Pel'meni Restaurant

On a recent trip to Bellingham, Sarah introduced us to my two new favorite things- Trader Joe's and Pel'meni Restaurant. (America, you have been holding out on me! How did I not know how awesome Bellingham could be?) Pel'meni is tucked into downtown Bellingham and they served one thing. Dumplings, meat or potato. The other feature is a rack of records that you can play while you enjoy your dumplings. With my love of food wrapped in dough and Big M's love of vinyl, Pel'meni is the perfect restaurant.

Shady Island Seafood Bar and Grill

I have lived in Vancouver for over sixteen years now which means that it gets harder to find new and exciting things to do when my Mom comes to town. Some things we repeat, the Granville Island market is a favorite, and some things I will never do. I am talking to you, suspended bridge of doom. This visit was our first trip to Steveston. For living here so long, Steveston is still new to me. My first trip there was earlier this year for BBQ. This time we were there for the fish and chips.

Big M, surprisingly, decided to opt out of the trip to Steveston to poke around in the little shops and awesome Farmer's Market. So it was just Mommo and I as we hit the boardwalk in search of food. It was an amazingly beautiful Sunday so every place we saw was packed.  We randomly chose a restaurant which turned out to be Shady Island Seafood Bar and Grill.

Hog Shack Cook House

Roller derby has brought many wonderful things to my life. One of those things is the amazing, funny and talented Cherry Grant aka Vicki. So when she emailed me and said "Let's go eat some meat", how could I say no?

I almost did though, because she wanted to go to the Hog Shack Cook House... in Steveston! I realized that in the 16 years that I have lived in Vancouver, I have never been to Steveston. Mainly because I didn't have a car for 13 of the 16 years and Steveston is really far on the bus. I made Big M come with me in case I got lost in the wilds of Richmond. Such a strange road that has farms on the one side and suburbs on the other.

But, we made it to the BBQ house!

Cora

My favorite breakfast chain has finally come to BC! My first introduction to the Montreal based chain, Cora was in Newfoundland when we went to visit Big M's family in 2005. We had just gotten off the plane and the in laws took us there for a late breakfast. It was a long trip and I was a bit plane fatigued but I remember being so impressed by breakfast.  My first breakfast with  I wondered why they were not in BC as their focus on healthier, fruity breakfasts would be a hit on the Best, I mean West, Coast.

We had another couple of visits when they opened up a franchise in Calgary. I was happy to go, but it makes me crazy-mad when Alberta has things that BC does not. That is just not right. So my joy was increased when I found out that some smart person had opened up in Coquitlam, near the Coquitlam Centre mall.

Big M and I were so excited that we woke up early to go for brunch....on Mother's Day.

Pho Thuy Dong- Red Deer

My love of pho has no borders. It even follows me to Red Deer. After spending the day at Bower Mall, which is a good mall now but I miss MMMMmmmmMuffin and San Fransisco, we decided it was time for lunch. And for Big M and I, this brought on a craving for pho. Mom had taken me to a Vietnamese plade behind the Superstore (where I worked in the early 90s) before, so we went again.

Pho Thuy Dong Vietnamese Restaurant is much bigger and fancier since we were there last. They must be doing well as they have taken over the place next door and now run one of the biggest pho places, with the nicest decor, that I have been in. I said it before with the Momo sushi review, but wow. My favorite pho place in Burnaby is a hole in the wall with some pictures of Vietnam taped to the wall along with menu photos. Nothing like this:

Momo Sushi- Red Deer

Big M and I recently travelled to Red Deer for my Mom's 65th birthday party.  Mom suggested that we go for dinner on one of the nights to a cute place that was around the corner from her place.  It turned out to be a sushi restaurant!  When I left Red Deer in 1994 I had never been to a sushi joint.  I am not even sure if RD had any sushi places.  Back then my tastes ran towards Boston Pizza and Humpty's Egg Palace (an all night coffee house with grumpy waitresses who would let a bunch of broke college kids sit around and drink pot after pot of coffee as long as we ordered some fries and were willing to take their abuse.  Hi Susan!).

Momo Sushi comes quite highly rated on the Red Deer version of Urbanspoon. My Mom is quite and adventurous eater so we braved the snow and off we went for some sushi.

Portland- Good Eating. The Farm Cafe

I love vacation. I never eat and drink like that at home, for good reason! One of the deals that I made with myself is that vacation is for a good time. I can keep with the program when I am at home.

As mentioned in the last post, we love Kenny and Zukes and Clyde Common. We had discussed a no-samesies for this trip but in the end we went back to both restaurants. We did hit some new ones as well.

We stayed at the Jupiter Hotel this time. I love the Jupiter but Big M found it too loud. There was a dance party on Saturday night. I think you know what you are in for when you stay at a hotel that gives you a free condom and earplugs on the bedside table.

