White Spot - Richmond Bridgeport

White Spot opened up their newest Richmond location where the old Ikea building used to be along Bridgeport road.  It’s located amongst several other big furniture stores around the area.

This White Spot has a large bar area and is more brighter than some of the other locations we’ve visited in the past.  It was a Wednesday evening when we visited this location so it was rather quiet.

We ordered a fish taco with Cesar salad.  The fish taco comes in a pair with salsa and tartar sauce.

The fish tacos were crispy and similar to other locations.  The fish was cooked well and remained moist inside.  The salad could have used some more sauce though.

Next we ordered the fish and chips (with Spot salad instead).  This was currently on special for $12 along with some other popular White Spot dishes.

The salad veggies were quite fresh.  The house dressing appears to have changed again as this time it was really thick.  The fish batter here is a bit different than other locations.  It’s better because it’s a lighter and fluffier so it was not as filling and did not feel as oily.  The fish was cooked perfectly.

This location was understaffed this evening.  Although there were not a lot of tables, there appeared to be only 1 or 2 servers running around handling the whole restaurant.  Thus, it took a long time to get a hold of our server whenever we needed extra water or napkins. We then had to sit around for a long time waiting for the bill, then waiting for the server to bring the credit card machine.  

We don’t blame the server at all because she was truly busy.  We do hope that management does a better job in arranging enough staff.  Another quick solution is not to seat customers so far apart.  Perhaps close one area, and have everyone sit in one section so the servers don’t have to run around so much.

SFDD gives 3.5 out of 5 Delights.

Boston Pizza - New West Queensborough

We visited Boston Pizza (BP) to try out their $10 lunch specials being promoted since Fall 2016.  I think this is our first time visiting BP.  We arrived just before noon and the restaurant was still quiet.  We were seated promptly.

There was quite a variety to choose from in their $10 half time lunch specials.

The first lunch plate we chose was the roasted Veggie and Pesto flatbread.

This was presented beautifully with a generous amount of fresh toppings.  It was cooked perfectly.  The flat bread was very fluffy as well.  The size is probably equivalent to a small pizza.

The second plate we chose was the Thai chicken wrap paired with a side salad. 

This was not part of the $10 lunch menu but the price was just a couple of dollars more.

There was lots of chicken breast strips inside the wrap.  The lettuce and onions were also quite fresh.  The Thai part of this wrap was the fried crunchy noodles and Thai chili sauce.  This tasted quite good.  The side salad was also quite fresh.

Unfortunately, we found something wrong with the 2nd half of the wrap (hair).  However, they corrected this issue for us right away when we brought this to the attention of the server.

Service was quick and friendly and the food was quite good (except for the hair).  I’m sure this was just an isolated incident.  We still would like to visit BP again to try their other $10 half time choices for lunch.  Probably we would visit another location.

SFDD gives 3 out of 5 Delights.

Storm Crow Alehouse

We found Storm Crow from a couple of Summer Groupon offerings for this pub along West Broadway located just west of Granville street.  This pub boasts to be a nerd friendly pub.  Throughout the pub you can see a sci-fi comic book type of theme from their decorations, posters and collectibles.  At the back of the restaurant there is a giant shelf filled with all the board and card games you can imagine.

They allow patrons to take the games at the table while eating.  This seems like an innovative idea at first since it deviates from the traditional local pub.

We actually went on 2 different occasions, but we’ll blog both visits here at the same time as this place is definitely not worth having separate blog posts.

Our first visit was for a late lunch. It was not too busy and we were seated right away. I would say it’s more of a pub than a restaurant.  There aren’t many tables for eating.  Most of the area was occupied with the the taller bar type tables where you’d have to sit on a stool.

Our first item was the fish and chips. 

The batter looked kind of dark so we are thinking maybe it’s beer batter doing this.  It also had some peppery spices within the batter which you can kind of see in the pic.  It came with a generous serving of tartar sauce.

What turned us off immediately was that the batter was soggy.  No crunch to it at all.  We lifted the fish off the plate and saw it was drowning in a pool of oil. This would happen if the oil is not hot enough when being fried.  We tried to finish it without the batter.  The fries were too dry.

Next is the Crow Burger.  It’s a chicken burger with lettuce, tomato, onions and a pickle.

The chicken breast was way overcooked and was burned as you can see from the black char.  It was not that great.  Fries were kind of dry too.  The bun was a bit hard.  The best part of the burger was the lettuce, tomato and onion which were fresh.

