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.

Insadong Korean BBQ - Coquitlam

Insadong is in the heart of Korean town of the North Road neighborhood.  We got there just after 5pm on Saturday after a nice 2 hour hike, so we were very hungry.  The restaurant was not very full as we were early.

The restaurant feels very big as you can see  multiple levels with private rooms available for parties.

The usual Korean cold appetizer dishes were served.  They are usually refillable if you ask.

We started with a Korean seafood pancake. It is a small size but had lots of filling.  One seafood item missing was oyster.  It was about the size of a small pizza.  It was still sizzling on the cast iron hot plate when it came so the bottom had a nice crisp by the time we picked it up to eat.

We ordered the hot stone beef rice.  It also came with s small bowl of soup.  It had a nice balance of flavors for the veggies and a good amount of beef.

We also shared this pork bone soup.  They placed the pot right on the gas grill to keep it hot.  It had lots of pork bone pieces to chew on.  What we found unusual were the giant pieces of potatoes.  It would have been nice if the cut it into smaller pieces.  The potatoes were bland as it did not have a chance to soak up the soup flavour.  The soup was good though.

The soup also comes with 2 bowls of rice.  If we had known, we would not have ordered the beef stone pot rice.

The service was reasonably good since we went early we did not have to wait too long for the food to arrive.  The parking lot is not very pleasant though because it is in a shared strip mall so spaces are limited.  It would be better to find street parking on the side streets if you don't mind walking.

SFDD gives 4 out of 5 Delights.

Fondway Cafe - Burnaby

Fondway Cafe is located footsteps away from the Metrotown Skytrain station.  It is opposite of the Metropolis/Station Square on the other side of the train tracks.  You can find Fondway on the ground floor of a newly developed Condo.

We visited on a Friday morning just after it opened.  It was not too busy with just a few tables of students doing their studying.

The inside is quite modern looking with a wall of different teas for sale as you see below.  They also have cute little tables that have a clock face on it.

We ordered their signature grass jelly milk.  It is served in what look like a glass flower vase.  I was concerned it may be too sweet so I asked for half sweet.

The drink was not that eventful for $4.50.  To me it was a glass of sweetened milk with glass jelly sunk below.  Grass jelly is just like a tea flavored Jell-O in case you were wondering about it.

Next is the ice latte.  Our friend suggested it was not very deep in coffee flavour.  Furthermore it was not cold enough to be an iced drink.

Aside from drinks, Fondway also has a small selection of pastries.  I was hoping to try their matcha cake as seen on other reviews, however they did not have it this morning.  Maybe next time.

Service was friendly. Perhaps we chose the wrong drinks to try this time.  We hope to be back in the near future to try their pastries.

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.

Fraser Park - Burnaby

We headed out to the industrial neighbourhood of South Burnaby to try out Fraser Park after reading other bloggers talking about their famous German Breakfast.  It is located on the south side of Marine Way on Byrne Road  around the neighbourhood of the factories and auto mechanic’s garages.

We got there at about 11:30am on Saturday morning and the restaurant was packed.  It was our first time their so we just stood at the entrance waiting to be seated.  After a couple of minutes one of the servers told us it was self service.  It turns out that you order and pay at the counter first, then sit any where you wish.

You get a number to take back with you so the server knows where to bring the food when it is ready.

From seeing the pictures on the blogs, we knew the German breakfast was going to be a big serving.  So we shared one German breakfast and also ordered a regular meatless breakfast.

The German breakfast above comes with toast, watermelon, German style bacon, sausage, ham, pan fried potatoes, potato cake, and scrambled eggs.  It was huge!  The meats are very unique.  We never had it before but it was really good.  We would say the bacon looks like Canadian style bacon.  The scrambled eggs had cheese and some sweet yellow peppers inside.  The potato cake was also very good.  It was mashed together with some other veggie ingredients inside.  You’d have to have a big appetite to finish this yourself.

Here is the meatless breakfast.  It has 2 eggs made to order (over hard), pan fried potatoes, potato cake, toast and a wedge of watermelon.  If you want meat, you just have to add a couple of bucks.  But this was a good enough size since we shared the meats from the German breakfast.

