The Shrimp stand near Deception Pass August 17, 2009

I’ve heard about this place but didn’t know where it actually was nor have I ever been to Deception Pass until recently…I found this road-side Sseafood and BBQ stand without even looking for it – a large gathering of cars and people on the side of the road near a little white shack drew my attention the moment I saw it :)

For those of you who are in the area and want to plan ahead, it is located on HWY 20 when you go south-west towards Deception Pass park on the intersection of Deception road approximately in the middle between lake Campbell and Pass lake (look at the map…) .

The BBQ looked and smelled great, so did the various versions of fish/shrimp/oyster and chips but the main attraction is the freshly boiled spot prawns, small and pretty and incredibly fresh. They are sold by weight (about $4 or $5 per pound) with the option to add cocktail sauce for a $1. You take those with you tot he beach and indulge :)

Food in Switzerland July 22, 2009

Zermatt

Picking up from where I left in my last post about my vacation…after Chamonix Mont Blanc we continued on to Zermatt and stayed at Le Petit Hotel which justifies its name by having really tiny rooms, overall it was clean and quiet but if you are coming for your yearly vacation and want a really nice hotel this one is not it.

In Zermatt itself I do recommend visiting the Italian GramPi’s on 70 Bahnhofstrasse where both pasta and pizza were quite good. The real gems though are the various mountain restaurants you can visit either while skiing or hiking in the mountains. They serve traditional simple foods, concentrating on fresh local ingredients and all this is washed by beer and some more beer. Here is a photograph of a restaurant we absolutely loved, Chalet Ried Restaurant,  it is located on the trail going up to Sunnegga and is really close to Zermatt so you can either go there from the town itself for the sake of enjoying a lunch with a view or to actually go up to Sunnegga and on your way down have a well deserved meal. The owners are very nice people and the restaurant is open all day long until 9 pm (in the summer). 

Another one is located in Z’mutt (a very nice hike to get up there with constant views of the Matterhorn) and is also good, it is actually called Restaurant Z’mutt (there are a couple more restaurants in that tiny old village).

So keep looking for the mountain restaurants because they have the best views, the best prices, the best food and you will have the best appetite whether you are hiking, biking or skiing.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Andermatt

Baumann Cafe Oberland on 49 Gotthardstrasse, a lovely bakery and cafe in the also lovely town of Andermatt. Good coffee and a mouth watering selection of pastries with loads of seasonal fruits. We did not have any food but what I saw on other people’s tables looked appetizing to say the least.

 

Interlaken and Iseltwald

In the Interlaken area we actually stayed at the Hotel Bellevue Iseltwald (it is in Iseltwald, not in Interlaken), the hotel itself is nice and clean with all rooms overlooking the beautiful lake, it is very simple and basic inside with no luxuries but its location and lake view compensate for that. While staying at this hotel we visited Bern and Lucerne, we hiked in the Jungfrau region hiking up to Klein Scheidegg where we enjoyed rosti, sauerkraut and sausages from the outdoor stand.

In Interlaken itself I was happy we found Restaurant Baren on 2 Seestrasse, Interlaken is quite the touristy town and many places give up on quality. This place was not an outstanding restaurant worth telling long stories about but it is was quite good and provided an authentic local meal.

 

Lucerne 

An outstanding meal in the area came again from a restaurant mentioned in the Relais and Chateaux guide and is located on lake Lucerne. We visited the Restaurant Sparks  in Park Hotel Weggis (one of the three restaurants in this lovely hotel). The shady terrace overlooking the lake was beautiful, service professional and the food delicious – I really enjoyed the seared steak tartar and the Pike-Perch as well as the multi component dessert.

 

Blausee

One more restaurant on a lake side was quite different, it is located on lake Blausee and is adjacent to a trout farm and is celebrating it on its menu. It costs 5 euro to actually “enter” the lake area but here is a tip – its free after 5pm and in the summer it is not a problem to come after hours without missing a thing. The lake is tiny and full of trout, the views around it are beautiful and the restaurant had good food and lovely atmosphere. I had a plate of various cold preparations such as smoked trout, smoked trout mousse, trout tartar etc and really enjoyed it; I obviously tasted everyone else’s food and both the beer batter fried trout fillets, the oven backed whole trout as well as the smoked trout ravioli were all delicious. Desserts were quite good but very large so be ware.

