20150711 Toronto Trip: Wedding and Bubble Tea

My cousin, JS, got married back in July. It was a gorgeous wedding! The morning began with the traditional Chinese ceremonies at the bride's family home. After the Chinese ceremony, we all had a quick lunch in the garage. My aunt had decided to get it catered by one of their favourite restaurants. There was rice noodles with beef, stir-fried Singaporean curry noodle, salt and pepper shrimp, and other dishes. We all had a quick bite to eat and then drove to the chapel. Once that was finished, we took a bunch of photos outside and inside.


At that point, the cousins and I were getting a bit hungry so we thought about going somewhere for bubble tea and a snack. The two choices were either go to a place called Destiny or go to Chatime and then head back to the house. KG chose Destiny since they made savoury food.








I was floored. Look at their extensive menu! It actually didn't take too long to order. Everyone already knew what they wanted.






Among the food that we ordered, the star had to be the plate of Popcorn Chicken ($6.99).


Oh, did I forget about all the bubble tea?

~*~
Destiny
165 York Blvd,
Richmond Hill
905-889-7899

Jack Astor's Lansdowne: Zomato Meetup

Have you been to the redeveloped Lansdowne Park recently? Do you remember what it used to look like? My memories are a bit foggy. I vaguely remember going down for the SuperEx and going to 67's games. Gone are the empty lots. Now there are places like Whole Foods, Lindt Chocolate Shop, Winners, and Cineplex Cinemas. Among the new shiny establishments, Jack Astor's can be found by the Aberdeen Pavilion. Earlier this week, I had the privilege to be invited to the third Zomato Meetup in Ottawa.



Once we were all introduced to one another, we went on a brief tour around the restaurant. We learned that Jack Astor's has added more of a local feel at both their Lansdowne and Hunt Club location. At this specific location, they have coasters that feature local personalities, arena lights that used to light the old Civic Centre, pictures and memorabilia of Ottawa's sports history. Don't be shy to ask the staff if you're curious about the decor.

Father's Day Banquet Lunch

Father's Day was a day before Grandpa's 80th birthday this year. The extended family gathered at Sea King Restaurant for a huge banquet lunch that started off with Peking duck. I didn't photograph every dish, but here are some notables:


The Peking duck wasn't sliced properly. Usually the skin is sliced and served with the pancakes. Then the duck meat is stir-fried and served with lettuce to wrap. And the third rendition is supposed to use the bones for soup. We got two versions of duck that day; the skin, with a bit of meat attached, on top of disappointing limp shrimp chips, and then a plate of the duck meat.


A family favourite, shrimp paste balls, arrived. These are the same mixture that restaurants use to make those stuffed crab claws that you get during Chinese wedding banquets. Grandpa likes these too.




Grandpa wasn't happy to see the Chinese roast chicken. In his opinion, if we got the duck, then we didn't need this. We had to remind him that it was part of the set meal and to try and enjoy it. The chicken skin was so crispy and the meat was very tender and juicy. The chicken is usually left mainly untouched, since it tastes great reheated the next day. But the chicken was finished.


This was an unfamiliar dish of young snow pea shoots with crab meat and egg whites. The family really enjoyed the dish.


The lobsters with ginger and onion were spot on for me that day.


The last two main dishes were fried rice and braised e-fu noodles. The e-fu noodles were slightly smoky and tasted even better when mixed with some of the lobster and ginger onion sauce.


The set lunch was capped off with a plate of almond cookies.


But our lunch finished with a fragrant durian layer cake from Kowloon Market (about $23/lb of durian), which my uncle picked up beforehand. Although we were in a private room, I still felt bad for anyone who was eating in the restaurant. The room reeked of durian and we overheard people talking about the smell. Most of the family loves durian. I find that I have to be in the mood for it, otherwise, the smell ruins any curiosity. I had a small slice that day and that's all I needed. After scraping off most of the icing, I got into the fluffy cake and durian, which was very creamy and custardy.

The banquet lunch was paced at a reasonable pace, especially considering that it was during their busy Sunday dim sum service. The portions were good too. There was enough for everyone to have at least one serving of every dish, except the Peking duck -- but we made the miscalculation. We still had leftovers after eating, but none of the good stuff.

