Umberto's Trattoria Review

A few weeks ago I went to Whistler for the weekend with my family and one of my friends. It was my birthday when we were there so we decided to go to my favourite restaurant to celebrate. We went to Umberto's Trattoria.


When we got to the Trattoria we were seated right away. We always sit at the bar when we go there because you get to watch the chefs prepare the food. Our waiter was very friendly and brought us drinks right away. We got some appetizers to start our meal. We shared a caprese salad and got a platter of antipasto toscano.  It was a great start to our meal!

After our appetizers, they served our main courses. We all had pasta, it was delicious and beautifully presented. I had Tagliarini di Mare, it was pasta in a tomato and chili sauce with seafood. I had never tried it before, but it was absolutely delicious. 

After our main courses they brought dessert for my friend and I. They brought me a chocolate torte and my friend tiramisu. It was a great way to end our meal and made my birthday dinner feel very special. 

All in all, we had a great experience at the Trattoria. The food was delicious, it all tasted fresh and it was cooked and presented beautifully. Since the chefs were preparing the food right in front of us we got to see exactly how they prepared the food, which was really cool. The service was excellent, the waiters and the chefs were all very friendly and made sure that everyone enjoyed their meals. If you are visiting Whistler I would highly recommend the Trattoria, it is definitely my favourite restaurant!

Chronic Tacos: a Mexican twist for Vancouver

Vancouver is a city known for a few things, beautiful natural scenery, vibrant city life, great music and of course, mouth watering food. Our sushi is world famous, our Japanese infusion hotdogs have become an international phenomenon, our street vendors have shaped our culture, and now Mexican food has made it’s mark on the city. Chronic Tacos, an urban Mexican restaurant founded in California, has 7 locations outside of the golden state, and 4 of them are in the heart of Vancouver.

After hearing ad after ad on local radio stations, I knew I would have to check it out, so I took some friends down for a pre-concert dinner. I visited the Granville location, right in the middle of the Vancouver nightlife and concert scene. The restaurant perfectly reflected the culture of the area, with walls decorated in urban art, TVs hung up, showing the play-offs, and multiply pierced staff waiting to make up your tacos fresh.

I was impressed by the whole experience. Their radio tagline, “If it’s not fresh, what’s the point of putting it in your mouth?” now makes perfect sense to me, because the food was cheap (about 25 dollars for four people to eat) and just as fresh and delicious as they promised. I had their famous fish taco and couldn’t resist going back for another; this time, a chicken taco. I fell in love with the flavors! They were both divine, and I was told by my friends that the burrito option and less spicy option were equally as savory. Of course, they serve more than your basic tacos, everything from tostada bowls to nachos and quesadillas is available to fulfill your wildest mexican food dreams. Food coma, achieved.

 

textbook perfect taco

Another plus was the superb service. As I mentioned, everyone working there fit the lifestyle. The young employees were friendly, efficient and so relaxed. The store is open quite late to accommodate the partiers in need of a 2 am post club re-fueling. But even I (who am not of age & therefore do not go clubbing) felt at home at Chronic Tacos, despite my lack of tattoos.

I can now appreciate the recent addition to Vancouver’s food scene and I suggest everyone check it out, because who can’t appreciate the perfect taco?

Check out their website for more info on my new favorite taco makers.

-Neve

The Famous Warehouse

 Working on a Thursday night, one of my co-workers had asked me if I wanted to go to a restaurant downtown. He told me it was very cheap there and good apparently. So later on after he sent me the website link so I could look up the menu and prices, and I was very surprised at it. I was very surprised to see that every item on the menu was $4.95. Actually, I found it pretty unbelievable. Everything was besides the specials. On Mondays they have all you can eat pasta for $6.95 and on Tuesday, they have Taco Tuesday where its all you can eat tacos for the same price. Also, on Wednesday, they have wing day, where all day, wings are for 15 cents with your choice of flavour; salt and pepper or hot.
  Besides having amazingly affordable food, apparently, they also have good music that plays in the restaurant. The operating hours for the restaurant are everyday, opening at 11:30am and closing at 2:00am. However, as told by my co-worker, its better to get there early, because comming later, it would be much harder to find a seat available. This restaurant is located Downtown Vancouver on 989 Granville street. With the price of the food, location and music, I honestly believe that this is a good restaurant and I'd recommend others to visit it, and have a good experience at The Famous Warehouse.

