Palermo’s Pizza (Frozen)

Tonight was another playoff night in Vancouver which means dinner at home in front of the TV.  Instead of ordering pizza like last time we opted to make frozen pizza to save a bit of cash.

We normally stock frozen pizza from Costco since you can normally get a pack of 3 for about $10.  Costco has some nice variety with some stuff not available in other chain supermarkets.

Frozen pizza has sure come a long way in the last twenty years.  I remember back then eating frozen pizzas was like eating a piece of  cardboard.  Nowadays in the freezer you can find much variety such as different flavours, thin crust, rising crust,pocket crust, personal size and so forth.

In our freezer was Palermo’s Chicken Fajita pizza. This is a thin crust pizza with chicken, red onions, fire roasted green peppers and err..sour cream?  It comes packed in threes.

This is how it looks out of the package.

The danger with these thin crusts is that if you don’t know your oven well, you can easily burn the crust if you leave it in too long or if your temperature is too hot.

The pizza is about the size of a medium pizza.  It was able to fit into our table top convection oven.  The instructions says to cook it for 15-20 minutes at 450F. From experience, this would be too much for our oven. Instead, we cooked it at 400F for 15 minutes.  After 15 minutes we monitored and determined to give it another 5 minutes as the cheese had just melted.

So after 20 minutes, we put on our oven gloves and took it out.  Smells really nice.  Look at those big chunks of delicious white meat chicken!

The crust didn’t burn nor was it too crisp.  If we used 450F, it likely would have turned out crunchy.

This was very tasty.  There was so much chicken. It had a touch of spiciness to it.  The good thing about thin crust is that you won’t end up with a thick soggy crust with overcooked toppings. I find that some of the thicker crusts pizzas, such as the rising crusts will overpower the flavour of the toppings.  So most of the time we try to stock thin crusts like this one.

This was simple to make and was not messy to prepare. The sour cream blended in with the cheese but was hardly noticeable.

SFDD gives 4.25 out of 5 Delights.

Bubble World, Richmond

Bubble World is best known for making bubble teas.  They have expanded to have shops all over the lower mainland.  Correct us if we are wrong but we think one of the very first shops is in Granville St. in southwest Vancouver. 

Around summer of 2010, they opened up a new shop in Richmond’s Union Square strip mall.  This mall is located just behind the Canadian Tire on No3 rd. 

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If you haven’t been to this mall before before it is quite odd because you will see that there is like ten different hair salons. There are several restaurants in here as well as an Asian supermarket as well.  The good thing about this mall is that parking is plenty so you won’t have the same problems as going to the Richmond Public Market or Aberdeen Centre.

When we first visited this shop, we were just aiming to pick up some bubble tea.  When we walked through the door we were surprised to see that it was a full service restaurant serving Taiwanese style food too.

Since it opened it, we’ve been here numerous times but never got a chance to record our visits here until now.  It’s been getting more and more busy which is good news for the shop.  We like it since the beginning but we were a bit concerned since the shop was always empty the first few times we visited.  Business seemed to have started picking up during the Fall of 2010.

We were hungry today so we got an appetizer to share.  These are fried chicken knees!  If you haven’t tried them before they are pretty neat.  They are chewy and with a bit of meat fried up in a peppery batter.  Normally chicken knees we seen at other places are fried as well.

 

It seems to use the same type of batter as on their fried pork chops and chicken.  This was $5.

We ordered a simple Taiwanese rice bowl.  This is called meat sauce on rice and only costs $4 and change.  It comes with minced pork, preserved veggies and a marinated hard boiled egg. 

This is a good value dish except it seemed to have shrunk a bit since last year.  This rice dish is always the first to come out in fact it always comes out too quickly, like 2 or 3 minutes after you place the order .  It always comes even before the appetizers! They really should time it to come out with other main dishes.

The other item we got today was the deep fried fish fillet with noodle in soup.  This was $7.  If you like fish, then this dish is for you because it comes with three very large pieces of fish.  Not sure what kind of fish they use though.  Likely it’s something cheap like cod.

Quite good as the breading is not very thick.  It comes with a bowl of tarter sauce as well.  The bowl of noodles came with some shanghai Bok Choy veggies.

Overall bubble world did a good job with their kitchen menu.  The food is inexpensive and they have a good variety in their menu.    One thing we didn’t like is that sometimes they play the music way too loud. Also their window blinds are paper thin so it can’t block out the bright sun going down in the evening.  Seating is plenty and service is quick (except for the rice coming out too quick though).  Normally you wouldn’t have to wait too long to be seated even during the busy time of the day.

SFDD gives 4.8 out of 5 Delights.

