Fatboy’s Honolulu – Special

After going snorkeling at Hanauma Bay, we were so hungry as it was already way past lunch time.  We drove to a nearby strip mall about 5 minutes away and found this place called Fatboy’s which serves some authentic Hawaiian food.

It’s not a fancy looking place.  It’s simple looking with a big menu behind the counter and some dated furniture.  You order and pay at the counter and pick up the food when ready.

We started with some Hawaiian Sun pop, which seems to be the popular drink around here as we see it all over the place. 

For our first dish, we ordered Hawaiian style noodles called Saimin.

It’s like a cross between a Japanese, Chinese and Hawaiian style dish so it was quite interesting.  It’s served in a Chinese style bowl.  We didn’t get a picture of the side of the bowl but it’s the red and green one with Chinese characters you usually see at the Westernized Chinese restaurants.

The noodles are medium thick, not quite like Japanese ramen.  It is served in a simple clear soup base (chicken soup maybe) with some spam and also some of that Japanese artificial seafood thingy which you normally get in a Japanese ramen bowl.  This was not a complex noodle but did the job in filling us up.

Next we ordered another popular dish in Hawaii called the Loco Moco.  It’s a big hamburger steak, with an egg covered with gravy over rice.

It’s usually served with a sunny side up egg that’s almost raw, but because we have weak stomachs, we asked for the egg to be well done.  It’s served with a small side of salad.  The hamburger steak was quite tasty and went well with the gravy and rice.  What is strange is that they served this on a paper plate so it kind of felt like we were eating in a food court.

Fatboy’s is a simple restaurant where you can get some well known Hawaiian dishes. Their menu is diverse and prices are not out of the ordinary.  Service here was quick and straight forward, but not exactly full service as you order and pick up food yourself.

SFDD gives 3.5 out of 5 Delights.

Yama Cafe – East Vancouver

Yama Cafe is located on Hastings near Victoria Drive.  We were here last year when it was called “Basho”.  It seems to look exactly the same, also run by Japanese staff. Other food blogs have indicated that there was a change in ownership.

Yama is a small cozy coffee shop with tables, a counter by the window and also a small sofa on one corner.   They have their menu on a chalkboard up on the wall:

Yama also has daily specials written on separate boards behind the counter.  They also have a variety of Japanese inspired bakeries up on the counter.  Most appear to be small bite sized cookies.

I was alone and ordered the matcha latte.  You can have it sweetened or unsweetened.  I went for half sweet to be safe.

I was quite surprised by the large size of the latte.  It only comes in one size and is served in a very nice Japanese tea cup which actually looks more like a bowl since it was quite wide.  The staff took their time to make it look really pretty with the latte art.

At first I thought it was just the top layer that was dark green with matcha powder.  However as I sipped through it,  I realized the dark green was consistent throughout.   This is truly a matcha latte as it was deep with green tea flavour throughout.

It was not too busy when I arrived late Friday afternoon and I was in no hurry.  It did take a while for the drink to be prepared but it was worth waiting for.  It got a little bit busier later on and I noticed people had to wait longer for their hand crafted drinks.

The service was good and the drink was superb.  We will try their baked goods next time.  Be forewarned that if you drop in while busy, be prepared to wait as they will take time to make the drinks, but know it will be worth waiting for.

SFDD gives 4 out of 5 Delights. 

Gorilla In The Café–Honolulu Special

We were delighted to visit Honolulu for a short end of summer trip.  We were blessed with wonderful weather during our stay.   We visited a couple of coffee shops including this one called Gorilla in the Café which had a name that really caught our attention.

 

It is located on the busy Waikiki strip.  Since it was afternoon, it was not that busy when we arrived for a coffee break.  On the counter they show what sort of coffee beans are used:

We ordered a house brewed coffee.

It was piping hot and had a deep bold flavour to it without being too bitter nor too acidic. It had the right balance.

We also ordered one of their specialty fruity iced teas :

It was served with light ice and was a good drink to have to cool down after a long walk.

There is actually no seating inside the coffee shop, but a few tables have been set up outside.  It was preferable to be sitting outside anyway since it was a nice day and most importantly since we were in Hawaii!

Service was good and we have no problem coming back next time if we can be back in Honolulu again hopefully sooner than later.

SFDD gives 3.5 out of 5 Delights.