This was not a great lunch, but we had a Groupon so that mitigated our disappointment a bit. 

We went back a couple of weeks later to try their brunch.  It was a Sunday early afternoon and was not busy at all. Only a couple of tables occupied the restaurant.

The first breakfast we ordered was the Crow Classic breakfast.  We chose Chorizo sausage for the meat, and scrambled eggs.

It came with home fries, a side of fruit and some toast.  The sausage was horrible.  It was sliced in half and pan fried till it was dry like cardboard.  The home fries were not that great either.  They were fried like there was no tomorrow.  What’s up with this place overcooking the food?  Scrambled eggs way overcooked.  The best part of this breakfast was the fruit. 

Next we tried the Hillbilly chicken and waffles.

The waffles were cut into finger sized pieces and had a big serving of chicken breasts fingers seasoned Cajun style with some honey mustard for the chicken and some sort of sweet creamy dip for the waffles.  Everything about this was wrong.  The chicken was super dry, again over fried crazily.  The waffles were totally bland. The serving was large, but was difficult to swallow both literally and figuratively.  We won’t say more about this disaster.

Next we ordered the Huevos Rancheros.

It comes with two poached eggs on an English muffin.  It has chili, guacamole, salsa and sour cream served with home fries and fruit salad.  The eggs were both cold.  Not just the yolk, but the egg white was cold too.  We wonder how long the eggs were sitting around.  The home fries were also dry like the above breakfast as they were probably made at the same time.

Storm Crow has a unique setting targeting a unique crowd.  They have a wide selection of beers on tap with daily beer special too.  The servers seemed friendly and attentive at both visits. However, as you can see, the food is far from being up to par.  Everything we had in both of our visits was overcooked or over fried.  Improvements need to be made in the kitchen. 

It’s probably OK to visit here just for a beer and to play board games.

We won’t be returning here in the short run with or without Groupon.

SFDD gives 1.5 out of 5 Delights.

Maui, Hawaii Special – Bubba Gump Shrimp Co

We spent the morning strolling along Front Street at the Lahaina Section of Maui.  There is a lot to see along this street, including this giant tree that branched out endlessly.  We were quite fascinated to have seen this Bubba Gump restaurant as we immediately recognized that it was from the movie Forrest Gump.

Initially when we were walking towards it, we thought it as going to be some sort of a museum dedicated to the movie, but it was definitely a real restaurant.  We found it at the right time because we were hungry and needed a lunch to get our energy back up.

The restaurant is rather large and had seating next to the water. It was not very busy when we got in so we got a table right away.  It felt as if we were on a cruise ship since we had a nice ocean view of the beautiful Maui water.

Our server was friendly and explained to us their system of how customers can flag them down whenever we needed attention.   Apparently we have to flip these license plates on our table to “Stop” them.

We thought this was an interesting idea, but then realized it was a bit annoying to use.

The menu had quite a variety of seafoods, burgers and sandwiches to choose from.  It did not have as many shrimp choices as recited by Bubba Gump in the movie though, but still had a nice selection.

We started with a featured appetizer, which was a fried shrimp tossed in a creamy sweet and chili sauce.  It was served on a small cast iron pan.  There were more than a dozen good sized juicy shrimp.

The sauce they used was very creamy and tasty.  It was not too spicy but had the right balance of heat.

For our mains, we got the fish and chips.

This was quite a large portion for lunch.  The fish was lightly battered over some nicely prepared fries which had some Cajun seasoning on top.  What caught our attention was the paper  used underneath the food had the fictional articles straight out of the Forrest Gump movie.

For our next main, we got the Dixie Fishwich, which was a fish burger.  You can choose between a deep fried version or a charbroiled version.  We went with the charbroiled fish.

The fish was quite a large piece with a slice of cheese melted above it.  There was something not quite right with this, but the server fixed it right away for us with a replacement.  The fish was quite juicy with the right amount of seasoning.  The fries were also fried perfectly.

This was a beautiful location to eat at since you can be right next to the sea and have a nice breeze to keep you cool from the Maui heat.  You can also visit their souvenir shop to pick up lots of different Forrest Gump memorabilia.   We had not known about the existence of Bubba Gump restaurants, but seeing their website shows they have quite a few locations around the US and even in Japan.

If you are a fan of the movie, then this restaurant is a must visit.

SFDD gives 4 out of 5 Delights.

