Popular coffee shop on South Main is now haute cuisine

Mark Laba
Province

In the always shifting landscape of Main Street, where thrift-store-attired skate punks are now donning $300 jeans and fancypants merchandisers are selling hip to the disposable-income dispossessed, some fine joints have been swept away in the storm. Monsoon restaurant is gone and, next door to it, the popular Soma coffee shop disappeared only to reinvent itself as a wine bar and bistro-style facility down the street.

Now, soma can refer to a hallucinogenic mushroom or plant, a drug in Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World or the trendy abbreviated name condo developers use to describe the South Main area. You can see it emblazoned on the worksite hoarding: Eat, Live, Work, Play, Change Your Socks, Floss Your Teeth, blah, blah, blah.

I met up with The Brain to check out the new Soma digs.

“Y’know,” The Brain said. “If Aldous Huxley had lived in Vancouver, his version of soma would’ve been pot and a latte.”

“I’m surprised the two haven’t been combined yet into one refreshing drink.”

“Could call it a Hempaccino.”

The Brain and I slunk into this low-ceilinged grotto of cool with its long bar, mod-ish furnishings with slightly retro-Danish curvature and styling, low-lighting in the evening and a wall-sized chalkboard where daily specials, including charcuterie items and wines, are written up.

The Brain began with the daily-soup special. Thai curried soup with roasted carrot, yam and ginger ($7) was an aromatic adventure and a gullet galvanizer on a cold night. I took on the Tijuana Caesar ($9), which bore no resemblance to the original created by Caesar Cardini at his Tijuana restaurant. Sometimes less is more and this Caesar was a tad overdressed, I thought at first, but the whole shlimazel grew on me. Grilled romaine, pumpkin seeds and pecorino-romano cheese, smoked-paprika dressing and hand-rolled cumin-seed crouton is a nifty bit of verbiage, and the contrasting textures and spicy finish of the smoked-paprika dressing was exciting.

The grilled romaine could’ve been a bit crisper.

For our mains, The Brain again opted for a daily special of seafood pappardelle with prawns, scallops and halibut cheeks finished with a citrus- chipotle sauce ($16). The egg noodles were wide enough to be a belt for a ventriloquist’s dummy and, judging by the way The Brain sucked back the dish, I ascertained that it was excellent.

The Brain further slapped his synapses silly with a couple of good wine picks from the eclectic list.

I set my sights on the free-range chicken breast stuffed with goat cheese, cranberry and walnut brioche, plunked in a pool of chipotle-cumin butter sauce and a nicely constructed and very savoury puck of roasted root-veggie hash on the side ($19). This dish was excellent, from the slightly sweet and smoky sauce to the stuffing and, although I usually don’t like cranberries, I gobbled these up.

It’s a small but adventurous menu, from the braised lamb-shank in saffron-date sauce with double-smoked bacon and Macedonian feta mash to the fricassee of duck, to the pound of P.E.I. mussels steamed with fennel sausage, roasted tomato, caramelized onion and Sun God Wheat Ale. My only quibble is that some portions, I felt, were small for the price, although other dishes seemed fine. I mentioned this to The Brain, who was enjoying an after-dinner scotch from the esoteric selection.

“Purely psychosomatic,” he told me. “It’s all in the brain.”

REVIEW

Soma

Where: 151East 8th Ave., Vancouver

Payment/reservations: Major credit cards, 604-630-7502

Drinks: Fully licensed

Hours: 9 a.m.–midnight every day

© The Vancouver Province 2007

 

Deuce, North Vancouver’s newest, hippest eatery, doesn’t get too clever or carried away with tapas — and they sure are good

Mia Stainsby
Sun

It’s a dash of cool on North Vancouver’s Lonsdale Ave. Deuce is a smart looker in a contemporary, straight-edged, minimalist way, although a little too starkly naked for my liking.

