and have a unique design/building that you probably can't miss. They've definitely put in effort for their decorations. 

Dutch Wooden Shoe Cafe

Dutch Wooden Shoe Cafe

So, what's there to eat at a Dutch restaurant? Pannekoeken (or Pannekoeks?)! Now, I'll let them define it.

Definition of a pannekoek

They didn't mention that pannekoeken is the plural form (as wikipedia told me) and they used pannekoeks? Hmm..

Read More

Banana chocolate oatmeal

Steel oats take a much longer time to cook as compared to quick oats but it's worth it. I love the chewy texture that it brings to my bowl of oatmeal. After the steel oats are done cooking, I am at the point where I am quite hungry and I just want to be able to eat spoonfuls of it. So, I add some milk (from the fridge) at the end so my bowl of oatmeal will be at the perfect temperature to eat. Perfect way to cool down a bowl while making it creamier and yummier.

Banana chocolate oatmeal

Half cup of steel oats in over a cup of boiling water for 20 minutes. Add milk, bananas, and chocolate syrup.

Read More

Sushi Zero One

I received a gift card from Sushi Zero One and finally, I got a chance to grab lunch there to try it. They're a fairly small place and it seems like most people ordered take-out instead of eating there. I got my order as take-out too.

I opted for scallop rolls and my usual California rolls. (Man, I should probably do a post comparing California rolls from different restaurants.) As I've mentioned in my previous post, I usually feel like California roll and I also feel like it's the safest choice for my first-time visits to see how fresh their ingredients are. I noticed that Sushi Zero One does sell a day old sushi at a discount, but I chose the fresh one today. Their rolls were pretty good, but they didn't stand out from any other Japanese place I've been to. Though I did think they did a good job with the size of the rolls and the amount of rice. 

Next time I come here, I'd like to try their udon as other reviewers have told me good things about it. Thank you for the gift card, Zero One Sushi! :)

Read More

Copa Cafe 高柏餐廳

The "other side" 

I met up with my two music friends (we're music nerds when we're together) for lunch at Copa cafe right at noon on a Saturday. They were packed and we were waiting for about 10 minutes until they finally decided to open the other side, which has 8 tables. (I didn't know they had another side and I don't know why they didn't open it earlier).

When seated, they served us the typical tea you find at HK style cafes.

We ordered from the mini lunch menu (which isn't really that mini) and comes with a complimentary drink. Ever since I first ate baked seafood rice a few years ago, I have grown to like cheesy baked rice. This time, I got the baked chicken steak on rice in Portuguese style and chose Horlicks for my drink.

Baked chicken steak on rice in Portuguese style 芝士葡汁焗焼鸡饭  $6.95

Baked chicken steak on rice in Portuguese style 芝士葡汁焗焼鸡饭

My friend seemed to have enjoyed her order of bacon, lettuce, and tomato with toasted white bread. The ingredients were fresh and the salad was creamy and had fruits.

BLT sandwich with salad $5.95

The scrambled egg and shrimp with fried rice noodle took the longest time to arrive. I wonder if the menu actually meant flat instead of fried, because that looks like non-fried rice noodles to me. The flat rice noodles would have been better if they were separated a bit instead of being stuck together in chunks. Hence, it made it difficult to get the creamy sauce in every bite and as a result, was plain. I don't believe this met my friend's expectations as there's some discrepancy between the actual dish and the menu. Due the the wait to be seated and for the dish to come, my poor assumption that we could be done with 1.5 hours was wrong. I apologize for that as she had to pack most of it.

Scrambled egg and shrimp with fried rice noodle 滑蛋蝦仁炒河 $8.95

Horlicks 好立克

Almond 杏仁双

Hot chocolate with whipped cream

As with HK style cafes, you can choose the your drink from a list including Horlicks, Ovaltine, almond, HK style lemon tea, HK style milk tea, etc. Like Ovaltine, Horlicks is a name of a company and typically used to refer to the powder malt drink. I have a thing for malt so I got that.

Read More

Banana Walnut Crumb Muffins [recipe]

 I love muffins, but muffins are definitely not my forte when it comes to baking. Mine has never turned out to be like the store-bought soft and moist muffins. However, I''m stubborn (and wanted a muffin) so I decided to give it a go again. 

