I can’t show you what the food I ate looked like. I can’t tell you what TV commercial I was working on. I can’t even tell you which big name sports celebrity I stood next to and was like “huh, he’s a lot smaller then I would have thought.” What i can tell you is crafties deserve a hole lota thanks and respect, this is my love letter to them.

Thank you good looking skinny jean-woman in your unmarked van. You’re hot, also your hot pressed sandwiches got me through the day. Each time you came around with a different home made snack or well thought out platter of goodies I legitimately fell in love.

Thank you slightly balding but friendly guy, I would like stake with roasted potatoes and peppers. There’s caesar salad? Don’t mind if I do grab a little ice cream with chocolate browine and strawberries.  For breakfast, a delicious ham quesdila with a a side of bacon, hash-browns and sausage, that does sounds like a winning way to start the day!

Because of my work I often end up in pretty interesting places. Sometimes the experience is an enjoyable one, sometimes not so much. Today I was in the downtown east side. I spent my afternoon walking around with a local “binner”  as he collected bottles and cans from back alleys and residential dumpsters. Before heading out for our 5 hour long, absolutely drenched, pavement pounding odyssey my new friend told me he would need to make a pit stop for food. I was also hungry and decided to get some grub as well, thus I discovered the glory of Prime Time Chicken and Chinese Food.

It’s location and regular cliental will scare away most people but if you man up, grow some balls and put aside your prejudices you might be surprised. Prime Time is located down on Main st. just off east Hastings, soooooo it’s about as downtown east side as you can get, and the regulars there are all local flavour. The joint was bright, clean and felt safe. It’s counters were wo-maned by a cute clique of Chinese women who were friendly but a little ambivalent to their customers presence. The place is run a little like a cafeteria, you order your food up front and after being served over the counter you head back and grab a seat. I ordered a plate of chicken chow-mein. The half and half english/chinese menu said it was $3.85 but the lady only ask for $2.50, so score!

I love chicken chow-mein, while in India I had some amazing examples of the dish that cost almost nothing, I also had some really bad experiences, I’m talking to you Green Hotel in Mysore, so I feel like I’m a fair judge. This was defiantly on the good end of the spectrum, very tasty and fulfilling. At $2.50 a plate Prime Time Chicken and Chinese Food absolutely takes the cake for most value for money spent. In fact I don’t think i am going to find a better deal out there. So if you think you can get down off your high horse and are looking for some tasty tasty Chinese for no money at all I highly recommend Prime Time Chicken and Chinese Food.

One of the fun things I have found in writing this blog is that it has gotten me to step outside of my comfort zone food wise. From forcing me to look for new places to eat to getting me out of the habit of always ordering the same sort of food. Like soup, I hate soup. That’s a lie, I don’t hate soup, I just don’t like it all that much. Ironically my favourite meal of all time is my mother’s corn chowder, but I digress.

I had a business meeting with a fellow photographer today. After discovering our choice of lunch venue was closed due to attempted arson we settled for option two, Burgoo, on Main and east 15th. The place was busy for lunchtime in the middle of the week but we managed to snag seats on the patio.

As mentioned above I wanted to review something different and I have a particularly soft spot for chowder, so I ordered the Manhattan Clam Chowder. My meal was very un-chooowdery and by that I mean it wasn’t Boston Clam Chowder which had been what I was expecting. That’s my bad, I clearly need to bone up my soup knowledge. So despite my disappointment I enjoyed my meal. It was tangy and flavourful but in the end probably too expensive. 

This might be stating the obvious but cities are big. Each neighbourhood teems with its own sensibilities, tone and culture. When I travel abroad I find that the best way to explore a new city, learn its geography and ultimately get to know it is to wander aimlessly exploring back alleys and side streets. As a relative newcomer to Vancouver I love discovering new parts of town and it was while doing this that I found Union Market.

Tucked away in the neighbourhood of Strathcona on Union St. and Hawks, Union Market is a sleepy corner store that also sells hot food and boasts a very chill outdoor “patio” space. I got a mini-pizza and a apple turnover both of which were quite tasty if not particularly noteworthy.