The feeling-est part of the room is splashed across the back wall where a crimson graphic swirl captures an in-joke. Owner Rob Gietl had a morning meeting with the designer after a late-night celebrating a friend’s 50th; the designer doodled the look of Gietl’s morning-after eye and that became became the feature wall. Just don’t stare too long — it does a Reveen number on you.

Gietl is familiar with hip — his other restaurant, Capone’s, though not minimal or modern, sits amid fashion-conscious Yaletown.

appreciate not having to drive across a bridge for a downtown feel.

Deuce has been open for about three months now and locals are figuring it out although hipsters might have found the grandparenty couple in the lounge one evening a bit of a buzz-kill. But it’s been busy enough even on the weekday evenings we visited.

To send out hip and au courant signals, one must serve tapas and that’s what chef Courtney Burham does. He wisely doesn’t get too clever and carried away in this cusp of cool project. The dishes are tweaked and styled comfort food, good for sharing. On the dinner menu, he shows esthetic control with a beet carpaccio and fennel salad, beautifully presented paper- thin and vibrantly hued.

I loved the crab risotto fritters, presented in little spoons; lamb chops with double bacon, lentils, cranberry and cardamom were juicy and delicious; the seared scallops with crispy pancetta, vegetarian caviar and vanilla mango purée shows he’s good with seafood — it was fresh and cooked just to the brink of doneness; salmon corndogs were hokey but good and they really resembled corndogs.

“Bottle Rockets” are marinated prawns wrapped in phyllo and cooked on skewers; they’re good, but one should be careful not to plunge the pointy end of the skewer down the throat while struggling for prawns. Remove the skewered prawns on to a plate, then eat.

The Surf and Turf, at $16 and the most expensive dish, didn’t excite, nor did the beef steak lasagne. The latter has the promise of down-home comfort food but it was preciously deconstructed and lacklustre.

Duck ‘Twofer,’ a duo of smoked duck with blackcurrant port poached pears, gooseberries and chives and shredded duck confit with caramelized apple, roasted onions, goat cheese herb tart sounds like explosions of flavour but the five pieces were diminished by their diminutiveness. The oomph went missing.

I like what they’ve done with the desserts. They come in small $2.50 sized pieces so you can order all five and share, or, sensibly, just have a nibble. The Parfait Duo, a layered affair in a cappuccino cup was the most memorable.

Deuce is also open for lunch and brunch.

– – –

DEUCE

Overall: 3 1/2

Food: 3 1/2

Ambience: 3 1/2

Service: 3 1/2

1617 Lonsdale Ave., North Vancouver, www.deucerestaurant.ca

Open 7 days a week for lunch and dinner (brunch on weekends)

Restaurant visits are conducted anonymously and interviews are done by phone. Restaurants are rated out of five stars.

 

© The Vancouver Sun 2007

 

Giving us a daily offering

Mia Stainsby
Sun

It’s got style and it’s got grace. From the chaste white room with twinkling crystal chandeliers to the pretty pastries arrayed in a neat display; from the toothsome savouries to the polite and helpful staff, T Room Bakery and Kitchenware is a charmer.

Half of the room is bakery/cafe and the other half is a kitchen store with affordable cooking tools and cookware. In warmer times of the year, it’s really worth walking to the back of the room and out the door to the designer patio.

The woman behind it is Isabel Li, a Taiwanese woman who came to Canada by way of Brazil and it shows in her accent. It also explains why amid the variety of baking and pastries, you’ll find pao de queijo, a Brazilian bread made with cassava flour.

She and her sister once ran a local business making custom cakes until it got to be too much. Li decided to continue her passion and went to the Pacific Institute of Culinary Arts, although instructors wondered if she needed the training.

She’s always changing her offerings so you can’t describe her menu of selections; leading up to Halloween, there were lots of seasonal items as well as lavender shortbread, matcha cookies, biscotti, a version of Thomas Haas’ chocolate sparkle cookies and French pastries. Her half-spherical jiggly gelatin moulds are lovely.

