Update: they made it! woo!
It’s a portable espresso machine, and it looks pretty good. Sturdy, not electric. Yes I have several means of making coffee and espresso, but hey it’s KEWT AND GREEN (or black or red or…).
They need some more backers to make it, so if you love coffee and have a few nickels to rub together, think about it!
The Sardine Can has opened its doors.
Open from 3:00 pm daily, 26 Powell Street.
Sardine Can Opening Menu
We went last night (how could we not, really?).
We started with a glass of red. Total tally was three glasses each, working our way up the list.
Then we had these gorgeous shrimp in spicy garlicky butter. Make sure you get some bread to sop up the juice.
This is the partially eaten rice with paella bits…we didn’t get there till pretty late for us, so we were hungry enough to forget about the camera.
These are the lovely piquillos rellenos, filled with bacalao.
And a special half-and-half serrano and pata negra plate that Chef made for us. I managed not to get a pic of the amazing albondigas, or the tomato and manchego toasts, both of which were unbelievably tasty.
And I completely failed on dessert pics; we had one of each, and a glass of sherry to go with each, and shared all of it.
Fantastic. Everything was great.
It’s tiny (19 seats), you may have to wait a little while. Sit at the bar if you can, and chat with Chefs Andrey and José. But go! don’t let the neighbourhood deter you. They open at 3:00 daily and I may be sneaking out of work early more than once this summer 
So there have been a few things going on since last I wrote.
The MD and I went to Victoria at the last minute last weekend, to say hello to some friends and to visit a friend‘s art show at a gin distillery. We had some fantastic pizza at Prima Strada. Cannot recommend too highly if you’re on the Island. The show was a success (although we didn’t get anything; we still haven’t put up most of the art we already have, and buying more at this point seems a bit silly. But one day I will! I love his stuff!). The weather was pretty good if on the cool side, and the hotel was cheap although the number of hairs stuck to the wall of the shower gave me pause. We’ll spend another $20 next time to save me the shudders.
The night before we went, some douchebag scraped the side of the Bunny pretty badly, oh yay, another massive deductible. No note, of course. How do people live with themselves, wrecking people’s stuff and just fucking off? The side mirror was totally snapped back and even the wheel cover is all scraped, so there’s no way the driver didn’t know they’d hit the car. Maybe they said “Oh, their insurance will cover it, who cares?” Yeah? well, I care, $500 isn’t something that comes so easily that we won’t notice. So, a big, hearty, “FUCK YOU, ASSHOLE,” to all the hit and run drivers out there. I hope karma bites you on the ass a little extra-hard.
Last weekend the Main Distractor and I both had haircuts, and I started the road back to blonde. I am currently sort of orangey-gold, or prawn, depending. Which is fitting since we went to the Spot Prawn Festival on Saturday and ate some lovely fresh little dudes. The lineup to get some to take home was too long, though, so my planned prawn dinner will wait.
Instead we went to Cafeteria because it had been too long and they had shrimp and grits with cheese and bacon on the menu, and it had been calling me, “Deeeeeeeeeeb!” It was delectable. You know, if you follow them on twitter, you can keep up to date with important happenings such as the presence of shrimp and grits with cheese and bacon on the menu.
Spring seems finally to have arrived. Not a moment too soon!
***
The post title is, of course, a Beastie Boys line. Today Maurice Sendak died, and that’s a pity, too, but he was 83 years old, so….it’s nothing like the big glaring pile of awful that came with the news of Adam Yauch’s death last Friday, aged 47. My friend Sandra, whose boyfriend Robert was from Queens, introduced me to the Beastie Boys in 1983-84 or so. We were already listening to Run-DMC and Grandmaster Flash et al., but Sandra and I were about the only people who would race to the dance floor for “Cooky Puss.” (Take me home and eat me, yeah!)
“Licensed to Ill” was just so much awesome punctuated with the dumb jock song…had some great times listening and dancing to that record. Oh my. “Hello Nasty” was a big part of the road trip P. and I took up to the Yukon in 1999, too. Is there anything quite as fun as listening to loud music with the sunroof open, on an empty highway on a beautiful day?
Anyway, I have 100 Beastie Boys songs on my iPod, from the old days to newer stuff, and I listen to them still, all the time. Other people, more eloquent than I, have said all kinds of lovely things about MCA and the difference he made to so many people’s lives. I just know that my life wouldn’t have sounded, or felt, as great as it has all these years, if not for the Beastie Boys and Adam Yauch. Thank you.
