A Taste of Vancouver

Hello there my wonderful readers, thanks for joining me on one of my yummier posts!

This post is going to feature a lot of the food I had in Vancouver. It is in no way holistic of what is available and when scouring my pictures, I’ve realised I didn’t take as many foodie pictures as I would have liked. Too busy eating and also a downside of deciding to blog after you’ve been travelling but anyway let’s get seated and enjoy!

Bubble Tea – now I discovered this back when I visited China in 2012 but just like everything else in China it was more of sample everything using our limited Chinese and see what happens! Since then I haven’t really tried it and when my friends in LA were going crazy over bubble tea or boba as they call it there, I wasn’t too keen. When you go for bubble tea and peruse the menu there’s literally hundreds of options to choose from: teas, milk teas, smoothies, juices and then there’s the extras of various flavoured jellies and tapioca (which is the bubble part of the tea). So basically you pick the flavours you want and hope for the best that they complement each other and I guess I was doing it so wrong to not be in love with the drink but then…I found my flavour. Lychee green tea with lychee jelly. The most refreshing drink ever. My friends looked at me weird and I even looked at myself and thought creative but it works so well together. The sweetness of the lychee offsets the slightly bitter green tea and the jelly gives you something to chew on! It only took a couple of years and Vancouver to get it right but now I’m addicted so if you find bubble tea is a bit bizarre go with your favourite fruit and green tea to start off with and hopefully you’ll get it just right! Already know your choice drink? Let me know in the comments below!

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Sushi – if you had told me before going to Vancouver that it’s known for its sushi I’d give you this squinty confused look. However, I have tasted this sushi and oh my word it’s amazing. Everything from the generous portion size, the presentation and the freshness of its preparation; Vancouver sushi is a must try. You don’t even have to go to a Japanese restaurant to sample sushi in all of its deliciousness, even smaller, mixed Asian restaurants will serve darn good sushi. My friend took me for sushi the first day I arrived and I’m a roll kind of girl, whereas she’s all about the sashimi. Now I can handle raw fish but like with other things so sashimi isn’t my favourite but she insisted that I try a bit of hers because the sashimi were different cuts from Tuna and Salmon. Never one to say no to food, I go for it and I was pleasantly surprised. The Tuna belly is soft and melts in your mouth and the Salmon has way more flavour that I imagined. I mean I’m still a Rainbow/Dragon/ California roll girl (new superhero name) but Vancouver’s sushi game is on point!

Those rolls tho~

Have you ever tried Vegan food, are you vegan or are you up for good tasting food regardless of what it is? Well Meet on Main ticks all those boxes! This cute spot serves up everything you’d expect from a good restaurant but everything is vegan. I don’t eat meat unless it’s Halal so a veggie/vegan place is always a good type of restaurant to hit up because then I too can be baffled at all of my options! Even though I know the place is vegan I’m always wary of dish names or descriptions reading: Chicken burger or coconut bacon…I know you’re trying to make it sound tasty but my anxiety! Haha there’s no need to worry as my friend orders a burger of some kind but me? I order a bowl. It’s basically a salad bowl but because it’s vegan it must contain magical powers right? Also I should mention for some reason my Vancouver trip kind of turned into a health holiday too (whatever that means) so I thought yeah let’s go healthy and give it a bash. The food comes and I eye my friend’s burger, which is massive with a plate of fries but my bowl was no push over either! Large in size and great in depth it’s filled with more veggies and colours I’ve ever seen on one dish. After two very hearty meals, my friend and I were satisfied…until we found ice cream! Teehee! Here’s the address for Meet on Main: 4288 Main St, Vancouver, BC V5V 3P9, Canada – so you can try it out for yourselves!

The veggie burger vs

The Bowl! Who will win? Only you can taste and find out!

