2008 June : Tiny Bites

On Green Drinks and SteakCamp

6 Comments Karen HamiltonJune 19, 2008

It’s 10pm when I arrive home tonight, happy to have caught up with a friend over dinner at Steamworks and energized from eco-tastic conversations at my first Green Drinks event. 10:15pm and already I’m plopped in front of my computer to plug back into the virtual world. What do I find on Twitter?

buzzbishop @hummingbird604 @tinybites this post is for you http://tinyurl.com/5nknqb

For all you non-Twitterites, that was Buzz Bishop’s way of issuing myself and fellow foodie Raul a challenge: review The Brave Bull…if you dare.

Raul immediately stepped up to task, scheduling this Saturday Monday as the day he will dine at said questionable eatery (which looks more like a mafia front than a food stop). I believe he and Buzz have dubbed it SteakCamp. If SteakCamp wasn’t the same night as my father’s birthday party, I would so be there! But since it is, it looks like I’ll have to schedule another time to steel my belly for what this restaurant has to offer.

If you want to join us on Monday in this adventure, leave a comment, Twitter to me, or send an email to karen [at] tinybites [dot] ca. The more, the merrier. Bring your camera. Maybe some Pepto-Bismol.

And now for something completely different

Now that I’ve offically responded to Buzz’s challenge, let’s get back to the task at hand: telling you more about tonight’s Green Drinks event.

Grab a nametag. Grab a drink. Mingle will eco-aware souls. Repeat next month.

That was basically how the sign at the welcome booth summed up the Green Drinks concept. My dinner companion and I were welcomed by none other than Christina Olsen, one of the organizers of Green Drinks Vancouver.

I learned a lot from Christina and the other folk that crossed paths with me tonight. Topics ranged from the environmental (SkyFarm, Green Table, environmental leadership programs for kids) to the tangential (the guilty pleasure that is Yoshinoya Beef Bowl, Flaming Lambourghinis, Scrapple). It was wonderful to meet people that dedicate their professional lives to reducing greenhouse gases or fostering awareness in industry and the general public. I may have even generated free publicity for local restaurants and food purveyors that are greening themselves in some way.

Keep an eye out for the next Green Drinks gathering

Want to meet new people? Want to meet new people over drinks? Want to meet people over drinks while discussing the merits of carbon offsets or finding out your new acquaintance can help you get greener? If you said yes to any of the above (especially the last), then Green Drinks is the networking event for you!

Green Drinks Vancouver usually meets at Steamworks on the 3rd Wednesday of every month. Next month’s event is a July 30th BBQ (details TBD). The best way to be reminded of upcoming events is to join their mailing list: send a request to green_drinks_Vancouver-subscribe [@] topica.com.

Hope to mingle with you at the next Green Drinks shindig!

Categories: Events, Food, Going Green

Why I probably won’t Eat! Vancouver in 2009

19 Comments Karen HamiltonJune 17, 2008

This post should have been up weeks ago. Better late than never.

I had been eagerly awaiting the arrival of Eat! Vancouver months before it opened its doors on May 23rd. The promise of food, wine, and a BBQ cook-off was almost too much to bear. Perhaps my expectations were too high. Perhaps I should have guessed that this event would not have been to my taste. Whatever the case may be, Eat! Vancouver 2008 was a huge disappointment and a waste of my time, money, and excitement. A massive overhaul in event management is needed before I’d consider coming back in 2009.

That being said…it wasn’t an utter failure. Components of the festival are worth a positive mention. Other parts were great in theory but were poorly executed.

Most of it was a gong show.

The Good

I’ve already spoken well of the Marriott Airport Vancouver butter sculpture and Edible Vancouver magazine in an earlier post. Here are other highlights.

BC Chef’s Association: Chocolate and Food Exhibitions

There weren’t a lot of chocolate submissions inside the Chocolate Exhibition pavilion, but that’s okay. The non-chocolate entries were way more impressive. Besides the butter sculpture by the Marriott, a bevvy of professional and amateur artists in the world of culinaria displayed meals that were less a delicacy than a work of art.