Union Market oozes charm, from the friendly and welcoming late-30s couple who I am going to assume own the place to home made snacks and other baked goods. Their patio is the perfect spot for a low-key professional meeting, friendly hang out or quirky hipster date. On top of all that the place is cheap, not crazy cheap so don’t wet your pants but cheap enough.

I was in the downtown east side today meeting with a friend and colleague. After the usual rigamarole of work related chatter we broke for lunch. Both being financially under appreciated documentarians we decided that neither of us were prepared to spend more than $6 for lunch. I of course ended up spending $8.

There were a few options of cheap lunch spots but we ended up at SAVE-ON-MEATS on West Hastings between Abbott and Carrall. For anyone reading this blog who is less intimately familiar with Vancouver, this isn’t the best part of town. In fact, you know the East Hastings you have heard about? It’s a half block away. Then again historical Gas Town with its high end galleries, million dollar condos and endless tourists shops is also only a block or two away so go figure.

SAVE-ON-MEATS is one part butcher shop, one part street-side sandwich counter and one part all day diner. Three great tastes that taste great together. We stopped at the butchers shop for a free sample of chocolate&bacon cookies(!!!!!!!!!), nodded/winked to the cute 20-something working the sandwich counter and slipped onto a pair of stools, avoiding the line, at the diner.

Because of how they have split the joint into half butchers and half diner there isn’t a whole lot of room width wise. But what it lacks in width SAVE-ON-MEATS makes up in length … and character. The restaurant is quite deep with a sit down counter running down one side and a series of booths along the other. Friendly, attractive and in our case Australian waitresses scuttled up and down while the authentic looking jukebox pumped out enjoyable 50’ish tunes. I ordered a club sandwich and was pleasantly surprised at how fulfilling it was despite it not looking like all that much, you know “volume” wise.

SAVE-ON-MEATS nails the atmosphere, nails the food and nails the price. I will defiantly be back to try other things on their menu, in particular their $6 burger!

I was out for beers with friends tonight on Main and 3rdish, after horsing around for a while we decided that we were all hungry and nachos would really hit the spot. Seeing as there was already a gaggle immaculately disheveled 20-somthings lined up outside The Foundation we decided instead to head to The Whip Restaurant & Gallery a block away just off Main on east 6th.

The Whip’s location is prime and its old brick feel is very inviting. The place was packed out but we were able to slip into a table in the bar section and avoided having to wait. The menu was full of organic this, pan-seared that and wild salmon snatched from the claws of a kodiak bear. We ordered a few beers and a plate of nachos which entailed “olives, tomatoes, green onions and jalapenos drizzled with guacamole and sour cream, served with a side of house make salsa.”

What we were served was a little hurting, the chips were burnt and the toppings lacking. After a few bites our server popped by to ask us how things were going and we ended up asking for a new, maybe slightly less charred, plate. He was very polite and apologetic taking our food back and replacing it quickly with a superior offering. Even still I was underwhelmed. In a different life I worked in road construction and after a long day of manual labour my co-workers and I would stop at the nearest bar and tuck into nachos and wings. Maybe it was all the hard work we had just completed but the nachos we got in those days were always so damn fulfilling. The Whip’s nachos were not.

I liked the location, I liked the atmosphere, our server was attentive and polite and the cooks did seem to make an effort the second go around. On the hole though The Whip’s menu seems a bit on the pricy side, averaging between $12-15 a plate and with a lacklustre showing in the actual taste department the overall experience was a bit of a let down. In the end I might be convinced to eat there again … if I wasn’t paying.

I love me some hamburgers. In fact there was a period in my life when, blessed with a bbq and trying to keep my grocery shopping simple, hamburgers were almost all I ate. Over the years I have been slowly building my own personal recipe and in my humble opinion it’s starting to get pretty good. As my burgers have gotten better my expectations for burgers I’m paying for have risen. Enter Hamburger Mary’s Diner. 

