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.

Zakkushi Charcoal Grill - Vancouver

Zakkushi is a Japanese BBQ bar located on Main and King Edward.  We came here on an early  Thursday evening.  Knowing that this place is usually busy, we booked ahead of time on the same day and had no trouble getting our table as we arrived a few minutes early.

Zakkushi is situated in the same strip mall as the Kung Fu Noodle (formerly Beefy Beef noodle).  The parking lot is not very friendly so it’s better to find street parking nearby instead.

It has a menu posted outside the restaurant with pictures.

Be careful when ordering as you can easily overdo it.  There were only 2 of us and we definitely ordered too much.  Most of the dishes are per skewer.  We just wanted to try it all!

This seemed like a deal as it included a beer, so we ordered this with a pint of Sapporo beer.

It came with this sampler plate:

and also the chef’s pick which was a flavoured egg:

Takoyaki: This was very fresh. It comes with 5 pieces and was not overly oily.

Here are some different skewers that we tried:

I think this is the beef tongue because I recall it had some tasty hot/sour type of horse radish wasabi sauce on the side.

This was the prime rib beef skewer:

Pork skewers:

Chicken Skewer: This was a bit spicy from the pepper.

This is a pork skewer wrapped around some beans.  It was quite neat. Although the meat was not as thick as it looked in the menu picture.

Octopus: It was cooked in a very light batter and included a spicy mayo type dip.  It was very good.

Mixed bowl of soup:

Rice ball: this was very good.  It was like a pan fried piece of rice that is crispy on the outside.  It was flavoured so it was not bland like regular rice.

The servers are all Japanese here.  They shout out each order you place to the kitchen staff, so cover your ears.  The service is really friendly.  Be sure to make reservations before coming.  If you order too much it will be easy to lose track so keep tabs on what you ordered.

SFDD gives 4 out of 5 Delights.

Globe@YVR - The Fairmont Vancouver Airport

Fairmont Vancouver Airport was having a Groupon special where afternoon tea for two with parking with a value of $108 was sold for $54. Since our relatives were visiting, we decided to experience the traditional British afternoon tea together. 

You can see the Fairmont when driving up to the departure level of YVR.  We went there on a Saturday. Their afternoon tea starts from 2pm to 4:30pm. The restaurant was nearly full when we arrived for our appointment at 3:30pm and were seated near the window. The groupon comes with a 2-hour parking coupon which will be given to you at the front counter. Each table is allowed to get one ticket, regardless of the number of groupon you have purchased.

The afternoon tea for two groupon comes with a three tiers of treats such as scones and petite sandwiches, and a choice of loose leaf tea for each person.

There are 11 choices of tea to select from on the menu. The four choices that we picked were Belgian Chocolate Rooibos, Japan Sencha Fukujyu, Berry Berry, and Kea Lani Orange Pineapple.

The Belgian Chocolate Rooibos has a strong scent of cocoa. However, you cannot really taste the cocoa when drinking the tea. The Japan Sencha tea tasted like regular Japanese tea and was not that special. Berry Berry was the best amongst all four tea as the tea has strong berry taste. Kea Lani Orange Pineapple was a bit sour and the taste of orange and pineapple was not obvious.

For the three tiers of treats, the lower layer includes four different kinds of sandwiches:

Black forest ham: The bread of the ham sandwich was very fresh and the pita pocket was also quite tasty.

Mini pita pockets with roasted eggplant and cucumber:

Smoked BC salmon: One of the smoked salmon pieces was not cut and prepared properly as there was still lots of bones inside the fish!

Samosa:

The second layer was the blueberry and lemon scones. They provided clotted cream and strawberry jam on the side. The scones were fresh and not too dry inside.

The top layer has four kinds of desserts.

• chocolate and sour cherry truffle cake
• apricot clafoutis tart
• mango cheesecake
• salted caramel apple cream puff.

None of the top tier desserts were exceptional. They were either too sweet for our taste or too dry as if they were day olds. The crust of the tart was already soft. Overall, it was quite disappointing as I expected high quality desserts at this premium price.  We will not come back again.  Perhaps the fresher desserts are reserved for the non-Groupon customers.

SFDD Gives 2.25 out 4 Delights.

Bubble Waffle Cafe - Richmond

Bubble Cafe is a chain of noodle restaurants across the lower mainland.  The newest location is located in the Lansdowne Mall food court.  They took over a corner unit and we’ve noticed they brought a lot of new foot traffic to the usually quiet food court.

Their popular menu item is the combo noodle with 2 items for around $6.  Before ordering at the till, you can pick up one of their menus at the counter and check off items you want.  Pencils are provided.  There is a wide selection of soups ranging from plain to spicy.  There are also lots of different meats and veggie toppings that you can choose.
Drinks are the typical Hong Kong style, hot or cold that you can choose to add to the combo.  We picked Iced Lemon tea. The lemon tea was a bit sweet for our taste, but I guess next time we’ll have to remember to ask for half sweet.

We didn’t have to wait very long for our orders.  We added $2 to get the bubble waffle with our meal.

On the left is the satay soup with Oil noodle. The right was the parsley egg soup with rice noodle.  The noodles were made al dente so it was good.  The soup base for both came with lots of shredded Chinese cabbage and onions so it filled the bowl right to the top while the soup was not overly salty nor overly MSG’d.
The bubble waffle was slightly crispy on the outside and soft on the inside as it should be.

Lansdowne Mall is a nice location since the parking lot is not jammed pack all the time.  This place was rather the busier of the other food court restaurants.  They do have lots of people working in the kitchen and on the front line so things move efficiently.
The prices here are quite a good value compared to its neighbours where $8-$10 is the norm.
SFDD gives 3.25 out of 4 Delights.

Costco Kirkland Frozen Cheese Pizza

Costco’s own Kirkland house brand is well known for great value and superb quality.  They make everything from prepared food to toilet paper.  This pizza is a regular item we buy because it is flexible allowing us to add or own topping as we wish.

They come in packs of 4, and cost about $10-$12.  It does not have a rising crust, but what stands out is that the crust is quite soft and ‘bready’, unlike other frozen pizzas that have a cardboard like crust.

As you can see, it has so much mozza cheese that you can hardly see the red sauce underneath.  We usually cook it in a small conventional oven at 425F for just a bit over 15 minutes.  The result of this particular pizza was a bit off balance as I did not turn it enough in between.  That’s why it looks so white in the middle while the edges are dark because it matches the position of the heat bars.

There is quite a bit of sauce so you gotta be careful when biting in as it can burn your tongue really bad if you eat it too fast.  The sauce is a bit on the sweeter size.  If you have leftover chicken or happen to have can of pineapple, you can certainly make this extra tasty and savoury by adding those before putting in into you oven.

For meat lovers, Kirkland also has a pepperoni version of these pizzas too for a couple of bucks more.  This certainly is one of my favourite frozen pizzas available.

SFDD gives 4 out of 5 Delights.

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.