And just like everything else in Vancouver, it knows how to do ice cream! At La Casa Gelato International Ice Cream Factory it serves between 218-235 flavours of everything you could possibly imagine! The building is bright pink and on the corner, full of people, and inside is a wonderland of magic and fairy dust. If I were to have a magical princess castle this would definitely be in there! My friend brought me here because she told me they had kimchi ice cream. Now kimchi is a Korean dish that is spicy fermented cabbage mmmmm so obviously that in ice cream form is a must have! Wrong! They didn’t have it, so sad! However, with everything else like curry, roasted garlic, wasabi, popping candy floss, birthday cake, chocolate fudge brownie and a plethora of other flavours my disappointed disappeared. We must have spent a good 20 minutes just going around all the counters and asking for samples and laughing at each other as we tried weird and wonderful flavours. After sampling a lot, we both decided on our actual ice creams and the fun thing about this place is that when you pay, they give you a coloured casino chip so once you’re at your intended flavour, hand the chip over for ice creaaaaam! Now for an important question: are you a cone or a cup person? I used to be a cone person but I was traumatised in Korea, I ordered a fairly large scoop of ice cream on a cone but it wasn’t secured…I went to lick the beautiful chocolate ice cream and it fell off…but for those who don’t know me, I’m actually a ninja so I caught the ice cream scoop, stuck it back on the cone securely and asked the shocked waitress for all the napkins she had haha. So since then I thought it was safer to stick to cups to avoid shock and horror for everyone!  Do you want to try out these funky flavours then follow this address: 1033 Venables St, Vancouver, BC V6A 3R9, Canada.

Which flavour will you dare to try?

Ok so you may have noticed I mention Korean things…a lot. So it would only make sense that Korean food features in this post and my favourite Korean dish is Sundubu 순두부 (how to pronounce it: soon doo boo). This was my comfort food back in South Korea so I take any chance to eat it when I’m travelling because it’s such a feel good dish. So what is it? It’s a soup, you can pick how spicy, and it can either have various meats, seafood or veggies in it. So pick a spice level, a protein and in addition the soup will also have tofu in it. If you’ve never had a Korean meal, then what is usually the case and always if you’re in Korea, is that each meal is accompanied by side dishes! These can be spicy cucumber, pickled onions, kimchi, sweet glass noodles and whatever else the restaurant feels like giving you, each will have their own stock of side dishes and these are to be enjoyed with your rice and soup! Once the soup arrives, bubbling and piping hot, you’ll be given an egg that you crack in there that you can mix to give the soup a creamier taste or left to cook and eat. The stone plate that your rice arrives in will be divided for how many people are at your table but a thin layer will be left in and the waitress will add water to this and after you’ve eaten you can eat the watery rice dish to clean your palate! Sounds like something you want to try? Head down to The House of Tofu Soup at 4563 North Road #1, Burnaby, BC V3N 4J5, Canada.

Wow I can talk about food huh? Good thing I made this a separate post, are you hungry yet or can you stomach a couple more before you have to run out and try these places for yourself? What? You can? I’m ready to book my flight back to Vancouver haha! Another type of food I haven’t had a lot of before Vancouver was Malaysian food and if you haven’t tried it either google the nearest restaurant and go. It’s really amazing, I only had it twice but it’s definitely a favourite for sure! I had two prawn (shrimp) dishes and both of them were vibrant orange, tingling with spice, crunchy with roasted peppers and onions and accompanied with the fluffiest of rice. Ugh I’m hungry…Before coming to Vancouver I’d never have thought that it would hold so many kinds of food but like I’ve mentioned before, people from all over live there so really it shouldn’t be a surprise. I’ve always like the idea of Malaysia and now having tasted the food on the other side of the world in Canada I’m pretty sure the food can only taste better in its home country.

Art you can eat!

Urgh take me back!

Right now for the serious matter, I’m sure some of you will recall I talked about the Fish and Chips in Vancouver so here’s a picture of one I had when I was cycling around Stanley Park. If you take the Sea Wall route this café will be near the end but it’s a good place to sit down, recharge and grab some food! Look for signs for the Tea House and I promise you, you won’t be disappointed! And if you are order another batch…just to be sure 😛

Be wary of the wildlife trying to get in on this!

I’ll wrap up this food edition of Vancouver here and I hope you’ve enjoyed hearing about some of the food that’s on offer in and around city. Let me know which pictures you liked the best and what foods you’d love to try!

Until the next journey, I bid you farewell!