Maui, Hawaii Special - Outback Steakhouse

We  had the opportunity to visit Maui for the first time so we are looking forward to share our restaurant visits with you.  We will start with Outback Steakhouse.  True that this is not quite Hawaiian, but we were craving for some steak that evening and since there was an Outback not too far from where we stayed, we dropped in here for dinner.

This Outback is located in the Kihei section of Maui within a strip mall.  We got here Sunday early evening and were seated promptly.  It was not a full house like other Outbacks that we’ve been to. I guess tourists prefer Hawaiian restaurants instead since it appeared that the other tables were locals.

We started with the loaf of brown table bread which came with some whipped butter.  The bread was cold though.  We recall that the bread at other locations usually comes out warm.  We didn’t care much for it since we were looking forward to our appetizer coming up next.

Outback is famous for their Bloom’ n Onion.  It is a giant onion fried in a light batter and blooms open like a flower’s petals. It comes with a spicy chipotle dipping sauce.  This onion seems smaller than before, but it was still more than enough for the two of us.

You have to be careful though when chomping down on the onion while hungry. It fills you up quite fast due to the oil and the richness of the dip.  Aside from the size of the onion, it tasted consistent like other locations.

One of our meals came with a side salad.  This is also smaller than the ones we had at other locations, what’s going on Maui Outback??  Furthermore, the lettuce leaves had black specks on them throughout. 

We ordered their prime rib.  We usually get medium but from our experience, restaurants seem to overcook it so we asked for medium-rare this time.  It came almost perfect as a medium so it was just what we expected.

The beef was so tender it can almost melt in your mouth.  It was also not to overly fat along the sides.  It was also not overly seasoned as you can taste the natural beef flavors throughout.  It came with mashed potatoes but they were bland as if the kitchen forgot to add in the salt.  What was strange was serving this nice piece of meat on such a small plate.

The second main we ordered was the beef tacos.  It came with 3 rater large pieces with medium well cooked beef.  This was presented quite nicely as they used a special utensil to hold up the 3 tacos.  They were very generous in the amount of beef stuffed in each taco.  It came with some sort of ranch/tarter sauce type of dip and some more of the bland mashed potatoes.

Despite the few hiccups we were still satisfied with the main dishes and the bloom’ n onion.  The server was friendly and got us what we needed in a timely matter.  This location is located in a strip mall with plenty of free parking available.

SFDD gives 3 out of 5 Delights.

The Reef - Main Street

Another Groupon deal brought us here to the Reef on Main St/26th Ave for the first time.  We never tried Caribbean style food before so we were looking forward to try this place out.

Things didn’t start out too well unfortunately.  We got there quite early, 5pm since we figured we’d have a better chance getting a table  with no reservations on a Saturday.  The inside of the restaurant was practically empty, maybe 1 or 2 tables were occupied and we saw the rest of the tables had a “reserved sign’ on it. 

The server looked around then  asked if we wanted to sit in the bar.  We declined and offered to sit outside as we respected the other reservations and didn’t want to eat at the bar.

The Groupon deal gives you a Jerk platter for 2 along with 2 draught beers or wine.  We got the beer  and asked for a ginger ale as a substitute.

Unfortunately we did not get the ginger ale. The server dropped off a Sprite instead.  Before we could say anything the the server already quickly darted away back inside.  No one came out for a while so we just went ahead and settled with the unordered Sprite.

We chose chicken breast and wild salmon for the platter. It comes with rice and coleslaw.

It came on a long plate and some smaller side plates to share.  The rice was not very pleasant because it was very firm, in fact so firm that a lot of the rice was still ‘crunchy’ when you chew on it.  We were not sure if this is how Caribbean rice is supposed to be as it was our first time.  It tasted as if the rice was undercooked.  We asked the server if it is normal for Caribbean rice to have this characteristic and we didn’t get a straight clear answer.

The salmon was overcooked so it was dry.  The chicken breast was fine but we didn’t see any special preparation done on the meat. It was just meat with special sauce on top of it.  The portion was not big at all.

We had to wait upwards of 20-25 minutes before the food came (the restaurant was empty by the way).  What was even more upsetting was that throughout our meal of being there for more than an hour, we hardly saw any customers walk in to get their ‘reserved’ table.    Thus, by the time we paid our bill to leave, we peaked back inside and the restaurant was still empty just like an hour and a half earlier when the server couldn’t give us any of the empty tables.