I know I talk about the Andrey Durbach/Chris Stewart restaurants a fair bit. It’s because I love eating at them, and have done for some years now. I have celebrated more birthdays at Parkside and Cafeteria than anywhere else, the MD and I ate our wedding dinner at Parkside, and according to my Foursquare whatsit, we’ve been to Cafeteria 19 times since it opened, nearly two years ago now. Pied-à-Terre and La Buca are also favourites, although simple geography tends to keep us on the East Side.
So they’re expanding again, into a tiny little hole in the wall at 26 Powell Street in Gastown, to be called the Sardine Can.
They posted a taste of menus to come earlier this morning.
Menu in theory……..
gambas pil pil — spicy garlic prawns $10
lomo embuchado — dry cured pork loin ham $10
guisado de pulpo — octopus, chorizo and potato casserole $10
albondigas — meatballs in tomato and Rioja wine $10
pa amb tomaquet y manchego — tomato, manchego & olive oil toast $5
arroz la bomba — Spanish rice with paella bits $10
queso cabrales — blue cheese and carrot jam toasts $5
chorizo y jerez — full flavored sausage cooked in sherry $10
piquillos rellenos — imported piquillos filled with salt cod $10
empanadas — beef cheek and potato pastries $10 (for 3)
bocados — mixed olives, spiced almonds, chickpea spread $5
diablos espanoles — warm dates stuffed with bacon and Mahon $5
pan — terra breads sourdough $2terrine de chocolate — chocolate terrine with sea salt and olive oil $5
flan de dulce de leche — baked caramel flan $5
I think it’s fair to say that I will be a customer reasonably soon after they open, later this month.
I am more Irish than anything else (rebellious and all), and like whiskey in many forms at least as much as the next guy, but fake Irishmen and and an excuse to be sloppily inebriated en masse (and crowds, generally, of course) are just not my bag.
So we’re staying in tonight. But we have several appropriate beverages, and I have what smells like a lovely stew on to slowly cook all day. I may even make a pot pie in the end, but recent medical revelations encourage me not to add the extra lush bits, as neither the MD nor myself really needs that crust, much as we love it. Beef, onion, celery, carrot, fingerling potatoes, mixed mushrooms, thyme, bay leaf, pepper, stock, and some tomatoes for brightness. I’ll add peas at the end (we must have our peas!).
So I’ve been an enthusiastic user of Open Table since I found it a few years back. It simplifies making restaurant reservations and saves you from miscommunication and all kinds of good stuff. I have it on my phone now, too, which makes it super easy to find a place to eat while you’re out and about and plans change.
Aside from all that, you get “points” for every reservation you make, so every now and then you get to turn them in and get a cheque which you can use at any restaurant in the system. We ended up with a decent-sized cheque, and decided to go to “Top Chef Canada” Dale MacKay’s Ensemble (we watch a lot of these cooking contest shows, and it’s at least as much my Main Distractor’s fault as mine: he was a much bigger Iron Chef fan than I ever was, when we met).
We went on a Wednesday, hoping for a quiet-ish night, but it wasn’t all that quiet by the time we left. Well, good for him: it’s hard to get bums in seats mid-week in March.
My MD had a Belgian beer and I ploughed right into a bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon. We both started with seafood: he had a Dungeness/pineapple/daikon dish, and I had the lobster iceberg salad. While both were good (I mean, mine had bacon), he definitely won the course: just fantastic flavour, good presentation…I find I really am not all that crazy about lobster. I keep trying it in case my love develops, but next time I’ll just go with my gut and get the crab. Highly recommended.