roundel cafe

For the one full day I spend at home during spring break, my dad dragged me out of the house to the Roundel Cafe on 465 East Hastings Street. I was jet lagged and annoyed that he woke me up just to go to some diner and I expected to hate it. The restaurant was filled so we had to wait for about 15 minutes, which didn't impress me too much. While waiting I noticed everyone had some sort of tattoo, piercing or unnatural hair colour, from a gay couple in the corner to a young family with a baby.

The waitress led us to a seat by the table, but we had to squeeze past chairs, tables and bags. I tried my best not to trip and ruin someones meal. When we finally completed the maze, I started to look through the menu. They had everything from tofu burgers to huevos rancheros to corned beef hash to a side dish of vegetarian bacon. I ordered the tofu scramble and my dad ordered the huevos rancheros. The food came fairly quick despite the crowd.



I am not exaggerating when i say this was the best tofu scramble I have ever had. The tofu was mild and slightly sweet, mixed with spinach, sesame seeds and peppers. It came with roasted white and sweet potatoes and a simple salad. It is a really good dish as an introduction to tofu, because it was cooked perfectly and was defiantly not plain or boring.

I give the Roundel Cafe 9.5/10.

Eating In Paradise

In the summer, my sisters and I took a seven day, all inclusive trip to the beautiful city of  Cancún, Mexico. We stayed at the Fiesta Americana Condesa resort. During our visit, we dinned at many restaurants, but the restaurant that was my favourite was Restaurante Kambu. It was located beside the pool of the resort and overlooked the shore. This restaurant not only had amazing food but they also had impeccable service. The menu included diverse favourites from around the world. Their food varied from seafood to pasta to rice and had delicious desserts. It was a buffet during the day and a classy restaurant by night. 

For lunch, my favourite order was the fish tacos. It consisted of fried fish inside a soft tortilla shell filled with lettuce and delicious, tangy tarter sauce. Every bite of this taco was delicious and filling, but it made me want more. There were also the shrimp tacos, which consisted of the same fillings but with shrimp instead of fish. Both of these tacos made me want to stay there even longer.        

For dinner, we had one of the restaurants most favourite dish, the lobster tail. At first, I was hesitant to try the this entrée because lobster is not one of my favourites, but after this meal, I was completely satisfied! The lobster tail was grilled with different vegetables: including green and red peppers, onions and celery. It was perfectly seasoned and served in a very appealing way which made me want to eat it even more.     

This restaurant has an amazing appeal with made us go back everyday. Having every delicious meal with a beautiful beach front view topped of this magnificent restaurant. Anybody want to take me back? 

Resturant Sango!

It was Valentine’s Day, and I am a big lover of Japanese food, so my boyfriend decided to take us to this place that we had never tried before called Sango. Whenever I go out to eat Japanese food, It’s usually the normal Sui sha ya. But, we decided to go to Sango because it was more convenient to where the movie theater is & it’s something new to try.

We got their at a really good time, because just after us a whole load of people started coming in wanting to sit at tables but, there was no room so they had to wait. I started to think, this is probably a really popular place and the food must be really good. The place was really small, and were my boyfriend and I got seated was by the front so it felt like all those people were either watching us eat, or envying us because we were eating and they weren’t.

When we sat down, the Japanese lady gave us our menus, and we had a really hard time trying to figure out how to actually read it. Some of the food had numbers beside them but, no dollar signs and we didn’t know if they were prices or not, and some food did. We wanted to find out what the menu meant but it took the waiter a really long time to get back to us. With so many people, people waiting, and only 2 girl waiters, it just wasn’t enough.

