Granville Island - La Baguette et l'Echalote and Laurelle's Fine Foods

Granville Island is a corucopia of foods, and I'd imagine is a chef's paradise with fresh ingredients of just about every variety.  Of course, GI isn't exactly close to where I live and getting in and out of there can sometimes be a pain because the place gets crowded whenever the sun comes out.

One of my earliest memories of GI is the bakery located close to the market.  There are usually performers right in front of it and on a windy day, you can smell the scent of freshly baked bread from quite far away.

I've had the bread here, and some of the pastries and sweets and because of the high quality (and I'm guessing the sky-high rent on GI), the prices are a bit inflated. 

Another shop I like to go to sometimes (when I'm not suffing my face in the the food court, haha!) is this place.  They've got some quiche, pasta, sandwiches and stuff that they can re-heat.  I think they're vegetarian friendly, so most of their food doesn't interest me a whole lot, but they are smack in the middle of the market's secondary food court, so it's conveniently located. 

The real reason I come here is for the sweets.  They've got rum balls that are bargain priced.  I get cookies from here as well, but I love the rum balls here...and I'm not even a big fan of rum!

There are countless produce, meat, seafood and cheese stands scattered througout the market, and sometimes it's worth going down there just to see all the wonderful foods.  If you're an out of town foodie, Granville Island's public market should definitely be on your list of places to visit.

French Toast

I had the food channel for a month and I got addicted to this TV show called Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives.  The food showcased on that show was right up my alley - tasty, but not necessarily healthy, haha!  One of those recipes was for French Toast.

I really don't know the millions of variations of this dish, but on this show, it was the first time I ever saw French Toast made with a baguette.  Cut the bread into sections about the size of a fist, and let it soak in a concoction of eggs, milk, brown suger and a squirt of vanilla extract overnight.  The next day, pan fry each side to seal it and toss the whole thing in the oven for a bit.  Serve on a plate with some fruits and drown it in whatever syrup is handy.  I used maple syrup, but Aunt Jamima's will do. 

The end result is a toasty-on-the-outside, soft-and-moist-on-the-inside French Toast that isn't soggy before it even hits your plate.

Top Shanghai Cuisine - revisited with a full battery in my camera!

I had the chance to go back to Top Shanghai Cuisine, this time with a fresh battery for my camera.  The place was packed from wall to wall as usual, and this time, we ended up sharing a table with another couple.

The Hot and Sour soup was just as good as the last time, pretty decent portion for the price and again, we weren't able to finish it.

The green onion pancake was good, as before.  I don't know if I mentioned, but I like mine fried almost to a darker, crispy level.  Haha, I know, it's probably not very healthy, but whatever. 

And of course, the whole reason for the visit was the shao long bao.  This time, available for your viewing pleasure in 720p!

We mixed it up a bit this time, passing on the crispy rice and prawns for something I knew would be good - mei cai kou rou - you can't go wrong with pork belly. 

Also brought to you in all of it's high-definition glory!  It's so bad for you, but it' tastes soooooo good.  I can't eat as much as I used to, and was only able to eat one slice....the leftovers fed me for the rest of the week, haha!

Bubble World Marpole - LEVEL DOWN!

I've been going to Bubble World for years, and I never thought I'd say this, but I think they're starting to go a little downhill.  The other day, I popped in for my favorite - Macha Slush (green tea ice cream) with pearls. 

The place was dark and gloomy, no music, a few customers and one, very bitter looking employee. The last time I went to this location, I was greeted by several smiling faces behind the counter, and the place felt alive. This time, I felt like walking into an empty warehouse with one security guard reading a paper.

I had no idea they canceled their points card system. When we showed the employee a points card that needed one more stamp, he just looked at it and said bluntly said they don't take it anymore. No smile, no explanation, no customer service whatsoever.

So, crappy service aside, I got my green tea ice cream with pearls and the green tea looked brown.  Again, dating back to the last time I was here, the green tea ice cream was actually green, with a nice, thick ice cream slushy.  The one I got today was almost brownish and very runny.  It was really, really sweet, way sweeter than I remember, and I could barely taste the macha.  It basically tasted like a sweet milk (taste and consistency) with pearls. 

Suffice to say, I was disappointed.  I'm not sure I will go back, but deep inside, I'm just hoping that the employee was either having a bad day, or maybe he was just one bad example out of many good staff that weren't there that particular day.

Anthony Bourdain and Bill Murray

Another Anthony Bourdain moment, this time featuring Bill Murray.  Haha, just watched Zombieland last night, hilarious movie.....what does this have to do with food?  I dunno, haha, there were a couple of slabs of meat in this video right? 

Anthony Bourdain vs Andrew Zimmern

Haha, I've been a big fan of Anthony Bourdain for a long time, and most recently started watching Bizarre Foods with Andrew Zimmern recent.  It's pretty funny to watch them interact with each other. 

Copa Cafe - revsited

I went to Copa Cafe again!  And again, it smelled like takenoko when I stepped in....why does this place always smell like bamboo shoots? 

We had a couple of coupons for free red bean ice so we dropped those down right away.  As a drink, I think it was a bit of a fail because there were loads of red beans, but the ice was...how do you say it....not shaved fine...it was more line ground ice so we were chewing on little chunks of flavourless ice.....yea, could have used some more condensed milk.  I would have preferred a plain ice lemon tea or milk tea, but they said that we couldn't substitute so that's fine.

I ordered a baked seafood on rice.  I've been dying to try it here to see if it was any good and it didn't disappoint.  It was a little smaller than I expected though, especially for a dinner size.  To me, it felt like it was afternoon tea-time size.  Complaints about the size aside, it was chock-full of seafood, and the cream sauce was awesome.  It was a lot better than your run-of-the-mill flour and milk bit....this actually tasted creamy and a little buttery.

Next was the Baked Pork Chop on Rice, also seemingly small for a dinner size, but still tasted really, really good nonetheless. 

I think I might take a break from HK Cafes for a while though, not sure if I'm going too much or just getting bored.....maybe I should try other stuff........actually, I was hoping to order their baked Linguini Bolognese this night, but they were out of Bolognese!!!  Hard to beleive but they ran out and it was only 7pm.