For the next plate, I had the Foie Gras Sundae. This is a very light mousse piped like whipped cream on top of a fruit gelée and mascarpone, garnished with hazelnuts and balsamic reduction…I should have taken a picture, but it’s really spectacular. My MD had a very creamy risotto with prawns, and even though he is not a massive foie fan, he thought I won that one. Largely because it came with wedges of warm “brioche waffle.” Two thumbs up
Next up: I had the pulled pork sandwich with coleslaw that was served on Top Chef, and the MD has a chicken duo: poached with maitake mushrooms and a red wine reduction, and little bits fried with a dollop of sauce on top. I SO won that course. Hands down. If you are in Vancouver and you want a good sandwich, get thee to Ensemble (or his second restaurant, eTap), and eat this damn sandwich. Great sauce (not too saucy); beautiful slaw (hint of horseradish); and a deep fried pickle that my MD seemed to like even more than the sandwich, which he pronounced as good as any he’d ever had. Cornmeal thin batter or dredge, and I can’t imagine that was a commercial pickle. There was also a bit of pickled daikon that was too sour even for me, and a cube of watermelon with fleur de sel. I am going to have a hard time living up to that sandwich, and my pulled pork ain’t bad.
He had one extra course, roasted cod with Moroccan spice, and he found it perhaps overly subtle. But well cooked, like everything we ate.
For dessert, we shared the apple pie with brown butter ice cream and cider foam and whatnot, and it was delicious. The sugared puff pastry wafer was…well, felt refrigerated. That was the only off note all night, with a whole whack of fussy dishes, so I am not complaining.
Not an every day meal for us, but wow! we will be happy to return when we’re feeling rich, for sure! Service was just right, too: on the ball, helpful. The noise level was a little high for us, but we’re old and cranky like that. It wasn’t horrible, just a bit louder than we like. Dinner with a $70 bottle of wine was $200 before tax/tip, so not insanely expensive (also, good value for money: good portion sizes), but not a cheapie.
Baked Squash
Oh and some bacon. I saw this baked pumpkin recipe in my new Dorie Greenspan cookbook, and I kind of mashed it up with a few other recipes and because my kabocha squash was kind of too small to effectively stuff, I decided to throw it all in the crock pot. Amounts are approximate, because if I’m not baking, that’s pretty much how I roll.
4 slices of bacon, fried, chopped
1 onion, in large dice, sautéed in bacon pan
1 leek, white part, halved lengthwise and sliced, sautéed with onion
3 small potatoes, peeled, chopped, lightly sautéed with onion and leek
Deglaze your pan with white wine vinegar
4 slices slightly stale white bread, cut in about 4 slices in both directions
~4-6 oz gruyère cheese, cubed (a couple of handfuls)
1 cup/half-pint whipping cream
1 cup/half-pint milk (mine was 2%)
1 kabocha squash or smallish pumpkin, peeled, seeded, chopped in large chunks (around 2 lbs)
2 cups chicken bouillon
pepper, thyme and a little nutmeg
So once your bacon, onion, leek and potato are nicely sautéed and the pan’s been deglazed, stir in the bread pieces. Spray a little cooking spray in your crock pot. Line the bottom with about half of your squash, then put in about half of the bread-bacon-veg, then about half of the gruyère cubes, then more bread mixture, then sprinkle the rest of the cheese cubes. Then add the cream, then the milk, then grind some black pepper on top, and add a liberal amount of thyme, and a few pinches of nutmeg. Put the remaining pieces of squash on top, then add the chicken stock and put the lid on.
I ran mine on high for four hours and then on low for an hour or two after that; the last hour or so, I put the lid on ajar so the excess moisture could evaporate. (The stock was to make it OK in the crock pot; the baked versions don’t use stock at all.) The point is that the squash should be nice and tender.
Serve in a bowl, it’s pretty good.
So the Main Distractor and I went to Tales of the Cocktail last year. Did I mention it? maybe not. Not the one in New Orleans, but the little cute mini-one they started doing here.
We had a blast: stayed in the city near the hotel where it was held so we didn’t have to stumble too far home, tried a few new bars, tasted all kinds of different cocktails, made Ramos Gin Fizzes for breakfast.
This year, we decided to go again in spite of not being very flush, because it made a nice break (over Valentine’s Day even), and it’s fun to be a tourist in your own town. Plus of course we didn’t have to fly anywhere or spend a lot on gas. We actually took the bus to our hotel but we downsized the hotel budget, and ate some low budget meals instead of room service, and generally planned a slightly less exuberant version this year.
