Hawksworth - Fancy Schmancy Brunch

If you are a regular follower of my blog, you know I'm pretty frugal when it comes to food. Quick, comfy, affordable restaurants are my go to's and expensive posh restos are usually reserved for my friend or family's birthdays. Nevertheless, I always dream of going to these restaurants and pretend I'm baller enough to make it rain. :P

On my birthday, my coworkers surprised me with a huge gift card for Hawksworth located inside the Rosewood Hotel Georgia. My team truly knows the key to my heart <3.

Meta Knight was the lucky chosen one to accompany me to this exciting award winning restaurant (2012 and 2013 Restaurant of the Year from Vancouver Magazine). Hawksworth emphasizes on contemporary Canadian cuisine with a focus on using local quality ingredients. With every bite of this Spaghetti De Nero ($26), I could taste the freshness of the sea, earthiness of the microgreens, and rawness of the house-made squid ink spaghetti.

Meta Knight opted for the Steak and Eggs ($27) which was accompanied by half an avocado, perfectly crispy rosti, beautiful mini salad, and jalapeno salsa verde.

Everything was on point and it was one of those meals where no one has to say a word but you both know you're experiencing something special. If I had to choose again I would get his steak and eggs over my spaghetti just because there was more variety on the plate and the portion was more substantial. Our lunch came up to $70 (cray!) for the both of us and luckily I still have quite a bit of money left over in the gift card to enjoy a nice dinner.

Hawksworth definitely lives up to it's name, location, and awards. Meta Knight and I were even smiling from ear to ear coming out of the restaurant, both lingering at the thoughts of our delicious food, while already planning our next trip back for dinner service!

Service Rating: 5/5
Food Rating: 5/5
Price: $$$$$+

Overall Rating: 5/5

Happy Eating!


                  the meal was... so good..

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reLISH Gourmet Burgers - Get Their Green Peppercorn Poutine!

Besides Romers, Veras, and Moderne Burger, I can't think of too many other gourmet burger joints in Vancouver (even though I obviously know there are a billion places you can get a good burger here in the lower mainland). That's why I was super excited to be invited to this new restaurant called reLISH Gourmet Burgers on Davie Street.

reLISH is super close to English Bay so instead of lining up at Veras for my burgers during Celebration of Lights, I'm so going to come here instead.

This gourmet burger joint is brand new and its a franchise that actually originated in Eastern Canada. There are a few locations in Fredericton, Halifax, and St.John's.

Fon and I started off with a Green Peppercorn Poutine ($6.45) which was AMAZING. I can't even explain how good it is, you just have to try it. But make sure you like the taste of peppercorns before you get it. :)

The humbling gravy was light and in no way heavy like the traditional poutine gravys. The fries were nice and crisp, kind of like the Costco fries. We honestly could not stop eating it, like literally! Our burgers were getting cold by the time we were willing to put the fork down.

Fon got the L.A. is my Lady ($9.76) made with fresh Angus Beef. It was jam packed with ingredients like sliced avocado, roasted red peppers, basil pesto, and creamy goat's cheese. She really enjoyed it and thought the burger patty was very fresh.

I went with the Ground Turkey Jersey City Burger ($9.76) instead which had fried field mushrooms, pickled peppers, pancetta bacon, and provolone cheese. It was delicious! Not the juicy dripping down my hands kind of good, but definitely a healthier, hippier kind of good.

Whenever I'm in downtown and want a solid burger and poutine after work, I'll definitely come here. This is a no frills, down to earth, type of cooking and grilling that you know is just cooking from the heart.

Service Rating: N/A
Food Rating; 3.5/5
Price: $$

Overall Rating: 3.5/5

Happy Eating!

 

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McDonalds - McLobster is Here!!!

For the past month, McDonalds Canada has been running a campaign called "Great Canadian Taste Adventure" which features five 'regional flavours" of Canada including the maple and bacon poutine, a chocolate nanaimo sundae, McLobster, Western BBQ burger, and Cottage country chicken.


All of these items are only available for a limited time. I didn't care too much for the other products, but I was REALLY looking forward to the McLobster.


The McLobster is available from June 17th to June 30th and features 100% Canadian Atlantic lobster meat with celery, lemon flavoured mayo, and shredded lettuce on a bun. This version of the 'lobster roll' has been offered in Atlantic Canada for over 10 years and it's the first time it's been offered in all the McDonalds locations across the country.

 The sandwich alone is $7.49 so it's a little pricier than the other sandwiches on their menu. It's to be expected though, they are using real lobster meat.

The bun they use for the McLobster is not the traditional hot dog bun you'd see on a Maine Lobster roll. It was fluffy though and I thought it was a great choice of bun consider how delicate the the lobster mixture was.

As you can see, they don't pack your lobster roll full of the lobster mixture. It's just enough to coat most of the bun but not really.

I took it out of the box and toasted it in my conventional oven. It made a big difference and gave the roll a good crisp on the edges.

Halfway into my McLobster, I actually noticed quite a few large chunks of the crustacean!

At the end of the day, it is a average lobster roll for $7.50 CAD and a good snack (not meal, because it's too darn small!) from McDonalds. Since it's a specialty item and I normally can't find lobster rolls in Vancouver, I might try it once or twice more before it's gone forever. :P

Service Rating: N/A
Food Rating: 3/5
Price: $

Overall Rating: 3/5

Happy Eating!


