I think Nu is one of the best restaurant with a view by the water.

I love the retro design of the restaurant and the cute mohair chairs!  I’ve also been here for dinner and the ambiance is totally different at night.  The lights are dimmed during dinner time and the view of the False Creek is breathtaking.

Once we were seated, the waitress gave us a small cup of hot chocolate and a blueberry biscuit.   I love these little things that a restaurant offer their customers.

These black grapes are also complimentary.  Sweet!!!!

Shucked Deep Bay Oyster served with horseradish.  $3 each.

Fried Local Oyster with lighthouse lager shooter.  $3.90 Each.  A fun way to eat fried oyster!

Smoke Salmon Benedict($15.90) It comes with greens in french vinaigrette.  I think Nu has one of the best Smoke Salmon Benedict.  The Smoke Salmon and the pouched eggs are done just right.

Here is the Organic Yogurt and Granola.  ($11.90) It comes with mixed fruits and orange crepe.

Brie + Black Truffle Omelette. ($14.9)  It comes with toasted brioche on the side.  Ed had difficult deciding what to order on that day cuz everything on the menu looks appealing.  He decided on this because the girl sat next to us ordered this and it looked sooo good!  It tasted really good also!

I’m a tea person.  I have to drink green tea everyday!  At Burgoo, green Tea ($2.25) is served with a pot on a cute wood board.

I ordered this Mesa Scramble ($9).  It was not on their regular brunch menu on that day, and I must say that it was quite disappointing.  The scramble egg seemed overcooked and bland.  Honestly, I think I can make better scramble egg than this.

I think it seems weird to have cheese fondue for brunch, but their brie fondue is good!!!  ($13)

My friend ordered the Mac & Cheese and he said it was great.  It looked pretty good to me!

I’ve been to Benkei Ramen a few times since they opened.  Benkei is a good place for Ramen while Kintaro is busy in the summer time.  Sorry but I just can’t stand the heat inside Kintaro during summer.  Seats are crowded and the air conditioner seems not doing its job.  Benkei is a lot more spacious and tidy.

This is the Shoyu Ramen.  The soup base is Chicken and Pork with soya and served with nori, bamboo shoot, green onions, spinach and 2 slices of chashu.   This is the standard one $6.95, but you gotta pay extra to get add ons such as corn, kimchi, extra chashu etc.  They are around $2 - $3 each items.  The portion of the standard one seems small to me, but the soup tastes just right and not greasy at all.

I ordered the Miso Ramen ($7.30).  The soup base is a combination of chicken, tonkotsu and miso.  I like this better than the shoyu one cuz I love rich soup base.  One thing I like Benkei over Kintaro is their chashu.  I like how they barbequed the chashu.

My friend ordered this cold ramen($7.95).  I had a few bites of it, and it tasted really refeshing! It’s perfect for the summer if you don’t want a hot bowl of ramen.

Since the portion are small and we still have room for more food.  We ordered these cute chashu rice balls.  I think they are the ‘must eat’ item at Benkei.  They are full of shashu flakes and they are really tasty!

Of course, the meal would not be not completed without gyoza.

Overall, I think Benkei is pretty good, but I still like Kintaro the best.  :  D

I’ve always been thinking of going to Portland simply because they don’t have sales taxes there, however, I always ended up going to Seattle instead.  It takes 5 hours of driving time to get to Portland from Vancouver, so it’s pretty tough for a 1 day trip.  Ed and I finally went to Portland during December for a 2 days shopping trip.  I’m glad that we finally made it!  :  )

Every time before I go on a trip, I usually do a research about that city, and I always check out the official tourism website to order the tourist guide.  We were surprised to know the fact that Portland is the most environmental friendly city in North America!  When we got to Downtown Portland, we didn’t see a single piece of garbage on the ground becasue there were always some people cleaning up the street.  We were really amazed!

I did a research before going to Portland and I found a hotel called Kennedy School.  It was a historic elementary school in about 100 years ago, and it is now became a hotel.   All the classrooms were transformed into hotel rooms so they were pretty big  with high ceilings and private bathrooms.  There were some restaurants and cafes inside the hotel and they also have a soaking pool which looked really elegant.  I’ve never imagined to be staying in an unique hotel like this.  It was a pretty interesting experience.

This is our hotel room, and it’s called Jack’s room.   Everything looks neat and tidy.  I’m really satisfied with this room.

The trip was basically a shopping trip, so I didn’t spend time doing research on dining.  We went to Lloyd Center after checking in because I wanna grab something to eat while I could go shopping right away.  We went to the food court and found out that there wasn’t anything attractive.  It was just the same food court you could find everywhere in North America, but there was one food stall which had some nice pictures of dumplings and Chinese buns.  We decided to try it since we were starving to death.  Well…..the pictures looked good…but the actual thing looked totally different.  The combination looked wired to me too!  A pork bun with wired tasted dumplings, rice and edamame beans???  umm…….

Our next shopping destination was Pioneer Place in Downtown.  We also had our dinner there at Todai Buffet.  I was so looking forward to this, because I had a fantastic buffet dinner when I visited Hong Kong last time, and it was truly amazing.  However, It was a BIG BIG BIG disappointment!  There wasn’t many choices, and often we had to wait for some popular items to be brought out, but they would be gone for seconds cuz there were too many customers with too little food!  Oh My God, I was really regret that I didn’t spend time on doing research on dining.   It was a BIG lesson to me!

I wasn’t too happy with the meals that I had on the previous day, so I decided that I shouldn’t just focus on shopping!   We couldn’t manage to have breakfast, so we had our lunch at the Courtyard Restaurant, and it’s the main restaurant in Kennedy School.  I ordered my favourite dish, Chicken penne, which tasted absolutely amazing!  The sauce was rich and creamy and the chicken was juicy as well.  It was a good start of the day!