Banana crumb muffins

I would say that these turned out relatively successful. They were soft and moist, and had a crumbly crunchy top. The inside of these muffins reminded me of banana bread and I'm still unable to tell the difference between them.

Here's what you'll need (for a dozen):

• 3 ripe bananas
• 1/4 cup white sugar
• an egg
• 1/3 cup oil (I used grapeseed oil)

• 1.5 cup flour
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1 tsp ground cinnamon
• 1 tsp vanilla extract

     Topping

• 1/4 cup brown sugar
• 2 tbsp flour
• 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
• 1 tbsp softened butter
• 1/4 cup chopped walnuts

Here's what I did:

1. Wet: Mash 3 ripe bananas, add in 1/4 cup of white sugar, 1 egg, and 1/3 cup grapeseed oil.

2. Dry: Mix together all the dry ingredients: 1.5 cup flour, 1 tsp baking soda, 1 tsp baking powder, 1/2 tsp salt, 1 tsp ground cinnamon, 1 tsp vanilla extract.

3. Topping: Mix together 1/4 cup brown sugar, 2 tbsp flour, 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon, 1 tbsp softened butter, 1/4 cup chopped walnuts. Mix thoroughly.

4. Pour the wet into the dry and fold them together. Don't over-mix. After buttering the muffin pan, carefully pour the batter into 12 muffin cups. If you're using muffin paper cups, skip the buttering.

Muffin batter, ready to go into the oven.

5. After the oven reaches 375°F, place the tray in the center of the oven and let it bake for ~5 minutes. Take it out and place toppings on to the half-baked muffins. 

Toppings on muffins, ready for the oven again

6. Place tray back into the oven for another 13-15 minutes (until golden brown). Sorry for the blurry picture as I wanted them back in the oven AFAP (as fast as possible).

Fresh out of the oven!

Sit back and enjoy your fresh muffins, perhaps with a cup of tea. They will still be soft and moist the next couple days too. 

Banana walnut crumb muffins with tea

Though I was pleased with this batch, I'm constantly looking for improvements/tips for better muffins. Here is what I think I'd do next time: 

- Add walnuts to the batter.

- Make bigger ones so they look more like muffins. 

I adapted this recipe from the one on allrecipes.com by Lisa Kreft. I made a few changes/additions to the recipe. My family and I don't like extreme sweet things, so a major change is omitting some sugar. Nevertheless, I thought the sweetness was at a perfect level. Be sure to go gentle on the sugar when you also have ripe bananas because those are your natural sugar source already!

Read More

The Eatery: Funky Sushi

The Eatery is pretty well advertised in the UBC community as their ads appear in our AMS Insiders (free agenda for students). As well, if you show them your student card, you get 10% off. It is also located fairly close to UBC and can get there by just the 99 B-line. 

The Eatery is definitely funky and not your typical Japanese restaurant. Here's a page of their menu, "The Eatery Store" and whether they actually sell these "sushi makes miso horny" t-shirts, I'm not too sure. 

The Eatery Store

Read More

Green Goodness

Some of you may already know, green is my favourite colour. Besides green pens and green walls in my room, I also like the "smell of green". Let me elaborate. One time when I went camping, I woke up to the fresh smell of crispy green leaves and trees. I was surrounded by nature's colour - green. That was my kind of paradise.

I also love matcha, green tea, green veggies and best of all, green smoothies. They're great for breakfast, as a snack, after workouts, for your sweet tooth, or simply for you to enjoy on a sunny day, like today. I basically just pop whatever I have in the fridge into the blender, taste it, and then adjust accordingly. 

Read More

Start off each morning with a smile

...Or a drooling smile.

Aunt Jemima's pancakes

I love pancakes. 

Read More

Book Kyung Ban Jeom (북경반점): Jajangmyeon and Black Day

Tteokbokki is my favourite Korean dish, hands down. However, I do really like Korean-Chinese fusion food too.