After the food came, one of the servers offered us home made hot sauce.  It was a nice addition for the potatoes.  It was not too spicy.  A bit on the sweet side too.  I would say it is very similar to the XO sauce you get at some Chinese restaurants.

Prices were very good.  The German Breakfast was less than $10 while the meatless of course was even less.  We also got bottomless coffee.  It is also self serve and they had 2 flavours to choose from.

Fraser Park isn’t a fancy place to hang out, it’s a straight forward greasy spoon for you to have a quick and cheap meal but made special with some German style ingredients.  It is a bit out of the way for us, but I think Fraser Park gets a lot of business from the local factories and garages in the neighbourhood.

Parking is plenty in the lot and also on the street.  The food was a bit slow though but it was busy so we didn’t mind the wait seeing that it was a weekend for us and we didn’t have to rush back to work anyway.

SFDD gives 3.75 out of 4 Delights.

Hanwoori Korean Restaurant - Burnaby

Hanwoori is a popular Korean restaurant located east of Metrotropolis.  It is unusually next to a couple of car repair shops.  We’ve been here a couple of times before so we are aware they have relatively large portions.  Although this time there were 3 of us, we were still conservative with our order since didn’t want to take any food back to our car as we had planned to see the movie Interstellar afterwards.  Surely the car would stink up with food after sitting for 3 to 4 hours.

It seems very common that Korean restaurants will have a little button on the table that works like a doorbell for you to push when you need to call the server to your table.

The appetizer sides were small compared to Potter’s Garden; however they allow one refill.  What we noticed is that the amount and type of appetizers served is quite inconsistent from our previous visits.  I’m pretty sure we got seaweed, bean sprouts and broccoli too.  Why only 3 dishes this time?

This is the seafood pancake that comes on a hot stone plate.  It is quite large even for 3 people. It came sizzling and is about the size of a medium pizza.  It has oysters, shrimp, various veggies and green onion cooked in an egg type batter.  The pancake had a light crisp to it on the outside.  The main ingredients are well balanced in terms of quantity and flavour.

The only main dish we got was the JapChea. JapChea are potato noodles which are very chewy.  IT comes with ground meat and veggies.  This JapChea was a bit on the salty side but overall was OK.  The noodles were very chewy which we like.

We went for lunch this time and it was not too busy.  The service was efficient and friendly.  Portions are large but rather pricey.  The inconsistency of the appetizer plates was a bit annoying seeing that other tables got additional dishes too. 

We prefer Potter’s Garden because they have options for smaller portions available.  Hanwoori will better fit larger parties as you can order more to share.  But with 2 or 3 people, you won’t be able to order too much to try in the same sitting unless you want to take stuff home to re-heat the next day.

SFDD gives 3 out of 4 Delights.

Potter's Garden Korean BBQ – Burnaby

There are a couple of popular Korean restaurants in the South Burnaby Neighbourhood, just about across the street from each other.  Potter’s garden is located in a strip mall that has a furniture store as well as a Korean supermarket.

We went in the middle of the week for lunch and the place was not too busy probably because of the holiday season.  We had a party of 3 and were seated promptly.  The first thing we noticed about the menu is that a lot of the dishes come in 2 sizes, medium and large.  This was great as other Korean restaurants we’ve been to usually serves very large portions so it was difficult to order more to share.  This time, at least we were able to get 3 lunch size dishes.

We were served 3 different appetizers below.  We got sweet flavoured potatoes, kimchi and bean sprouts.  You are allowed one refill for the appetizers.  The potatoes were very sweet so it was not popular at our table.  The kimchi and bean sprouts were standard.  We would have preferred the kimchi to be a tad more spicier.

 

The first dish arriving was the Kimchi – Jigae.  It was still boiling hot in the bowl when it arrived. This is a soup based dish with lots of kimchi, veggies and tofu in the pot.  It came with a bowl of rice and scissors for you to cut down the veggies.  This would be a great dish for those who like spicy food.

Next came the rice in stone pots.  We chose the original Bibimbab which has beef, veggies, mushrooms over rice.

The next rice dish was similar to the above except the stone pot was hot with a sunny side up egg.  The egg was quite runny because the purpose is for you to mix it into the hot rice and stone pot to let it cook a bit more. It was $3 more but had a bigger portion of beef. 

The beef was nicely tender on both.  They also came with a small bowl of soup on the side.

