Anducci's

It was a Friday, and we were a little too tired to cook, so we pulled out an old Entertainment book coupon that was to expire at the end of October, and visited Anducci's in Burnaby. I'd eaten at Anducci's over the years quite a few times, but the restaurant had disappointed us in some recent visits.

The restaurant itself is located on Cameron street, right across from Cameron library, and a few minute's walk from Lougheed Mall. The decor is a little strange, with really weird, concrete walls with concrete 'meringues' jutting out. The tables used to be this wrought metal with cut-outs, but these had changed to faux marble plastic ones. It seems that they have toned things down, design-wise. The menu too, had a new, sleeker look.

We were debating about whether to get appetizers or not, but they all sounded terrible, especially the Asian-inspired ones (why do restaurants DO this?), so we just opted for a couple of pastas.

Once we ordered, we were asked whether we wanted some house bread. We said yes, and were prepared to be charged. Once upon a time they offered free bread, which was brought to your table, but then they stopped giving free bread and started charging customers. I was pleased to note that we weren't charged for the bread. The bread is exactly as I'd remembered--slices of toasted focaccia drizzled with balsamic and olive oil, and sprinkled with parmesan. This was good: so warm and crunchy, with a nice tartness. Shane mentioned that he would have preferred to dip the bread himself, but that's not how they do it here.

The restaurant charges quite a bit for its pastas--it used to be a better deal when the portions were overwhelmingly huge, but the sizes have gone down over the years. The canneloni were $4 off that night, so Shane chose the spinach and cheese ones (these are normally $16). This came in a set of three, bathing in tomato sauce. However, the top and edges of the canneloni were dry, and the filling unfortunately tasted really bland. Shane described it as "tasting like a good microwave dinner," and I couldn't agree more. The filling was dry and tasted like playdoh. No fresh cheeses here, I'm afraid. The tomato sauce was unsettingly sweet for some reason.

I have enjoyed Anducci's pasta in the past, as they apparently make their own noodles, and I ordered a dish which has rarely failed me, the seafood pasta in cream sauce ($17). The good things about this dish were the noodles, and the seafood. The scallops were tiny, well cooked, and the shrimp were crunchy. Unfortunately they either failed to drain the pasta well or reduce the sauce, because the sauce was watery, and didn't coat each strand of pasta as it should have. It was also a bad sign that I had to reach for the salt shaker a few times.

We've given this restaurant quite a few chances over the years, and their inconsistency has been irksome. This visit was the last of a handful of disappointing ones. Given the price of the dishes, more care should have been taken over the quality and preparation of the food.

Chocolate Goodness

Recently I was in the mood for baking, and so I made a regular standby, Vegan Chocolate Cake. If you've never made this cake before, it is a revelation. It's light, moist, and chocolately, all without the aid of eggs or dairy.

Try it!

Peaceful Restaurant

Last week we headed into Vancouver to see the movie Bright Star, and stopped by for lunch at Peaceful Restaurant, at 532 Broadway. It happens to be along a row of noodle restaurants, including Shao Lin Noodle House.

Like a lot of noodle places, the look of the restaurant is functional. Aside from pink walls, light pink tables, and red lanterns, there wasn't much to the restaurant. The seating was mostly banquette seating along one wall, and in the middle of the restaurant there is a glass partition in which you can watch the noodle chefs at work.

It was a litle difficult deciding what to order, because there were many kinds of noodles, but Shane opted for the Dan Dan Noodles ($6.95). The noodles came really promptly, but we were both confused by this dish because it seemed more soupy than we expected. However, it turned out that Shane didn't stir the dish vigorously enough, because by the end, it was pretty thick and peanut-y. The noodles were excellent, long, with a good chewy bite to it. The flavour was pretty good too, though pretty standard.

I opted for a noodle dish I'd never tried before, the Shan-Xi Tangy Noodles ($6.95). To be honest, when this first arrived on the table, I thought the waitress had made a mistake. It looked like a stew to me. The dish was described as tangy and spicy, so I was expecting something along that vein. The noodles were again, very good, but it just tasted like a cornstarch-based stew, without any spicy or tangy flavors. Plus, it's a small thing, but I didn't like how uniformly the ingredients were cut for some reason. I was disappointed by this dish, because I had an intense craving for something sour and hot at the time. Do you ever had cravings for a particular flavour like that? Nothing else can satiate it.

My last hope were the Szechuan Hot Chili Wonton ($5.95), which I'd had at other restaurants and which usually contain a vinegar component. However, the wontons just appeared to be flavored with chili oil and soy. Again, I was a little disappointed. However, the dish tasted good, though the wontons tasted a little soft.