After shopping for the whole day, we decided to treat outself with Steak and Lobster simply because I was still upset about the meals we had in the previous day.  (yup, I admitted that I’m a weird person! I would easily got upset by a meal that didn’t meet my expectation, and I would have to eat something a lot better to compensate my feelings!)

We were starving after shopping at Washington Square, and we went to Red Lobster because It was really close to the shopping mall, and I’ve never dine in Red Lobster before.  we ordered a lobster fondue (US$8.25) to start, and I expected it to be something like Cheese fondue, but with Lobster in it.  It turned out that it was basically a lobster bisque served in a crispy sourdough bread bowl.  When the waitress brought it to us, we thought she brought us a wrong dish, and she explained to us that it was actually the Lobster fondue that we ordered.  Anyways, we were alright with that cuz we were just way too starving and we just wanna put something into our stomache.

We quickly finished the lobster fondue, and the waitress also brought us some very tasty cheesy garlic bread.  oh well….we finished them all as well.   I was so thirsty after the lobster fondue, so I ordered a jumbo pina colada ,( US$6.99) and the size was like a small fish tank.  It was HUGE, but I forgot the take a pic. keke

By the time we got our ceaser salad, we were both at least 50% full, but we still managed to finish the ceaser salad.

Here is my Lobster and Steak. (US$34.99)  It steak was juicy, but the lobster tail was a bit too salty.

Ed ordered the Lobster and seafood mixed grill.(US$26.5)  The grilled one tasted a lot better than my lobster tail.  We tried our best to finish everything because I know it wouldn’t taste good if I brought it home, but we failed.  It was just too much food for us.  The bill came to be about US$85 before tips for 2 starving person.  I think it price was pretty good in terms of having lobster dinner, but everything was a bit too salty to my liking.

One of our closest friend is a Vegetarian, and he just moved here from Toronto.  Since I’m not familiar with vegetarian restaurant, I’ve done some research on it and found out that Naam is a very popular vegetarian restaurant.  We brought our friend to try out this restaurant, but there was a long line up on a Friday night.  It is usually a good sign if there’s line up for a restaurant.   We waited and waited…for about 45 mins, we finally got seated at the patio.

I love to seat at patio on a sunny day, but their patio was a bit messy and crampy.  We ordered lots of food because we were starving.  Here is the Naam salad and soup. ($7.95)  It didn’t look appetizing to me at all!  The whole thing looked messy and bland.  It was just a bunch of boring veggies.  I didn’t like it at all.

Here is another boring dish, Naam Nachos.  ($11.95)  It truly didn’t worth the price.

Here is another messy dish, Naam with the works, its basically a veggie pizza. ($8.95)  I had a bit of it, and it actually tasted pretty good.  There were mushrooms, peppers, onions..etc in it, but I don’t like the presentation of it.

Naam Burrito Wrap.  ($7.5)  Look at the shredded carrot , it just didn’t look appetizing, and I have no idea why they put it there.

I ordered the Maui-Maui Burger.  ($8.95)  It was still the bland and boring veggie that they put in every dish.  It came with some wired colored potatos and the so called “miso gravy”.  The miso gravy and the potato tasted wired to me.  The vegan patty was tasteless, and I just lost my appetite even though I was starving.

I have no idea why this restaurant could be so popular, and awarded Best Vegetarian in Westender Magazine and GeorgiaStraight almost every year.  There were lots of good review on the web about this restaurant, but I seriously think it is overrated.  It was totally not my type.  I don’t like this restaurant at all not because I’m not a vegetarian.  I just think that it got to have at least one thing good about a restaurant to be so popular, but I just couldn’t think of any reasons.  The restaurant was dirty, the servise was slow, the presentation of the food was bad, and the food wasn’t even taste good.  This is a place I really don’t understand.

We went to this restaurant called Mi Bar & Grill which is located at the Marriott Hotel on Hornby Street.

As usual, we get some breads before the meals which are warm and crispy.  I couldn’t recall what’s the orange dipping thing between the olive oil and the vinegar, but it tasted really with the warm bread.

I have no idea since when did I fell in love with Ahi Tuna, and everytime I see Ahi Tuna on the menu, I would usually order it.  This night, I ordered my favourite Ahi Tuna as well.  It came with a few fried dumplings and asian slaw, and they went really well with the Ahi Tuna.  The Tuna was pretty rare, and this is actually how I liked it to be.

Ed ordered this slow cooked Pork Belly with mashed potato.  The pork belly was really soft and tasty!!

I love warm brownies serve with ice-cream!  I always think they are a perfect match!

Overall, I’m very satisfied and surprised with Mi Bar & Grill in terms of their price and quality.  Service was excellent too!

Phnom Penh is one of my favourite restaurant in Vancouver, and it is awarded as Best South Asian Food in the Vancouver magazine.  Phnom Penh is located in Chinatown, so finding a parking spot during lunch hour is pretty tough.  Make sure you’re not in a hurry when you go to Phnom Penh because not only you have to find a parking spot, but also you have to wait for a table.  The restaurant is always packed during weekends.

There are 4 things that I order every single time when I go to Phnom Penh, and they are one of the most popular dishes there too. Beef Rice, Red Bean Ice, deep fried chicken wings with lemon sauce, Raw Beef with butter and vinagar.  The beef rice in the first picture is my favourite!  It is seriously the best Beef Rice I could find in Vancouver.  The beef is juicy, and the sauce is fantastic!  I have no idea how they make the sauce, but it is absolutely delicious!

This is the most crispy and juicy chicken wings I have ever eaten.

This is