Chatime–East Hastings

Chatime is a chain of bubble tea beverage shops that recently started popping up around the lower mainland.  They opened up a shop on East Hastings near Renfrew.  This is at the old Radio Shack location, if you’ve been in Vancouver long enough, then you’d know what we mean.

They have quite a bit of seating inside. It was not too busy Friday afternoon when we arrived and there was no line up so we took our time browsing the menu.

We ordered a mango smoothie with pearls. This is a large.

The pearls were chewy with slight sweetness to it.  We were not able to see if they actually put in fresh mangoes into the smoothie or if it was a pre mixed powder.  Maybe Chatime can clarify if they read this.

This one is a mango slush:

It’s like a Slurpee with pearls.  They didn’t get it right the first time since they forgot to put in pearls.  When we addressed it, they simply opened up the cup and poured it into another cup with pearls. 

It didn’t look very pleasant the way they corrected this since the girl just popped the top open with a fork, and pealed away the plastic with her bare hands to pour into another cup.  The store was not even busy and the cup clearly shows “+pearls”, so staff must have been dozing when they prepared our drinks.

There is a tiny parking lot at this location but it’s shared with other tenants of this small strip mall.  Better to park on the street if you want to try this location.

The drinks took a long time to be ready and they got one of the drinks wrong even with hardly any customers waiting.  I can’t imagine how they can handle a long line up.  Perhaps they need more staffing or training to get things right and operating smoothly.  We hope to see improvements next time we visit.

SFDD gives 2.5 out of 5 Delights.

Pallet Coffee Roasters–Kitsilano Vancouver

We wandered into Pallet for a morning coffee break while in the neighborhood.  This is a very high end looking coffee shop with nicely decorated wooden tables. 

It was quite busy on this Friday morning but we managed to find some seats in the large natural wood table.  The shop is very bright with big windows letting in natural light.  It is also very spacious.  They’ve got an indoor living wall growing too.

 

The baristas here are pros when it comes down to latte art.  We ordered a mocha:

Very detailed oriented art with even a heart shape floating on the left side.  They roast their own beans and with this mocha, it had a great balance, not too bitter.

We also ordered a brewed coffee.

The brewed coffee had the perfect taste that I like. Strong, but not bitter and with just the right amount of acidity.

They only have one size for most of their drinks.  They are equivalent to a medium size if compared to other shops.

We also ordered a salted chocolate cookie. 

The cookie was still hot like it just came out of the oven.  It was superb, not overly sweet.  It was large enough for the two of us to share.

After our cookie we wanted to get some water at their really neat looking self serve water station:

Surfing their website we learned there are actually 2 other stores in Vancouver.  We were quite satisfied with our visit and look forward to returning to this location as well as visiting their other outlets in East Vancouver.

SFDD gives 4.5 out of 5 Delights.

Chez Christophe Chocolaterie Patisserie

Chez Christophe is located in the Burnaby Hastings area just east of Willingdon.  It’s a cozy little neighborhood with newer condos built in the surrounding area. 

They got a small outdoor seating area, however the morning sun was just too bright this morning.  Too bad they didn’t have table umbrellas up for the tables.  Luckily they had plenty of comfortable seating indoors including a few at the counter if you want to chat with the baristas.

We got here on a weekend morning just when it opened.  Just when you walk in you will smell the aroma of  freshly baked goods.This place serves some high end looking French style pastries including different croissants macaroons, beverages, and of course, chocolates!

Pastry Selection:

Chocolate Selection:

Maybe it was still too early but there wasn’t a big selection of macaroons so no pictures unfortunately.

We ordered a small latte.  The barista as you can see is quite an expert with the latte art.

The drink itself was not strong enough for my liking though.  It didn’t have enough acidity for me.  I still enjoy the ones served at Caffe Artigiano.

This is their basil berry tea.  It’s quite a fresh looking iced tea. It’s unsweetened and really does have many pieces of basil inside.

We also ordered this apple pastry.  It is like a cross between an apple strudel and a croissant.

It was very crispy on the outside, just like the the croissants you get in Paris.  The apple filling inside was also very tasty and was not overly sweet.

The service here was very good and the prices were very reasonable.  Too bad it was too early in the morning to try more of the other good looking sweets and pastries.  Definitely we will be interested to come back at a later date to try more.