Ascona

Ascona is beautiful but unfortunately when we were there the weather left a lot to be desired and we saw very little of this lake side town, but we did have lunch at one of the strangest restaurants I have even been to. The restaurant is located in one of the small alleys very close to the lake, to be more exact on via S. Omobono, the name is Grotto Baldoria. There is no menu and you eat whatever the cook makes in the kitchen, the seating is outside and is very basic with picnic tables and a fiberglass roof to prevent you from getting soaking wet when it rains. The meal begins with some bread, a board with cured meats (salami etc) that you get with a knife and cut some for yourself and the board goes onto the next table, a delicious salad followed, then the main course brought out in the pot or skillet it was cooked in and is divided between the diners whether its only your table or maybe a few tables depending on occupancy, it all follows with a cheese board on  a self serve basis, then a cake (crostada) also as self serve and even the Grappa at the end follows the same principal. The main course is simple and good as if you stepped into someone kitchen rather than a restaurant but do not expect anything fancy – we had pasta with tomato sauce and veal a creamy sauce of sort. 

Lugano

Tea room Vanini, right in the center of town on Piazza Riforma , with tables overlooking the city hall, good coffee and cakes. People come to sit and enjoy the sun, enjoy looking at the passing by tourists and locals. Basically to see and be seen as well as enjoy the pastries.

Zurich

Now on to our final stop – Zurich. You can have a plain traditional hearty meal of sausages or meat (veal in mushroom sauce…) with a side of potatoes of course – your choice between rosti, mashed, potato salad etc at the Zeughauskeller on 28a Bahbhofstrasse, it is touristy but don’t be afraid it is still good. Another option is to have a traditional Spanish dinner sitting at an outdoor table on one of the small streets in old Zurich having tapas made daily. The place is called Bodega Espanola and is located on 15 Munstergasse, we had some Sangria and some Rioja, olives, tiny sausages, sauteed rabbit,  anchovies in olive oil, squid and a few other small plates we chose from the selection available on display inside the restaurant; they also have a menu for some main courses but we did not bother with those.

Now we do breakfast and weekend brunch in two separate but geographically close places. The breakfast spot goes to Felix Cafe am Bellevue on 5 Bellevueplatz with a view on the lake where cakes, pastries and chocolates are abundant; indoor as well as outdoor sitting is available. The brunch spot goes to the garden in the Terrasse restaurant on 3 Limmatquai where it is busy on the weekend, with everybody in their “Sunday best” enjoying jams and pastries, scrambled eggs with smoked salmon, fresh orange juice, white wine and some (like me) lemon risotto with shrimp.

A must visit, though not exactly an innovation, is the huge Sprungli store on 21 Bahnhofstrasse, you can get a table and enjoy the pastries, little sandwiches and coffee and you can go ga-ga buying things to take back home with you loading on chocolates over chocolates but one thing you absolutely cannot go out the door without is the Luxemburgerli (macarons) – every color, every flavor, pink and gold, sweet and tart, they are tiny and delicious and if you are flying home from Zurich they have a special package which will allow you to get them home safely and devour them within a day or two because their shelf life is 3 days top. I like the fruit flavors best.

While in Zurich we stayed at the Sheraton Neues Schloss, its nice and spacious, has good service and a central location.

General

One other place in Switzerland I would like to recommend for lunch or take out is the Kauffmann Metzgerei with quite a few locations in Bern, Zurich, Thun, Basel and a few more (you can see a list if you click on “Aktuelles” on the website); it is a deli with sandwiches, a large selection of prepared food that could be heated for you if you like (sausages, potatoes, rotisserie) as well as a large selection of raw meats you can buy if you have a kitchen in your hotel room. They also have beer and other bottled drinks :)

Food in Provence, Cote d’Azur and Chamonix Mont Blanc July 14, 2009

I am back!!! I was on a wonderful vacation in southern France, Italy and Switzerland and now I have some recommendations to make :)

 

Our point of departure was a small town near Nice (about 20 minutes by car from the airport) called Vence where we stayed for the first night; the town itself is quite small but lovely with a beautifully preserved medieval center. We stayed at a very nice family run bed and breakfast called La Ferme du Paradou  and visited a very good restaurant called Le Pizzaiole chez Guy on 28 avenue du General Leclerc – the majority of the food is made in a wood burning oven we sampled quite a generous selection of dishes between the four of us (escargot with garlic & parsley butter, pasta, pizza, steak with pepper sauce, grilled fish of the day, foie gras) and everything was delicious.