Earlier, she had a champagne jelly with berries; more recently, it’s a Seville orange marmalade jelly with Grand Marnier. It’s a great way to have your French pastry and eat it too, without the butter, cream or even wheat.

She has about half a dozen panini, a couple of salads and soups daily. They, too, change. The chicken salad panini sold me on the sandwich front — moist, chunky marinated chicken breast with hits of cumin, celery, marinated cucumber, pine nuts and a flavoured mayo. The pastries, while not up to the exquisite standards of Ganache in Yaletown or Thomas Haas in North Van, are quite lovely.

Her sandwiches are $6.95 and French pastries are about $4 to $5.

There are some 60 different teas and if you want to splurge and do a girly afternoon tea, call ahead for a 2 p.m. or 4 p.m. seating. It costs $26 and $16 for the “Teeny” isn’t tinier, it’s just kid-friendly.

– – –

T ROOM BAKERY

4445 10th Ave., 604-677-2579.

Open 7 days week, 8 a.m. to 6 p.m.

 

© The Vancouver Sun 2007

 

Burritos, etc. are good but try something different

Mark Laba
Province

MI MEXICO

Where: 3853 Hastings St., Burnaby

Payment/reservations: Major credit cards, 604-677-1602

Drinks: Fully licensed

Hours: 11 a.m.-2 p.m. lunch; 5 p.m.-9 p.m. dinner; Tues.-Sun., closed Mon.

– – –

It was another beautiful Vancouver day. Beautiful if you were a snail or slug, anyway. But X-Man and I were headed to a Mexican shindig out Burnaby way to throw a little sunshine into our dismal surroundings. I’d heard the view was great from this place on the second floor of a row of non-descript stores and, from the outside looking up, this joint appeared to be no great shakes but the inside told a different story.

Tropical hues, Mexican-themed artwork festooning the walls, a beach umbrella opened in the centre of the room to guard against an invisible sun’s rays, exotic plants with lazy fronds that you could picture waving in a tropical breeze and, over the tiny bar, a TV broadcasting satellite soccer games.

X-Man and I grabbed a table near the window and put our peepers to the panorama. It was a looker, highrises framing the scene but in between was a clear view of a valley of greenery stretching out to distant condos on the horizon.

“What’s that area called?” I asked X-Man.

“Still Creek,” X-Man said. “That’s the kind of name they retain for what places would look like if they didn’t touch them. I used to live on a street called Wild Brambleberry Way where you’d have been hard-pressed to find even a weed pushing up through the concrete.”

The owner of this eatery is Roberto Molina, who plays on the B.C. Men’s Wheelchair Basketball Team. Suffice to say this restaurant is completely wheelchair accessible, from the washrooms to the second entrance around back. His aunt, Dona Molina, is the cook, whipping up some hearty Mexican home-cooking.

X-Man and I put the pedal to our molar metal with the complimentary homemade chips and great salsa while awaiting the main event. For me, on the advice of our server Tara (who also makes a mean margarita, according to the regulars) was the chicken molé ($12.99), while X-Man opted for the whole fried tilapia ($14.50). Tilapia to me is like the baloney of the sea — popular, found most everywhere, breeds in the most adverse conditions and, depending on what you do with it, can be OK or downright exhilarating.

The chicken molé was a deep, rich, reddish-brown mire, served with rice and beans and tortillas on the side. The sprinkling of sesame seeds overtop this dish was a nice, authentic touch and the sauce had all the pizzazz of ground chili peppers tempered by bittersweet Mexican chocolate.

X-Man was impressed by the visual display of his plate. The whole tilapia had a forlorn expression as if saying “Why me?” but who cares what he thought. Proclaimed to be seasoned with grandma’s secret recipe, the crackling skin had a salty finish and tender, slightly sweet flesh that added a nice balance. X-Man wasn’t crazy about the dish but I think he had a bone to pick with all the bone-picking the fish necessitated.

