Vancouver Trip - Elixir

We had one last meal before we left Vancouver, a brunch at the restaurant attached to our hotel. While hotel restaurants usually aren't the best places to go, this restaurant, Elixir, was actually decent, and it was nice to have a breakfast meal.

Note: we actually went to two different breakfast places, but I was scared to take photos at the first place, The Elbow Room - they said they would yell at anyone who didn't finish their breakfast - so me and Jen were careful to finish everything. At the Elbow Room, they say "Food and service is our name, ABUSE is our game (so have some fun!)" - so you can see what kind of place it was - I didn't want to be yelled at just for taking photos, even if it was all in good fun. =P It was packed with locals, though, and it a good place to visit if you are interested in breakfast.


Ok, so back to our brunch - this is a photo of the inside of Elixir - it has a french bistro restaurant kind of feel.


Jen ordered a "crepe pannequet" - a crepe filled with spinach, tomatoes, ham, gruyere, topped with a sunny side up egg, with a side of fingerling potatoes. Jen loved the potatoes - me, not so much, but that is because I like crunchy skillet breakfast potatoes (the kind cooked with onions and bell peppers).


I ordered the "Poached Eggs Catalan" - the layers, from bottom to top - olive foccacia, asparagus, poached eggs, lomo embuchado (a dry cured ham from Spain), and shavings of manchego on top (sheep's cheese). It came with a piquillo smoked hollandaise sauce. I especially liked the presentation of this breakfast dish - usually breakfast dishes are homestyle, which is always great, but it is always nice to see something arranged in an interesting way.


Even though we just technically had two breakfast dishes, we still ordered dessert. In retrospect, a dessert right after breakfast doesn't really sound appealing to me, but we must have wanted to have a dessert for some reason, I suppose. Anyway, it was a creme brulee with lavender, purple violent tuile, and an espresso reduction. Like my other dish, I liked the presentation - usually brulees are in a small dish or bowl, but seeing a twist on the presentation is always interesting for me.

Vancouver Trip - Blue Water Cafe

Our last night in Vancouver, we decided that we should go to another seafood place, because it would be a waste to fly all the way to Vancouver and not have as much of the local seafood as we could get our hands on! This restaurant, Blue Water Cafe, was conveniently located about a block away from our hotel.


Seafood was clearly on our minds, and they had a dish, "Plateaux de Fruits de Mer", basically, two tiers of various types of chilled seafood. They had another dish that had three tiers of seafood (including a whole Dungeness crab), but that seemed like an overabundance of food for two people, hence, the two tiers.


As you can see, on the top tier, there were oysters, shrimp, mussels, smoked salmon, and jellyfish (yes, the same dish that you get in Chinese banquet meals, and it tasted the same too...what it was doing in this dish, I don't really know. But, I can't really complain about restaurants diversifying their dishes, can I?).

On the bottom tier, the shells you see were raw scallops (personally, not as good as I thought they would be - I think I like my scallops cooked), and more of the other chilled seafood that was on top.


A close-up photo of the top tier...


I think I was getting a craving for Japanese food after three days of not having it (evidently, I can't last very long without it =P), so I ordered a sushi roll, "the Stamina" - crab, eel, and smoked salmon, with a sweet soy sauce glaze on top. Yes, it tastes exactly like what you are probably imagining right now.


Jen loves ceviches, and since we don't see them on the menu very often, we ordered a mixed ceviche, which ended up coming out in a more interesting presentation.


Ok, so with the dessert: We weren't planning to order two, really. But after we had the sorbet (the pear/blood-orange sorbet on the right), we had to order some more sorbet. It was soooo good! Sweet, light, and refreshing, but it still retained the essence of the fruits it was made from. Whoever was the chef that made it is a sorbet genius.


So, we ordered a second sorbet. Evidently, they make different sorbet flavors daily, so you never really might now what you will get. This second sorbet had a mango flavor.

Vancouver Trip - Sanafir

So, I don't remember why we chose to eat at Sanafir - I think because it had an upstairs lounge that had some potential. Anyway, the restaurant itself was a bit crowded for me - a lot of long tables, where everyone sits closely together - =P, invading my bubble, bleh. But, it was good to change up the food we were eating, and tapas dining is always fun, because even if you don't like one dish, there isn't much of it, and you can just try another one.


Sanafir's bread and olive presentation - everything was served on these long wooden plates - perhaps a theme?