Book Kyung Ban Jeom is one of the Korean-Chinese restaurants in Vancouver. Though this is one of the more Korean than Chinese (food-wise and staff-wise) restaurants. After ordering, we were served with sides - yellow pickled radish and kimchi white radish

Sides

Our first dish was the sweet and sour chicken, kinda like the Chinese sweet and sour pork. The chicken was crispy and flavourful.

tangsuyuk - crispy sweet and sour chicken

Read More

Hokkaido Ramen Santouka 山頭火

There are so many ramen restaurants in downtown Vancouver that I have not even tried them all yet. However, I love ramen, especially on a cold, rainy day; It's fast, filling, flavourful, and satisfying. 

Ramen Santouka has locations all over Japan, Hong Kong, Singapore, and the US. They say that they monitor the cooking standards at all their locations, so you can probably expect an authentic bowl of ramen. Though ramen may seem simple to make, but apparently the pork bones are simmered for 20 hours to make the rich, fatty soup base.

Watch the chefs prepare ramen

Round table to share

Read More

Costco's hot dog: Both my tummy and wallet are happy

One of my favourite things to do is grocery shopping. I don't usually go to Costco, usually only when my mom asks me to go with her. 

Our shopping trip ended with a stop at the food court outside which is opened to everyone (not only Costco members). They have poutine, fries, pizza, and of course, the jumbo quarter-pound all beef (or polish) hot dog. I got the all beef hot dog which comes with self-serve bottomless soda, but I'm indifferent about that as I'm not a fan of soda. My friend told me that he's gotten just the hotdog before for less than a dollar, but I'm not sure if that works at all locations and I have yet to try that. 

Hot dog with 20 oz. soda for $1.50

Read More

Jolly's Indian Bistro: Where I fell in love with Naan

I'm a sucker when I see good deals on daily deal sites. That's why I try not to check them out too often, but sometimes I just can't resist because I love giving myself opportunities to try new places at good prices. It's kinda like an addiction, a good one? But I have gotten backstabbed where my vouchers expired :( Before I knew it, my voucher for Jolly's Indian Bistro was almost going to expire and so I quickly set up a date to go. We waited for almost 2 hours for a table for two. Guess I'm not the only one who's using the voucher last minute. (Thank you to my friend who waited with me - I was desperate to avoid having another unused and expired voucher.) I've tried to go for lunch and was greeted by a closed sign, unfortunately. Their hours on Google is completely wrong. They're only opened for dinner from 4:30pm - 10pm daily.                                                                                                                                                                                                                            When I stepped into the restaurant, I instantly felt the "Indian vibe" from the unique decorations - nice draping clothes used to cover the ceilings and the detailed light.

Our entrées came with naan. Oh my goodness, they was AMAZING! I loved it so much that we ordered two additional naans for $2 each. They were topped with sour cream and some spices and were super warm, fluffy, and soft. 

naan 

Read More

Fruit Sandwich

According to Health Canada, we need ~8 servings of fruits per day. I find myself constantly struggling to include more fruits into my daily diet. I usually find myself too full after a meal to eat more fruits. So I thought, why not include them in my meal? Here is a fruit sandwich I made with what I had at home. 

Fruit sandwich

Banana, apple slices, avocado, and peanut butter on whole wheat bread. Great for breakfast or lunch! Yum :)

Read More

Suika: Two visits, one blog post

One of the challenges in having a food blog is keeping it up-to-date with when I actually visited the restaurant. Unfortunately, that is still something I'm working on. I've visited Suika again before I had the chance to blog about it so my two visits will be combined into one big post. 

Beer bottle lights

A very prominent and creative design - colourful Japanese beer bottle lights hanging from the ceiling.

Salad

In addition to being served green tea, we were also given green salad to start off. I really liked this - the greens were fresh and the dressing was very appetizing. And, you could ask for more salad too.

Double tonkatsu set (deep fried pork cutlets with homemade breadcrumbs) $12.80

Double tonkatsu

I got the double tonkatsu set and even for me, it was huge. It came with miso soup, rice, and two different types of sauce. The waitress told me to grind the black and white sesame and put it in the sauce. I did that, but I don't think it made a big difference (or perhaps I didn't do it properly). The pork cutlets were served on a rack which was smart, because nobody likes soggy breadcrumbs. I wasn't a fan of the sauce. Even without dipping into any sauce, I didn't find it dry.

