West Restaurant + Bar on Granville Street serves contemporary Pacific Northwest cuisine, and it is one of seven restaurants in the Toptable Group restaurant group.Helmed by Executive Chef Quang Dang, West came highly recommended by my good friend Mijune of Follow Me Foodie. Even though it was not on my Vancouver restaurant "hit list", I was more than happy to try out Westgiven that Mijune and I have very similar taste in food.
West's sophisticated dining room boasts a temperature-controlled wine wall (on the right), a Werner Forster installation from the ceiling (Forster was a well-known Vancouver architect), etched stone tabletops, and Mario Bellini designed original chairs found at MoMA. There are also two chef's tables for guests who like to see all the action in the kitchen.
Pretty pink cocktails to start. Forgive me but I don't remember what spirit and ingredients were in them. All I remember is that they were very tasty and, contrary to how they may look, not crazy sweet.
Congratulations! You've all just won a PAIR of tickets to the first annual Lobster Clam Jam Food Festival taking place on Saturday May 20th & Sunday May 21st at Cabana Pool Bar. Please email me at foodjunkiechronicles@gmail.com to claim your tickets!
A big THANK YOU to the 24 people who participated in this contest!
Here's a snapshot of the Excel spreadsheet where I tracked the #fjclcj hashtag from day one of the contest. The tracking was done using chronological order, as in, #1 was the first person to enter the contest. To enter, the person had to tweet "Please take me to #lobsterclamjamto at @cabanapoolbar @foodieyu! http://bit.ly/2qDsWns #fjclcj #lobsterclamjamto". Each person could tweet once a day for the duration of the contest. Once the contest was over and everybody's entries were accounted for, I checked to see if they followed me (@foodieyu) on Twitter. Below are the 38 valid entries:
I used "True Random Number Generator" from random.org to pick five winners for me.
I finally had a chance to visit Vancouver last month, a city I haven't been to in more than 20 years (I blame the ridiculously expensive airfare). I spent one very chill week in and around Vancity just eating, drinking and hanging out. It was exactly what I needed; I came back home very well rested (7 lbs heavier!) and I didn't feel like I needed another vacation from my vacation (I hate that feeling). Anyway, researching which restaurants to check out naturally became my main mission before the trip. My final list consisted of around 7-8 places, withHawksworthbeing on the very top of my list. Hawksworth Restaurant (Instagram: @hawksworthrest, Facebook: Hawksworth Restaurant) has received an impressive number of awards and accolades since it opened in 2011, some of which include Best New Restaurant from enRoute Magazine, Canada's Restaurant of the Year from Maclean's Magazine, Second Place in Canada's 100 Best list, Chef of the Year, Sommelier of the Year, and Best Upscale Restaurant from Vancouver Magazine Restaurant Awards, etc, etc. The list goes on and on (click here for the full list of awards). So, to say I was "excited" when my friend Mijune of Follow Me Foodie snagged a reservation there is clearly an understatement.
Located in the gorgeous Rosewood Hotel Georgia, Hawksworth serves contemporary Canadian cuisine. The restaurant's menu is seasonal and features local Canadian ingredients. We left it up to Chef de Cuisine, Chris Stewart, to feed us that evening. It's always better that way, trust me.
PUFFED BEEF TENDON (amuse)
Iberico ham, liquefied fat trimmings
Take a look at that iberico. Thinly sliced with a dark-ish red hue and some natural fat infiltration, the 48-month old iberico had a sharp flavour and an oily texture (amplified by the liquefied fat trimmings). The fried beef tendon puff had an intense crunch that quickly dissolved on the palate. Yum. I couldn't have asked for a better way to start the meal.
Wine Director, Bryant Mao, leads the award-winning wine program at Hawksworth. Here is Bryant pouring Mijune and I our first glass.
HALIBUT
Buttermilk poached halibut, fresh peas, pea puree, pea veil, pea tips, pea powder, edible flowers, puffed rice.
Pairing: Little Farm Riesling 2015, Mulberry Tree Vineyard, Cawston, BC.
So much yes for pea season! Nothing symbolizes the sweet, light, and freshness of spring quite like peas. Underneath the velvety pea puree, the poached halibut was soft and flaky, and the puffed rice added just the right amount of texture to the plate (or bowl). Beautiful flavours, textures, depth and colour. This was a wonderful representation of the terroir of Vancouver, with land and sea uniting to form a perfectly made dish.
I'm giving away 5 PAIRS of tickets to the first annual Lobster Clam Jam Food Festivaltaking place on Saturday May 20th & Sunday May 21st at Cabana Pool Bar. Each pair of tickets is worth $50.