Then of course the Main Distractor had this horrible cold that kept him home from work for a day, the week before, and we had extremely abridged nights out with it (although we did manage a lovely dinner at Diva at the Met…that was the “Hey I sold my car finally!” dinner). He was coughing and sneezing and blowing, and needing all kinds of sleep, so we were home by 10:00 mostly, in spite of naps. Then one day he slept in and I went to the venue to check things out and taste a few things, and we both managed to go to two seminars out of three we’d signed up for on the second day. But that night (Valentine’s Day, and the awesome Bar Crawl event), my throat started feeling like it was on fire, and so yeah, another early night. We enjoyed our seminars, though, and the few bars we managed to hit (we aimed at six or seven, and managed only three, one of which is where we ate our dinner).
So a few notes.
The Refinery – We had a dinner here, which was pretty good, and the cocktails they came up with worked well with the food. It’s always interesting to do these, because you end up trying things you wouldn’t normally order, and it can expand your horizons.
The Pourhouse – We ate here on Valentine’s Day, and I’ll just warn you that the starters are large, so order wisely. We had a savory to start, and I had the Chopped Salad, which I really enjoyed, but it was so massive that I hadn’t a hope of finishing my main course. Mind you the pound of meat on my plate most likely would have discouraged me even if I’d been starving. Those massive portions just don’t work for me. But everything was tasty. The MD had a steak which he enjoyed greatly, and the mac and cheese is a lovely thing. The cocktails were smart and delicious, but the bartender who was on duty doesn’t shake very long–the MD was not able to get even one photo
Clough Club – A Donnelly Group newcomer, with a very engaging man behind the bar. We liked this place a lot. The drinks look fabulous (the one we tried was incredibly inventive without being precious, and involved cedar smoke), and there’s an interesting menu that will likely lure us back for brunch once we’re healthy again.
The Revel Room – A little piece of Americana apparently staffed exclusively by (charming) Australians, we liked their special cocktail a lot. It’s a lively spot, with another interesting menu, that we will not be averse to trying again another time.
Due to our general illness, we decided to skip the cochon de lait at the Chambar closing lunch event the next day, opting instead to go home early for MOAR SLEEP. I hate being sick on holiday time 
we’re both still sick, too! very annoying.
So I do have some (phone) photos, and I may add them later, but I’m still feeling crappy and I must husband my strength to go to the grocery store.
Maybe one year when finances permit we’ll hit the NOLA TOTC, but being as it’s in July and being as my constitution doesn’t really like New Orleans in July, it’s hard to say. But it would certainly be fun to see it in its native habitat.
So right now it’s Dine Out Vancouver, the Tourism Vancouver answer to Restaurant Week, a way to get bums in seats during the quiet January-February stretch.
It’s a way to try new places, perhaps spendy places you normally wouldn’t go, without spending a ton of money, too; or at least that’s how it started. I heard someone last night describing it and he was working from old information, so I remembered back to when I started going, and it was $25 for 3 courses, and a very affordable way to have a nice evening out.
It’s a little different now. It’s a conundrum for restaurants: they want to participate and get the bums in the seats, but they still want to make money. Fair enough! but in addition to that, they still feel the need to present a menu that represents their strengths and is enticing enough to bring in people who have more than 100 budget options available to them. So after finding dull menus, and phoned-in desserts, and hard to find reservations, the bloom had pretty much gone off the Dine Out rose, for me. I don’t mind paying full price, and I’d rather do that less often than have a meal that isn’t as good as it ought to be just because the place is slammed and they’re not taking the care with each plate that they ought.
That all said, I’ll still go if you twist my arm, even though the meals now range from $28 to $38 at dinner, which, while not unreasonable, kind of escapes my definition of a cheap dinner.
This year, an alternative sprang up to Dine Out: Feast Van, which centres on East Vancouver restaurants, and donates $1 to a food bank for each meal sold, to benefit East Van, which is among the neediest neighbourhoods in the country. So that’s an added reason to go out. The price point varies by restaurant, but so far we’ve seen them at $30- $35 for three courses. So when I heard about that, and that one of our favourite restaurants was participating, I thought well, let’s do that instead, since it gives to a good cause and all!
