The Urban Grind at Harbour Centre [events]

I've always loved taking part in local community events and trying out new things. I realized I haven't participated in any local events for a long time and I have almost forgotten how much I enjoyed doing things like that. 

If you like trying new things in Vancouver, enjoying gorgeous views, and could use some exercise, then this is perfect for you. The Urban Grind at Harbour Centre is a winter alternative to the Grouse Grind, though of course, it is shorter. 40 flights of stairs, 593 steps, up the 28-storey building to Vancouver Lookout. Ok, does that sound exciting? It did to me. It's not just about climbing staircases, but it's the atmosphere and the reward that you get when you reach the top.

Currently, they are doing a promotion for every Tuesdays in March. Simply pay $5 for entrance and you get $5 back in food voucher to use at the food court at Harbour Centre. You also get a free cup of beer at the top! It's a win-win situation.

coat check, food voucher, beer ticket

Here we go! Starting from the lobby and from staircase #1! 

Don't expect any fancy staircases though. This is what they look like:

And more of this. 

We've reached the top!

Skyscrapers of the world

Harbour Centre is relatively very, very short. 

At the top, they have a live DJ. 

And beer! This is what I'm talking about. 

Though your ticket only gets you 1 cup, there's always that option of paying though. 

There's also no need to carry water with you as each person gets a bottle of water at the top!

Beer & water

Views from the Vancouver Lookout:

It was a fairly gloomy day with fog, but I think that made it look nicer and calmer. 

View with beer.

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Pâtisserie Für Elise: High Tea in a Super Cute House!

Think pink. Think princesses. Think tea party. Pâtisserie Für Elise in Yaletown is all that, and more. This is absolutely the perfect place for a bridal shower - so it was exactly what we did. We held a bridal shower here for my friend and they had a special room for us for 2 hours, which was perfect.

Because Pâtisserie Für Elise is actually in a heritage home itself, there are 2 floors of this high tea location. The main floor is a bakery shop where people can just go in and buy their products while high tea is on the second floor.

Once I stepped inside the house, I felt like I was in a dreamland of a princess. Everything was so detailed, adorable, and looked delicate, including their waitresses, whom were all wearing a very cute dress. I wish I had taken some pictures of the decor, but I was just too focussed on surprising my friend and living in the moment! Pâtisserie Für Elise offers their afternoon tea set menu for $30 per person with your own choice of tea.



Their menu of teas has an elaborate description of the teas, so you can get a good idea of your tea. Their selection of tea included the classics: honey scented black tea (apparently exclusively imported by them), Jasmine green tea, Earl Grey, and the more unique: creme brûlée, blueberry yogurt, to name a few.

First, we were our choice of tea with our own tea pots. It also came with a sandglass timer which is exactly 2 minutes so we know when the tea is done seeping. On our tea cups, we got a little birdie strainer for catching the tea leaves. Look at how delicate the cups look!



Secondly, we were then served a very delicious blueberry panna cotta. Smooth and creamy, light and refreshing, and not too sweet - absolutely perfect.

blueberry panna cotta

Then came our 2-tier of goodies! The bottom tier consisted of the savouries and the top tier were all the sweets. There were 4 of everything as we sat 4 per table.

Afternoon Tea at Patisserie Fur Elise

Savouries (bottom):

Proscuitto, brie, and fresh basil in a croissant - very yummy and a great start to the platter

Cucumber dill finger sandwich - simple, yet refreshing

Asparagus and mushroom quiche - loved the flaky pastry

Almond strusel scone - especially good with their homemade jam

Cheddar and pancetta scone - really liked the tad bits of green onion and pancetta

savouries

Almond strusel scone and proscuitto, brie, fresh basil sandwich croissant

Ok, so after the platter of savouries, I already felt quite full. Probably from all the butter. But as the saying goes, we girls have a second stomach for dessert! The top platter consisted of:

Honey madeleine 

Macaron

Maple pecan daisy tartlet

Tiramisu

Mini Für Elise

Sweets

From the sweet platter, I especially liked the maple pecan daisy tartlet and the mini Für Elise, similar to a strawberry mousse. It was smooth and had great strawberry flavour. 

I was absolutely stuffed after all the savouries and sweets! Overall, I really liked this place because of the atmosphere and the fancy, princess feeling I got while having high tea here. It was absolutely perfect to hold my friend's bridal shower with all the girls. We also had privacy as we had the private room in which we could place gifts and party favours, which I shall show in another post. In fact, I also played a couple of videos I made from my laptop here. Here is a group picture!

