On a lunch-hour walk between Granville and Cambie on West Broadway, I must have ducked into a half-dozen potential lunch spots: Pizza Cono for cone-shaped organic pizzas, Chiffon Patisserie, Saravanaa Bhavan for $5 4-item lunches, and Whole Foods hot food section. I was just hoping La Taqueria at its new Broadway/Cambie location would be open and worth passing up other good food… but not quite yet.
I was marveling how La Taqueria is going to be able to give Chronic Tacos, a California-based chain that arrived in Vancouver last year, a …

We were talking about April Fool’s pranks over lunch yesterday and the only one from my past that I can remember was one propagated by a local radio station. It was probably c100 with their zany (read: annoying) morning team. There is (until this post) only one Google result for “Hadabesac” and for a moment I thought I had stumbled upon a GoogleWhack, but I was mistaken.
This prank dates back to my high school days since it pre-dated the amalgamation of several municipalities into Halifax Regional Municipality (HRM) in 1996. …

Next after Groupon, Living Social (LS) is where I have made the most group-buying purchases. No doubt LS is doing a good business for itself but I’ve noticed they got a fancy new logo (can’t even remember the old one) and differentiating itself with family-oriented Family Edition coupons as well.
I didn’t know about Kreation Artisan Cakes, itself a narrow shop tucked between narrow shops on the west side of Cambie Street between West 17th and 18th Avenue. Their LS deal of $7 for a half dozen cupcakes (reg. $14.25) and …

(I wrote this in the early morning of Sunday, January 4, 2009, but edited it now for clarity.)
I’m sitting in Vinnie’s 30-something floor apartment living room with a clear view of partially frozen Lake Ontario, CN Tower poking into the fog, and the various satellites atop communications hub CBC. I am in a slice of sky, amongst downtown skyscrapers and condos. We were out and up late last night and, natually, I’m the first one to be awake and rather than twiddling my thumbs, I BLOG.
I had the spectacular kind …

Summer is drawing to a close way too quickly. I was saddened last week when I was working for my parents and it was frightfully dark already at 8:30. I do not appreciate all of Vancouver’s seasons equally even if the rains bring so-called lush greenery, and am only grateful that imminent cool weather will make flies go into hibernation (or die or whatever) and despite it raining seemingly 95 of 100 days, I really am grateful my commute is really short.
In some respects, I had the most boring summer …

Cari and I were at the VPD north of Chinatown to pick up/have sent our criminal records to the place we will volunteer. It was a bust because while the station is open until 7, the records office closed at 5:30. I thought I might suggest we go to The Naam or Don Guacamoles, two restaurants I have not yet gone to.
But Cari had recently read about two new-ish Asian fusion restaurants in Chinatown and I picked the one that kind of had better reviews across dinehere.ca, Urbanspoon, and Yelp: …

So, I only managed to go to three Dineout Vancouver 2010 dinners and I can’t really imagine a fourth one topping the dinners so far, if only because I’m so Dined Out now.
hidden tasting bar + lounge
I was so excited to try hidden, a new restaurant in the centrally located Westin Grand hotel, within a week of it opening, and I knew another couple would be game for the ride. Plus, if it was a real bust, it was only an $18 Dineout (3-course) menu. We joked (not that I …

Dineout Vancouver 2010 actually began on Monday, April 26 and goes full-steam for 12 days until Friday, May 6, ending just a couple days short of the restaurant industry’s Biggest Day of All-Time (Mother’s Day).
This year, over 200 (most ever) restaurants participate in the dining bonanza offering three-course prix fixe menus for $18, $28, or $38. (If you don’t order something to drink–and I don’t intend to if I’m out on a “school night”–with just GST applied to your meal, the dinners come to under $20, $30, and $40.)
Being quite …

Are periodic food reviews back on this site?? I wouldn’t say that for certain but I get sad about my photos languishing on Flickr so I thought I would share some of my favourite photos and places to eat in Vancouver.
Copa Cafe. Beefy Beef. Motomachi Shokudo. Hapa Izakaya Yaletown. Mazazu Crepe. The Cannery. Vij’s Restaurant.
Copa Cafe
Do you have a routine when you come home from a trip? NPY and I will hit up a Chinese food joint because it’s our comfort food. I think that by now, I’ve successfully broken …

February 1, 2010 marked the (approximate) five-year anniversary of me living in Vancouver. Although I did arrive in the Lower Mainland in August 2004, my first four months were spent atop Burnaby Mountain in an SFU residence, followed by a month of random, miserable south-east Vancouver living (to wit: I moved into a dump near south Main, non-stop January rains happened, it flooded, I moved out).
Five years ago, I moved into the Cambie Village area of town, the area I spied amongst my first days in Vancouver as my preferred …