~

Sea King Restaurant
1558 Merivale Road
Ottawa, ON
613-228-8819

Ottawa Street Food Showcase 2015

On a cool sunny day, the crowds were genuinely excited for the street food season to begin in Ottawa. It kicked off yesterday with many vendors setting up shop at the Marion Dewar Plaza, in front of City Hall. The Street Food Showcase donated a portion of the proceeds to the Ottawa Food Bank. It was a win-win situation, really. Not only did the crowds have a chance to check out all the options, but they were supporting a great cause.

I invite you all to use the SFAOtt (aka Street Food Adventures in Ottawa) hashtag on Instagram and Twitter.



Andrew and I went there earlier than the official start time of noon to beat the crowds.

Sens House

It was Saturday, April 11th, 2015. The Sens were playing their last game in the regular season against the Flyers and only needed one point to clinch a playoffs spot. The same Sens were 14 points back of the last wild card spot back in February and quickly picked up steam to become the NHL's hottest team. Richard and I made plans to head downtown and watch the game with friends. There was some nervousness leading up to the game, but once it was game day, nervousness turned into excitement.


Are you a hockey fan? Do you have a team you cheer for? Where will you be watching the playoffs this year?

Ottawa's 1st Annual Poutinefest

Sparks Street has really been stepping it up lately with the sheer amount of food festivals being hosted this year.  Most people know about Ribfest, usually held in June, but the organizers also brought many of the same vendors back in October for Ribtoberfest.

Screen shot from Sparks Street Mall.

The newest addition to the food festivals on Sparks is Poutine Fest, going on NOW!  Although not completely necessary, I (Lucy) bought a $20 poutine pass that gives you five samples from the participating vendors.  They'll be great for sampling and figuring out which poutine we'd like to dine on, though it will probably mean that we'll be lining six times instead of just one or two.  These passes are sold in a small tent on the east side of Metcalfe and Sparks (block 1).  Otherwise, the vendors are selling the regular sized poutine at regular prices.

Poutine Fest is on now and runs until tomorrow night.  Check it out before it's gone, and make sure to vote for your favourite vendor!

Christine here:
Based on what I've heard, the lines are worse than Ribfest. It's probably because it's the first year for the event. But I think that Sparks Street will be more packed since there are vegetarian options too.

So here's my plan of attack. Depending on how busy it is, I might get the Poutinefest pass where you pay $20 and get five 8oz-small poutines from any of the participants. With that pass, I'll try to get poutine from 5 different places. I'll try to get one regular poutine (cheese curds, gravy, and fries), one with chicken gravy and, finally, a poutine that has unusual toppings. We'll see how that goes. Worse case scenario, we'll just go somewhere else for poutine.

I hear that there's also churros and mini donuts available for dessert too!

For those who have been to Ottawa's Poutinefest, what was it like? Which poutines were among your favourites?

Canadian Thanksgiving 2013

Happy belated Thanksgiving to our Canadian readers! And happy early Thanksgiving to our American readers!

Unlike past years, we just had a small family dinner with our immediate family earlier this week on Monday, October 14th. On the menu: smoked salmon cream cheese appetizers, prime rib roast, pan-dripping gravy, sweet potato mash, buttered carrots and corn, and dinner rolls. We were going to have three kinds of homemade desserts: apple pie, apple crumble, and cookies.


The day started off slowly. I didn't end up going downstairs until 11:30am. It was nice to sleep in after a hectic week at work. My brief morning began with open-faced peanut butter banana sandwiches and a cup of coffee.


We began our prep work by making pies and cookies once everyone had a bite to eat in the morning. The apples actually came from our Golden Delicious apple tree, which Dad planted about 10 years ago. Mom made the pie pastry out of Tenderflake and some butter. The apples were peeled, cored, sliced, and seasoned with brown sugar, cinnamon, and a bit of salt. Then some oatmeal crumble was made for apple crumble. There was a little confusion in the kitchen and we ended up making apple pies, apple crumble, and even an apple crumble pie. I'll touch more on that in another post. (Update: Apple Crumble Pie post is up.)


I also worked on these DoubleTree chocolate walnut cookie dough too. Once the cookie dough was done, I put the bowl into the fridge to firm up.

I've been thinking about making these beauties for a while now, well, since I stayed at the DoubleTree Hotel by Hilton. They gave us warm cookies when we checked in. So amazing!


Around that time, Lucy arrived and we began to snack some more. She put together a Ritz cracker with smoked salmon cream cheese, half an olive, and some dry dill. Looks good, doesn't it? Lucy even took this, and a few other, photos with my dSLR.

