When Divino opened on the Drive, I was so excited. I went ito check it out immediately and then never went back. Not because there was anything at all wrong with it – I love their zebrawood tables, bright windows and delectable wine list – but I lived only a block away from it and while I’m sometimes lacking in groceries, I always have wine and cheese. So it’s been a while since I’ve been in. Now that Commercial Drive is a destination for me, I think I’ll be back a lot more.

I settled on a glass of the 2004 Muga Rioja Reserva, a peppery, almost chewy Spanish red that was perfect for an overcast afternoon. To eat, we had a bruscetta sampler plate – five different bruscettas all with different toppings, from caramelized onion and brie to carpaccio – and antipasto. The antipasto, pictured above, was a picnic-like plate of soppressatta, proscuitto, olives, gherkins, peppers, mustard and a litle  jar of salad. It was all very tasty and summery and while the wine would have paired better with red meat, I certainly had no complaints.

Divino Wine Bar
1590 Commercial Drive | Vancouver
(604) 258-0005
www.divinovancouver.com

Degan of Ethnic Eats recently organized a night of food worship at the temple of Café Kathmandu.

In attendance were like-minded Vancouver food lovers: David of Loud Murmurs, Roland of VanEats, Eagranie of The Well-Tempered Chocolatier, and Raul of Hummingbird604 (even though his broken tooth prevented him from partaking in the nibbles – mon pauvre).

I sat back with camera at the ready while the rest of the group ravaged the menu for the choiciest items.

Selection of 3 tipan tipan (small plates), served with hot sauce and chiuraa – a crunchy beaten rice, lightly toasted.

Left: Choilaa, $7. Pork simmered with a distinctively Kathmandu-style spice mix with lemon, garlic, onion, and fresh coriander.

Middle: Aaloo achaar, $6. Chilled sesame-lemon potato salad flavored with timmur (Himalayan peppercorns) and fenugree.

Right: Bhatmaas, $6.  Toasted soybeans, quick-fried with fresh ginger, garlic and chili and garnished with fresh coriander. By far the favourite of the table.  The crunch could wake the dead; the beans felt hollowed out. Never encountered a texture quite like this.

This month features the momo for $9. We ordered a plate each of vegetable and pork steamed dumplings, served with hot sauce, tomato sauce, and cilantro chutney. I made the mistake of dolloping a teaspoon of hot sauce on half a momo. Luckily, this searing off of my tastebuds occurred at the end of the meal, after we all had our fill of Nepali cuisine.

Gently fried soft tofu curry sautéed and cooked with green beans in tomato sauce. $10 for a cereal-bowl serving, spiced at medium.

Khasiko massu for $12 – goat meat in curry sauce whose heat was also set to medium.

Medium spcied daal jhaneko for $10. It’s a lentil puree accented with caramelized onions, ginger and roasted red chili seeds.

I was feeling cold from the winter weather, so I opted for Nepali tea served with milk and steeped with fennel seed.  Reminds me very much of chai, but despite the unlimited refills that I was privy to, my lactose intolerance didn’t trigger. Hooray!

The rest of the group ordered thick and frothy mahee.  Looked like a mango lassi to me.

We exchanged food pleasantries and delved into topics gastronomic and tech well beyond the last bite. Eagranie even provided dessert in the highly appropriate form of mini chocolates.

If you’d like to see what Himalayan food can offer your palate, make sure to come down to Café Kathmandu the next time you are on The Drive.

Café Kathmandu
2779 Commercial Drive | Vancouver
(604) 879-9909
cafekathmandu.com

Lately, I’ve been following the Twitter musings of Mark Prince, founder of CoffeeGeek.com. It’s the site that my food blogging mentor points me to in my quest to educate myself about the world of coffee.

I had the opportunity to hang with Mark at JJ Bean a few days ago, along with 2008 Western Regional Barista Competition winner Sammy Piccolo of Caffe Artigiano. As I had missed out on the regionals a couple weeks back, Sammy and Mark gave me a run-down of the event, complete with iPhone photo sharing and a showing of Sammy’s “barista hands”. It was a pleasure to talk coffee with these two and to observe their easy camaraderie as they gave me a glimpse inside the industry.

