VanEats

MontrealFood.com is a great website about cooking and dining in Montreal. The site content (e.g. their restaurant reviews or flavourguy's cool articles on cooking ingredients like Zershk) is wonderful! Just wish it was updated more often. I bet a system like Manila (which is what we use for VanEats) would help!

Arbutus Street between Broadway and 12th is turning into a veritable cafe and restaurant corridor thanks to the arrival of places like the Swedish Bakery Cafe, the wonderful La Petite France and Gramercy Grill.

Barb and I visited the Swedish Bakery Cafe (2668 Arbutus Street, 604 736 3335) for the first time yesterday.

Barb and I tried Patisserie Lebeau's French bread today. It is a steal at $1.75. Light, but substantial texture! Crisp, but chewy crust and not flakey. A definite find! Highly recommended.

As if we needed another reason (in addition to their wonderful baguettes, eclairs, waffles, etc.) to go there! Please check it out. You won't be disappointed.

We went to Wild Rice (117 West Pender, 604 642-2882) Thursday night for Dining Out for Life 2003.

It's a great, beautiful space. Perfect for cocktails and a quick bite.

We went with a large group and tried almost all of the small plates and a few of the larger plates.

I love Chinese food and Chinese influenced food: both traditional and non-traditional! It would be great to have a restaurant like New York's 66 here in Vancouver.

The New York Times preview and review of 66 make me want to try it.

Anybody know of a similar restaurant in Vancouver? If so, please let us know!

QUOTE

That is exactly Mr. Vongerichten's intention.

Yesterday I took the following photo of the Mouse and The Bean's moving poster. I take it this means that they are moving really soon now!

Tonight we enjoyed another excellent half Prosciutto Funghi and half Margherita pizza at Lombardo's.

What can we say that we didn't say before: the pizza at both Lombardo's restaurant and his son's restaurant, Marcello, is to die for. Excellent thin crust and excellent ingredients combine to make delicious pizzas. And it has been that way for many, many years.

Our friends Ron and Loraine love the Golden Great Wall Szechuan Restaurant (B2-525 West Broadway, 604 872-0328). So it didn't take much persuasion for Barb and I to try it out last night with a group of friends.

We were really excited to read Adam's very postive review of the Golden Great Wall.

Today I walked by a new Gelato place on Arbutus. It's at 2636 Arbutus (between 10th and 11th) and it's called LKK Gelato.

Looking forward to trying it because gelato is one of our favourite things. Of course (as always) if you try it out or know anything about it, please let us know!

Here's a picture of their sign:

Tyler Cowen's Guide to Ethnic restaurants in Washington, DC is awesome.

Now I know where to eat the next time I am in DC (I've only been there a couple of times as a kid)! And I doubt, I'll be in DC soon.

Seriously though, his advice such as 'Go for dishes that are "composition-intensive" ' is right on and applicable to Vancouver!

My only quibble is that it's not really a site at all. Just one web page.