When she finally came to us, she did in fact tell us that those were prices, and we got 1 order of gyoza, 2 orders of California rolls, and teriyaki chicken with vegetables and rice. It defiantly wasn’t long before our food came which is good because it made up for the long time we waited for her to take our order.

We started off with the gyoza and California rolls, which were good like they always are, and then after the teriyaki chicken. The teriyaki chicken was like nothing I’d ever had before. At Sui sha ya, they serve it to you in a bowl with rice and tempura (if you want) but, at Sango, they come out with your chicken and vegetables on a really hot metal plate that is attached to a wood block, and the rice is served in a small bowl. The chicken is steaming when they bring it out to you, and its cooking right in front of you. You can smell the sauce that’s burning but everything’s cooking perfectly. You need to wait a while before you bite in because it’s so hot, and the metal plate remains hot for the whole time.

After we were done, I still had some left over that I wanted to save, and we needed to get going so that we could catch our movie in time. Again, it took the girls so long to come to us that we virtually had to come to them. My boyfriend had to get up and walk over to where one of the ladies’s were and pay, we didn’t receive a check at our table. I had to stop one of them and ask if my food could be wrapped up to take, because we had to get going and I knew she wasn’t going to be coming anytime soon, and in no time between when we were eating and when we left were we ever asked if everything was fine and if we needed anything else.

In all, the food was great but the service wasn’t. That’s a huge deal breaker because I probably won’t go back there. Ill search for another place that has the same food with proper service.

Just some random restaurant...

“Can we please just go to some random place?”

It was with these words that my dad decided to park in front of some random Chinese restaurant, and of course with my luck, the busiest one. (Great. Definitely not getting my food anytime soon.) Located near the “downtown” of Surrey was Lee Yuen Seafood Restaurant. From the outside, it looked puny, but judging by the mass of cars taking up every single existing parking space, I guess you could say it was a tad busy. Skeptical about what was to come, we were seated rather quickly by a very bubbly man who spat out a variety of recommended dishes – smoothly putting in a couple of jokes here and there – as soon as we had sat down. We ended up ordering hot and sour soup, beef lettuce wrap, sweet and sour pork, and beef gai-lan. (Might I first point out that Chinese restaurants are AMAZING for their ability to quickly make and distribute the food; we received ours with lightening speed! ) True to our waiter’s words, his recommended meals were absolutely fantastic.

With the hot and sour soup, your taste buds will first notice the definite spiciness, but then Mr. Sour comes along and sneaks up behind that spiciness, giving you a surprising, yet refreshing taste; it was like a match made in Heaven.

Next was the beef lettuce wrap. Now, you have a choice between chicken and beef, but we chose the beef; it gives it more texture! What this is, is a melange of vegetables and beef (the filling) which you wrap with a fresh, crisp leaf of lettuce, topped by a small dollop of Hoisin sauce. This was and is still my favourite dish, by far. Having the filling by itself is rather salty and quite oily, but the lettuce just smoothens out that oiliness while adding another level of crispy texture for you to enjoy. And just when you thought you had everything, the Hoisin sauce majestically reveals itself, making the meal just that much better.

Third: the sweet and sour pork. The name basically describes it all, it’s sweet and sour. The pork, which is breaded, is covered with a red sauce and also has chunky slices of pineapples. It’s the pineapples, in my opinion, that serve a big role in this because they are both sweet and sour! (The sauce probably has something to do with it too, but who knows.) A rather simple dish presents amazing flavours in your palette.

And last, but certainly not least, is the beef gai lan . This is the simplest dish out of all, but it is definitely not in the last place. Gia lan is a long green vegetable that is very crunchy; it almost resembles the rigid structure without the potent smell of a celery. The gai lan itself, when eaten alone, is a tad bitter, but with the sauce (I'm assuming it's a mix of oyster sauce and something else...) it works quite well and it tastes very good. The sauce does not make the gai lan soft or soggy in any sort of way, so the crunchiness of the gai lan is existent and the beef slices are also very tender.