All in all, I would come back to Peaceful restaurant. The noodles were good, but it seems like I just ordered the wrong things (other dishes on nearby tables looked so much better!). I'd be curious to try their other dishes, for sure. It is definitely good value--good quality and cheap prices!

Sunday is Mad Men Day

don, always in the foreground

Sunday evenings are always filled with dread for me. That’s when I painfully realize that my two days of freedom are over and that I have to go back to work the next morning. I makes me want to cover my head in blankets and hide. I’m sure many people feel this way. It’s an awful feeling.

But that feeling is no more, thanks to....Mad Men!

Ever since I’ve started watching the Sunday evening broadcast (airing on the west coast at 7pm), this day has been a delight. I look forward to it all day, and think about it after it’s over. It soothes and simulates my noggin.

the ladies: betty, joan and peggy

Unfortunately, I didn’t catch the show when it first came on, and I was kind of suspicious of the hype the show had been getting, but by chance I happened upon a rerun of the first season on Bravo, and I found it so unusual for a TV show. It’s slow at times, the shots are lingering, and people don’t really say what they seem to feel; there is such a depth of character and subtlety in what you see, and you know there are thoughts/feelings going on there that are a little hidden to the us and the characters themselves. The stylish era is sumptuous in its detail, and the clothes are gorgeous. It’s simply a beautiful show to look at, and so deep that you can watch and rewatch each episode (as...ahem...I’ve done).

We watched the first and second seasons on DVD, and each season has a different flavour. The first season is more centered on the main protagonist, Don Draper, and the mysteries that lie within that grey suit. The second season is more effuse in its focus, with storylines with Betty Draper, Don’s wife, and Peggy Olsen (my favourite), a young secretary-turned copywriter, as well as Don; the people in the show generally become a lot more rounded. Plus, the extras on the DVDS are also great: two commentary tracks for each episode, features about the advertising age, women’s movement, costume, and little historical snippets that give the show cultural context.

the men of mad men (harry, paul, pete, ken and sal)

So far we love the 3^rd season. The show is dealing a lot more with the bourgeoning civil rights movement (in the past, the black people on the show have been just in the background—ie. Clara the maid/nanny, Hollis the elevator operator, the waiter Don has a conversation with about Lucky Strike in the Pilot episode), and the role of women in that world. Don is shown to be more and more flawed...the show has done a little more experimentation in form, with film noir influences, bizarre dream sequences, singing & dancing. In my opinion, it’s the best season yet!

If you are a fan, there are several sources to fuel the obsession. Here is a list of great places to visit:

• AMC, the network that airs Mad Men, has a great site and blog—lots of bonus pictures (fyi, all of the photos on this page are from there), discussion about costumes, props, sets, interviews, and behind the scenes videos. One of my favourites is their ‘scrapbook’ for each season—here you see papers, documents, and other stuff that you only glimpse in each episode (wanna see Joan’s drivers license? How about the organizational chart from season three?)

• Footnotes of Madmen is a great site where you get information on the historical and social context of each episode of Mad Men. If you’ve ever wondered about Patio cola, or the Bubble Cut Barbie, here’s the place.

• Basket of Kisses is a very well written blog, devoted to every minutiae of Mad Men, written by two devoted female fans.

• For episode reaction and summary, there are several mainstream news sites that follow Mad Men. Slate’s TV club has entries discussing the latest episodes (so far this season, there have been 42 articles). Their back and forth articles are rather entertaining. The NY Times also discusses each episode of Mad Men in their Arts Beat blog.

Golden Pita Restaurant

In the Lougheed area, there are a ton of Korean restaurants, a few Chinese and Japanese places, and even a couple of Greek places, but there is only one Lebanese restaurant, and luckily for us, it's a pretty good place to eat. The restaurant is called Golden Pita Restaurant, located near Red Robin and the recently departed Liquor store. It's a little bit hard to find. It's a tiny spot, with seats for only about 15 people, but it's a local favorite and run by a Lebanese family.

We arrived around 6pm and the restaurant was full of eat-in diners, and people who were getting takeout.

The interior is very basic, with menus and pictures of the food on the walls. You order at the counter and wait until they bring the food to your table. The menu has the usual Mediterranean items, like donairs, falafels, hummous and meat plates. An interesting thing is that they have specials everyday. They also do catering, and the prices are pretty reasonable.

After we ordered, we sat ourselves down at the window seat, right below the TV showing the 6 o'clock news. The wait was a little long for the food--but then they were pretty busy. One bad thing is that they brought out Shane's plate first, while I had to wait for a long while for my plate to arrive.