The centimetre of shellac that encompassed each perishable dish only leant to the surrealism of the displays.

Jennifer Jones of Malaspina College created an amazing cherry blossom tree sitting atop a glowing green sphere…all out of spun sugar. It could have been venetian glass.

Pulled Tea with Tourism Malaysia

There were an inordinate number of booths manned by Tourism Exotic_Locale_Here. Malaysia, Indonesia, New Zealand, and others represented the cuisine of their homeland, presumably in an effort to book your next vacation for you. In Tourism Malaysia’s case, they flew in Chef Mior to demonstrate his acrobatics as he pulled tea for the crowd. It took me 20 minutes in line to be able to photograph his antics and try a free sample, but in this instance, it was worth it.

The Bad

BBQ and Chili Cookoffs

Nice idea; poor fit. The booths were removed from everything else since the grills had to be outdoors. It was out in the scorching heat. Samples ran out in seconds. There was supposed to be a chili cook-off too, but God knows where and when that was supposed to be. If this had been its own distinct event, like the June 15th Smoke on the Water BBQ competition in Kelowna, I’d be camped out for samples all weekend long.

Welcome Kits of Worthlessness

A huge plastic bag of junkmail was proffered to every visitor. Some people, caught unprepared, might appreciate it as a receptacle for all the brochures that will be thrown at them by exhibitors. To me it was nothing but a waste of paper and plastic. If they were giving out reusable bags or even stuff like Feed 100 Bags at the door, I would have been more likely to tolerate advertising inserts that may have come bundled with it.

No Room to Lay Your Head (or Your Fanny)

You’d think that hosting an event in a 60,000 capacity stadium means plenty of room to rest your tired feet. Unfortunately, stadium seating was unavailable to the masses. You had to try your luck securing a seat at a partially-attended cooking demo or in the crush of people at the food pavilion. During the 2 hours of wandering around, our attempts to have a breather were foiled. Curses!

The Ugly

The Crowds

I detest crowds. I detest line-ups even more. The worst possible thing to ask me to endure is an event with thousands of people all milling about to queue up for something that they can’t even identify from their place in line. The longer the lineup was, the more people wanted to wait for it. Arrrrgh.

We deliberately went on Sunday figuring that we’d be avoiding the Saturday rush. It still felt like we were packed in like sardines. I cannot imagine how it must have been like the day before. Perhaps a little like this?

The Crowd, originally uploaded by wishymom.

Ding! Ding! Ding!

Admission is $14. Since the venue has exclusivity rights with the evil monster that is Ticketmaster, I also paid a hefty “processing” fee to purchase tickets in advance. Sitting in front of my computer at home, I’m thinking that this better be a worthwhile event.

As soon as you enter the mammoth venue, the first thing you see is a ticket booth. Fine; we were forewarned that food samples are extra. We decide to tour the booths first to calculate how much we’d need to spend on tickets.

It wasn’t a happy assessment. Tickets came in $10 or $20 sheets. Booths charged anywhere from 1 ticket to a whopping 8 tickets per sample. In the beer and wine pavilion, they even charged 2 tickets for a wine sampler glass. One could easily spend an additional $40+ for enough food and drink to satiate a growling belly.

No thank you!

For Pete’s sake, pick a revenue strategy and stick to it! Charge a higher admission and ensure that samples are included. Or let the event be free and let exhibitors charge for samples (where revenues are shared with the event organizers). Determine that most of your profits will be through exhibitor fees and sponsorships if you have to. Just don’t get your public pissed off that they’ll have to spend over $50 to wait in 20-minute queues for food samples of highly questionable quality, and then find several leftover tickets in their pockets when they get home!

Bites of Vancouver

Since we’re on the topic of quality, let’s investigate the food pavilion next. What self respecting foodie celebration would populate its food pavilion with cheapo fast food eateries? With the exception of Tequila Kitchen and Cassis, the majority of the booths hawked fare that I could have bought at a dodgy open-air concert. Fast food curry, fast food Tex-Mex, fast food Asian. It was with extreme disappointment that I vacated the Bites of Vancouver Pavilion without a single taste on my lips.