Overall, the entire experience was absolutely fantastic and I had absolutely no complaints at all. The food came out quick, the waiters were absolutely awesome people, and with all this food for a price ranging from the high 40s-50, I am definitely not complaining.

So Lee Yuen's Seafood Restaurant this weekend, anyone?

Opa, anyone?

I absolutely love Greek food; there are many unique and satisfying flavours. Recently, I ate at Paros Taverna, located at the Burquitlam Plaza, on the corner of Clarke & Smith.


The atmosphere as you enter the restaurant is very authentic, with dim lighting and candles illuminating every table. Me and my parents were greeted right away by some friendly waitresses and lead to a table. After scanning the menu for several minutes, we ordered our food; a kalamari dish starter, chicken souvlaki for me, and a lamb shank for my parents.

The kalamari was very good, with lots of texture and taste. The small side of tzatziki just added to the flavor, giving it a nice, tarty zing.

Chicken souvlaki is one of my favourite Greek dishes, and it was quite good. My only complaint of the meal would be the rice pilaf, which came along with the souvlaki; it had small pieces of diced raw onion, which isn't exactly my favourite vegetable. My parents also let me try some of their lamb, which was great. Lamb is unique to other meats, being very tender and almost "melt in your mouth" like when you eat it.

After our meal, we had to wait for about fifteen minutes until our waitress came and got our plates. She was kind enough to give us a slice of baklava, due to us having to wait. I really enjoyed the baklava. It satisfied my sweet-tooth, being drizzled with honey and topped with whipping cream.


Though Paros Taverna wouldn't be my number one choice for Greek, it was quite satisfying and I would recommend for others go to there and give it a try.
I would rate it 3.5/5 stars.

http://www.parostaverna.com/index.html

My Favourite Restaurant

I've been going to The Tomahawk pretty much my entire life, and it is without a doubt my favourite restaurant in the world. 

It's been around since 1926, and the original owner's son runs the restaurant now.  The Tomahawk is in North Vancouver, not far from Lonsdale Quay.  It's known for all the different burgers, which are each named after different Indian chiefs, and especially the Skookum Chief burger, which is the biggest burger on the menu with onions, lettuce, an organic ground beef patty, Yukon bacon, an egg, aged cheddar cheese, a sliced wiener, tomato, and Tomahawk special sauce.  I don't think I've ever seen more than 4 or 5 people eat the whole thing.  If burgers aren't your thing, they also have salads, sandwiches, soups, gigantic breakfasts, and the pies are to die for.  Trips to The Tomahawk are a family tradition for us, and it's one that I will definitely pass on to my own family.
http://www.tomahawkrestaurant.com/index.html

Tied into Thai - Sang Thai Restaurant review

Culturally rich, vibrant and exotic, thai food at Sang Thai Restaurant is a must-try.

Located right on the corner of Shaughnessy and Lougheed, this thai food heaven is not too far away. I went to Sang Thai's for the very first time with my teammates from track and field during my winter break. Although I had heard great things about it, having been to several asian cuisines, I wasn't sure what to expect.

Once you go through the entrance doors, the first thing you notice is the sudden change in atmosphere --- one second ago, you were in downtown Port Coquitlam, and the next second, you find yourself on other side of the world. The interior design is very exotic and fitting to the 'thai' image of buddhist statues, fine detailed silk decor, and warm tones of red, gold and brown. Even then, there is a very sophisticated, modern look.

We were then shown the way to our seats. The servers and hosts are very welcoming and sincerely kind, coming by every now and then to check how we were doing. In addition, there were traditional thai musicians performing, making the occasion feel that much more special.

Once the very kind and sincere servers escort you to your seats, it is time to order.

