Fresh Local Wild Seafood Cart

The food cart thing in Vancouver is still in it's infancy and already there are early favorites and the good ones are starting to generate some buzz. Fresh Local Wild has generated enough buzz that Guy Fieri from the Food Network made a visit on his first trip to Vancouver. I'm looking forward to seeing the episode.

I'm a big fan of food trucks at least the ones that do it right. Doing it right means fresh food, local food and organic ingredients. Holy crap someone should name a truck fresh local and organic! Close but then again since this truck is a seafood joint the wild fits better.

I had the fried oyster sandwich, crunchy oyster nuggets soft, supple, briny on the inside, nice. I'm glad I made it in time, I got the last one, two persons after me they ran out of all sandwiches, 90 tuna melts today, wow. It seams the tuna melt is the truck specialty, ok, I know what I 'm having next time. BTW, the fries are also outstanding, fresh cut, crispy, totally flavorful; my recommendation is to mix the sriracha in with your ketchup, my new favorite, who knew?

I like this cart; I'm going to add it to my favorites for carts. If you like places like Go Fish at Granville island or Red Fish Blue Fish in Victoria, then I don't think you'll be disappointed with Fresh Local Wild. Check them out at the corner of Burrard and Hastings

Peaceful Restaurant - No Thousand Chili Chicken

Peaceful has two restaurant locations in Vancouver I visited the

Davie Street

location.

I am here because of the “buzz”: Van Mags things to eat 2011 – Thousand Chilli Chicken.

And also a few months ago Guy Fieri from Food Networks Diners Drive-ins and Dives visited Vancouver and Peaceful was one of the restaurants he visited. I don’t know what he ate?  The show will view in the New Year.

First impressions; Peaceful is a nice no frills family restaurant. The kitchen is open so that you can view the chefs pull handmade paste. I love that. If you’ve never had fresh pasta this way go quickly, there is nothing better on a cold wet Vancouver day then fresh pulled home-made pasta in broth.

General Tsao's Chicken

Today I am here for the Thousand Chilli Chicken. But crap it’s not on the lunch menu. I asked for it anyway and I had a slight language problem with the server. I got a bit flustered, had to order by number off the menu, had chicken on the mind and ended up ordering General Tsao’s Chicken instead.

 It was pretty good; the chicken was supper tender, the sauce was sweat and yet a bit on the salty side. The broccoli had a fantastic pineapplely flavour.  But damn it, it wasn’t the thousand chilli chicken. And just to rub it, I was sitting at the window counter and smack in front of my face was the takeout menu with Item C1: Thousand Chilli Chicken staring me right in the face.

C1: Sichuan Thousand Chilli Chicken

Peaceful Beef Rolls: Five Spice beef in crispy green onion flat bread and sweat hiosin sauce. Good finger food. This is all about the sweet hiosin sauce for me, tastily but I found the flatbread a bit greasy. Still an OK dish.

Peaceful Beef Rolls

I can see why Triple D came around. The restaurant is nice family run type of joint, you get a nice show from the pulled pasta and the food is pretty good.

But me, I’m just going to obsess about not having the Thousand Chilli Chicken.

I'll be back!

Sushi Q a cold wet winters dish

 Sushi Q is a tiny tiny maybe 15 seat sushi joint on Dunbar, so small that the one and only restroom is in the back through the kitchen. The sushi master guy was butchering tuna and I am also happy to report that the kitchen was very clean.

Perhaps all restrooms should be through the kitchen? Then again, maybe not (I might never go back to some of my favorite restaurants).

I here specifically for the spice Miso chowder, Van Mags best places to eat and drink in Vancouver. I thought I'd throw in the Dunbar roll as well, what the hell, when in Rome;

avocado, shrimp, crab, orange row and cucumber roll with a smoked salmon jacket. Tasty but I think the salmon on the outside overpowers everything. Yes I am correct,  I just took the smoked salmon off one piece and it tasted much nicer, the subtle sweetness of the shrimp and crab really came through.

The Miso Chowder: Shrimp like stock broth, not nearly as spicy or salty as I expected but it does have a beautiful sweetness. The more I eat the impact of the flavour grows and grows, nice surprise. Killer thick noodles, this is a cold wet Vancouver fall and winter dish extraordinaire.

I'll be back on a cold grey Vancouver day. Is it Van Mags best places to eat in Vancouver worthy?

I'm not sure, it is very good but you should go and decide for yourself, it’s worth a trip.

Refeul very disappointing

One of my favorite Vancouver burgers is from Refeul.

One of my favorite Vancouver Pizzas is from Campagnolo, Refeuls sister restaurant.

So it pains me to say that my last experience at Refeul was far, very far, from stellar.

Let me explain:

3:30 on a sunny Saturday my wife and I are starving we haven't had lunch so we decide to step into Refeul for a quick bite.

We are the only ones in the restaurant when we sit down; two other tables are occupied when we leave an hour later. It’s the dead zone between lunch and dinner service.

We order 4 appies. We ask that they be delivered all together.

10 minutes later Kate's salad arrives. It's a good looking salad and its tasty I only had one bite because Kate loves the beets. So I just watched her eat and then somewhere around her last mouthful of salad 8-10 minutes later my clams showed up.

The clams were very average; but the grilled sourdough was really good which made the dipping in the end very tasty. Kate doesn't like Clams so she watched me eat through the clams for about 10 minutes until the salmon and egg dish arrived.

Then I got the privilege of watching Kate eat for about 5 minutes until I got concerned and asked the server if perhaps my octopus salad is coming at all. Yes it's on the way...5 min later it arrived just as Kate took the last bite of salmon. So now Kate is watching me eat octopus.

The Octopus was not my favorite, I've had the octopus a Campagnolo were it was excellent, here the greens were just a bit strangely flavored and wilted.

In the end the food was very mediocre and the service egregious. If this was my first trip to Refeul I'd never go back and I would recommend that you stay far far away from this pace. Luckily I know they can do and have done better. Refeul please do better.

Oh, and the cherry on top of the bad service Saturday was on the way out when I noticed the fresh board advertizing in season fresh heirloom tomatoes. I would have loved some tomatoes if only my server told me about them. I walk away more disgusted then I was a few steps previous.