The first three tapas dishes we ordered, from top to bottom: thai vegetable salad with marinated tofu, seasonal squash and cashew curry, and morrocan spiced grilled vegetables and lentils wrapped in philo dough.

The interesting thing about this tapas place was that the plates drew from all different kinds of international cuisine - a good example of this were the dishes we ordered above - we tried the three vegetarian dishes offered by the restaurant, and they all had different flavors - thai, indian, and morrocan. Fun and interesting - what I think tapas restaurants should be like.



The next three dishes, from left to right: A crispy pork pakora with mango mint puree (it was very fried, and pretty sweet), a salmon tartar, and an oxtail cappellitti with white truffle cream sauce and Parmesan reggiano (I remember not liking this dish at all - it was kind of plain and bland, even with the truffle sauce).


I didn't write down the next three dishes we ordered, but the center dish is something we ordered seconds of: the thai vegetable dish.


Our three desserts: a chocolate cake, something I don't remember, and a cardamom yogurt/ice cream, I think. Getting to order three different desserts is always good for me especially. =)

Vancouver Trip - C Restaurant

We flew out to Vancouver for this past Labor Day Weekend. Our first night in Vancouver, we unknowingly ate at the top seafood restaurant in Vancouver (at least according to Zagat Guide), C Restaurant - "A Contemporary Fish Restaurant". We were lucky to have the opportunity to eat here, as it was a great find and an excellent culinary experience.

I should note before I start this post that this restaurant is different from a lot of seafood restaurants out there because the chef is committed to using local seafood only, because it is more environmentally sustainable than flying out seafood from far away places in the world. Hooray! =)

So here is a small story for those of you that are interested (or bored): We didn't know where we were going to eat, but our hotel provided a list of places to eat in the hotel room. Among the seafood restaurants was C Restaurant, so we just decided to go on a whim. When we arrived, I walked in and asked the maitre'd for a table, and he looked surprised (looking back on it, probably because no one in Vancouver is clueless enough to attempt to even go there without a reservation). He checked the night's schedule, and asked if we could finish the meal within 2 hours. We said yes - little did he know that we finish even long expensive meals within the hour ;). So, he gave us a really nice table, the only one that was free that night. I think we were fortunate because we arrived there pretty early - later, and we probably would have been politely kicked out.


Here is a view of the outside of the restaurant from our table. From the decor of the restaurant, I never would have guessed that it was one of the top restaurants in Vancouver. Unlike the U.S., where all the top restaurants have lots of glitz in its decoration, this restaurant was really understated in its decor - it looked like a nice riverside restaurant to have a meal, but not one of the top restaurants in the city!


Another photo taken from our table, looking out onto the river. They have a very nice view - I think that almost all the tables in the restaurant have a view of the river.


Our first dish were some freshly shucked oysters from British Columbia. Delicious, of course, because they were from the source.


They provided us with two sauces for the oysters: jalapeno and cucumber juices, and a saffron anise cream.


We ordered a second appetizer: a trout tartare (with rainbow trout from Langley, Canada), with smoked steelhead roe, and minted organic yogurt. When this dish was served, we immediately started to notice that the chef at this restaurant was very creative in his presentation and use of ingredients.


The soup was a lobster bisque (the lobster was from Nova Scotia), with citrus cured salmon and bay laurel froth.

The froth was fascinating for me - I had seen the technique being used on Iron Chef, but I never really thought I would get to try something like it (from what I remember, the froth is made through a combination of the sauce with air in a can of pressurized/compressed air to puff out the sauce with air bubbles, or something like that =P). The lobster bisque had a depth of flavor and smoothness that I really have never encountered in any lobster bisque I've had before - honestly, it was about as good of a lobster bisque as I've ever had, and I don't usually like lobster bisques!


Another trout dish, except this time, it was the main course. It was a crispy trout, with dungeness crab, grapefruit and summer truffle (I think the froth in the photo was this flavor, I am not sure), and creamy Isreali cous cous.


Next, we had a seared foie gras dish, with poached Okangan peach, hazlenut, and a bitter chocolate sauce.


Because I love desserts, we ordered two. =) The first was a plum tart, with vanilla ice cream a la mode.


The second was interesting - it was a chocolate trio, with a chocolate soda on the left, and two other chocolate desserts as well (sorry, I didn't write it down) =P.