Life in the Lower Mainland (BC, Canada)

Just got this in my e-mail box yesterday from the Hamilton Street Grill : * Do you love Steak? We love steak. We love steak so much we want to share it with you... well, kind of. For three weeks in November, the Hamilton Street Grill is going to offer New York steaks one of three ways for you, at a great price. We are offering up our most popular cut, the Certified Angus Beef New York Striploin , grilled to perfection and with your choice of finishes... our classic, tried and true Peppercorn or Blackened, or our new favourite, Agrodolce. Of course, these steaks come with creamy mashed potatoes and vegetables included because that is the way we do it. All of this can be yours for $22!! That's right, for three weeks in November, we are featuring a premium steak dinner for $22. From November 1st to the 23rd. Hours & Location The Hamilton Street Grill is open 7 nights a week for dinner from 5:00 to close and open for Lunch, Monday to Friday, from

Society Dining Lounge is a pretty busy place that sometimes sees rather large groups. We were there at the tail end of the Taste of Yaletown promotion on a late Friday, and it was one of the few restaurants in the 1200-block of Hamilton that was seeing any action. Good for them, I suppose, since that far off, they are outside the busy restaurant hub of Yaletown. They enforce an 18% gratuity for a table of 8 persons. This seemed to scare off some of our dining group because interest fell from eight persons to six, and then two no-showed so we were only four in the end. Sigh. They were fortunately understanding and did not make us feel bad about it. There's the dark interior and the heated-patio exterior. The overhead lamps seem to pulse, so you get periods of warmth and then it cools down, especially in the current Fall weather and if you're out at 8pm for dinner. Blankets are available for extra warmth. After perusing the menu, only one person ordered the Taste of Yaleto

My friend and fellow Urbanspooner  ichigo recently shared a recipe for Ice Cream Bread with me. Unfortunately, the Google translation of the page turned out to be more or less utter rubbish, but I was still keen on trying it out. It looked like the recipe basically said "just add flour". Easy, right? Here is a slice of my first attempt. I used chocolate ice cream on the bottom and maple walnut ice cream on the top. Tons of missteps along the way (I can't bake to save my life), but surprisingly this turned out OK. More like cake than bread, but definitely edible without having to drown it in anything to make it palatable. The main downside is that there wasn't as strong an ice cream flavour as hoped -- not very chocolatey on the bottom and barely any flavour of maple on the top. Here's how Google translated the recipe, roughly: Material 200 g Wild berry sorbet (unsalted) 200 g Vanilla Gelato Ice Cream (unsalted) 18 g Sugar 200 g self raising flour 40 g

Honjin Sushi is at the water's edge of Yaletown, in the plaza with the funny chairs and steaming floor lights (at night) that is opposite Urban Fare. Their sister restaurant is Kibo Restaurant and Lounge , also in Yaletown. The restaurant is smallish but seating is spacious. Staff are friendly, attentive, and helpful. They can be counted on to list what is in each roll of maki sushi -- which is very helpful because the ingredients aren't listed in the menu or on the website. If you have allergies, you'd better ask because the names of the rolls aren't that indicative of what's inside (e.g., NHL Roll?). The regular menu is available during the Taste of Yaletown promotion! In addition to trying all the sushi on the TOY menu, we also had a few side orders, which turned out to be a strategic error because you do get a really decent-sized meal for $29 because of the "main dish". Taste of Yaletown $29 menu Appetizer Crab salad fresh crab meat and cris

Yaletown L'Antipasto has a solid Taste of Yaletown line-up at a decent value compared to the regular menu price. Overall, the food was tasty, but there were some oddities in a couple of items that threw us off. Whether this was a case of kitchen error or a choice on the part of the restaurant is debatable, but unless you're a conservative or perfectionist, it won't ruin your experience. We had a later dinner at 8pm, and though it was still busy at the start, the dinner rush was clearly over and we had a relaxed time at this later seating, lingering past 10pm savouring our food and enjoying conversation and company. At this later hour, there were no lineups waiting at the door to pressure the restaurant to move people along, Taste of Yaletown notwithstanding. Prior to coming, I had heard that the menu used to have smaller portions in their early days, but that is no longer the case. I had also heard of speculation that some of the food was reheated. The kitchen is smal

I got a e-mail recently from Chambar Restaurant  announcing (in rather fine print on the inset picture in the e-mail) that they will close May-2014 on their 10th Anniversary -- but to reopen nearby. The announcement also contained a link to a long-ish survey for information that might be helpful in shaping their new locations. An interesting tidbit in this survey was that Opentable costs restaurants $1.20 per person reserved. Hmm...

El Matador is a tiny and rather busy place. If you sit at the long and startlingly narrow bar-height community table, you may well wonder how you will possibly have enough room to have dinner. But somehow, it works out because of the small plate concept. It's cozy-small and rather dimly lit. I guess you could say it's good for dates. The dishes seemed to be really hit-or-miss, which may make you think it's not all that great, but that's actually a fallacy. It's not fair to expect every dish to be tasty to your palate. Dining at El Matador is very much like going for dim sum: If your friend orders chicken feet or duck tongue and you go "yuck!", before you give them 1-star on Yelp, try to remember if you ordered something that you liked. Unlike dim sum where they demand you make ONE order at the start of your meal and they get upset when you try to order more stuff because it screws up their billing, you just keep ordering stuff and stuff comes to the

Martin's Marvelous Naturals Fig Salami mostly tastes like figs, so that is what you should expect. Fig taste plus crunchy fig seeds. It's sort of like the paste in a fig newton , except with a hint of apricot. The chocolate contribution is sadly lacking and more or less non-existent -- don't count on tasting it, or any of the rest of the ingredients. Overall, this felt like a disappointing product because I was really hoping for a clear chocolate taste somewhere in there. The packaging is interesting -- a waxy crust envelopes the salami instead of plastic wrap. Although it looks melted onto the outside of the salami, it can be pried cleanly off.

I was in Superstore last Friday and happened to see this little free booklet. If you want an easy primer on cheese -- what's what and how to serve it -- so you can break out of eating just cheddar and mozza, pick this up! You can also go to the website AllYouNeedIsCheese.ca  to access all sorts of cheese information, but it actually isn't as straightforward and cleanly laid out as this booklet. It does have a lot of videos as well as a " Tools " section that includes a Cheese Encyclopedia and help for planning a cheese platter. Finally, you can sign up for a free quarterly magazine of cheese recipes .