getting there

We're into August, and so the title of this entry has a double meaning.  It's documenting the getting there on our recent vacation, but it's also a reflection of my Christmas-mania and how much I yearn for the holiday season (and to escape the heat of summer).  I'm playing Christmas-adjacent music this morning while I write this blog and cards and such to friends.  Sorry, not sorry.  It puts me in a nice mood.

Anyway, the getting there, vacationwise.  Let's tackle that.  I'll break up the vacation into a few entries, as is my usual wont.  Shall we get going?

Going back a week and a half, then, we found ourselves not at Burbank Airport, our now-preferred starting point, but at LAX. 

Ah well.  A direct flight to Vancouver is a good thing.  We had lounge time,

then boarded,

and it was a smooth flight north.  A window seat for me for a change, and so I caught the view from time to time and enjoyed picking out familiar landmarks and locales from above. 

It was a quick transit through customs, a long wait for our bags, and then upstairs in the airport to the Fairmont Hotel there.  Our room

had a nice view over the airport itself,

and the next day I spent a little time just peacefully watching planes landing.

The trip was a birthday trip for two of us.  A mini-milestone for me during the trip, and celebrating a larger milestone for Courtney to come later this month.  She and Robert were due to land later that evening, so Conrad, Van, and I hopped onto the Canada Line and headed into downtown Vancouver

to meet Marie at the Club for dinner. 

What a gorgeous evening for sitting out on the patio. 

So good.  Cocktails and a nice meal (a poke bowl for me),

and catching up. 

We would see Marie again a few days later, and the day after that, but it was nice to have her just to ourselves. 

I'll see a lot of her this year, happily.

Back at the hotel, Conrad and I let Van go to bed early and headed to the hotel bar to meet up with Courtney and Robert and enjoy a nightcap.  That nightcap turned out to be a BC red,

from a winery I did not know, but I've enjoyed the Similkameen reds in the past, so we took a chance.  And enjoyed it!  It would have been better with some food, I admit, but it was otherwise good.

Thursday morning we checked out, picked up the rental car (the convenience of staying at a hotel built into the airport!), and the five of us were on the road.  I have seen the route before, and I am a little bendier than Conrad, so he did the driving into the Okanagan, and I was crammed into the very back. 

That's ok - uninterrupted napping!  We stopped for lunch in Hope (no photos, sorry) and then kept on to Kamloops, passing through that city an continuing along the river to Monte Creek Winery.

I didn't want to make this whole trip about wine tasting, I swear, though that is a very easy thing to do in the Okanagan.  I couldn't resist us stopping here, though.  First off, the modern building

in the Thompson Valley setting is quite something, especially with blue summer skies. 

Second, it broke the trip into thirds, which was nice - two hours for each segment, which was manageable for all.  So we stopped, and Courtney, Robert, and I sipped some wines,

buying a few bottles among us.

And then back on the road, taking the old route from Kamloops to Vernon, skirting through the western side of that town, then up into the hills south of the city and between the lakes to our hotel:  Predator Ridge.  A golf resort, curiously enough, and I'll comment on that in a future post.  But we were here, our destination for three nights.  With great thanks to our lovely driver, Conrad.  We settled in,

and started on the Okanagan part of our vacation....

three Vancouver meals with friends

(and let me pause before launching into this to say that, with this post, I will essentially have caught up on the backlog of travel and dining and more)

(and let me also say, Peter: it's about bloody time!)

Anyone who has even casually skimmed this blog would know that I like to eat well and drink well.  Our brief visit to Vancouver afforded us opportunities to do so, happily.  Let's dig in!

Thursday evening Conrad and I walked and trained and walked on over to Zarak to meet Chris

and Allister

for dinner.  The restaurant, which features Afghani cuisine, was Chris' suggestion.  And you know, well done, Chris.  Very well done.

All of us had cocktails, save for Conrad who started with a bottle of wine that we eventually shared (and ordered a second one of).  I liked mine, a light cocktail called Heritage

that seemed not to be alcoholic at all, which means it was dangerous.  Chris, however, got the show thanks to ordering the Dr. Damji's Negroni.  Fun!

And then we got down to food.  Oh, what food!  I didn't get a shot of the green beans, but they were a highlight.  The mantu were beautiful but not as flavourful as the beans. 

I still enjoyed them.  The buttermilk fried chicken was a delight. 

The lamb shoulder was equally as delightful. 

The bolani was fine, the least memorable of our dishes (and yet, still tasty enough). 

The Uzbeki palaw was a jewel. 

Piping hot, the rice grains each distinct, chunks of tender meat hidden in there.  I would go back just for that dish alone.

We also ordered one of each dessert (there were four).  I wasn't all that interested in vegan chocolate mousse, and although I tasted it and thought it was fine, it proved to be the least interesting to me. 

The tres leches cake was tasty but I still don't understand what it was doing on that menu. 

The shir yakh was lovely - I like rose water as a flavour, and having it in an ice cream tamed it well. 

The firni, a milk pudding, I dismissed at first, but I kept coming back to because the subtlety lured me in. 

My favourite of the desserts.

An excellent dinner, and we've been spreading the word about the place since.