Located on Davie and Bute Mary’s sells it’s self as a throw back 50’s burger joint. But it fails. It lacks the authenticity and character of something like Zak’s Diner in Ottawa or the greasy hole in the wall’ness of Whitehorse’s Lil’s Place. The truth of the matter is that Hamburger Mary’s feels like a poser. Almost as though some jack-in-the-box woke up one morning, thought it would be cool to open a 50’s diner, picked up some James Dean posters at the flee market and called it a day.

Not helping my visit was Hamburger Mary’s wait staff, of which half were a bit dickish and the other a tad unresponsive. I ordered the Vancouver Burger. It consisted of an “Alberta beef burger with Swiss cheese, guacamole, sprouts, and mayo” which after reading made me question which part was uniquely “Vancouver” but I didn’t want to dwell on semantics. 

I thing what frustrated me the most about my meal was that the joint is called HAMBURGER Mary’s, the entire reason I dropped in for lunch was because I assumed they would make a sweet burger, it’s in the fucking name! Sadly no, no amazing burgers, just a thoroughly mediocre one. I didn’t hate it, but would I spend $9.99 to eat there again? Hell no.

I recently read an article about the rise and success of the mobil gourmet restaurants in major US cities like New York, Chicago and LA. So it was with sweet dreams of affordable roadside eating in mind that I passed the Bada Bing food truck today in downtown Vancouver. I thought to myself “hell, I could do with a Philly cheese stake.” Wrong move me, wrong move.

I don’t want to hate on these guys too much but for $8.00 they sold me little more then meat, greens and cheese tossed haphazardly into half a bun. I swear to god I was more satisfied by the turkey sandwich I made when I got home then I was by this waste of cash and time. If I buy street meat in Toronto I’m not expecting a master piece, but the street meat in Toronto only costs me $2, maybe $3 if you’re a chump and buy it in the wrong part of town. But $8!?!?! Come on, I call bullshit Bada Bing, bullshit.

I went to dinner tonight with a good friend. The last few times we have gone out her choice in venues has been spot on, taking us to hip vegetation joints in the trendy alternative parts of Vancouver. Tonight we ate at The Foundation Eatery at Main and Kingsway.

This place was HIP! The waitresses had cool tattoos, sexy midriffs and stylish yet causal digs, the cooks buzzed around the open air kitchen with ironic moustaches  and big bushy beards, and clientele, to the last man, woman and child, wore skinny jeans, off kilter tuques and red bandanas. Despite the high quotient for possible douchiness the atmosphere was very low key and comfortable.

I had the “Spicy Peanut.” The plate consisted of peanuts, greens, pasta, onions noodles and some kinda aaaaaaaaaamzing peanut sauce/seasoning. I loved my recent trip to India in part because the vegetarian food I had there was so exciting, the meal I had at Foundation was a similar joy! 

At $11.00 a plate, Foundation is an absolutely affordable for a night out and borderers on being cheap enough to visit regularly. It’s also worth pointing out that they do have less expensive dishes, their cheapest being a $6 or $7 salad. 

I was out wandering Vancouver’s Stanley Park and downtown west side with a friend today. We stopped for lunch at a japanese restaurant called Yuko Maki just down from Bute St. on Davis. While doing a some double checking via google maps for this review I noticed that the google maps image (below) showed the restaurant had recently been run under the name Kisha Poppo. 

For reasons I don’t fully understand, the new owners decided to keep the distracting and tacky red awning as well as add several oversized and weathered looking photos of their dishes. Their hole look reminded me of a fast food joint, a thought that I am sure was helped along by KFC next door. What was inside was a different story though. Comfortable booths and well placed skylights gave the feel of dinner dining, in fact If not for the  ear grating top forties local radio playing it practically was.

I ordered a number 2 special box. Along with all the fixings it came with five or so California rolls, rice and teriyaki chicken, a salad, and a deep-fried yam, prawn and spring roll. Although not spectacular the meal was very enjoyable and at a price point of $6.95 it was well, well worth the money.