SFDD gives 4 out of 5 Delights.

Dairy Queen - Richmond

Richmond used to have several Dairy Queens around but over the years they all just disappeared for different reasons.  We were very happy that a new Dairy Queen opened up along Francis and No 3 road.

Actually it’s not a new DQ, it was moved here from the Cooney road location since we recognized the owner.

This place is quite busy, maybe because it’s the only DQ in Richmond.  We went in the evening around 7pm to try out their $6/$7 meals and there was quite a line up throughout our stay.

We ordered the $6 deluxe cheeseburger meals which came with a soft drink, fries and a small sundae.  You can pay a little more to upgrade your sundae to a Blizzard.

The burgers are made to order and contained fresh lettuce and a slice of tomato.  The burger patty seems to be a leaner than other places so it was not dripping with oil like other fast food burgers. The beef was lightly seasoned.

The fries were very golden with a nice crisp outside, and it was soft and fluffy inside.  It was like the frying oil used was freshly changed.

Finally the best part of DQ, here are the strawberry and chocolate sundaes.  Although they were a ‘small’ size, it is actually quite big and is a nice treat to have after the burger and fries.

The food and ice cream were good, but I think this location is understaffed.  The owner/manager was the only person handling the orders at the till. She was also the one delivering the food to the tables.  Hence, the wait in line was very long and others were also getting impatient. 

We asked for the ice cream for ‘later’, so we had to line up again to get the ice cream which took almost 15 minutes due to the line up.

The bottleneck was at the till, because once you place your order, the food didn’t take that long to come out as the kitchen and ice cream stations were staffed with enough people.

We hope this DQ location improves the queuing system next time we visit as the wait was rather unreasonable.

SFDD gives 3.5 out of 5 Delights.

Basho Cafe - E. Vancouver

Basho is a small coffee shop located along East Hastings between Victoria and Nanaimo.  It is run by Japanese people specializing in Japanese inspired drinks and desserts.  It’s a rather small shop that seats about 10-15 people.

 

They have quite a few different matcha drinks and desserts which caught our attention.  We started with a matcha latte.  They use real matcha which we saw them manually grinded before being made into a latte.

As you can see it is quite green, with nice latte art.  The matcha powder was still coarse and not yet diluted so it got stuck in our teeth while drinking. Not sure if this is normal or not.

Next we got the special ice matcha drink with coffee jelly.  This was quite delicious and was not overly full of ice (like what they do at Starbucks).  The coffee jelly was like a Jell-O type texture and complimented well with the green tea latte.

We added a few mini baked items to go with our drinks.  They were mostly cookies that we ordered and was quite fresh and not overly sweet.

 

Overall the service was friendly and the shop was not overly crowded so the baristas were able to take their time to prepare our drinks perfectly.

SFDD gives 4 out of 5 Delights.

Damien's Belgian Waffle Factory - Steveston

Wow we are long overdue for a post update.  Had a busy summer but hope to have more regular updates in the next couple of weeks.

We tried Damien’s for the first time after passing by it many times.  They are located near the Steveston Village, but at the quieter section without all the tourists.  They specialize in many flavors of Belgian Waffles, some flavors which are Japanese inspired since one of the owners is Japanese.

Inside the shop is nice and cozy with bright citrus colors.  There are a few small tables available if you want to sit and enjoy the waffle.

The shop also smells very nice from the freshly baked goods coming out of the oven.  They have a menu with many choices available, including breakfast combos, teas and coffee.

The different Belgium waffles are displayed in the case.  Not all flavors were available but we managed to find 2 that looked delicious.  The owner heated up the waffles for us in the oven.

They were served in these stylish bags mimicking animal prints.

This one is the green tea flavored Belgium waffle.

It was not too sweet and you can taste a hint of the matcha used to make the waffle.

This one is called the Yuzu flavored waffle.  It is citrus flavored so you can taste the orange and some lemon zest in the waffle.  It was sweeter than the matcha.

Both waffles were very fresh despite being reheated it was very soft inside.  They were not too sweet so it was to our liking.  This waffle shop is located in a small strip mall with a few parking spaces.  There is some street parking available but we can imagine those spots will be hard to find on weekends. 

We hope to return soon to try out their different flavors.

SFDD gives 4 out of 5 Delights.