Lobster Clam Jam (Instagram: @lobsterclamjam, Facebook: Lobster Clam Jam (Toronto)) is a highly acclaimed outdoor food festival. Not just for seafood lovers, this affordable culinary showcase offers guests the opportunity to experience the creations of a variety of renowned local chefs and restaurants. Already a must for fans of Montreal’s world-class food and festival scene for the past four years, and deemed “One of the Top Canadian Food Festivals to Visit This Summer” by Food Network Canada, Lobster Clam Jam will feature delicious creations from well-known restaurants from Toronto and Montreal such as Patria, Weslodge, Oliver & Bonacini, Jae Anthony of Seasoned Dreams, Blowfish, Notre Dame Gourmet, Queue de Cheval Steakhouse and Raw Bar, Buster’s Sea Cove, The Food Dudes, Bac Ky Pho, Buonanotte, Boehmer and Cherry Street Barbeque, plus many more. Guests will be treated to a culinary experience by each restaurant along with a freshly shucked oyster station. The Festival will also feature their very own signature whole or half lobsters. Mixologists will offer signature flavoured Mojitos, Bloody Caesars as well as a wide assortment of beer, wine and other libations.
Lobster Clam Jam is a family-friendly event, with a variety of activities for children to enjoy, including bouncy castles, face painting and caricature artists. Free admission for children 12 years of age and under. A portion of the proceeds will be donated to SickKids Foundation.
What is included: Your tickets include complimentary entry. Food coins not included. Winners can only redeem for one day.
HOW TO ENTER
1) You MUST be following me (@foodieyu) on Twitter
AND
2) Tweet the following sentence, exactly as shown, nothing before or after it:
Please take me to #lobsterclamjamto at @cabanapoolbar @foodieyu! http://bit.ly/2qDsWns #fjclcj #lobsterclamjamto
1. For your entry to be valid, you need to tweet the above sentence exactly as shown.
2. You may tweet once a day for the duration of the contest. Re-tweeting others do NOT count as a valid entry.
3. Contest is tracked by the #fjclcj hashtag. If you don't see your tweet in the hashtag stream it means there is no entry from you. Read this to find out the possible reasons why your tweets are not showing up.
CONTEST DURATION
Contest starts on Saturday, May 13th, and ends on Thursday, May 18th at 12PM.
Five lucky winners will be chosen randomly from www.random.org and I will announce the winner shortly after.
I wrote a blog post about Sidecar Bar and Grill in May 2010, about a month after I started this blog. You can check it out here if you want. In a nutshell, it's about my friend Cindy and I trying Sidecar's prix fixe menu for the very first time and me falling in love with their steak frites (FYI till this day Cindy and I still go on a lot of dining escapes together!). Ughhh, looking back at old blog posts always make me cringe - I hate the way I wrote back then. Sometimes, I have an urge to delete certain old posts, but a friend once said I shouldn't because "it shows growth"...yea, seven year's worth! *Sigh*. Reading that post actually made melaugh though because of how I described my cocktail:
"This was so yummy and refreshing. I love fruity drinks!"
Kill me now! Oh, how I've grown. I despise fruity drinks nowadays. The boozier, the better. Actually, this is an excellent example of how a person's taste can change over time, which is why I always encourage people to try foods they previously didn't like because you may end up enjoying it the second time around (especially if years have passed). I used to despise sea urchin but now I can never get enough. Can you imagine? Hating uni? I don't even know myself anymore.
Sorry to veer off topic. Anyway, since that blog post, I've probably been to Sidecar a handful more times over the years. Admittedly, I frequent their second floor cocktail bar - Toronto Temperance Society - way more often. TTS is like my second home; it makes some of the best cocktails in the city and the atmosphere there is second to none. Seeing that I haven't been to Sidecar in a while, I was very intrigued when I heard that a new chef took over downstairs.
Before I start talking about the food, there are two things worth noting: 1) A minor change, but nonetheless important, is the restaurant's slight name change. Back in the day, the restaurant was called "Sidecar Bar & Grill", now it's Sidecar Restaurant(Instagram: @sidecar_restaurant), and 2) Since 2017, the restaurant eliminated tipping completely to become Toronto's first gratuity-free restaurant.