The Verdict

Sigh. This could have been such a great event if it hadn’t been so crowded and if I had gotten to eat more (without feeling like it was burning a hole through my wallet). A hungry Karen makes for a grumpy Karen…and no one likes that.

Will you go to Eat! Vancouver next year? You tell me.

Categories: Events, Food

Filipino Restaurant Series: Sandy’s Cuisine

23 Comments Karen HamiltonJune 11, 2008

Update, January 27, 2009 – The Main Street location of Sandy’s Cuisine is closed. Sandy Daza is currently scouting for a new venue. I’ll update this post with any news.

Do you ever watch the Multicultural Channel? If so, you may already know of Sandy Daza, the man behind Cooking with Sandy Daza. I’ve enjoyed many an episode of his Filipino cooking show, although I prefer not to be told 3 times in a row that the recipe needs a clove of bawang.

The show has been on for years but it was only since our recent patronage of Pho Tan that I stumbled upon Daza’s nearby turo-turo (literally “point-point”) restaurant. [For the uninitiated, turo-turo is a buffet or cafeteria style of offering pre-cooked Filipino food, since most Filipino dishes take several hours to prepare. Almost all the Filipino restaurants in Vancouver offer their food in this manner.]

So it was thusly, fueled by my recent disappointment with Josephine’s, that we finally decided to give Sandy’s Cuisine a try.

To my delight, Sandy Daza was the first person to greet us as we entered the restaurant. I hid my fangirldom enough to order a round of dishes for the family. It’s amazing how almost every dish we ordered had pork in it. It’s not the restaurant’s fault; Filipinos just have an obsession with pig.

My brother wanted the paksiw, which is roasted pork braised in a sweet gravy that many people simply refer to as lechon sauce. I’ve seen this dish homemade using bottled lechon sauce before (and to great result). I’m sure this restaurant did not take this shortcut. It looked spectacularly indulgent and tasted much like that. It was way too sweet for me but my brother enjoyed it.

The adobo was the highlight of my meal. I’d been craving it ever since [eatingclub] Vancouver teased me with their home recipe.

The dish is similar in concept to gai lan in oyster sauce. Instead of gai lan, you get kangkong (water spinach) with its hollow, crunchy stems; instead of oyster sauce, you get tangy adobo sauce, which is usually made with soy, vinegar, and loads of garlic. The dish wasn’t on display as they preferred to cook it to order. Sandy had to mention that the kitchen could make it for us. I was fine with that…fresh food for all! They also had a huge array of choices, much of them more adventurous than what you’d see at a typical Filipino turo-turo, and for that my tummy was grateful.

Their kare-kare, or oxtail stew in a peanut sauce, was better than what most Filipino restaurants offer in Vancouver. No blandness to be found. Actually tastes like it was made with roasted peanut rather than a jar of peanut butter. But it still doesn’t come close to my mother’s home concoction. And even she cheats with peanut butter.

We also ordered the dinakdakan. Somehow, I neglected to photograph it! Bad Karen. Maybe it was because it didn’t look appetizing to me: it was one monotonous pasty colour, kinda like chicken salad. Not at all like the Flickr photo in the link above. It tasted tart and sort of citrusy, with a lot of bursts of onion. Again, not to my taste but enjoyed by my brother and husband.

I was sad that the 4 dishes we chose meant that we had to pass on the lechon kawali (boiled and deep-fried pork belly…can you say yum?!) and the Bicol Express, which I had never tried before. I mentioned as much to Sandy, who was kind enough to give us a small sample of the Bicol Express along with our meal. I regretted not ordering a full serving as soon as the spicy coconut curry made contact with my tongue. If my kangkong craving hadn’t been so extreme, I’d rate this dish as the best of the bunch.

Ah well…that just gives me reason to return to Sandy’s Cuisine and trawl through more of the dishes they have to offer.

Sandy’s Cuisine
4186 Main St | Vancouver
(604) 677-4807