See’s Chocolates

See’s candies have been around for as long as I can remember.  My uncle always buys a box for us whenever he visits from the US when we were kids.  Their candies aren’t cheap especially the ones with nuts.  I think they can be compared to Purdy’s in Canada.  I was therefore very excited to receive an Easter special box of See’s chocolates last weekend.  It was nicely wrapped in an Easter yellow paper but I was too excited that I ripped it opened before getting a picture of it.

When I opened the box I was even more excited to see that they were almost all nut themed chocolates!  There were almonds, peanuts, cashews, walnuts covered in chocolate, caramel and even some covered in dark chocolate.

I like See’s because of consistency.  All these years they have tasted the same.  If you are lucky enough to pass by a See’s store while shopping down south, the friendly staff will always treat you to a sample piece of chocolate.  I’m not a fan of all of their chocolates though.  For example, I  don’t like fruit or alcohol themed chocolates (in general).

What I would have liked to see is a menu included in the box describing each piece of chocolate so I know what I am biting into.

SFDD gives 4.75 out of 5. 

Pizza Hut | Panormous |Wingstreet

It was Hockey night in Vancouver with not a lot of time to prepare dinner we opted for take out at Pizza Hut.  We got the Panormous again since we think it is the best deal at Pizza Hut for such a size.  We ordered from our usual Terra Nova location. 

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There was also a deal where you can get 20% the full order if it is your first time ordering online.  Not sure how long this promo is going on for but was there last month when we ordered too.

I had a so-so experience picking up this time because the lady did not know how to operate the gift card machine thing.  Although the pizza was ready for me, I still had to wait an extra five minutes while she pushed all sorts of buttons on her machine.  My pizza was sitting on the counter getting cold. 

As a starter we chose some new chicken sides offered through their wing street menu.  They now have like 10 different choices of flavours and also offers option of bone in or bone out wings.  We chose the spicy BBQ, bone out.  The bone out option is fried and then covered with the sauce.  Also the bone out option uses white meat!  The pieces were large and juicy. Flavour was a tangy BBQ, not too spicy though.

For the pizza, we chose Hawaiian on one side and Mediterranean veggie on the other.  The Hawaiian had a big double layer of cheese which made it extra good.  There is just something about the Pizza Hut cheese that differs from other pizza places.  It seems to be more stringy and stretchy.  The Mediterranean had more toppings including red onions, feta, tomatoes, olives and spinach. 

We finished the wings but had about 5 pieces of pizza left.  The pizza was consistent in quality so no complaints in the preparation of it.  The only downside was just the experience picking up this order this time.

SFDD gives 4.5 out of 5 Delights.

The Old Spaghetti Factory (Richmond, BC)

Wowsers, after 8 months without a single update this site has fallen to #153 on the Uurbanspoon Vancouver ranks!  We haven’t been logging our restaurant visits since we haven’t gone to any new places interesting worth blogging about.  So we just took a break since we spent a lot of time cooking at home anyway.  Anyhow hope we can put up at least one post per week just to keep this blog alive.

So for the first post of 2011, we will talk about TOSF.  After watching a movie at Silvercity on Saturday night, we headed across the street for a late dinner as it was conveniently located close by.

TOSF is located at 14200 Entertainment Blvd, Richmond, BC.  It is on the southeast side of Richmond, kind of like Richmond’s rural area as this is where you can find the farms and new development. 

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This complex has been here since the late 90’s.  Most people come here for the big theatre.  There used to be three theatres in Richmond.  This will be the last one remaining after the Richmond Centre one closes down to be converted into a food court.

TOSF is a popular place for pasta because of value.  The food is not top notch but the dinner menu entrees come with a choice of soup or garden salad, coffee or tea, and ice-cream.  Dinner items range from $10-$20. 

The unlimited sour dough dinner bread is also a bonus.  It’s baked fresh from the oven and comes with garlic whipped butter and plain whipped butter.

We both ordered the meat lasagne with minestrone soup.  This meal was $12.50.  The soup was a bit watery compared to last time.  I expected it to have a bit more veggies and beans.

The lasagne came about 10 minutes later.  It came straight out of the oven with the cheese still bubbling hot.  It is served in an oval bowl like this:

It was a bit soggy and was not very tall.  Overall it was ok considering it was only $12.50.  After the entree we got our choice of tea and ice cream.

Overall the meal was pleasant. We didn’t have to wait too long as we got in pretty late after the movie.  The service was good and the restaurant atmosphere was decent.  If you are looking for authentic Italian pasta you will have to go someplace else.  But if you are looking for a budget mind meal that won’t leave your wallet empty, then this is a place worth visiting.

SFDD gives 3.75 out of 5 Delights for good value.