My friend got the seafood don and it had a variety of fresh sashimi and seafood. It came with miso soup as well and looked very good, but she liked my order more. As a result, I happily let her help me eat some of it so that I was able to leave nothing behind :). 

Seafood bowl set

SECOND VISIT:

Green salad with amazing dressing

As I mentioned, my friend really liked the double tonkatsu set so we decided to come here after our last Brain Day presentation. We got to the restaurant just past 11am, but then we found out that they actually open half an hour later. Luckily, they had their doors unlocked already so we were allowed to sit inside on the couches and they even handed us the menu. Of course, my friend didn't need that since she had her mind set on the double tonkatsu. I could tell that Suika is a popular place because shortly after, another group arrived (before they were even opened). Right at 11:30am, they seated us and again, served us with fresh green salad with the yummy dressing that I really liked.

To start off, we got the hamachi carpaccio. There were 8 pieces with bean sprouts and alfalfa sprouts. I think there was a bit too much mayonnaise and sauce as it was too flavourful in that I couldn't really taste the fresh fish itself.

hamachi carpacio 

This time, I got the beef tendon bowl set. Again, it was a generous amount (or perhaps I ate too much salad...). I was actually expecting pieces of beef but the beef was shredded and mixed with egg, onions, and some veggies served on top of rice. The rice was a tad too gooey for my liking this time, but it did mix together easily with the beef and egg. It was yummy, flavourful, and gooey.

Beef tendon bowl set ($8.80)

Stewed beef tendon and egg on rice 

I look forward to trying Suika's sister restaurants someday: Kingyo in downtown and newly opened, Rajio in the Point Grey area.

Read More

Oishii Sushi

I kept on seeing Oishii Sushi being featured on the voucher sites so I decided that I'll try it out as I love exploring and trying new places. I don't like to think that just because a restaurant is on daily deal sites, that they are not doing well - I've definitely bought vouchers to places where they were super busy already. Unfortunately, I don't think that's the case for Oishii Sushi.

Sushi bar

Oishii Sushi is a fairly big restaurant with lots of seatings. I ordered chicken teriyaki roll and Box A (tempura, California roll, chicken teriyaki), which comes with with miso soup and ebi sunomono. Yes, you can probably tell by now that I always tend to get my favourite California roll. Well, not exactly my top favourite, but I do really like it and it can tell me a lot about the restaurant. Another thing you can probably tell by now is that I'm not so good at ordering: teriyaki chicken roll and teriyaki chicken with rice. Hm, I must have been really craving for teriyaki chicken.

Miso soup & ebi sunomono 

Read More

Solly's Bagelry

I've passed by Solly's Bagelry on 7th and Yukon St. quite a few times and it always seemed busy.  I stumbled into it with my mom for an afternoon snack and realized it was actually quite big with seats available inside and outside. They also have two other locations in Vancouver.

Solly's Bagelry (7th Ave. and Yukon St.)

Inside of Solly's Bagelry

Bagel bar

Goodies from Solly's Bagelry

This sign (below) was clear and big at the window and so I knew I had to get one because my mom loves warm, gooey cinnamon buns.

Their "world famous cinnamon buns" cost $2.85 each and I got myself a chocolate babka ($2.95). Yup, this place is owned by a Jewish family.

Chocolate babka & Cinnamon buns

My mom liked the cinnamon as it was soft, warm, and gooey, but I'm not sure if she would refer to it as  the "world's best"- that's quite a title. After having a bite of both the cinnamon bun and the chocolate babka, I don't understand why the chocolate babka is 10 cents more. It's just like a chocolate bun, while the cinnamon bun was more unique.

This certainly looks a lot bigger than it actually is - it's only two bites. This Jewish pastry is called rugelach and is rolled with some sort of sweet filling.  It costs less around $1. 

Before leaving, I also got half a dozen of bagels to take home with us. The guy who was helping me was very friendly as I'm an indecisive person and they had a variety of bagels. I got poppy seed, sundried tomato, raisin, mix, multigrain, and herbs. The raisin wasn't anything special and the herbs had a unique taste.

Bagels from Solly's Bagelry

I loved their bagels. I would definitely come back and perhaps try a more exotic bagel at the bagel bar (picture above).

Read More