Saturday night we decided to check out Farm Cafe. It is right by the Jupiter built out of an old Victorian house. The restaurant was rated well on Urban Spoon Portland and I liked their description of fresh, local and organic farm-to-table products from the Pacific Northwest" so off we went.

The decor of the restaurant is very nice. I find houses that are transformed into restaurants kind of odd, most times. This one was done well with a big group table in the "dining room" when you enter the restaurant to give it a nice, warm gathering feeling. The kitchen was in the middle with more tables and booths in the back. The lighting was really dim, almost a little too dark.

As this is vacation eating, we decided to go for a full 3 course meal. We decided on: (from the online menu)
"Clams and Mussels $9
Fresh local clams and mussels sauteed in golden ale with garlic, butter and red chili flakes, served with grilled bread."



The mussels were huge! I am still a bit squeamish with the ugliness of shellfish so I found the gigantic size a bit off putting. Big M loves mussels so he was in shellfish delight. This was my first clam eating experience. Turn out that I like clams more than I like mussels. Can't wait to try Clam Chowder now. The garlic toast was a bit burnt, so it was really crunchy to eat but the sauce was wonderful and the shellfish was so fresh.

For dinner I had one of the specials so I don't have it's exact description. It was a half chicken on a bed of mixed beans.



The chicken was AMAZING. So moist and flavorful. I would say perfect. I did not enjoy the beans on the bottom, unfortunately. They were really aggressively herbed. I am not sure what they were flavored with, but it was really strong and tasted like HERBS only. Big M and I had some "unstable herbs" jokes here.

Big M had the:
Goat Cheese Ravioli $15
Handmade ravioli stuffed with Fraga Farms goat cheese, hazelnuts, basil, pecorino, Parmigiano Reggiano, and ricotta served with blistered cherry tomatoes.



I wish I would have ordered this, because Holey Cramoley, this was good. I just had a bite of it but the cheese and the hazelnut mixture was awesome. The sauce was flavored perfectly.

Side Note: I don't know whether Portland is so hip that all the servers are taught to be blase, or if we have aggressively perky servers in Vancouver, but we found that most places had such ambivalent service. You would say thanks and the servers would be like "okay, sure". The only time our waitress at Farm seemed interested was when I talked about how stunningly amazing the dessert was. Then she told us about how the chef recently went to study pastry with local pastry master, (didn't catch the name) and how this dessert was the best ever.

From the special menu, it was a blackberry bread pudding with creme fraiche.



I should have ordered 3 servings of this. So good. So, so good. I am obsessed with bread pudding at the moment and this was the best I have had. So warm and creamy and good. I can see why the waitress would break from standard to rave about this.

Overall, really enjoyable meal. I don't know if we need to go back there again the next time we are in town, but if you are in the area it is worth considering.

Portland Bound!

Big M and I are off to Portland for the long weekend! I love Porland. If it were not in America, where I am not allowed to live, I would live in Portland.

Our last trip was on the Easter long weekend. Big M had not been there before but I had been a couple of times with Derby. Turns out that America still closes on holiday weekends so all the shopping was closed- except for Powell's. We did a lot of book shopping on that trip. It was too early in the season for the Saturday Market. So we are going again!

We did do some excellent eating. Portland is a great food town. We stayed at the Ace Hotel, which we love. It is located downtown and about a block from Powell's. They have 2 restaurants in the building, Kenny and Zukes and Clyde Common

We ended up eating lunch and breakfast the next day at Kenny and Zukes. It was that good.

We both ended up having the pastrami sandwich for lunch. I had potato salad and Big M had the fries.


This pastrami sandwich could beat up every other pastrami sandwich you have ever eaten. Again, it was that good. I loved the pickle.

We went back the next morning for breakfast. I had the 2-2-2 and Big M had a benny of some kind with pastrami.



I wish they would have let me order a 1-1-1 because it was super good, but too much. The latkes were amazing. Big M really enjoyed the benny. They have good coffee and quite a healthy line up for a table in the morning.

Clyde Common was amazing. We have no pictures of that meal because they have a healthy fancy cocktail list with fun names of drinks made from booze I don't recognize. The menu is full of words that are too advanced foodie for me to understand, even with all the Top Chef watching we have done. We ordered by protein and then were surprised by the rest of what was on the plate. I may not have understood it, but it was GOOD. The schtick of this restaurant is that they only have the large communal, or common, tables. You could be rubbing shoulders with the Portland elite!

The other awesome experience was Voodoo donuts. Yes, we lined up for 30 minutes on a cold Sunday morning. It was worth every second. I had the Old Dirty Bastard and the Triple Chocolate Penetration. Big M had the Maple Bacon Bar and the Mexican Chocolate donut.


For this trip we are staying at the Jupiter and I am going to be using another food blogger's site as my guide: Under the Table with Jen. See you on Tuesday!