Tag Archives: Cafeteria

Yo, Baby, what’s up?!

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.

Sardine Can

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 $2

terrine 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.

Dining out

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. :D 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 :)

Still alive; still eating :D

So the other night, I was riding Enzo down Main Street, after an unsuccessful hunt for espe handbags. Thought to myself, “Self, wasn’t the new Andrey Durbach/Chris Stewart restaurant supposed to open one of these days?”

Well, my self was correct, and being as there was an empty parking slot right out front of Cafeteria, I hopped off and popped in to say hello to some of my favourite people in the world. I had a chat, took a look around, saw that there was a spot prawn and salmon sashimi dish and Dungeness crab tortelloni on the menu, and called my Main Distractor to say “Let’s EAT!”

I did stop back home to change out of my scooter togs, but we were back, salivating, in an hour.

It’s called Cafeteria, and there are no tablecloths and no printed menus. The menu is instead on a felt board, easily adjusted to suit the whims of the chef, the market and the season. The “starter” small plates (including soup of the day, a Caesar salad, an asparagus and chorizo dish, and mushrooms á la façon du chef) are largely under $10 (the sashimi dish being a worthwhile exception—the Main Distractor just INHALED that baby), and the “mains” are under $20. Options included chicken schnitzel with spaetzle, pot-au-feu, the Dungeness crab tortelloni which just blew us away, red snapper and a duck breast “steak et frites” that looked like it came with polenta fries.

Wines come in at three price levels: $30, $40 and $50, with some available by the glass, and there is also a specials board for wine, ranging from $35 to $70 a bottle when we were there. There is also beer on tap (Red Racer) and Big Rock cider by the bottle (that’s a good BC alternative to Strongbow, by the way; nice and dry).

The space is clean and bright, with enough room between tables for my large posterior to easily enter and exit the banquette (ahem).

I did enjoy eating at Ping’s, but there’s no comparison. The menu is straightforward, concise, and oh, so Durbach. Not kawaii like Ping’s, but I have a limited tolerance for kawaii in relation to food in any event. Conversely, I appear to have an unlimited appetite for restaurants operated by Chris and Andrey. We’ve missed Parkside dreadfully this past year and l’Altro Buca as well.

Cafeteria is on Main at 11th Avenue; they don’t take reservations. They’ll be serving dinner daily from 5:00 pm. You may very well find me and the MD chowing down :D OH and I will probably have an espe handbag, since I ordered a couple online this morning and they’ve already shipped :D

This reads like promo material, doesn’t it?! but I just love it so, I can’t help it.