Helming the kitchen at Sidecar now is chef H ("Hyun Jung") Kim (@hhyunjkim). Graduated from George Brown in 2010, Kim started his career at Globe Bistro under chefs Kevin McKenna and Daniel Sanders, followed by a brief stint at C5 with chef Ted Corrado. He then worked at George Restaurant for chef Lorenzo Loseto as chef de partie and eventually moved up the ranks to junior sous chef. After two and a half years at George, he traveled around Europe for six months. When he came back to Toronto, he staged at a couple places and briefly worked at The Chase before heading back to George as sous chef. In December 2016, Kim took over the kitchen at Sidecar, and the rest, as they say, is history.
Move over fruity drinks! Nobody gets between me and my old fashioneds anymore.
OLD FASHIONED ($14)
Bourbon, sugar, bitters
I have a soft spot for restaurants that offer complimentary bread. There's not many of them out there anymore.
@thisharriet Congratulations! You've just won a PAIR of VIP passes to MadeWithLove™ Toronto Regional Finals taking place on March 27th from 6-11pm at the Liberty Grand Entertainment Complex. Please email me at foodjunkiechronicles@gmail.com to claim your tickets!
A big THANK YOU to the 37 people who participated in this contest!
Here's a snapshot of the Excel spreadsheet where I tracked the #fjcmwl hashtag from day one of the contest. The tracking was done using chronological order, as in, #1 was the first person to enter the contest. To enter, the person had to tweet "Hey @foodieyu take me to the largest mixology competition in Canada @_MadeWithLove_! http://bit.ly/2nyHU8i #fjcmwl #enjoymwl". Each person could tweet once a day for the duration of the contest. Once the contest was over and everybody's entries were accounted for, I checked to see if they followed me (@foodieyu) on Twitter. Below are the 107 valid entries:
I used "True Random Number Generator" from random.org to pick one winner for me.
Are you a cocktail aficionado? If your answer is a resounding "YES!" then enter my contest now for a chance to win a PAIR of VIP passes to MadeWithLove™ Toronto Regional Finals taking place on March 27th from 6-11pm at the Liberty Grand Entertainment Complex. The tickets are valued at $130!
MadeWithLove™ is the largest mixology competition in Canada. Founded in Montreal, it is an internationally reknowned competition for culinary discoveries and an annual celebration of the restaurant industry. Today, MadeWithLove™ (Twitter: @_MadeWithLove_, Facebook: MADE WITH LOVE) is active in 3 countries (Canada, Mexico, and Spain) and continues to develop internationally.
For one night only on March 27th, the MadeWithLove™ Toronto Regional Finals at the Liberty Grand Entertainment Complex will host 18 of the city's most talented Barchefs will present a unique and original cocktail & some food-pairing creations in view of being crowned Toronto's BEST Barchef for 2017. The public, alongside a panel of renowned judges, are invited to witness this interactive competition by savoring various creations presented to them and to vote for their favorites. The winner of each category of Public’s Choice and Judge’s Choice will represent Toronto at the National Finals held in May 2017 and will have a chance to win one of 10 trips to one of the MadeWithLove™ affiliated distilleries.
What is included: Your tickets allow you and your guest to a complete tasting of all showcased cocktails, some food-pairing, a welcome cocktail as well as a right to vote for your favorite cocktail creation / favorite BarChef.
HOW TO ENTER
1) You MUST be following me (@foodieyu) on Twitter
AND
2) Tweet the following sentence, exactly as shown, nothing before or after it:
Hey @foodieyu take me to the largest mixology competition in Canada @_MadeWithLove_! http://bit.ly/2nyHU8i #fjcmwl #enjoymwl
1. For your entry to be valid, you need to tweet the above sentence exactly as shown
2. You may tweet once a day for the duration of the contest. Re-tweeting others do NOT count as a valid entry
3. Contest is tracked by the #fjcmwl hashtag. If you don't see your tweet in the hashtag stream it means there is no entry from you. Read this to find out the possible reasons why your tweets are not showing up
4. This is a 19+ event.
CONTEST DURATION
Contest starts on Tuesday, March 14, and ends on Tuesday, March 21, at 12PM.
One lucky winner will be chosen randomly from www.random.org and I will announce the winner shortly after.
@sleepydex @PillyJ @JubleeW @shellyfaber @Girlstar28 @BrendaKennedy76 @JuiciChic @bonitafong @amandaaaq @loucheryl Congratulations! You've all won a pair of tickets to this year's One of a Kind Spring Show!Please email me at foodjunkiechronicles@gmail.com to claim your tickets!
A big THANK YOU to the 52 people who participated in this contest!