Shane ordered the Friday special, Lebanese Beef plate ($10). This was strips of beef, with a salad, rice, tomato, tzatziki, pita, and a creamy onion salad. He really enjoyed this. Bits of the beef was a bit tough, but the seasoning was amazing. It was nicely spiced, with notes of cinnamon, and you could tell that the beef had been marinated a long while. We were also surpised by the quality of the sides. I normally don't like Mediterranean style rice, but this was was extremely flavorful. Each rice kernel was plump and had a good firm texture (while still being fully cooked), and it was seasoned to perfection. There were also little noodle-y things in the rice, which I'd never seen before. The salad was fresh, and the dressing was a delicious homemade concoction that tasted a little like Italian dressing. Even the onion salad was great--the creaminess of the sauce quietened the rawness of the onions. Everything was delicious.

I was stealing food from Shane's plate because I was waiting so long, but finally my Veggie plate ($9) arrived. This was a sampler, and it included: 2 falafels, a spinach pie, a veggie pocket, dolmates, tabbouleh, and hummous. The spinach pie was unusual and delicious--it just had spinach inside, unlike the Greek spanakopita, and it was really good, having a slight tangy flavour. The veggie pocket was similar in taste to a potato samosa, and it was good as well. The stuffed grape leaf was really flavourful, tender and with a bright zing. The hummous could have used more lemon, in my opinion, but you could taste the tahini and the chickpeas really well. Tabbouleh is one of my favorite salads, and this one was good--it looked like it had been sitting around a while (the parsley were a little wilted, and there was a lot of liquid), but the the sourness of the salad just brightened up the whole plate.

Finally, the falafels! This was what look so long, because unlike a lot of other places, they were made and fried to order. We ordered the side of falafels ($6), and these plump, large brown rounds arrived with a side of Lebanese pickles and a tahini sauce. They were crisp, crunchy and had a great coarse/crumbly texture. They weren't as well seasoned as those at Nuba, but they were still tasty and fun to eat.

Golden Pita is a great place to visit, especailly if you like falafels. We will definitely come back to try other menu items, especially the daily specials. It's a very modest little place, but in care and love in the food, this place is huge.

Pique In Action

One of our favorite photographic subjects is Pique the cat. She usually stays still for the camera, especially when she's sleeping, but the other day Shane got a few 'action' shots of her cleaning her face.

Look at that tongue!

North Garden

There are about three Chinese restaurants in our neighborhood in the Lougheed area, and surprisingly, all of them have the word "garden" in it (Mui Garden; Yan's Garden; North Garden). Last week we went to one of our regular Chinese spots, North Garden, right on the corner of North Road and Cameron. It's quite a big restaurant, with booths on one side and tables in the rest of the room; at the back there is also an additional room that consists primarily of booths. The decor is minimal, but this place has really tall ceilings which are painted a cobalt blue. The feeling is of strange combination of old-school diner with modern, industrial bits thrown in there.

We've been here many times before, and I must admit that the service has sucked. Being ignored happens on a regular basis, and you're just left alone. To be honest, we've kind of gotten used to this indifference--it gives you a kind of anonymity that can be refreshing. However, much to our surprise, this time around, the service was excellent. Our waitress was nice and not too chatty, and she even asked us how we liked things. Plus, she even asked us if we wanted dessert, and brought our bill promptly! Awesome.

Every time we come here I almost always order the HK style cold milk tea. It's sweet and delicious, and reminds me a little of the 'cha yen' that I used to have in Thailand.

The restaurant has a very large menu, and they have cheap lunch specials. This time around, we opted for the combo dinner, which is 2 dishes with choice of soup, rice, and dessert, all for $26 bucks. This is a great deal, since the soup that comes with it is pretty large.

North Garden has one of my favorite places for hot and sour soup. I love this soup, and I've had mixed experiences with other restaurants. Word of warning though: I like the soup to have strong flavours, and this really fit the bill. It is very sour and quite spicy. Yet delicious! In addition to the usual pork, bamboo, egg, etc., they have really crunchy shrimp in the soup. This is almost up there with the Hot and Sour soup from Bo Kong.

For one of the main dishes, we chose the crispy chicken with soya. This arrived brown and glistening to our table. The chicken was cooked really well: moist, juicy and with really crispy, yummy skin (which was, of course, the best part). The pile of julienned ginger and green onion gave the dish a really nice flavour as well.

The last dish we got was the Szechuan green beans, which is a dish we get pretty often. It doesn't have the special numbing peppercorns, however; this green bean dish has just pork, onion, and bits of pepper. Not spicy at all. However, it tastes pretty good. The beans are crisp (though a little greasy), and the sauce just coats every last bit of bean. Really good with rice.

One of the great things about this place (and Chinese places in general) is the portions. We ate until we were full, but we still had enough leftovers for two more meals.