Jan-chan’s Tidbits

On Saturday (June 21) I went to the Dragon Boat Festival down at False Creek with Al and Mike. It was a pretty nice day. We got there around 11:30 am. After a quick tour around the place, we decided to save a few dollars by going to eat hot dogs at Costco. After a yummy lunch of $2.18 each, we head back to the festival ready to check out the exhibits.

We stopped by the GM tent first because Al was really interested at the test drive. He picked a Solstice and Mike picked the Corvette. Here are the pictures of the boys and their ride:

After the test drive they give you a gift card of either $10 gas or Starbucks certificate. I “borrowed” Al’s Starbucks card since well, I wasn’t fortunate enough to test drive, for obvious reasons (like who else would be taking their picture right?!).

Other fun stuff we did was getting the Schick shavers, some green tea drink with snacks and my favourite exhibit is the one from 744 Communication Regiment, Canadian National Defense. They were there to recruit members and they had an army truck there. Check this out!

I felt like a kid when I climbed up there but hey, where else would I get to play with a real gun? Anyways, after watching Wanda’s race, we head down to Gastown to join WuWu at the Jazz Festival. Here are some pictures of 2/3 stages we visited. The first one is by the steam clock.

This one is by Hotel Europe.

Gastown looked so lively that it barely looked like the same place I went to a week ago. The Jazz Festival run through out this week so be sure to check it out if you get a chance. We all went out to Saltlik for dinner after. The three guys all had burgers while I tried the pasta. I also had the chocolate cake for dessert. It’s even better than the lemon tart!

More pictures at my Picasa album.

Yesterday I went to have Father’s Day dinner with Al and his family. We got to Italian Kitchen Restaurant a little earlier than we expected but they were able to accommodate us. After about 3 minutes, we were seated up stairs. On the way up to the 2nd floor, we passed by the open kitchen. It was very neat as this is the first time I’ve seen an open kitchen that is…well, very open. There were no divider or glass, it’s almost like the kitchen you have at home.

It didn’t take long to decide what to get for dinner. We ordered an Antipasto Platter for two to share as the starter. Al’s mom and dad ordered the Father’s Day Platter, Ken ordered a roasted pork tenderloin, while Al and I got the Seafood Platter. All the platters has a minimum order of 2.

While waiting for our food to arrive, I made a comment that there were water marks on the knives. Checking the utensils seems to be one of my favourite thing to do at restaurants lately, which turned out to be a good thing because after I made that comment, we all noticed that some of our knives and forks were dirty. Here’s a picture of my fork:

There were stuff stuck on the tips of the fork. Ugh, I’m not putting that in my mouth. So we had our utensils changed not once, but several times. Even the serving tongs got dried stuff stuck to it. We were not impressed with their dishwasher.

The food arrived and it looked gorgeous! I really liked the idea of the sharing platters. However that’s about all the raves I can give to the food. It looks great but when you eat it, it’s lacking something. What it is lacking? Taste! It seems like they didn’t add any salt to the food or any other spices/flavourings because there is just no taste at all. For example, the wild salmon from the seafood platter. It’s seared perfectly, cooked on the outside and still a bit rare on the inside. But when you bite into it, it doesn’t even have the natural salmon taste (*removed the “fishy taste” since it was confusing people, what I meant was the natural flavor of the salmon*). Even the previously frozen salmon fillets I bought from Save-on-Foods has more flavour than this. And all I used to marinate it with was salt, pepper and some olive oil. I even over cooked it because I can never tell when it’s done. Here are some photos of the dishes:

I was pretty disappointed with the food. From a restaurant that classify itself as a “business-casual” setting I’d expect the food to be better. However, since dessert is made by a pâtissier, I still have hope that the dinner will have a happy ending (for my tummy). And sure enough, I was right. The desserts were fabulous!

I ordered the Flourless Chocolate Cake with Espresso Ice Cream (yes you guessed it, I ordered it just for the ice cream)! Al got the dessert platter which has contains a mini lavender infused creme brulee, raspberry semi-freddo and a wedge of hazel nut and chocolate ganache torte. Ken got the Maple Panna Cotta. All of them were really delicious. I would definitely recommend coming here for the desserts! Here are some mouth watering photos:

On the way out, I decided to take a photo of the washroom. What’s so special about the washroom? Well it’s a washroom for both male and female. I guess to eliminate lineups? Inside you’ll find a toilet AND a urinal, opposite of each other. Technically speaking 2 people can use one washroom at the same time…ok lets not get into that. Anyways, aside from that, they also stock the washroom with mouth wash and toothpicks. I thought that was a very good idea as there were multiple times where I wish I had sneaked in a toothpick with me while I went to the girl’s room.