This week, we ended up having four dinners out: two Dine Outs and two Feast Vans. One more than intended, but that’s OK 
Meal one: Feast Van, Fray on Fraser. This was last Saturday, our first time at a new pub that’s pretty easily accessible to us on the bus. We had their Tuna Niçoise salad (fantastic quality of tuna), I had a burger and he had Wild Mushroom Ravioli, and he had Orange Panna Cotta for dessert, and I can’t remember what I had! LOL. Anyway. Food was good, service uneven, but I think they were unexpectedly slammed. We’ll go another time, and spend less than $30 a head for supper, but with moar drinks, no doubt 
Meal two: Dine Out Vancouver, Chambar. My mother unexpectedly joined us this week, so she also joined us for dinner at Chambar on Wednesday. We had an early supper because of the William Gibson reading that night, but had a very good meal. I started with a beet and fennel salad, she had the duck foie with housemade brioche (which is like a brioche sponge cake, fantastic) ($8 supplement), and he had the venison carpaccio. He was confident that he won the course, but I liked mine just fine. For mains, Mummy and I had mussels and fries: me Congolaise, and she au vin blanc. He had the Arctic Char, and again felt as though he’d won. She was drinking tempranillo and I was drinking Liefman’s draft kriek, which is nice and fresh but not too fruity. He had a succession of beers and ales made by monks and nuns. For dessert she had the meringue and lemon thing, which she was very happy with, and he and I had the chocolate and salt and PRETZEL ICE CREAM. We both won that. It was a good meal, although at $218 including tax and booze for three, not something we can afford to do very often.
Later that night we took a detour to The Union Bar, for our second visit: drink and a Banh Mi for him. We love this place. Arthur Wynne has crafted some fantastic cocktails, and we like the menu too. It’s part of the group that includes The Cascade Lounge, where we go for drinks and quiz night from time to time, and Habit and some other spots. We like the people and we like their spaces. The Union is also participating in Feast Van, and we may head there next week if we can scrape a few dollars together.
The third dinner, added at the last minute when Mummy announced her arrival, was a Dine Out at Hamilton Street Grill. The owner is a friend, and we had a very tasty meal: two $38 dinners and one $28 one, bottle of wine, a beer. Two steaks, one Halibut, a side of bearnaise (cause that’s how I roll) and the cutest shepherd’s pie you ever saw, for a very successful dinner.
Last night capped off a heavy work week (and heavy dining week!) at a Feast Van participant: Cafeteria, our special occasion restaurant. We hadn’t been since New Year’s Eve. Most unusually, we had the same dishes for two courses: the Endive salad and the Teriyaki beef tenderloin. Both were, of course, excellent. For dessert, we had the apple crepes and the peanut butter pie, and shared. A very good dinner. He had two glasses of Hendry pink, and I had most of a glass of Argentinian Cabernet Sauvignon.
I can recommend you try any of these places. Particularly interested in going back to Fray, since they’re easy for us to get to and they have a mid-week quiz night that has a little easier timing for us than Cascade’s. We’ll see. Meanwhile, I’m cooking this weekend
Sorry about that!
I managed the NaNo by the way; I got my words in, at least, although the story is still hanging and there are major cleanups that need to take place before anyone else can read it. It’s a kind of dull but potentially nice kind of story, I guess. I had intended to work on it over the Christmas break, but that didn’t happen.
Christmas, we ended up staying at home and my Units came down for a few days’ visit. We had a tiny tree in a pot that needs to leave my living room very soon, and some good presents and Mr Wolf helped me make a very nice supper
The first weekend after the holidays, I went to Phoenix to meet up with friends, and had a fun and different weekend away from the grey and the rain, yay! it was also the weekend that a Congresswoman was shot in Tucson, which was a teeny bit closer to my location than I might have preferred. I learned even more things about Arizona that I’m not crazy about than I knew before (the whole legal concealed carry had somehow escaped me, before, for one). But I managed to escape with my self intact. Americans’ ability to occasionally cut off their noses to spite their faces, politically, will never make sense to me. Is there really anyone who honestly thinks that the Founding Fathers wanted their words interpreted the way that modern people do, for political gain? or that Thomas Jefferson or Madison or Adams wouldn’t ask for a goddam do-over to edit a few things for clarity if they could see the world as it is today? or that the availability of the kinds of weapons that are currently available doesn’t more often result in terrible consequences for innocent people rather than joyful exercise of rights and freedoms of responsible citizenry?
Not that there’s any way to make all the guns disappear. Not that anyone, including the current administration, is TRYING to make the guns disappear, you terrified fucking rabbits. No, I don’t have a solution. I kind of like the thought of a continuous goddam metal detector along the 49th parallel, though, keep that shit out of my country. Because it’s a little harder, takes a little longer, to legally build a human-killing arsenal, here. And I like it like that.