Aoyama Cafe- Serves Filipino Dessert?

It was Cupcake's birthday and we decided to celebrate it at Aoyama Cafe, the Japanese restaurant that serves UCC coffee in Aberdeen. 

When we arrived, I instantly noticed this advertisement introducing their latest dessert, Halo Halo. I found that weird because Halo Halo is a Filipino dessert and Aoyama specializes in Japanese cuisine. Perhaps the owners of Aoyama are Filipino? Does anyone know? :P

Meta Knight didn't feel very hungry so he ordered the Seafood Rice Pizza ($9.50). It is a new menu item as I never heard of it before. Sounds pretty interesting right?

The first thing everyone noticed was how small the portion is. The tomato sauce, mozzarella cheese, and seafood (it had squid, scallops, shrimps) laid on top of a bed of flattened crisped up rice. Or so I thought. I tried a bit and the rice was actually not crispy at all. It stayed intact but the rice was very soft, so it didn't feel very pizza-y to me. Meta Knight liked the abundance of seafood on top but overall thought it was average.

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La Patisserie- Mooncake Only for Durian Lovers :)

As we all know, Mid-Autumn festival is coming up in a few days. Here is a wiki link of Mid-Autumn festival if you are interested. 

Just a few days ago, Rae introduced me to this durian mooncake she bought from La Patisserie. We both love durian and she was sure I was gonna love this mooncake. She said they were quite expensive but well worth it. I tried a bite and... oh gosh, she was right. Fresh, soft durian danced around my mouth and I was in heaven. Needless to say, the next day, I went to La Patisserie and bought one. :D

This is the Durian Mooncake ($4.50) and it is quite expensive for a size that is roughly the size of your palm. But again, it is worth every penny. They also sell frozen mooncake in other flavours such as chocolate, taro, mango, black sesame, cantolope, etc.

As you can see, the mooncake is completely frozen when you buy it. I definitely recommend thawing it a bit in the fridge until it is not frozen anymore before eating it. This will greatly enhance the flavours of the durian.

I am not sure what they used as the skin but it held everything together wonderfully without every cracking or falling apart. As for the filling, it seems to be 100% pure durian but they could have added something in the mixture. 

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Liu's Taiwanese Restaurant- Tastes Like Home-Cooked Taiwanese Food

Liu's Taiwanese Restaurant is located right next to Richmond Sushi and I honestly am quite surprised that I never heard about this place before! This restaurant specializes in Taiwanese food and bubble tea drinks (although you probably coulda guessed from the name eh :P).

The decor is quite elaborate, and actually unexpected as it looks nothing like it from the outside! I believe the restaurant is family run because there were only two people working (so one was the cook and one was the server) during the lunch hour. 

By the way, something really weird happened, the restaurant suddenly became really busy and the two employees seemed completely overwhelmed and therefore the service was SOOOOOOO slow. They served us wrong drinks, never came by to take our order, and took forever to get the food out. 

My friends and I all ordered off the "Combo" menu where you get to choose an entree and a drink (green or jasmine tea) for roughly $9.00. 

If you add $0.50, you can have whipped cream served with your tea. I thought it was really weird but apparently it tastes really good. Once you stir the cream in, it looks like....

...THIS. It's pretty much just a different way of making milk tea? haha I'm not sure :P

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Healthy Banana Bread- No Oil, No Butter, Just Yogurt!

Since I had three ripe bananas one day, I decided to make banana bread! I wanted to use a recipe that was relatively healthy because I hear most commercially baked banana bread contain a lot of fat and oil. After much searching on the web, I came up with two recipes, "Easy Banana Bread" recipe by Kraft and "Healthy Banana Bread" recipe by Tablespoon.com. In the end, I chose to follow the 'Healthy Banana Bread" recipe because they substitute yogurt for oil and butter! Interesting!

Here are my 'wet' ingredients. My three super ripe bananas, two egg (whites), one container of yogurt (I used strawberry yogurt but I couldn't taste the strawberry in the banana bread. Phew!), and milk.

Once it's all blended together, it looks like this.

My dry ingredients include all-purpose flour, sugar (I used white but recipe calls for brown), and baking powder.

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Alleluia Cafe- Oh Ex-Favourite HK Style Cafe, What Have You Become?!

Alleluia Cafe used to be my family's favourite Hong Kong Style Cafe. We used to eat here at least two to three times a week, or sometimes more O.O. We were sucked in by their large quantities, cheap prices, fast service, and average/good quality food.

However, ever since they raised their prices (by quite a bit in my opinion), we stopped going there because there were cheaper alternatives in Richmond. After yesterday's horrible experience at Alleluia, I don't know when I will ever go back again.

Let me first tell you, the main reason why I had such a horrible experience yesterday was because it took more than 15 minutes to flag down a waitress to take our order (I am not even exaggerating), and then another 20 minutes for the food to come. For a HK Style Cafe where fast service is key, this is completely unacceptable. If they hadn't served us tea in the beginning, I would have probably walked out.