If you visit, maybe overlook the usual burritos, enchiladas and quesadillas (not that they’re not tasty) and instead venture into new territory with the Camaron à la Diabla, a prawn and chipotle– chili sauce concoction, the Chiles Rellenos or the Alambre with peppers, onion, sausage and cheese. And for dessert, the homemade flan is excellent.

“So, what say you, X-Man?”

“What with the food, the Dos Equus and the hurricane outside, I feel like I’m on my last Mexican vacation.”

THE BOTTOM LINE: All the trappings of a day in the Yucatan, minus the iguanas, of course.

RATINGS: Food: B+; Service: A-; Atmosphere: B

© The Vancouver Province 2007

 

Group of athletes team up to create Players Chophouse, where steak’s a good bet while cheering on the hometown favourites

Mia Stainsby
Sun

What do you get when a dozen professional hockey and football players, an Olympic/ World skeleton racing champ, an actress, and a former chef to Wesley Snipes get together? They could spawn a whole new sport or. . . of course! A new restaurant. (The Olympic skeleton racer silver medallist, by the way, is Jeff Pain.)

There’s quite an athletic team behind Players Chophouse, which is within walking distance to GM Place, BC Place and the theatres. When you walk into the restaurant and are confronted by the 14-by-10-foot video projection screen and the plasma TVs, it feels like the modern equivalent of the Roman coliseum.

Players was previously another steakhouse called Wilsons, which met an unfortunate end, assisted by the 2004/2005 NHL lockout. It’s a spacious, dark, wood-panelled room, with the manly attributes of a modern steakhouse.

Sports fanatics might be able to decipher the column of numbers stretching from the main floor to mezzanine level but since regular people will never guess, I’ll tell you: They’re the jersey numbers of the hockey and football players within the ownership.

I’m tempted, like Gertrude Stein, to say a steakhouse is a steakhouse is a steakhouse but, of course, that’s not entirely true. The quality of steak rules, of course. What the crowd wants here, as well as good meat, is permission to roar when there’s a goal or when one of the “players” is in the restaurant, visiting tables. And here, the room is big enough the ceiling high enough to withstand the decibels.

The food is really centred around steaks and chops; the seafood and other dishes definitely take a back seat, except for the crab cakes, which I found to be top-notch. On game nights, you might be better off in the lounge with its more beer-friendly dishes, including pizzas, starters and sandwiches.

A 14-ounce California rib-eye was cooked as requested, medium-rare, and it was juicy and flavourful. The vegetables were forgettable and they seemed to recur on other plates. Braised Asian pear shortribs were as tender and fall-apart as could be. The slow-roasted prime rib dish (14-ounce or 18 ounce) cried out for a 200-pound linebacker to absorb the shock of it. Here again, the meat outshone the veggies; furthermore, the Yorkshire pudding was too dry, not even warm, and entirely unappealing. Too bad, because I love Yorkshire pud.

The seafood in the paella was overcooked, which was not surprising considering how scorching hot the dish was. “Charred” mussels were a letdown; they cooked, I guess, in their own juices and lemon. I prefer them in a yummy broth.

West Coast seafood chowder also featured overcooked fish; and if only the seared yellowfin tuna was as sparklingly fresh as the peashoot salad it came with.

Entree dishes cost upwards of $24; steaks and chops go from $24 to $46.

Players isn’t a foodie destination but if you’re looking for an upscale sports bar with straight-ahead steaks and a linebacker, skeleton racer or goalie in the house, you’ll be very pleased.

– – –

PLAYERS CHOPHOUSE

Overall: 3

Food: 2 1/2

Ambience: 3 1/2

Service: 3 1/2

Price: $$$

808 Beatty St., 604-694-2467, www.vancouverchophouse.ca

Open for lunch and dinner, Monday to Friday; 3 p.m. to midnight, Saturday and Sunday.

Restaurant visits are conducted anonymously and interviews are done by phone. Restaurants are rated out of five stars.