Unfortunately I have very little to say about the food in Provence because it was more than disappointing though one restaurant really did stand out, it is located in the small town of Chateauneuf du Pape and is called La Mere Germaine and is listed in the Relais and Chateaux guide. The food was amazing and the light and sunny dining room was very pleasant, there is also a terrace which we couldn’t use due to the Mistral. Order anything – meat, game, seafood, desserts – its all good! While in the Chateauneuf du Pape take the time to visit a winery or two (some require advanced arrangements) – we visited the beautiful Chateau La Nerthe  and gladly brought a couple of bottles home with us. 

Another decent meal in Provence (my view was not shared by half of our table of four…) was Allain Assaud in St Remy de Provence  at 13 blvd Marceau (to the left of the church), the food wasn’t amazing but it was good starting with a traditional fish soup with toasts and rouille, pot au feu with duck confit and a cherry clafoutis of sort for dessert. I do think it was overpriced for what it offered but the atmosphere was nice.

 

We continued towards the Alps through Annecy and really enjoyed our meal at Le Venezia at 23 rue JJ Rousseau, it is a small place overlooking one of the canals with very good pasta (the carbonara came with an egg yolk in an egg shell on top of the pasta which I thought was nice) and buckwheat crepes (galettes).

 While in Chamonix Mont Blanc we stayed at the wonderful Les Balcons du Savoy which on top of the amazing view had a kitchen allowing us to shop the many beautifully stocked food stores with many local specialties like Chanterelle or Cepes salamis & oozing cheeses. We also found a very good pastry shop not falling in quality or imagination from its Parisian counterparts; the name is Patisserie Richard on 10 rue du Docteur Paccard.

 

While in Chamonix we actually visited only one restaurant and it was quite enjoyable with fun decor which complemented the name, La Dolce Vita, displaying some scenes from Federico Fellini’s classic. The restaurant is located on 78 rue du Lyret and is an Italian restaurant with Italian owners and Italian food.

After Chamonix Mont Blanc we continued on to Switzerland and this will be my next post.

Thomas Haas, Vancouver March 11, 2009

It was a very pleasant discovery – a proper bakery in North Vancouver, making European pastries on a professional level, the only unpleasant part was that I discovered it only recently and now I moved back to WA so the next visit will not be any time soon.

Thomas Haas is famous for his chocolates and you can purchase them in high-end grocery stores like Whole Foods, Meinhardt’s and Capers…to be honest I have tasted the chocolates but wasn’t impressed, neither was my husband but the pastries do compensate for it big time! The space is tiny with two counters inside and a couple of outside tables. We have visited a couple of times and it was packed! The sandwiches are delicious and grilled if you want them to be, coffee is good and the pastries and delicious – both the cakes of sorts as well as the croissants and tarts – worth a detour even if you do not live in the neighborhood :)

WWW: http://www.thomashaas.com

Address:  998 Harbourside Drive, North Vancouver   Tel: 604-924-1847 

Lumiere in Vancouver – review February 2, 2009

Lumiere had an introductory $58, 3 course prix fixe (instead of the usual $98) during the 2 weeks of DineOut Vancouver 2009 – I do not know if it had anything to do with that but frankly my darling(s), I don’t give a damn!

The restaurant was almost full Sunday night @ 8:30pm, except for maybe 3 tables; the decor is great, the music is a nice background, service is professional and attentive, wine picks were perfect and the food was definitely interesting and rightfully praised by the various critics.

The amuse bouche was a selection of 3 miniature treats – a crab salad wrapped in lettuce with some squash strings at its basis; a squash soup with brown butter and sage foam; a squash quiche with yogurt topping which was tangy and was a nice offset for the sweet squash. For the appetizer we both chose the Lobster Bisque with lobster meat medallions (which I assume were made from lobster meat processed into a smooth cream and combined with some gelatin creating cute lobster coins of sort) which was delicious and appropriate for the weather the only thing I did not care for were the chipollini onions and carrots which were few but not required in my opinion. Seconds…I had the squash ravioli with pork belly and black trumpet mushrooms, those were delicious and very pretty; my husband has the veal trio (tongue grebiche ,tender loin with chanterelles and sweetbreads with ziti) which he enjoyed as well. A cheese selection followed (not included in the 3 course prix fixe) and it was a well selected one :) Desserts – if a meal was good but desserts were not, for me its a deal breaker and I was really glad this wasn’t the case here! My husband, the conservative, had a warm chocolate cake with Sicilian pistachio gelato and I had the caramelized pineapple with coconut rice pudding and pina-colada ice cream which was both refreshing and interesting – exactly what I wanted it to be! With the bill we got another treat, warm-out-of-the-oven mini citrus madeleines – nothing tastes or smells better than a baked anything right out of the oven :)

Bottom line, go and enjoy :)

WWW: http://www.lumiere.ca/

Address: 2551 West Broadway, Vancouver, BC   Tel: 604-739 8185

Beard Papa’s Cream puffs in Vancouver December 1, 2008

Choux pastry shells filled on the spot with Vanilla custard (real one, I saw the seeds) – yum!  

