Arctangential

A Vancouver travelogue, in food.

1) On the drive up, stopping at a Shari’s for dinner. There isn’t a lot of choice for where to eat between Seattle and Vancouver, and so Shari’s, which is a lot like a Denny’s, was about the best I could do. I ordered, with some trepidation, the salmon risotto, assuming that it would be some kind of horrific mess. It actually turned out mostly OK. The risotto was well-done, and the piece of salmon on top, while small, was reasonably done. The only problem was that someone had decided it would be a good idea to drown the entire thing in hollandaise sauce, which was entirely unnecessary.

2) Brunch Saturday morning at The White Spot, which turns out to be a pretty big chain in Vancouver and maybe Canada. I thought it was just a downtown restaurant at the time, but that’s OK. My main rule for traveling is to only eat at places where I could not eat at home, and while that usually means avoiding chains, chains which we don’t have in Seattle, like The White Spot, or Swiss Chalet, or Harvey’s are entirely OK. I had a chipotle chicken wrap, which was quite good but nothing amazing.

3) Dinner at Modern club, a Japanese restaurant, escorted by Dennis. He knows what’s good there and doesn’t steer me wrong. We start with pumpkin korroke, a wonderful dish consisting of large chunks of roasted pumpkin wrapped around cheese and deep-fried. I could probably eat nothing but this food for the rest of my life and be happy. I would probably die from some kind of vitamin deficiency, but it’d be worth it. We also had some nice warm mochi. As a main course I had a wonderful pork okonomiyaki, a food which I will not attempt to describe but simply suggest that all of my readership (both of you) should find and consume it as soon as possible. This was a very good dinner.

4) After a play (The Stone Face, quite good), some pie at Tom & Jerry’s diner. Seems like a nice enough place, but the waitress was very surly, and brought the wrong kind of pie. I know that lemon meringue looks roughly like banana cream, but please.

5) Lunch on Sunday at Burgoo. Burgoo is a common stew of the southeastern United States, usually made with squirrel meat, vegetables, okra, etc. Burgoo (the restaurant) does not have a southeastern US theme, however: their concept is that they serve comfort food from around the world. There’s Malaysian curry soup, Irish stew, Russian borscht, Moroccan tagine and of course the eponymous burgoo. I had the burgoo, as I thought it was fitting, and it was served over two of the best buttermilk biscuits I’ve ever had. It’s a good thing I don’t live near this place; I’d be going there all the time. ALL THE TIME.

6) Dinner on Sunday at Lalibela Ethiopian restaurant. Ethiopian food is served on a wonderfully sour spongy bread which serves as both plate and utensil, and the entrees are generally spicy melanges of vegetables and meat piled on the bread. Lalibela is a great little place, small and low-key, but clean and friendly. It’s not technically in Vancouver, but in the nearby suburb of Burnaby. Near the hotel, which was particularly convenient.

Not listed: A variety of Tim Horton’s donuts and muffins, an aero bar, some ice cream and a couple of McDonald’s chicken nuggets which I’d rather not go into detail about.

It was a good trip. I took some pictures.

This entry was posted on Friday, November 16th, 2007 at 2:11 am and is filed under Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.