Took a trip to India recently and incorporated a four day stop over in Bangkok. I really enjoyed Bangkok. Fairly clean, friendly people, and great food. Here is video that recaps some of my four days.

Matt

Every once and a while after soccer I will eat at a gas station. There is a Church's at a near by Shell and there are White Spots at the occasional Chevron. I often ask friends and they usually state they rather not eat at a gas station. I understand it but I am interested to see how wide spread that feeling is.

My friend and I had a meal and discussed why there are soo many Filipinos working at Church's. I figure they like the food and they bought into the franchise, my buddy just things they like the food and it is an ideal high school job to have.

I prefer Church's over KFC, there is something about that skin. And if you eat it like I do, you get take out (chicken, fries and gravy), make a few cups of white rice at home and chow. I like to wrap my chicken skin around fries, and rice and dip that in gravy. So damn good and the only way to eat it if you ask me. This time we had no rice and just had to dip the skin and fries.

You might think this is a lame post until you try eating your rice, with fries, wrapped by Church's chicken skin and dipped in gravy. You can thank me later.

Church's Chicken

2103 W Broadway

Vancouver

Matt feeling ghetto.

Oh anyone been to Ezell's in Seattle? If not, google that before your next trip down.

There’s a tremendous lack of Spanish fare in Vancouver. Café Barcelona, which serves up tapas and pintxos on Granville Street downtown, fills that void somewhat, and thus it’s easy to gloss over its many deficiencies: you take what you can get.

The place is not without its charm, and recalls the casual breeziness of many neighbourhood tapas bars in Spain. Here, then, are your obligatory selections of olives, seafood and jamon in a variety of shapes and forms, supported by a limited assortment of Spanish wines and beer (along with your local choices). It’s impossible to overemphasize the importance of alcohol in any tapas outing, and with the view looking out towards the Granville Street nightclubs, it’s hard to forget its importance at Café Barcelona too.

We ordered a few staples. The croquettes had a pleasantly thin crust surrounding a sea of béchamel that drowned not-quite-enough ham. The txistorra, a Basque sausage, was what one would expect but no more. The pulpo a la gallega, octopus served with potatoes and drenched with olive oil, took on a bit too much of a metallic taste of the can from which it came (Spanish fare being one of very few that value canned foods as much as fresh). The tortilla de patatas, a Spanish frittata of sorts, turned out to be a highlight, simple and well executed. All were good, not great: if Café Barcelona reminds one of an average Spanish tapas bar, the emphasis is on “average.”

From there it went downhill. We ordered a crème Catalana, a Spanish riff on crème brulee, which had a chewy, sugary mess on top, covering an overly liquid crème that was warm in some patches and cold in others. This provided a good summation of the bipolar service, with one server pleasant enough, the other dour, forgetful and just plain absent. Taken together with the average fare, Café Barcelona isn’t a place to rush back to. If it wasn’t for the city’s slim pickings for traditional Spanish fare, it probably isn’t a place to rush to in the first place.

Joe.

Café Barcelona
1049 Granville Street
Vancouver, BC
604 909 2223

A quick note for those in need of a warm pastry: Bonchaz, previously sold in local markets here and there, has opened its first standalone location on W. Hastings downtown. Their namesake speciality, the bonchaz, is a take on the Mexican 'concha,' which tastes a bit like a brioche topped with a Chinese pineapple bun crust. (Sandwiches, soup and other things are available too, but ultimately inconsequential.) The bonchaz comes in three flavours (original, banana walnut, and mocha) but go with the original if it's your first.

Light as helium, the buns sit warmed in the oven until you order - they might float away otherwise - so make sure you get one that's not burnt (one out of our three were), and eat it before all that lovely warmth fades away.

Joe.

Bonchaz

426 W Hastings Street (between Homer and Richards)

Vancouver, BC V6B 1L1

604 626 7215

The Olympics are over and hopefully gone are the raised menu prices and the mandatory 15 - 20 % gratuity.

I took a trip back to Gyoza King and I forgot how good this place is. It saddens me to think that Gyoza King is just getting reviewed now. This place to my memory is one of the first izakayas in Vancouver, maybe Raku on Thurlow is older but I don't think so.

The interior could use an update now and sometimes there is a strange smell in there but those things are worth pushing through just so you can get some of those gyozas in your belly. I am happy that the photo of the staff with John Travolta is still on the wall.

We ordered a few things all of which were good but I want to talk about the gyoza. The prawn and vegetable gyozas are fantastic. The prawn gyoza are hands down best in the city. Each gyoza filled with one whole prawn so you are guaranteed to have prawn piece in every bite.


I always order chikuwa cheese at Gyoza King, I actually don't know another spot in Vancouver that serves this dish. Chikuwa cheese is a processed fish tube, filled with processed cheese and then deep fried. Similar to a jalapeno cheese popper.

Long story short, I forgot how good this place is. My recent visit reminded me that Gyoza King sits at the top of the list when it comes to izakayas in Vancouver.