© The Vancouver Sun 2007

 

The pork, chicken and seafood are made out of soy or wheat products. Stocks are from vegetables

Mia Stainsby
Sun

Paradise is more than just a pretty name at this humble vegetarian restaurant. It’s a state of mind where the two owners live, peacefully and perhaps even blissfully.

Sisters Kim and Yen Nguyen opened Paradise Vietnamese Cuisine four years ago in the hopes of turning people on to vegetarian food.

They are devout followers of a spiritual form of meditation (you’ll note the photos of their supreme master in the dining room) and, as Kim says in her imperfect English, “We just have idea, want to have people to be vegetarians. Some of people never try.”

find God and a happy life.

“Our master [a female] teaches to go beyond meditation. She will show whoever follow her teaching to find God and enjoy Heaven while you are living,” Kim says.

Back at the more earthly pursuit of eating, you’ll see dishes like Grilled Pork Rolls; Barbecued Ham or Chicken; Beef Rice Noodle Soup; Steamed Fish Roll; and other dishes with ingredients that once had legs or swam.

It seems somewhere along the line, Asian vegetarianism took the fork that led to making vegetables and grains act like meat and seafood. The pork, the chicken, the seafood are made out of soy or wheat products and so vegetarians can — without fear or loathing — safely eat pork, chicken, shrimp and ham here. Stocks, too, are made from vegetables.

“We begin thinking, how can we cook stock with no bone? We have to prove [vegetables] can be more tasty,” Kim says. So flavour comes from carrots, radishes, broccoli, cabbage and other vegetables.

The food at Paradise is healthy, hearty Vietnamese home cooking. There are some 50 items, nearly all dishes are less than $10 for generous portions and more in the range of $8.

The mysterious Special Salad is a huge coleslaw-like salad with tofu; the wonton soup is made from scratch; Panfried Stuffed Eggplant is one of their best sellers, as is Spicy Lemongrass Chicken and the Do It Yourself Dinner (rice paper wrap with tofu, steamed veggies, lettuce, “meat,” or “fish,” and herbs). The last is the most expensive at $12.95.

The restaurant is open for lunch and dinner Monday to Saturday. You’ll find food for your spirit as well as your body.

– – – PARADISE VIETNAMESE CUISINE

8681 — 10th Ave., Burnaby (Crest Plaza), 604-527-8138

© The Vancouver Sun 2007

 

An attempt to invoke a bygone era in a heritage building comes up short when it comes to the food and the service

Mia Stainsby
Sun

It’s a Vancouver gem, so thank you Eli Gershkovitch for the partial makeover of the part of the former CP station on Cordova Street that was frumpy, dishevelled, bricked and drywalled over, its inner beauty ransomed for a rabbit-warren of offices.

“It was like urban archeology extracting the cinder blocks,” Gershkovitch says.

The restoration respects the original neo-classical beaux-arts style and tall, graceful, arched windows once again pour in light; elegant mouldings have been replaced and the space evokes the era when Canadian Pacific trains ping-ponged across this vast country.

Too bad, however, that a mezzanine level was installed over part of the room, subtracting from the soaring ceiling. The floor-to-ceiling steel V-beam that stands out like a lightning bolt is from a previous seismic upgrade that was buried behind bricks.

Gershkovitch recently opened The TransContinental Heritage Restaurant and Railway Lounge in the space, conjuring an old CP hotel dining room with Group of Seven-ish paintings, railway posters and Orient Express style dishes. And while I’d love to say I’m enamoured of the new restaurant, I was underwhelmed.

The food also seems to also be from a bygone era and set against today’s culinary tableau, the straight-ahead dishes (including prime rib and five different steaks) aren’t stand-outs. While the lounge seems to be a great spot to socialize, have a drink, have a nosh, the dining room, though grand in scale, lacks personality and the food isn’t strong enough to make up for it.

