chicken! wine!

A beautiful evening out. Even the breeze is warm. A pink moon rose to the southeast of us after dinner. Many sailboats on the lake. The highrise across the street trapped the vermillion sunset in its windows. Ahhhhh.

We had a simple dinner outside on the balcony tonight, and I'm sitting outside still, thanks to the marvels of wireless. I baked chicken legs and thighs marinated overnight with mustard, shallots, lemon, and capers.I served them up with some broccoli rabe and a bit of tomato dabbed with a creamy French sheep's milk feta. Conrad had picked out a bottle of Church and State Pinot Noir in Vancouver just because he liked the bottle, and we decided it was a decent one to try again.

And now? The sky darkens, Art Blakey plays on my iTunes, and we're shamelessly enjoying some dark chocolate caramel bars from Rogers'....

favourite Vancouver restaurant

Where do we always want to eat on our trips back west? We don't always make it there, but ViJ's is the place for us. We missed out on it in April (which was just as well, given my horrid cold), so we had to make up for that. Twice in one year dining there now - lucky us!

On Marie's advice, we arrived before the 5:30 opening in order to get a table when they let us all in. That was no problem. Oh, and what was that? Joie Noble Blend on the wine list? Yes, please!

We shared all that we ordered and loved it all. Here's the rundown:

Appetizers!


California prawns in coconut masala on grilled kale (grilled kale! Seriously, it will make you LOVE this vegetable!) (I think this was the best of the three appetizers)

Local mussels in a buttermilk and saffron curry (so fragrant!)

Jackfruit in black cardamom and cumin masala (Marie's favourite thing on the menu)

Main courses - Marie and Conrad ordered the same thing. Oh heck, why not? By this time we'd polished off the Joie and had started on a bottle of a La Frenz Viognier on the advice of the waitstaff. Nice choice, too.

Let's see if I can remember all this. Spinach and paneer served with lentil, fennel, and (GAH! Nope, I'm blanking) dumplings in a pomegranate curry. The spinach and paneer was loved by all, though we all had to admit that the pomegranate curry was a bit too subtle alongside it. Nice, but the one half of the dish dominated.


Lemon ghee marinated and grilled chicken breast with roasted garlic and cashews, plus an eggplant fritter for good measure. And you know, I am trying to reduce my carbs, but at a meal like this, no way!


That left us with the enviable task of having dessert. Conrad declined (though he had a brownie later), so Marie and I ordered the gulab jamun each.
And Marie, being the smalltown chick she is, bluntly asked the waitress for "the balls". 'I can't pronounce what they are," she added, but honestly!

:-P

That pretty much sums up the most recent weekend of dining/vacationing back in BC. Conrad is at the pool right now, I have some chicken thighs and legs in the oven, and this weekend's trip will be Denver!

Saturday night, Glowbal Grill

You know, it was kind of like a date on Saturday night, only with loud, boozing, a**hole lawyers having a pre-reunion dinner at a large table nearby us.

Hmmm.

Glowbal Grill was Conrad's request, and I was more than happy to go along. Not the first time we've been there, of course. An earlyish dinner reservation in hand, we settled down at a table on the patio, a warm night in Yaletown coming on. And h, those lawyers. 10-12 of them, and so obnoxious that other tables on the patio were asking to move inside. We found them somewhat amusing and stayed put instead.

In any case, it helps when you have a decent bottle of wine, this one a Mission Hill Pinot Noir.


The management might have felt bad about the nearby table, we don't know, but a couple of complimentary satays soon came out: tiger prawn on the one skewer, scallops with bacon on the other.



See? We're happy!In fact, we felt very well treated all evening. The waiter knew his stuff and was personable without being too chummy. Nicely done on his part!


We did order our own satays anyway, and went for more prawn and scallops along with beef shortrib topped with a truffle aioli.


As for the main course, I went for the pecan-crusted pork chop. My love of pig is well known, I think. No bad comments from you, Mr. Remley.

Conrad, unsurprisingly, went for the salmon. And, unsurprisingly, he enjoyed it muchly.



By this point we were done the bottle of wine, though we did have a half liter of an Okanagan Cab-Merlot (I think - I am sorry I didn't pay attention to it) to get us through to the end of our evening. And given the towering cheese course that came out, well, we needed a drink to manage! Whoa!



I'll make a criticism here: despite an amazing presentation, the cheese was served too cold. Additionally, we had only four run-of-the-mill selections from which to choose. We didn't do badly, as you can see, but a proper cheese course can be more than just a massively tall pile.

Post-dinner we weren't ambitious at all. We stopped in a Yaletown wine shop and bought a few things, and otherwise headed back to the hotel for the comforts of a big king bed!

one more YVR post before bedtime

Just a handful more photos before bed. We got in the door from Vancouver about a two hours ago, and we've since unpacked, got groceries, had a light dinner of a lousy chicken from Jewel (jeepers, people, could you put on more BBQ sauce????), and taken care of mail/bills. Off to bed soon, but not before some random photos taken this weekend. Still to come are dinner at Glowbal Grill on the Saturday and dinner at ViJ's last night, but those are more involved postings, so they shall wait.

Most of these are photos taken around the area of our hotel (the Terminal City Tower Hotel) the first morning there,



as well as a few from a stop for coffee with my sister at Safari on Main.

The last few are views from our hotel room on Sunday evening - a splendid evening!

Phnom Penh

I hadn't been in Chinatown much in recent years. A lot of Vancouver's East Asian population has resettled in Richmond, in fact, and I had the impression that Chinatown was run down and desolate. Silly me. On a Sunday at lunchtime, it was lively, and the many shops spilled out intriguing wares and customers onto the sidewalks.

Conrad and I met Steven and Jenny and their children for lunch at a Cambodian restaurant on Georgia called Phnom Penh.

We should have realized that we were in for quite a feast given how abundantly Steven ordered for us the first time we met up with him for lunch at a Chinese restaurant on Broadway. Oh my.

None of us went hungry, in other words. And while a couple of things, like Conrad's shrimp(or was it crab?) on a sugar cane were a little bland, there were some terrific things. Absolutely! The pork broth was clean and light. The chicken wings alone were super, and the crispy bits of garlic left behind when the wings were devoured would have livened up most anything else. I liked my pork chop flavoured with lemon grass, though I admit I'm not a big fan of fried eggs (though a fried egg sandwich is a curiously kick-butt lunch!). And while the coffee for iced coffee took some time to drip through onto the condensed milk, the end result was mighty good!

Fun to try new things, and we'll make a point of not writing off Chinatown, venturing in there to try a variety of foods we don't often have.

A photo for Jeph as well: we were out driving later that day, and I caught a photo of a monkey tree in a yard. Wouldn't that look cool in the yard of your new place?

Sky Train

Not much to comment here. Simply some photos taken on Sky Train platforms and along one route. We're trying to break free of our downtown/False Creek constraints we seem to go with on every Vancouver trip. Funny how mass transit can get you to other places!