Notable take-away: are you curious about the volatile history of coffee? Check out the 2002 documentary Black Coffee, as I will soon do. [Sammy was featured in the 2006 documentary Black Gold, which I will also check out in the near future.]

As our coffee meetup drew to a close and Sammy took his leave, Mark and I moved over to a nearby El Salvadorean restaurant for an early dinner. Topics shifted to food, restaurants, wine, and photography as we delighted in tacos with homemade chorizo and a selection of pupusas.

At $2.75 per pupusa and warm service from the husband-and-wife proprietors, I am definitely paying a repeat visit to Rinconcito.

Many thanks to Sammy & Mark for an educational coffee break and again to Mark for introducing me to another great food stop along the Drive.

Rinconcito Salvadoreno Restaurant
2062 Commercial Drive | Vancouver
(604) 879-2600

]]> http://tinybites.ca/2008/08/24/an-evening-of-food-and-photography-with-a-coffee-geek/feed/ 4 http://tinybites.ca/2008/06/26/misadventures-at-the-brave-bull-steakcamp-2008/ http://tinybites.ca/2008/06/26/misadventures-at-the-brave-bull-steakcamp-2008/#comments Thu, 26 Jun 2008 08:58:31 +0000 Karen Hamilton http://tinybites.ca/?p=73 The challenge was issued. Foodies around the city responded to the call. SteakCamp 2008 was born.

Our purpose: to dine and deliberate on The Brave Bull’s House of Steaks (known as The Brave Bull or simply The Bull).

Read on for a recap of this hallowed gathering and a review of the restaurant that Buzz Bishop was too scared to try.

Lessons of the interior: don’t judge a book by its cover

Ooh. What’s this?

Beaded curtains, Chinese lanterns, white strings of lights, flowers on every table? It was not at all the seedy, unkempt mess that I was expecting from the peeling paint of the storefront. Everything did look dated and admittedly run down, but it was not without its charm. You could even call it derelicte.

The Company

Fearless SteakCamp organizer Raul and myself were joined by fellows from the blogosphere and the twittering community. We whiled away the substantial wait for dinner with topics ranging from the interwebby to the philosophical. A few even managed to live-Twitter the event.

The Food

For what it is, this diner serves good food. Simply made, simply served. It felt like a weeknight meal at my grandmother’s house. The presentation was a little too in-flight meal meets TV dinner, but it was probably healthier than the Michelinas boxes and pizza pockets that get nuked in many a microwave on a Monday night.

The soups that started most meals were heartily enjoyed. The beef barley was a particular hit. The clam chowder, which was neither the white New England nor the red Manhattan, was coloured somewhere in between (but was nevertheless fulfilling).

One adventurous diner ordered the fried scallops. It met his hunger pangs as he waited for his main, but he said it wasn’t particularly memorable.

The $8.95 sirloin steak got mixed reviews. Some said it was good considering the price. Others barely touched their plate. Most still ate it all.

I ordered the $8.95 prime rib, which was also not a bad deal. Usually sauces are a welcome addition to my plate, but in this case I was hoping that the plethora of gravy wasn’t there to mask the quality of the meat. It was still tasty enough that I ate the bulk of it. I would have polished off the prime rib in its entirety if my small stomach could have afforded the room (this site isn’t called Tiny Bites for nothing).

A quick out-of-10 poll was taken halfway into the meal to gauge the reactions of the table. Food quality averaged out to about 7/10 (the lowest being 4 and the highest at 8). Everyone was also quick to qualify their rating with “for what it is….”.

The Service

Linda, the proprietress of The Brave Bull, is just about the most adorable hostess in East Vancouver. I have to say that her hospitality really made the evening for me. The way she mothered the table and told us what sides we’d each be getting evoked comparisons to my own sweetly strict grandmother.