The menu goes coast to coast, starting with B.C.’s wild salmon, moving to Alberta beef, bison, poutine, Nova Scotia lobster and Atlantic sea scallops. Dinner entrées are $23 to $30; vegetarian and pasta dishes are $17 and $18. (A bar and patio menu offers lighter fare, including a prime rib beef dip, prime rib burger and Boston blue crab, tomato and smoked cheddar dip.)

I found both the food and the service uneven. Baked crab cake had good structure and was fat and full of fresh crab; bison carpaccio with roasted garlic, olives, pecorino cheese was tasty; a house salad was crisply fresh (with iceberg lettuce), hazelnuts, dried blueberries and goat’s cheese; a grilled lamb trio (double rack shop, sausage, tenderloin) was competently cooked but not a standout. (The accompanying mint gnocchi was not a good idea.)

A grilled strip loin (a quality piece of beef) was cooked to medium which is a spoiler when medium-rare was requested. Chicken breast with morels featured a moist piece of chicken but I had to go foraging for those mushrooms and they were too small to add any flavour. Salmon was overcooked and sat joyless on the plate. One thing I loved was the mascarpone ice cream that accompanied a carrot cake dessert. It was more delicious than the main attraction.

While the bar area is lively, the dining room is in urgent need of selfhood. Instead of the background music that played when I visited, some higher decibels of Michael Bublé or jazz would add to the ambience. (I’ve been told by others that the music and sound system were good when they visited.)

On a second visit, we found that sitting under the mezzanine creates an acoustics problem; we had to yell to be heard above our noisy neighbours.

While some servers were spot on, others left a bad impression. On one visit, spilled food remained on the table for most of the meal; one started to walk away in the midst of answering a question. Cutlery isn’t changed between courses and for the dinner prices, they should be.

I wondered if a more casual spot with the feel of a busy railway station with an entrance from the bustling concourse wouldn’t have worked better . . . but alas, Gershkovitch would be competing with himself. Steamworks Brewing Company, his other restaurant on the same block, has that market down cold.

Postscript: In fact, at deadline, Gershkovitch called with the news that he’ll be expanding the trans-Canada menu and looking at a “more broader, more casual fare.”

TRANSCONTINENTAL HERITAGE RESTAURANT AND RAILWAY LOUNGE

Overall: 3

Food: 2 1/2

Ambience: 3 1/2

Service: 3

Price $$$

601 West Cordova St., 604-678-8000, www.thetranscontinental.com

Open for lunch and dinner Monday to Friday, and dinner on Saturday.

Restaurant visits are conducted anonymously and interviews are done by phone. Restaurants are rated out of five stars.

© The Vancouver Sun 2007

 

Menu features five curry dishes with different vegetables and spices, all cooked with coconut milk

Stephanie Yuen
Sun

It is not uncommon to see Southeast Asian restaurants offering cuisine from Singapore, Malaysian and Indonesian on the same menu. Thai restaurants, however, seem to be on a league of their own and often adhere to serving nothing but Thai dishes only.

My recent visit with a couple of friends to Go Thai Restaurant in New Westminster proved just that with an exception — their mixed dessert menu, which features carrot cake, cheesecake and assorted ice cream along with deep-fried banana.

“We just want to give them more dessert varieties,” explained chef and owner Matchima Noikumta, a VCC-trained chef.

Go Thai moved into the corner of Columbia and Braid about two years ago.

Besides the regular menu, Matchima also posts chef’s specials on the board in the dining room. “We love to serve special seasonal and original dishes using very authentic ingredients. I use my own recipes for unique flavour, such as the fresh chili, lime and spices in the papaya salad and the homemade marinade for the Thai wing.”

We started off by sipping fresh coconut juice that was a bit nutty, not too sweet and very refreshing from a young coconut — a nice way to begin a Thai dinner.