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Tropika at Robson 星馬印: "gym locker" soup

Yes, I'm back! My hibernation is over and I'm back with a new post and new exciting things to come :)

My friends and I went to Tropika on Robson for something satisfying yummies and to fill up our tummies a bit. Tropika is a Malaysian and Thai restaurant with 2 locations in Vancouver (and the one at Aberdeen is closed).  We decided to get a couple items from the appetizer and then a soup that my friend claims is "really, really good". Now, let me start with the appetizers.

Satays $1.30 each (beef and chicken)

Satays were nicely seasoned and grilled skewers from a choice of chicken, pork, beef, lamb with a peanut buttery satay sauce. Pictured above is beef and chicken.

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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! :)

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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

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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

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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

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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 

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Po Kong Vegetarian Restaurant 普光素食

My cousin gave birth to a baby boy last month and it hasn't been a full month yet, but we had a small dinner celebration. We will have a much bigger one (with more family members) in 3 weeks at Kirin Seafood Restaurant. According to the Lunar calendar, today is the first day of December and on the first day of each month, Taoists do not eat meat. I'm not Taoist, but my aunt follows some of their traditions so we went for a vegetarian restaurant today. 

When it comes to eating vegetarian in Vancouver, there aren't that many choices unless you count going to any restaurant and ordering a salad. Personally, eating a vegetarian meal to me means eating no meat, hence only veggies, fruits, beans, etc. I'm aware that some vegetarians may crave meat so some vegetarians have dishes that look and taste like meat, but are made from non-meat products such as tofu and beans. I mean, can you tell that the skewer dish below is actually "fake meat" or that the honey chicken isn't honey chicken?

no-meat skewers

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Gyoza King 餃王 & Gelarmony Gelato

Gyoza King is located on Robson street and is part of the Vancouver Japanese Izakaya Tapas along with Gyo-O Fish King in Richmond and Chicco Cafe, a dessert place. At Gyoza King, there are low Japanese-style seatings, western-style seatings, and seatings at the bar.

 The mini-sized rice bowls are only around ~$5 and I got the mini salmon don as salmon is basically the only raw type of fish I eat. My friends got a mini tuna don and mini negitoro don, which is spicy chopped tuna. I thought the salmon was very fresh and I liked it a lot.

Mini salmon don

Mini negitoro don

Mini tuna don

One of my friends decided that he was hungry so he got a regular-sized katsu don, deep fried pork cutlet with rice. I'm glad I got the

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YYoga - Flow Wellness Location (Downtown)

Yyoga Flow Wellness (888 Burrard Street)

My very first experience at YYoga was a hot yoga class in 2010 when Yyoga gave out complimentary cards during the Vancouver Olympics. Soon enough, I fell in love with hot yoga and YYoga. I have been to almost all of their locations (total of 8) and my favourite one is Flow Wellness (888 Burrard Street), their largest and first location. In my opinion, it is also the nicest and newest-kept location. However, regardless of location, all the staff and instructors that I've interacted with, are extremely nice. 

Lounge

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Ap Gu Jung 압구정

Ap Gu Jung is a Korean restaurant on Robson street. The restaurant is casual with 2 floors and my friends and I sat on the upper floor. The was literally one light above our table hanging down so it was quite dimmed, hence I apologize in advance for the pictures - I definitely need to work on my skills in dim places. 

I realized that whenever my friends and I go for Korean food, we order relatively fast. That's because we basically order the same thing each time! Seafood pancake has always been popular among my friends and I. It's basically batter mixed with a variety of seafood, most noticeably squid. One thing that makes me not want to eat seafood pancake is that it is very oily.

Jap chae (당면)

Jap chae is a stir-fried dish made of sweet potato noodles. I really like the noodles as they are unique and chewy. I actually tried making jap chae before at home and it is actually fairly easy.

Traditional Seafood Pancake ($15.95)

Spicy rice cakes (떡볶이)  ddukbokki

One of my favourite Korean dishes is ddukbokki (spicy rice cakes). I actually don't like spicy food very much, but I love these rice cakes - I love them because of their chewy texture. This dish came with fish cakes and glass noodles, which is very typical. Ddukbokki from Ap Gu Jung was actually not exactly the best I've had - not very chewy. In fact, I prefer ddukbokki from In the Cup more than this one.

Yogurt soju

Ap Gu Jung also has a great selection of soju and we shared a bottle of yogurt soju. The picture shows a cup of yogurt soju. (The size of the cups are actualy like shot glasses, it just looks big in the picture due to my poor skills!)

Ap Gu Jung also has a great selection of hot pot dishes and we got a beef stew dish, which was pretty good but I didn't get a picture of it. It can get pretty hot in the restaurant if you order a hot pot dish as the gas stove will be turned on and heat the hot pot dish continuously. Of course, like all Korean restaurants, we had a nice portion of their side dishes too. With all these dishes, our bill came to a total of ~$130 after tax.

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