Service was attentive and the food was very fresh.  This place had a wide variety of items to try, and having a smaller lunch size portion available was a big advantage if you want to try more without breaking the bank.

SFDD gives 3.5 out of 4 Delights.

White Spot – Burnaby/Gilmore

Whenever bringing out our niece & nephew, they always choose White Spot because of their excitement for the Pirate Pack. We went to the one on the corner of Lougheed Highway and Gilmore.  This location has the drive-In feature where you can eat in your car like they did way back when.  I didn’t see too many people doing that this afternoon.

It was a Monday afternoon during the holiday break so the restaurant was quite busy when we got there at 2:30pm.  We had to wait about 10 minutes for our table.  The first thing we noticed while walking to our table was the stuffiness and warmth of the restaurant.  It was not very confortable at all.  I was not sure if their HVAC was broken or if it was because they didn’t bother putting down the blinds to block out the sun. So far, so not good.

The place must be understaffed because we had to wait a while just to order some water.  At other locations we’ve been to, it’s usually the person taking you to the table who also immediately takes your drink orders at the same time.  Perhaps it’s only the Richmond Centre location that goes this extra mile?  We were seated in a corner booth right next to some windows so it was very hot and stuffy.  We closed the blinds ourselves and it helped a bit.

We ordered a strawberry milkshake first.

Now, again we can compare with other locations.  This was a frugal milkshake because we usually get an extra 2/3 in the the milkshake jug.  This place had the nerve to bring us the jug with just 1/4 of extra milkshake inside!  Furthermore, there were hardly any strawberry flavour. So far, so not good.

We ordered the chipotle chicken wrap with Cesar salad.  The good news is that White Spot no longer charges extra if you want to substitute the fries with another side.

I usually ask for extra chipotle sauce on the side whenever eating this wrap at other White Spot locations.  This was a very difficult request at this location.  The server suggested I had to pay extra if I want Chipotle on the side.  I was not very happy to hear that.  She asked if I want the Triple O sauce instead as there was no charge.  We reminded the waitress that my wrap already comes with chipotle sauce so it was reasonable to ask for extra.  She gave it some thought, hesitated and then agreed to reluctantly bring me a “little bit” as if she was doing us a big favour.  The bacon inside was way to crispy. So far so not good. 

Here comes the Pirate Packs.  Kids love these because they are kept busy filling out the puzzles on the order sheet.  The kids choose what they want by circling their preferences.  The kids at our table chose the chicken nuggets, pop, fries and plum dipping sauce.

The drinks are served in a plastic take out cups to minimize the kid mishaps.

The Pirate Packs come in a cardboard pirate ship and a piece of coin chocolate.  If you haven’t noticed, the plum dipping sauce is missing.  We ordered 2 of these and both did not have the plum dipping sauce so we had to wave down the waitress to get it. As mentioned, they were understaffed so it took a bit of waiting before we were able to flag her down.  So far, so not good.  Was she going to say that it cost $0.50 for the plum sauce too!!!  Gladly she admitted the error and brought the plum sauce.

Next up is the BC Chicken burger with spot salad.

The burger was consistent with just the right amount of Triple O sauce.  The bacon was not overly crispy and the chicken retained nice moisture.  The salad was fresh and their special dressing was nicely prepared.  We always wondered what kind of dressing is used for their spot salad.  It is like a green, creamy balsamic type of vinaigrette.  Just make sure it comes creamy.  At some locations, they may give you a cup of what looks to be like clear oil. When that happens, you need to remind your server to mix it a bit or ask them to scoop up from the bottom of their dressing can to avoid just scooping you oil.

At last, the ice cream for the Pirate Packs:

Well they got the ice cream right.

There needs to be some changes made in this location, first to cool down the temperature inside the restaurant. It was hotter than summer time!  Service was sub par with the long waits for water, overly crispy bacon, missing dipping sauce, and the threat of extra charges for chipotle sauce for my chipotle chicken wrap…

We chose this location just for convenience as it was close to the kids.  We certainly won’t be coming back to this particular location due to the poor management of facilities, floor service, and kitchen food output.  We thought franchisees need to follow the same formula.  Something is missing here.

SFDD gives 1.75 out of 4 Delights.