I had the Iced Lemon Tea. The drink comes with the meal and you can get a free refill if you like. But I think you can only refill once because they mark it down on the bill. 

Kirpa ordered the Milk Tea and it was pretty standard. 

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Nicli Antica Pizzeria- Authentic Italian Neapolitan Pizza

Nicli Antica Pizzeria is located in Gastown (on E Cordova St) and has been acclaimed as the best Neapolitan pizza restaurant in Vancouver. They are known for using fresh ingredients and baking pizzas in their very own wood fired oven, made from the stone of Mt. Vesuvius.

For Tea's birthday dinner, I recommended Nicli Antica Pizzeria because I have eaten here once before and I really liked the authentic Neapolitan pizza that they serve. It is completely different from the normal pizza you get from Panago or Pizza Hut in that the crust is thin and floppy, their toppings are scarce, and they use exceptionally fresh ingredients. I am not one to judge because I have never tasted real Italian pizza from Italy, but I'd say this is as close as it gets in Vancouver.

By the way, because they do not take reservations, I'd suggest you come before 6pm on a Friday night or weekend because apparently the line ups can be up to an hour long! I knew this coming in so we purposely went earlier (around 5:30pm) to avoid the lineup.

The decor is very modern, and the bright white furnishings gave the overall restaurant a really clean look which I appreciated. My friends and I also all loved the stone wall as it gave the modern decor a rustic home style feel.

Their pizzas range from $9 to $20 and they sometimes have daily specials as well.

Here is a peek of what we got. Nomnomnom... looks delicious doesn't it?!?!

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Random Thought- Gross DQ Mushroom Swiss GrillBurger

On one random afternoon, I had an urge to eat a burger. I didn't have much to work with in my kitchen, so I decided to head to Dairy Queen. Once inside, I quickly made my mind up on the Mushroom Swiss GrillBurger because I love mushrooms and I love Swiss cheese. I love them even more when they are combined! :D

So this is what it looked like. The burger was of decent size but I could already see the oil seeping through the wrapper. 

Before I show you what my burger looked like, here is a picture of what it is suppose to look like! I think you can already tell that mine looked nothing like this :P

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Bubble World- Huge Portions, Great Price

Ever since Bubble World opened up a new location in Richmond, my friends and I have deemed it our go-to bubble tea place! Their food is pretty good and it gives us great value for its price. Therefore, it is no surprise that when Meta Knight, Dup, Cupcake, Tea, and I picked up Dirtygirl from the airport a few weeks ago, she suggested we go there to eat. 

Cupcake ordered the Milky Mango Ice Cream Slush ($4.95) and it was delicious! It's creamy, not too sweet, and has great mango flavour. The huge portion (and cute mug) didn't hurt either. :P Btw, I have also had the Milky Mango Slush without ice-cream before and I love it just as much!

Meta Knight and I shared the Milky Brown Rice Macha ($4.45). I asked for less sweet but I believe they forgot because it still tasted really sugary. If you normally like the brown rice tea, you will love this milk tea version of it. 

Meta Knight and I also shared the Deep Fried Chicken Knee ($4.95). They had a good amount of chicken in there and the chicken-to-cartilage ratio was also pretty good (does that sound gross? lol). 

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Qoola- Aberdeen vs. Metrotown Location

First off, I LOVEEE frozen yogurt. Whether it be Scoop, Timothy's, Qoola, TCBY, TuttiFrutti,or Yogen Fruz, I can never get enough! Recently, I have been digging the whole make-it-yourself concept that Qoola has implemented in their Metrotown and Aberdeen location because I can make it however I want. :D

Metrotown's Qoola is quite big and spacious. They also have a few tables and chairs in front of the store for people to sit and eat.

You first have to take a cup (one size only) from the dispenser on the right hand side of the store. If you want to make a smoothie, you take the cup.

They have a total of six different yogurt flavours so you can mix and match! For people who like to try more than just one flavour, you can go for the middle lever to get the swirl of two flavours. 

Haha, clearly I am a person who likes to try everything so here is me going at it with the middle "swirl" lever.

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My Take on Ddukbokkie (Korean Spicy Rice Cake)

I have been a little obsessed with watching Korean dramas lately and therefore have been craving Korean food every time I see it on screen! 'You know you are a glutton when..' lol :P 

One Korean snack I found particularly interesting was the Ddukkbokkie which is rice cake in a hot and spicy sauce. It is typically eaten as a snack but if you add more fillers such as vegetables, fish puffs, tofu skin, etc, it can also become a meal... which is what I have done.

Trixie and I followed the recipe from Maangchi but modified it a bit to fit what I had in my fridge.  I wanted to use traditional Korean rice cakes which are shaped in long tubes, but since I had the sliced ones in my freezer already, I reluctantly substituted them for the tubes. So yeah... that's why it doesn't look very authentic :P

I first took out some frozen fish puff and oyster mushrooms.

Then, I soaked the fish puff along with the frozen rice cake and fish cake in water to thaw it out a bit.

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