                                            Tee hee!

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Momofuku Noodle Bar - Crack Pie Tastes Like Crack.

I've always wanted to try Momofuku, the famous restaurant chain owned by chef-founder David Chang. They're only in New York, Sydney and Toronto so I knew I HAD to try it when I went to T-Dot for a business trip. 

I went to the Noodle Bar and Milk Bar because I mainly wanted to try their 'famous' ramen.

In Toronto, they have something equivalent of our "Dine Out Vancouver" where restaurants participate in a month long prix fix menu program called Winterlicious. What a weird name eh? Haha. My colleague and I opted for that and the menu was $25 for three courses.

They're all about the communal tables at Momofuku. I ordered a Thomas Lavers Ginger Beer and it was spectacular. Really gingery and really potent if you like the kick.

I didn't order the Chicken Meatball Bun but my colleague insisted that it was good. It had kind of a spicy Thai chili sauce going on.

I went with their signature Pork Belly Bao and it came with two THICK fat pieces of pork belly inside a steamed bao. There was such much fat it dripped down my wrist! That's when you know it's a good burger.

Their Dan Dan Mien consists of ramen, spicy pork, scallop XO sauce, and peanuts. I like lots of broth with my ramen (I drink it all!) so I was glad I didn't choose this.

I instead went with the Winter Ramen which had smoked chicken, kale, squash, and egg. This was definitely a fusion ramen. A very poshy one too.

I think I'm too used to authentic tonkotsu ramen so I didn't love this as much as I wanted to. The grilled onions tasted a little out of place but everything else was great. Loved the addition of kale too (my favourite green as of now).

I didn't get to taste the brownie topped chocolate mousse but I heard it was delicious.

For my dessert I chose the soft serve ice-cream. Even though you can't see the colour difference, this was actually half Cereal Milk, half Fried Apple Pie. Boy was this delicious. I would come back to Momofuku just for this.

You know you're gluttonous when you continue to shop for food after being stuffed to the brim. That's what I did. I shopped at the Momofuku Milk Bar upstairs to grab some snacks to bring back to the hotel.

Their famous "Compost Cookie".

Apparently this "Corn Cookie" is also really popular.

I ended up choose the compost cookie and crack pie. You cannot go to the Milk Bar without trying these to signature items!!

Their signature Crack Pie is essentially a pie made of eggs, flour, sugar, butter and cream. It's ridiculous. I honestly didn't expect it to be so freaking delicious. Before I could think twice about how many calories I was putting into my body, the whole pie was gone. True story.

The compost cookie on the other hand was okay but I didn't understand the hype.

The Momofuku Noodle Bar and Milk Bar is worth checking out if you are visiting Toronto. If you can't make it for a meal, at least buy the crack pie!! You won't regret it.

Service Rating: 4/5
Food Rating: 3/5
Price: $$$

Overall Rating: 3/5

Happy Eating!


                       me after inhaling dat crack pie

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Soft Peaks Ice Cream - Dat Honeycomb Doe.

Soft Peaks Ice Cream just opened up in Gastown on Feb 5th and already they are taking Vancouver by storm. It's already the most talked about place on Urbanspoon and I hear they have line ups every single day!

Soft Peaks began when brothers Dan and Ken Kim left their corporate jobs to invest in the concept of gourmet organic soft serve ice-cream in Vancouver. They wanted to offer fresh flavours unlike any other soft serve you would normally get and top it off with cool ingredients like Fraser Valley honeycomb.

Meta Knight and I came on Valentine's Day after dinner and the line up was through the door! There were easily 30 people in front of us and we waited for roughly 30-40 minutes. Boo. Good thing it wasn't raining.

Their menu is simple and I love the whole 'honeycomb' decor. Their most popular soft serve is obviously the 'Honeycomb Peak', but they also offer some cool combinations like matcha/ red bean, and yuzu marmalade. Avalon organic milk is what they use as the base of the ice-cream.

I've never had real honeycomb before so I was super ecstatic to give it a try.

It seemed like they only had one or two ice-cream machines going at once so that could have been the reason why it took so long. Meta Knight commented on the hipster-ness of the place because he saw mason jars. Haha.

We ordered the Salty Himalayan ($6) which consists of a syrup of your choice (we got the Organic Maple Syrup) and himalayan pink salt, as well as the Honeycomb Peak ($6.75) which consists of crunchy cereal and a piece of Fraser Valley honeycomb.

Both of us could really tell the difference between this and regular McDonald's soft serve. It was creamy, barely sweetened, and just, very...fresh. You can even say it tasted like freshly churned milk. As for the honeycomb, it was da bomb. That little piece is all you need to sweeten the entire cup of ice-cream. The maple syrup on the other hand was a little on the sweet side and personally for me, I would have loved a bit more Himalayan salt sprinkled throughout and not just on the top.

Overall, Soft Peaks is a great addition to the Vancouver hipster food scene. I just hope the hype eventually dies down so I won't have to wait 40 minutes for ice-cream.

Service Rating: 3.5/5
Food Rating: 4/5
Price: $

Overall Rating: 4/5

Happy Eating!


       I wish my hair did that when I eat ice cream

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