Although every dish was very delicious, my personal favourite is the Chicken Pad Thai. The dish is presented very beautiful with colourful ingredients and sophisticated garnishes. The taste? Out of this world. It contains the chicken and sauce's umami, the refreshing zest of the lime and the combination of soft noodles and crunching peanuts. Not only wonderful to look at and taste, the Chicken Pad Thai includes all the nutritional values one may need --- a very healthy option for those who are making an effort. Mmm, yum! Note that the food servings are quite large and should be shared among the table, and that way you can try numerous dishes.

Finally for desert, don't forget to try out the deep-fried banana with ice cream. Simple, yet very savourous, it is a great way to finish of a meal. Best part yet --- all of this is generous to your wallet, having a very reasonable price range of $10.00 - $15.00.

For more information, visit: http://www.sangrestaurant.com/index.html

http://thaifood.about.com/

Bon Appetit!

Fantastic chinese food restaurant!!

I want to introduce a good Hong Kong style restaurant, called COPA, which is near the Coquitlam center. It is one of my favorite restaurants in Coquitlam. I sometimes go there with my family on the weekend. It is a kind of Chinese restaurant however it serves not only Hong Kong-style Chinese cuisine but also some western food such as steaks and fries. I recommend the mini set in the afternoon as well as at night after 9:00 pm because it is sufficient for lunch and most importantly it is cheaper than the regular hours. The price range for mini set order varies from $6.99 to $9.99. I seldom go there at dinner time so I do not know the price for regular menu. I like its baked rice meals and fried rice and I usually order ice tea with the meal. There is a special HK-style drink I recommend which is a mix of coffee and milk tea. Overall, it is worth going. If you are a fan of Chinese food or interested in HK-style food, do not miss COPA!

LINK: http://www.ipanda.ca/2009/09/copa-cafe
http://www.ipanda.ca/2009/09/copa-cafe

Tasty Haven in the Ghetto

All I wanted was to have some tasty butter chicken for dinner, but walking in the most dangerous part of Nanaimo on a cold rainy night was something I had not planned for. My best friend and I had wanted to go out for Indian food, and the only Indian restaurant happened to be in the middle of the sketchiest part of town. Drug dealers, crime ridden, prostitution, all that fun stuff. We headed out from a quaint coffee shop, and after roughly half an hour, we realized we had no clue where Gateway to India was. “Wonderful,” I thought. “We’re in the middle of nowhere, with no Gateway to India in sight, and I will probably be mugged any second now.” But just as I was starting to despair, I looked to my left and saw the blessed sign of a safe haven amidst the downpour. When we got in, a spirited young Scottish lady took us to our table, and immediately served us glasses of water. Throughout the whole night, she seemed to read our minds with her superb service and diligence of making our stay as enjoyable as possible. The food was absolutely delicious. For our appetizer, Braedan and I had naan bread with mango chutney which was mouth-watering, but nothing prepared us for our butter chicken, chicken masala and basmati rice dishes. The atmosphere was dimly lit, with background traditional Indian music hinting in the background, perfect for conversation. Overall, Gateway to India exceeded my expectations, with its exceptional service, quality of food, and relaxed atmosphere. The only objectionable aspect was that its location was challenging to find. Gateway to India congrats, I rate you Five Stars. Well done.
http://http//gatewaytoindia.ca/
http://gatewaytoindia.ca/menu

Welcome!

Welcome to the Food Studies 12 Classroom Blog!!

We hope to bring to the world the great ideas, opinions, and thoughts of the Food Studies 12 class at Dr. Charles Best Secondary School in Coquitlam, BC.  So, what will you find here?  Each student in the class will be responsible for at least one post, so be prepared for a great variety of content, but know that it will all relate to food somehow. 

Please feel free to leave comments, but please keep it clean--this is a high school after all.....

Any questions, or thoughts (or a great suggestion for a post)?  Feel free to email me dnembhard<at>sd43<dot>bc<dot>ca -I'm the proud Home Ec teacher!