Service was not pleasant and the food was mediocre.  Even with the Groupon discount, we felt like we over paid.

The best part of the visit was the beer and the mystery Sprite (in lieu of the Ginger Ale).  We certainly will avoid this place for the time being.

SFDD gives 1.5 of of 5 Delights (1 Delight goes to the beer and 0.5 for the Sprite) 
We would have given the 2nd beverage 1 Delight too except we ordered a Ginger Ale

Hamilton Street Grill - Yaletown

Surfing on Groupon we found a good deal at a Yaletown restaurant that we never tried before.  Being downtown, it is pay parking everywhere so we scheduled to go on a day which we can muti-task. We spent the day doing some shopping during the daytime, coffee break, reading and then heading down to Yaletown for dinner without needing to move our car which we parked at an all day discounted lot.

It is a rather upscale atmosphere with friendly service.  It was not too busy when we arrived at 6pm early Saturday evening.  We disliked that we were seated in a very uncomfortable, crowded part of the restaurant.  The tables and chairs were just too close to each other.  My chair had to make contact with the person behind me.

The Groupon deal was a 3 course meal for $59 for 2 people.

We got dinner bread presently quite nicely, but could have used a bit of heat.  It came with some whipped flavoured butter. We think it might be chipotle flavoured.

We also got the R&R cream ale which was off the tap.  I was not aware it was going to be so dark, so I must get more acquainted next time about beers before I order.

We both got the same 3 courses.  We started first with the butternut squash risotto:

It was a good size but we found it was a too bland for our liking.  The risotto was done quite well and was not watery.

Our main course was the certified Angus beef New York steak.  It was a rather large size:

It comes with green beans, carrots and mashed potatoes.  We both opted for medium which was cooked to order.

As for flavour, the steak was quite bland.  It seemed like there wasn’t any seasoning beforehand.  The peppercorn sauce was unusually sweet.  We had to sprinkle some table salt on the side to make it work.  The mashed potatoes were OK, a bit too creamy to a point that it looked like the powder mixed type of mashed potatoes which I hope it wasn’t.  The veggies were tender and well done.

For dessert, we got the flourless chocolate cake with raspberry sauce.  Flourless ??!  Well it was like a brownie. It was good but calling it a cake is a bit misleading.

We also got the Latte creme brulee.  This was done quite well and was very creamy like it should be.  It was a good size for sharing but after a few bites it was already feeling very heavy in our stomachs.

You also get tea or coffee included after your meal.

The atmosphere was nice and the server was friendly.  We did not feel rushed and the food came without a lot of wait time.  The food was a bit bland but not that bad.  It was reasonable for the $59 special pricing, but definitely we would not pay their claimed regular price $108 on a normal day.  A lot of the other customers we noticed were also there for the Groupon deal.

They had other choices as well for this Groupon deal, perhaps if you tried the fish, you can comment on how you liked it.

SFDD gives 3 out of 5 Delights.

White Spot - Burnaby Kensington

After a few bad experiences at the Gilmore White Spot, we decided to venture a bit farther to North Burnaby to try another White Spot location.  This one is located right in the Kensington Strip mall across from the Burnaby North high school. 

We got there early Saturday afternoon and the mall was busy.  We didn’t have to wait too long for a table as the restaurant was not too full.  We were seated near the bar and was surrounded by 6 big TV’s.  It was a cozy and bright area.

We first ordered a spot club house with multigrain bread.  They were quite generous with the turkey meat.  From experience, WS seems to over sauce the sandwiches and burgers so that’s why we opted for the sauces to be on the side.

They also have their own house made dressing which is now more creamier than oily.

What I was surprised with was that the updated the menu and scrapped the Chipotle chicken wrap.  They now only have the Chicken Caesar wrap so that’s what we ordered here. The tortilla was fresh and soft.  The Caesar sauce used was creamy and garlicky like it should be and it had a fair amount of white chicken meat. The endless fries were also great because you can tell they fried it in fresh oil as it was golden in colour. 

We had a young guest with us who got the famous Pirate Pack.  This location served it with both plum and honey mustard dip instead of asking for your choice.  Both dips went well with the large pieces of chicken strips.

The service was quite friendly and we did not have to wait too long for our food.  We also asked for refills for the pop and extra fries without any issues.  We will certainly visit this location again next time we are looking for a White Spot in Burnaby.

SFDD gives 4 out of 5 Delights.