Though I am always skeptical about deep-fried wonton, the Go Thai Delight with satays, spring rolls, wontons, wings and prawn wraps seemed to be a nice appetizer platter for sharing. The shredded jicama in the rolls was delightful, as were the tender satays and the wings; the usage of phyllo for the prawn wraps was a positive surprise. And yet, the wontons were once again as expected: plain and boring.

The taste and aroma of the hot and spicy Thai soup is one of the reasons I enjoy Thai cuisine. Needless to say, a tom yum goong was in the order. Not knowing the strength of Go Thai’s star system, we settled for the one-star soup. For my liking of real spicy food, I would have asked for three stars. Fumed with lemon grass, galangal and lime flavour, this soup was loaded with prawns, squids, mussels and mushrooms.

The menu lists five Thai curry dishes: red, green, yellow, panang and matsaman, all cooked with coconut milk and with a choice of chicken, pork, beef, tofu or prawns ($3 extra).

Red, green and yellow curries differ in their colours, herbs and spices. Panang curry is from Malaysia and uses less coconut milk. Matsaman curry is from India, with key herbs including cardamom and tamarind.

Different roots and vegetables also go with different curries. For example, bamboo shoots are in the red curry, eggplant in the green, potatoes and onions in the yellow curry. Panang curry favours lime leaves and basil and matsaman includes yam, peanuts and pineapple.

We opted for the green curry, since we all love eggplant. The thick, creamy, steaming curry did not disappoint us.

The drunken squid with chili was a bit chewy and not “drunk” enough for me, but my friends quite enjoyed it.

The crispy noodles and vegetables with chicken reminded me of a northern Chinese dish where they deep-fry the noodles before pouring sauce on top. Go Thai’s crispy noodles tasted pretty good but were nothing near crispy; they were also too saucy and included far too many bamboo shoots.

Deep-fried banana with vanilla ice cream for dessert was a must when I visited Thai restaurants. This time, I asked for mango ice cream instead.

One bite into it, I knew I had made the right switch.

– – –

GO THAI RESTAURANT

502 E. Columbia Street, New Westminster

604-524-3453/604-524-3493

Open Monday to Wednesday, 11 a.m. to 10:30 p.m.; Thursday to Saturday, 11 a.m. to 11 p.m.; Sunday from 4 to 10 p.m.

© The Vancouver Sun 2007

 

Diners get great value at self-taught chef Pamela Ong’s intimate Asian restaurant

Mia Stainsby
Sun

When I commented to a server on how inexpensive the dishes were, she was honest. “Middle,” she said. “Not too cheap. Not expensive.”

Between you and me, a meal at Ellie’s Tropical Cuisine is cheap. The most expensive dishes (and they’re seafood dishes) are $12 and the majority are under $10; appies can be had for as little as $2.50.

The menu jumps borders from Malaysia/Singapore to Taiwan and attracts Indian, Vietnamese, Indonesian, Malaysian, Taiwanese and North American customers. Normally, a restaurant with a menu featuring 127 savoury dishes would have me wondering if a kitchen could competently put out so many dishes.

For these prices, you’re not getting fine cuisine but the owner-chef, Pamela Ong, a self-taught cook, actually gives you great value for her modestly priced food. Eggs with shrimp and mushrooms ($7.50) were a little over-salted but featured fresh, plump shrimp in an airy omelette; grilled fish on banana leaf ($11.95) featured a lovely sole with a golden coating; sauteed pea tips seemed expensive at $10.50 until we saw the enormous portion; beef noodles with spicy sauce ($6.95) was an earthy plate of darkly marinated shortrib meat, udon noodles and veggies — very nice!

Ong’s curry laksa and beef curry are apparently popular dishes, as is the chicken with three sauces.

And if you think the food menu is extensive, the beverages take up a lot of real estate, too, with fruit juices, smoothies, slushies, cold fruit teas, milkshakes, shaved ice drinks and interesting teas (like the chrysanthemum blossom tea).