Cash only =)

Address: 1184 Denman Street

WWW: www.beardpapa.com

What to bring back from Barcelona? November 14, 2008

You got it…FOOD!

My husband was in Barcelona last week for a conference and brought back a few really good things – mainly cheese and chocolates :)

The chocolates came from Cacao Sampaka, all 5 boxes :)

One box contained chocolates from various countries of origin, the second one – chocolates with various spices (saffron, cloves, cinnamon, curry, cardamom, ginger, hickory, pepper, vanilla), the third – chocolates with flowers and herbs (lavender, thyme, rosemary, jasmin, rose, violet, pepper mint), the forth - chocolates made with Criollo cocoa and the last one contained various truffles. They had quite a few other options in the store – if those didn’t appeal to you (yeah, right…).

Another thing from this store came in a bottle and its also delicious – Vino Dulce Natural which is fortified dessert wine made by Pedro Ximenez.

The cheeses are as good as they look :) Just find a store and buy all the cheese you can carry :)

Benkei Ramen on Robson November 14, 2008

This place is always full, so are the few other Ramen places in the vicinity; I always wanted to visit and finally the weather is really suitable for hot soup and we went to check this place out last weekend and I glad we did because it is my new “crave” item :) The menu options are very limited and I liked it – one small restaurant, one specialty! There are three types of broth – Pork, Pork & Chicken with soy and Pork and Chiken with Miso (they also had a spicy miso off the menu, but I do not know if they always do); by definition it comes with noodles and some veggies but there are about 8 (or so) additional topping you can get or choose the option of “all toppings” which is what we did. The portion is very big so be ware, the “all toppings” option includes pork, nori, corn, sprouts, green onions, butter, spinach, boiled egg and kimchi (I do recommend ordering extra pork) and it is delicious!!! They also serve a few small side dishes like Gyozas which were so tender and delicious.

Go, enjoy and then crave to go back :)

Address: 1741 Robson Street   Tel: (604) 688-6790

Salsa and Agave Mexican Grill Review October 30, 2008

I have been looking for two things for quite a while -  a good takeout place near my house and a good, no frills, Mexican restaurant with authentic food. I tried Lolita’s on Davie and it was good but it is an “upscale” Mexican food; I tried El Taco on Davie as well and it the food wasn’t so good, it was overpriced and the service was slow slow slow. Salsa and Agave does answer all my prayers though – its not a place to go for dinner as it is rather casual but for a lunch or some takeout in the evening its perfect! It is a family run place, the food is very good, the service is quick and prices are very reasonable. Happy Happy Happy!

Address: 1223 Pacific Blvd the corner of Davie  Tel: 604-408 4228

BlueWater Cafe in Vancouver September 18, 2008

It was my birthday a couple of weeks ago and we opted to revisit the Bluewater Cafe which has a very nice atmosphere, is close to where I live and our previous visit during Vancouver’s Dine Out last winter was good.

It seemed to me that there was much more thought put into the first courses, whether those were from the raw small plates menu or the regular first plates menu, than there was into the second courses.

There was a selection of sushi and sashimi, wonderful fresh oysters with a few kinds to choose from (we had some Kusshi and Royal Miyagi) and various chilled seafood platters; interesting combinations of squid with crab and couscous which was delicious and refreshing as well as quail wrapped in pancetta, stuffed with fresh figs - it was tender and juicy and if hadn’t ordered my second course already I would have probably chosen it instead.

The seconds were much less imaginative and made selection difficult; quite a few fish dishes like Salmon and Halibut which I find boring in restaurants, especially higher end restaurants that pride themselves with being original and imaginative, same goes for the meat dishes. I opted for the fillet mignon with Chanterelle mushrooms, which were just coming into season, and a gratin of macaroni and green chard – the fillet was overcooked but was replaced by a perfect one minutes later; the sauce was too acidic in my opinion and the macaroni gratin had mainly green chard in it. 

Wines and desserts were good, mine had a candle on top :)

Overall a good experience though service was a bit slow; would go again and stick to the appetizers some of which are big enough to substitute for a main course.

Address: 1095 Hamilton street @ Helmken  Tel: 604-688 8078

WWW: http://www.bluewatercafe.net/