VanEats

Here's some edible art by Barb:

Delicious profiteroles with chocolate sauce! Almost as good as La Petite France's croquembouche!

We've always wanted to try Ajisai in Kerrisdale by London Drugs but have never gotten around to it.

But after reading SaabKen's mini review of Ajisai, Shhh, a sushi gem in Kerrisdale, we are definitely going to visit it soon!

Thanks for sending us the mini-review Ken! We welcome further contributions from our readers (requires free membership).

It's been a long time coming but The Mouse & The Bean's new location at 207 West Hastings finally opened on May 1, 2003. Congrats!

I will be trying it out for lunch soon and will give a full report.

For Barb's birthday, her parents treated us to dinner at Seasons in the Park. Besides the wonderful view of the sun setting over the gorgeous city of Vancouver, the highlight of the evening was Pan Seared Medallions of Caribou in a sour cherry frangelico demi reduction for $29. Not cheap by any means but oh so tasty. The meat was tender, not fatty yet somehow flavourful and did not taste gamey. And it was complemented beautifully by the cherry and truffle oil reduction. Superb.

[EDITORS NOTE: We covered the Splendid Table back in August 2002. However: a) it's worth featuring again (thanks Ken!) and b) it's easy to overlook because the search engine on our site is unreliable (you have to click twice to get it to work: first on Search and then on "Search Again". Otherwise, the results will be inaccurate. Sorry for the confusion. We hope to have the search engine working better soon!

For Jian & Walter's wedding, I wanted to design a cake that would reflect both Walter's German roots and Jian's Chinese roots. I decided to make a cake with 2 flavours: chocolate cake layered with chocolate ganache and almond cake layered with apricot buttercream.

Barb made an awesome wedding cake for our friends' wedding last Saturday. Like our wedding cake, it featured multiple layers with a retro coconut frosting. Unlike our cake, it featured a double happiness motif in honor of the bride! Our cake was pure retro and had no Chinese accoutrements!

My favourite layer was an almond cake with apricot butter cream. Absolutely delicious. I am currently lobbying for Barb to reveal the secrets behind this cake and to bake it again for me soon! And of course, the chocolate layer with ganache was excellent too!

Joi Ito's awesome photos and video of his snapping turtle eating experience in Japan are compelling and fascinating even if you are not a turtle fan like myself. Check it out to get a glimpse of the wonderful Japanese food culture.

Instead of watching the first three periods of the Canucks game on Friday night, Barb and I went to Eat Vancouver 2003. We were twice lucky! Not only did we have some great food moments at Eat Vancouver, we also managed to make it home in time to watch Canucks win in overtime live!

If you like food (which luckily most people do), the show is definitely worth visiting. Admission is $9 but you can find coupons everywhere to reduce it to $7 per person as we did.