One of our newest addition is our Beyond Meat Gyozas!

Eating plant based has become quickly popular and almost a trend in Vancouver these days. I personally am not vegan or vegetarian but I’ve been to plant based restaurants and have been surprised with how delicious the dishes are!

These gyozas consist of plant based “meat” and cabbage. They are available for purchase frozen so that you can cook it to your own liking in the comfort of your own home!

My favourite way to cook my dumplings are to place them into a shallow pan with an inch of water and simmer for 10 minutes, then drain the water and drizzle some oil on top and a bit on the sides so the oil can seep to the bottom of the dumplings to prevent sticking, cover the pan and let them sizzle for 6-7 minutes. They always come out with a crispy bottom and are so delicious!

If you don’t know what a bento is, it is basically a Japanese lunch box with sections of different foods to eat with rice or noodles.

This bento is called the “Gyu-Meshi Bento”, translating to “Beef Stew Bento”. This is one of my favourites as the beef stew is my mom’s recipe and she makes it fresh from scratch for our shops. The best part is that it is topped off with a sous vide onsen egg!

We also have a lot of other types of bentos such as tempura on rice and fried chicken with tartar sauce. I love getting bentos because it lets you try a bit of everything and it’s a meal that will keep me full all day.

In my experience, seafood is a category of food that people either love or hate and this dish is one that definitely fits that category.

It’s called the Uni Ikura Bamboo Box. Translates to Sea Urchin Salmon Roe on top of a bed of sushi rice, topped with shredded egg and wrapped in bamboo leaves.

Surprisingly, many people rave about it but I actually am not a fan of either sea urchin or salmon roe… sorry dad…

However, when it is sea urchin season, many foodies around Vancouver are always on the search for the best uni dish and combinations like these are becoming very popular in contrast to the traditional sea urchin sashimi with soy sauce.

As the Covid-19 situation begins or worsen in the province of BC, many restaurants are once again, turning to delivery services to generate income to stay afloat. From UberEats, Skipthedishes, DoorDash, Fantuan, etc., there are so many choices but which one is the best?

UberEats is one that most people think of first when they want to order delivery. They often have deals and free delivery over a certain amount of orders and are often very reliable with good customer service. 5/5

Skipthedishes is one that has been around for quite a long time but I find that the delivery fees are very high no matter how much your order total is. There is also less variety of restaurants so I don’t use it that often. 3/5

DoorDash was a platform I used to heavily use before UberEats came about in Vancouver. Again, the delivery fees are moderately high but is a little better than Skipthedishes as it offers deals from time to time. 3/5

Fantuan is a platform that I have had the worst experience with. The delivery is by km so sometimes deliveries can be as high as $20 which is insane! The prices are also jacked up around 20%-30%. Every time I have called customer service, I have to contact them at least 1 or 2 times after again as they never fix the issue initially. I have even had them hang up on me as I asked for someone who speaks English as they are a Chinese based company and many workers speak little English. I have also heard that people have been charged multiple times on their orders but cannot get a refund as customer service has been no help. 0/5

TIP: In order to support such establishments, if it is possible, try your best to order directly from the restaurant as many of these services charge the restaurants anywhere from 20%-35% commission from each order.

What is your most preferred food delivery platform?

This week, we discussed the issues around online hate. I am very grateful that I have not experienced much online hate towards myself online.

When thinking about this topic, one event came into mind which was the incident which took place in 2018 where a Vancouver restaurant was under fire for a whole rat found in a bowl of soup served to a customer! I have heard many opinions about this incident. Some say it was set up, where a worker may have been unhappy with the boss/owners and sabotaged the business. Some say the customer themselves set it up in order to ruin the company. This could have been plotted in hopes of online hate towards the restaurant or certain individuals involved in this business. Still, no one really knows the truth but unfortunately, the establishment has closed down due to lack of business after news broke out.

The article by Maria Konnikova, explains how online hate comments can not only influence the opinions of others but as well as psychologically and mentally. In fact, after reading the news about the rat in the bowl of soup, I was hesitant to return to the restaurant to eat despite all the opinions on whether the kitchen was actually unsanitary or it was plotted against them. I was in fact influenced by comments online from others.

Within the next week, we are trying to wrap up renovations so that we can hopefully re-open by the first week of December! I’m so excited to get back to work and spend by days by the Steveston Water and watch the sunset.

Anyway, I thought this wall we had was super cute and eye catching!

Everything was made with just coloured construction paper and some coloured foil for parts such as the eggs so that we can highlight the half boiled yolk. I though it was so creative of the chefs to create a visual menu to make it more appealing to all ages!