Gyoza King
1508 Robson Street
Vancouver, BC


Matt

After extolling the virtues of the Taiwanese beef noodle, I would be remiss if I didn’t also tell you about laksa. A mixture of all things good from the Chinese and the Malay, found throughout Singpore, Malaysia and Indonesia, the laksa soup noodle is an equally wonderous thing, for which the city now also has a self-proclaimed monarch: Bo Laksa King.

Bo Laksa King isn’t the easiest place to find, and if not for consistently glowing reviews and support from the likes of Chowtimes and folks on Chowhound, it would be downright impossible. Instead of a proper storefront, Bo Laksa King is a separate counter set within the Joyce-Way Food Market, run hawker-style in proper homage to your typical laksa joint in Asia. With that said, unless you like eating within the aisles of the neighbourhood grocery market on tables set beside the boxed juice, Bo Laksa King is strictly takeout.

It is highly considerate, then, that Bo packs the soup separate from the noodles, so that the latter doesn’t sit stewing in the soup for the long car trip home. The soup is the true attraction, a curry-based, coconut milk elixir, replete with flavours of lemongrass, shallots, tumeric…the list goes on ad infinitum. This is served with your choice of vermicelli or yellow Hokkien noodles, alongside fish balls, prawns, chicken, tofu puffs and chopped shallots and cilantro. Compared with other places in town, this laksa is rich without being overly dense or heavy, and intricate in flavour without any reliance on MSG.

We re-plated our laksa so you get the full effect:

Among the few constant items on the menu - the laksa, roti, wraps - Bo Laksa King also features weekend specials, typically of a dish of southeast Asian descent. This is largely due to Bo’s background, having left his native home of Burma to cook in kitchens throughout the region. We ordered a coconut rice with chicken curry, served with a spicy cucumber relish. The Thai yellow curry was as great, but the coconut rice was incredibly flavored, and a real testament in how a simple side dish can vary incredibly from place to place, with Bo Laksa King’s being the top of the heap.

Again, (a small portion) replated at home:

The hawker stand also does home delivery now as well, a salvation from the navigational complexities of finding the place. The menu is strictly online, and features a wider range of options than at the stand itself.

Joe.

Bo Laksa King
4910 Joyce Street
Vancouver BC
(604)339-0038

Locals have long since found a baseline standard for Taiwanese beef noodles at Tony’s Beef Noodle on Cambie and 41^st Ave. For years, the place has been held up as among the top, if not the best, of its genre. However, rumor had it that the original owner of Tony’s (assumedly, “Tony”) has moved around over the recent past, setting up successive beef noodle joint after another, and staying at each for short periods of time. When word spread that he had since relocated to open as the self-declared “Taiwan Beef Noodle King” on Oak and 64^th, I had to go.

On paper, the Taiwanese beef noodle may seem like simple fare. Noodles, soup, braised beef, the odd green and preserved vegetables. The initiated, however, will tell you that the Taiwanese beef noodle is something magical, a bowl of complex flavours that needs hours of cajoling, and one of the obvious rivals to Vietnamese pho as the best noodle soup around.

We ordered the classic: the stewed beef noodle, otherwise known as an underemphatic “A5” on the menu. This is a “red braised” beef, so named for its deep reddish colour, having been cooked in a rich, deep mixture of soy sauce, rice wine, star anise, and sugar, with a hint of Szechuan peppercorn thrown into mix. Each cut of beef is nicely marbled with fat and tendon, tender as all the motherly love in the world.

The soup in itself is something to cherish as well. The Taiwanese beef noodle is itself a re-interpretation of a Northern Chinese staple for the abundant Muslim population, and often served Halal. After an influx of mainland Chinese fleeing the Communist revolution, the beef noodle soup found ground in Taiwan, but quickly morphed over time to suit local tastes and become one of the most recognizable dishes in Taiwanese cuisine. The result is a darker, richer soup, made of stock that has been simmered indefinitely, flavoured with spices, ginger, green onion, garlic, and (from what I can tell) carrot. This is served with housemade noodles, of the thicker, doughy variety.

To round things out, we also ordered the “beef in Chinese pancake,” which at some places is similar to beef flank rolled up in a Chinese roti, but here was rolled up in a Chinese green onion cake. The key is the beef, also braised and flavourful, its tenderness contrasted with the flakiness of the green onion cake, with a light touch of hoisin sauce to provide some sweetness. While the beef pancake was great, the beef noodle is the main attraction: the Beef Noodle King has earned its crown, and there need not be any distractions for its subjects.

Joe.

Taiwan Beef Noodle King
8335 Oak Street
Vancouver, BC
(604) 266-8718

Here is a little something something that I was trying to get done before my vacation but was never really happy with. Either way I put in the work so I figured I would share it with you. At the very least it counts as a post.

Vancouver Slop Magazine

Matt

Since I am out of town I wanted to line up some posts so the readership wouldn't die. I had some saved in draft but they seemed to have disappeared.

Regardless, here is the Part II to the popular Favourite Things Under $6.50. Still lots of things to add on there but I don't have photos of them yet.

Still missing
-Gyoza King potstickers
-Purdy's Ice Cream Bar
- plus more...

Check out the feature here

Matt (in India with a stomach ache)