Friday!  Friday lunch was at the club, sitting out on the terrace under mostly cloudy skies but still enjoying being out there.  Our friends from Germany, Gerd

and Uwe,

joined us.  The day before had been Uwe's 60th birthday, and Gerd's 60th will be in October, so we wanted to treat them to a meal.  This is the second time that we have met up with these friends on a Vancouver vacation - our original connection is through the magic of Instagram.  We sipped a BC white and had a leisurely lunch.  My seafood Cobb salad

was different than I have had it before, I think - they could have dialed back on the tomatoes (which I didn't even get to, the salad was so big) and maybe not used such a mix of greens (it was a little rough by contrast to the seafood).  But I didn't go hungry, that's for sure!

Dinner was with Jenny and Steven, whom we always enjoy seeing when we're in town.  We went to the Main Street location of Sula for Indian food.  The restaurant had a good cocktail program, which is not something I have seen very often in Indian restaurants, and a nice wine list.  The bar

sent out our drinks, and mine was a light variation on a Last Word. 

Refreshing!  When I ordered wine with the meal, the waitress let us know that they were out of the one I ordered and instead recommended an Indian red wine.  She let me try some, I liked it, and it turned out to be a doubly good recommendation:  we had a nice wine with the meal, and it was a first time trying wine from India.  Oh, and the winery?  Also named Sula.

I didn't photograph much of the food.  A few of the dishes were meats or vegetables or cheese in a sauce, a curry or gravy, however we might call it.  And, sorry, those don't always make for the most interesting photos, alas.  Not a worry.  Here is the appetizer platter we shared. 

All of it was good.  Sula is on the list of places to go back to, I have to say.

After dinner, Conrad and I went to see Steven and Jenny's new (to us) home and sat and had a bit more wine before heading back to the hotel.  It was a full day of food (and steps for me!), and a very good one all in all.

why yes, this IS a blog entry

Oh gosh, I know, I know. Let's not count the months. Let's just talk food.
I have just re-read Todd's excellent, mouthwatering, truly delightful account of the dinner he and Michael had at Posh. I'm floored. Not simply because my best friend should have been writing a blog on his food adventures for some time now given his narrative, no. TK had quite a meal, and I can't compete.

But blogging is not competition, or not in my opinion. Our meal tonight can't measure up, but at least I can honour his meal (and ours) a little by once aGAIN turning to the blog.

Conrad and I are in Vancouver for a few days. Wedding planning, that sort of thing. Escaping the recent snow in Chicago, enduring the typical winter rains back west. Loving it. Much coffee consumed. I promise, we've been in the pool, too.

Our Valentine's date night was at the same place as last year, in fact: the Terminal City Club, in its dining room, 1892. We put on suits, hopped in a cab, and headed downtown in pouring rain. I'd seen the special menu beforehand, and I had a few ideas in mind as to what I thought might make for a nice night.

A few points before I describe the food:

• it's good to be back in a place in Vancouver where we are recognized and welcomed back. That's part of the reason we love Safari Cafe in the mornings, so.
• with the exception of special events, photography is not permitted in the club. A shame, because the food is often plated quite nicely.
• we rejected the special menu.

That last one was tough. Halibut cheeks? Oh my, yes, please. But we were lukewarm on the red meat options, and there weren't swap-outs possible. Also, Conrad is a huge chocolate freak, but I merely like it, and it wasn't my mood tonight. The table next to us (whom we overheard all too well, sometimes amusingly so) did have the special menu, and the chocolate desserts looked gorgeous. Tellingly, however, they couldn't finish them.

Some lengthy deliberation and negotiation, and Conrad and I had decided:

• a bottle of Bruno Paillard Champagne Brut Premiere Cuvée. This opened up so delightfully as we went along, progressing from a fruity, lemony start to toasty apple notes later. Splendid.

• baked oysters with spinach and gouda for Conrad
• celeriac veloute with wild mushrooms for me

• a shared Bibb lettuce salad with a light gogonzola dressing

• seared ahi tuna with a crab and potato hash and a lemongrass cream sauce for Conrad
• pan seared sablefish with spotted prawns and maitake miso broth for me

• a trio of cheeses with a glass of a Rioja for Conrad and a glass of the Joie Noble Blend for me

• two raspberry and two cassis truffles.

There's the outline, now the commentary...

I didn't taste Conrad's oysters, but to judge by how meticulous he was at cleaning out each half shell, I'd say they were good. My soup? Delicious. A certain meatiness from the mushrooms, and I gleefully swabbed out the last bits with some of the bread provided.

The salad was fine. I mean, look, we wanted greens, we wanted simple. We got it. I just wish the little slivers of apple and celery had had more flavour.

My fish kicked serious butt on his. Beet greens, tempura mushrooms, the unctuous sablefish? So much better than his nice but a little overcooked tuna.

The cheeses were fine, but the wines with them were each rather lovely. I think Conrad's richly fragrant red might have been the winner.

Oh, the truffles, the truffles...

A fine night, and a leisurely pace. The meal of the trip, though it's up aGAINst boil in a bag from ViJ's and last night's fun sushi with random service at Zipang.



What will tomorrow bring?

And that, friends, brings me back to blogging. For tonight. Happy Valentine's Day, what remains of it. I have the love of Conrad, and I revel in what I share with friends and family whom I love so dearly as well. And, it must be said, in the very good meals I get to enjoy time and aGAIN.