To fully assess the level of service we experienced, let’s return to the beginning.

My husband and I arrived 10 minutes early and were greeted warmly by Linda. Unfortunately, we got her all atwitter when we announced that we were the early arrivals of a minimum party of 10. She fretted at the unexpected onslaught of diners for a Monday evening, but seated us at a long table in a quiet corner of the restaurant to await the rest of the crowd.

The remainder of the evening had Linda managing incoming traffic (warning regulars of an extended wait) and catering to our large table’s needs. I felt a little bad considering that it was just her and her husband manning the entire place. The food did take an hour to get to us, and it did trickle in in spurts, but we were forewarned and were well stocked with Coke and Kokanee.

As the bill arrived, Linda did something that established, fru-fru restaurants should take note of: she proactively assigned each diner a number and costed each diner’s meal (by hand on a notepad, I might add) so that we could manage the food bill per person. Drinks were tallied separately by type. How a 70-year-old woman can manage to split a bill individually when a Squirrel-equipped 3-star restaurant cannot is beyond my comprehension.

The Verdict

Did I enjoy the Bull? Yes, very much. Would I go there again? No. But let me qualify this no.

1. If you had a husband like mine, you wouldn’t eat steak at any restaurant, let alone this one. My husband is a fantastic cook and a fanatic when it comes to steak. Our Weber grill is put to good use in the summer; when it’s too chill to grill, he takes it to the stovetop and makes steak concoctions that puts places like Morton’s to shame. When you’re this spoiled at home, you wouldn’t feel the need to go elsewhere either.
2. There are diners within walking distance of our home. We are downtown folk. For convenience, we do own a car, but it often collects dust in our garage for weeks before family obligations force us out of our 10 km walking radius. Since our apartment is situated within a 5-minute walk from mom-and-pop establishments like Homer Cafe and The Templeton, going to an institution like The Brave Bull would take second place (or is it 3rd?) to the ones that we can foot it to.
3. My lola is an awesome cook too. Perhaps the reason I enjoyed my meal so much is that it was so reminiscent of what my grandmother used to make for me in high school. Granted, the meat was not prime rib and the preparation had a Filipino flair, but you get the gist. If I were to ever crave a homey dinner with a grandmotherly presence, I’m blessed to still be able to satisfy that craving by visiting family.

I wish everyone reading this could be similarly equipped with a gourmet of a spouse or a grandmother that could run a restaurant out of her kitchen. If this is not the case for you, and you do want to bask in the old-school homestyle dining that is the Bull, please do check it out. It’s worth the journey at least once.

Will you venture out to The Brave Bull?

Have you already dined at The Brave Bull? Were you at SteakCamp and have something to add? Has this post piqued your curiosity enough to try it now? Inquiring minds want to know. Leave a comment with your thoughts.

Brave Bull’s House of Steaks
1298 E Hastings St | Vancouver
(604) 253-4728

Don’t forget to check out these other great reviews of the Bull:

• Raul’s recap of SteakCamp and The Brave Bull
• Viaduct braves The Brave Bull

My friends indulged my wish to snap shots of the place that will host SteakCamp 2008. This place looks even scarier in the dark!

Is all this news to you? Read up on it:

• Buzz Bishop’s Challenge
• My reaction on Tiny Bites
• Raul’s response: SteakCamp!
• Rastin’s Facebook Event Invite
• Buzz Bishop discusses The Brave Bull on 95Crave

SteakCamp details

WHEN – Monday June 23rd, 2008 at 6:00pm
WHERE – The Brave Bull
WHY – To answer Buzz Bishop’s challenge to Raul (http://hummingbird604.com), Karen (http://tinybites.ca) and restaurant reviewers in Vancouver.

The Brave Bull’s House of Steaks
1298 E Hastings St, Vancouver
Tel: 604-253-4728

If you are interested in tagging along, please click the links above to RSVP to Raul. I already know what to order…$8.95 prime rib, here I come!