There is no such person as Ellie, by the way. The name is plucked from a popular bakery in Taiwan. The vibrantly painted room has a surreal touch with several oversized Escher prints with his signature staircases going off in all directions. And unlike the acreages occupied by many Asian restaurants in Richmond, this is quite small and intimate.

ELLIE TROPICAL CUISINE

Continental Centre, 3779 Sexsmith Rd., Richmond, 604-232-0999

Open for lunch and dinner, Tuesday to Sunday; closed Monday.

© The Vancouver Sun 2007

 

It’s all about the complexity of the spicing

Mark Laba
Province

MUMBAI MASALA

Where: 138 West 16th St., North Vancouver, website: www.mumbaimasala.ca

Payment/reservations: Major credit cards, 604-984-8888

Drinks: Fully licensed

Hours: Lunch, 11:30 a.m.-2:30 p.m., Mon.-Fri.; noon-3 p.m,. Sat.-Sun.; dinner 5 -11 p.m. every day

– – –

“I got it bad,” Ricky Roulette said to me.

“Whadya mean?”

“Well,” his gal Lucky Lucy said, “as if the NFL, CFL, World Series and the start of hockey season isn’t enough, Ricky is now betting on cricket matches overseas.”

“You got a bookie who’ll do that?”

“Hey, I could place a bet on a boxing match with a kangaroo in the Australian outback. This guy’s that good.”

“But cricket matches? I mean, those things take weeks. Even if you win that’s a long time to wait for your money.”

“It’s not about the money,” Ricky said. “It’s about the process.”

“Tell that to your bookie next time you lose,” Lucky Lucy said.

So when we pulled up to Mumbai Masala, Ricky told me how he had placed a bet on the Mumbai Cricket Team and won himself some cold, hard cash.

“OK then, you can pay for dinner,” I told him.

Me, I like to hedge my bets, so that when I lay down some moolah I’m guaranteed something in return. And even if you’re not a betting person, the odds are you’ll like this place.

A carved wooden sentry greets you at the door, which beats those Gap door greeters easily. Sets the scene for the semi-opulent surroundings with ornate gold moulding, wood furniture laquered to a sheen and walls painted the colours of exotic spices.

Spice is truly the key to this eatery, conceived by seasoned restaurateur and chef Lalit Sharma. The complexity of the spicing is evident in each dish and, with some of the African-influenced recipes, dinner here can be a heady experience.

We began with the quintessential samosas, veggie-style ($4.95), served with both a pungent tamarind dip and a spicy mint chutney. It might sound basic but when you get the right flaky pastry and beautifully balanced stuffing that we tasted here, the mundane becomes marvellous.

We moved on to more esoteric fare with the Prawns Zanzibar ($15.95) and Beef Mshikaki ($11.95). The first is a creamy coconut mire spiked with Congo piri-piri peppers, the prawns pan-fried before their saucy submersion. I found the thickness of the sauce a bit strong for the prawns but that didn’t stop my quest for crustaceans.

The beef dish was a sizzling plate of chili-and- garlic-marinated sirloin pieces, tender to the tooth and savoury to the palate. Onions and peppers surrounded this blistering affair and I wrapped it in garlic naan as a kind of makeshift sub-continental sandwich.

To bind this whole shlimazel together, we dove into eggplant bhartha ($8.95), which proved to be a great version. Honestly, I can’t see how you can go wrong with anything on this menu. The vindaloo is fiery, the curry savoury and there’s some unique entries like the Sahi Salmon with ginger and tomato masala, Kuku Paka, a Swahili coconut chicken dish or the sensory overload of the Lamb Kalya, a lusty African curry.

Lucky Lucy was impressed, Ricky Roulette, inspired, was on his cell-phone placing cricket bets and me, I was so lost in a curry vapour I slipped the wooden sentry at the door a tip.

THE BOTTOM LINE: An edible journey from Mumbai to Mozambique.

RATINGS: Food: A; Service: A-; Atmosphere: B+

© The Vancouver Province 2007