To see a picture of the washroom and more from Italian Kitchen, visit my Picasa Album.

PS: I’ve left them with a very detailed comment regarding the food as well as the utensils. I’ll let you know if they follow up with me.

Last Friday I went to pick up Al after work and we took a walk in Gas Town while waiting for Ken to join us for dinner. I don’t usually walk along Water Street and shop there but this time I managed to find something interesting which might have me coming back.

John Fluevog Shoes Store

As we were walking back towards the skytrain station, a sentence from a store window caught my eye “A walk in the park soothes the Soul.” So I looked in the window and saw this:

See that back drop in there? I was interested in finding out what it was. The store clerk was nice and told me I could take pictures inside the store. It turned out this is the John Fluevog Shoes store (as you can tell from the title on the mural). What strike me as interesting aside from the mural is the way the store is laid out. The shoes are displayed on very low tables as well as what looks like a log split in half (see one of the pictures). I’ve never seen Fluevog shoes before but I liked a lot of the designs. I’m definitely coming back later on for some shoe shopping.

One more interesting fact about the store is that the space actually was never there before. The store was built on an ally way. You can see the side of the two buildings, with their windows, inside the store. They had used a glass roof to let sunlight which makes the store very bright and welcoming. The design studio is located on the 2nd floor near the back. The sales clerk told me they actually design the shoes right there. Very cool.

saltlik – A Rare Steakhouse

For dinner, we decided to check out this restaurant we passed by a few weeks ago called saltlik. The menu looked reasonably priced so we head in with hungry stomachs. Al ordered a beef soup and crab cakes ($13), I had a double bacon cheese burger with skinny fries ($15) and Ken got steak with truffle infused sauce ($21). I’m not a big fan of burgers, but those skinny fries were calling my name! The twins also ordered some martinis for $7 each. I’d highly recommend the Smiling Geisha. It’s very refreshing with the cucumber juice. Of course I can’t miss dessert. I ordered a lemon tart which was bigger than I had imagined it to be. The meringue was very well made, slightly crispy on the outside but gooey on the inside. For the price and the quality of the food, I’d pick saltlik over Keg or Earls. Here are some of the pictures.

More pictures from saltlik in my Picasa album.

Misc Pictures

On our way to saltlik, we ran into a bunch of bikers which were riding in downtown for the closing of the Bike to Work week. Here are some pictures I managed to take while some sped by us (click to enlarge):

Ok I finally uploaded the Apple store opening clip I took on Saturday, May 24, 2008. As you can see from the video, there were a lot of others filming and taking pictures. Oh and I was standing on tip toes (I was pretty far from the entrance) so certain parts of the clips are shaky.

PS: Loving the new ipod.

After fooling around on the Wii Fit on Friday night, Al and I woke up early in the morning to catch the opening of the Apple Store in Pacific Centre (PC). We heard that the first 1,000 people would get a t-shirt so we “had” to go check it out.

We arrived at 9:40 and the line up was already wrapping itself around the outside of PC. It took us a while to find the end of the line. I made Al stay in line so I can go check out the store as well as take some photos and videos (haven’t processed those yet). Just before the store opens, they dimmed the lights and all the Apple staffs inside started clapping and cheering. People at the front of the line followed and it got pretty loud. A lot of by-passers were wondering what was going on. The light came on at 10:00 and the Apple store is officially in business.

When it was finally out turn, we were greeted by a row of Apple staff cheering and giving hi-fives to people walking in. Al and I got our t-shirts, which consist of an Apple logo and the words Pacific Centre next to it on the front. We did a quick look around then bee lined our way to the ipod nanos. They actually have the red nano at the store! I’ve never seen it anywhere else. So I decided to buy that one to replace my old Sony mp3. Actually Al bought it for me as an anniversary gift (gotta give him credit or he’d hunt me down). The specialist which helped us with our purchase were really friendly and knowledgeable. I even managed to take a picture with him (my tourist-syndrome).

Oh one more neat thing I found is that the staffs wear colour code shirts. There are three colours: Black, Blue and Orange. They have “definitions” of the t-shirt (aka the staff’s role) on the back. Check them out in the pictures (click to enlarge):