Here's a snapshot of the Excel spreadsheet where I tracked the #fjcooaks17 and #fjcooakx17 hashtags from day one of the contest(I made a mistake of putting #fjcooakx17 when I first published the post. When I realized the correct hashtag for the event is #ooaks17 not #ooakx17, I corrected my post to show #fjcooaks17 that's both hashtags were tracked to be fair). The tracking was done using chronological order, as in, #1 was the first person to enter the contest. To enter, the person had to tweet "Hey @foodieyu I want to #win a pair of tickets to @ooak_toronto! http://bit.ly/2mqXBxU #fjcooaks17 #OOAKS17". Each person could tweet once a day for the duration of the contest. Once the contest was over and everybody's entries were accounted for, I checked to see if they followed me (@foodieyu) on Twitter. Below are the 125 valid entries:
I used "True Random Number Generator" from random.org to pick 10 winners for me.
The mission of One of a Kind (Instagram: @ooak_toronto, Facebook: One of a Kind Show and Sale) is to provide a marketplace to bring together makers and buyers who share a commitment to handmade excellence. Since its inception in 1975, One of a Kind has been cultivating creativity, craftsmanship and connection in order to deliver an inspired shopping experience.
Did you know there's also food at the One of a Kind Spring Show? Take a look at the show's website and under the "Flavours" category on the "Explore The Artisan Profiles" page, you'll find profiles from over 50 artisans specializing in food and beverage!
HOW TO ENTER
1) You MUST be following me (@foodieyu) on Twitter
AND 2) Tweet the following sentence, exactly as shown, nothing before or after it:
Hey @foodieyu I want to #win a pair of tickets to @ooak_toronto! http://bit.ly/2mqXBxU #fjcooaks17 #OOAKS17
1. For your entry to be valid, you need to tweet the above sentence exactly as shown
2. You may tweet once a day for the duration of the contest. Re-tweeting others do NOT count as a valid entry
3. Contest is tracked by the #fjcooakx17 hashtag. If you don't see your tweet in the hashtag stream it means there is no entry from you. Read this to find out the possible reasons why your tweets are not showing up
CONTEST DURATION
Contest starts on Friday, February 24 and ends on Friday, March 3 at 12PM.
10 lucky winners will be chosen randomly from www.random.org and I will announce the winner shortly after.
Happy Chinese New Year to all my Chinese friends! 2017 is the year of the Rooster, and because I have no idea what that entails, I googled it. I found this nifty graph showing how people born in a year of the Rooster (i.e. 1933, 1945, 1957, 1969, 1981, 1993, 2005, 2017, and 2029) will do in 2017 when it comes to work, love, wealth and health. Check out how scientific the folks at Chinahighlights.com made it all look:
This shows what's lucky and unlucky for Roosters. Note the cockscomb (obviously) and how Roosters should never, ever, venture east.
I'm not superstitious at all but it's fun to look at horoscopes sometimes, especially during Chinese New Year! But y'all know what's more fun than zodiacs during CNY? Eating the food my Mom makes.
This year, my Mom switched it up a bit. Instead of making multiple dishes, she made poon choi, or 盆菜, which literally means "basin vegetables" in Chinese. Ingredients are cooked separately, layered carefully and topped with an assortment of delicacies. Each person at the table takes food from the "basin", layer by layer, from the top to the bottom. Eating 盆菜, or "big bowl feast", signifies abundance and richness in the coming year.
FYI. According to Wikipedia, poon choi was invented during the late Song Dynasty. When Mongol troops invaded Song China, the young Emperor fled to the area around Guangdong Province and Hong Kong. To serve the Emperor as well as his army, the locals collected all their best food available, cooked it, and because there were not enough serving containers available put the resulting meal in large wooden washbasins.
There are all the ingredients that went into my Mom's poon choi:
⇒ Bottom layer: white radish, carrots, cabbage (白蘿蔔, 紅籮蔔, 長紹菜)
⇒ Top layer: black moss, abalone, soy sauce marinated tiger shrimp, egg tofu and broccoli (發菜, 鲍魚, 豉汁明蝦, 玉子豆腐, 西蘭花)
A short Instagram video of my Mom pouring homemade chicken broth into the pot on the stove. That sizzle thooo (don't mind my Dad talking in the background).
Each bite of the poon choi was such a treat - I wouldn't change a thing. The poon choi fed the five of us no problem..there was so much food in there! Before I go, I want to mention the most precious ingredient in the poon choi, which was the abalone. My mom bought this "Gold Price" boiled canned abalone from the supermarket. With just two abalones inside, this can was close to $70. The mollusks were tender with a bit of chewiness to them, and due to the salt water they lived in, the meat tasted a bit salty.
Like always, my Mom totally spoiled us :) Thanks, Mom!