Costco had one of their smoked salmons on sale the during the week. Cream cheese was also on sale a week prior. So we stocked up on both of them. Dad chopped up some smoked salmon and mixed it with the cream cheese for a nice kitchen hack. The real smoked salmon pieces were so wonderful!

I was planning to make either a spinach dip or caramelized onion dip, but we loved the smoked salmon cream cheese so much that we didn't need anything else. True story.


For the sweet potato mash, the sweet potatoes were peeled and boiled. They were mashed with half and half cream, cinnamon, powdered ginger, salt, butter, and freshly cracked black pepper. There was a carrot left behind.




Once the mashed sweet potatoes were seasoned, they were spread into a baking pan and then topped off with marshmallows.

I'd use less ground ginger and add more black pepper next time. Maybe I'd bake the mashed sweet potatoes for a bit before topping with marshmallows next time. That way the mash would be hotter.


This is the prime rib roast out of the oven. The burned parts is just the cap of fat. The prime rib was baked to rare and then we had to pop it in the oven for more time. By the time it was taken out, the prime rib was medium-well.


I grabbed my camera and went back to the table but Lucy blocked me off from taking the photo. She wanted the first shot. Alrighty then. After she took the picture, I swooped in to take one on my camera.


That's most of our spread. The dinner rolls, ginger ale, and red wine are missing.


Having prime rib was a nice change to turkey. Maybe we'll try making lamb next year.

Jimmy really enjoyed the prime rib. "How do you make something like this?"

"First, you need to buy a high quality of prime ribs -- high quality. Then you just season it however way you like it; like with steak spice or salt and pepper." Lucy chimed in.

As for the desserts, I'll be writing about the apple crumble, apple pie, and apple crumble pie separately. Here are the DoubleTree chocolate walnut cookies. I based these cookies off Food Geek's recipe.

The cookies taste the best when enjoyed just like the hotel serves their cookies: warm. That way the chocolate chunks are still gooey. The proportions of walnuts and chocolate chunks to cookie dough was a bit off. I remember the cookie was chunkier. I'll have to try the recipe out again. Until then, I'll hold off on sharing it.

Cooking and baking with the family does get noisy, but that's because we all have our different ways of doing things. Things get done however elaborate the meal is. And that's because we all know how to cook and, to some extent, bake. The underlying lesson is to learn to cook and bake for yourself and others. It's a life lesson.

Remarkable Tacos at El Camino

When tacos were all the craze in the States over five years ago, it seemed as though many food blogs I read were really into them. I was very jealous. Very. Jealous.

I've heard about a few decent taco joints in Ottawa. But the one that intrigued me the most was El Camino. Not only was it the newest craze in Ottawa this summer, but a friend also highly recommended it.


We had originally planned to go to El Camino on Saturday night but our family had other plans. We ended up going out to dinner with our large extended family. And of course when I checked Twitter that evening, I saw that Ottawa Senators' stud defenseman, Erik Karlsson, had been there for dinner. Bah!

My stomach still felt very heavy after brunch with my friends. We ended up leaving the apartment around 6pm. It wasn't tough to find the restaurant. We walked up Elgin Street and then saw a line up. Bingo.





We ordered our tacos and waited off to the side. You can watch the kitchen work their magic if you order from the taco window.


Once we got our tacos, we added some Cholula hot sauce to our food and began to walk back to Lucy's place. Lucy already devoured two out of her three tacos by the time we got about two blocks away from the restaurant.






My food was still warm when we arrived. I got an order of betal leaf shrimps and one crispy fish taco. The fish taco was remarkable! The warm pliable flour tortilla held the red cabbage and cilantro topped crispy fish. I believe there was also a slice of avocado too. I could've eaten four more of these if I had space in my stomach. The little wedge of lime helped.

The betal leaf shrimps reminded me of eating Vietnamese spring rolls with fresh thai basil. The flavour of the betal leaf help cut through the heaviness of the savoury shrimp filling. The filling surprised me. It was soft and slightly mushy instead of plump seasoned shrimps, as I had expected.

Lucy ordered two fish tacos and a pork taco. She was starving when we went, which was why she downed the tacos so quickly.


Andrew ordered one each of pork, lamb and ox tongue. The pork and lamb were both slow cooked and pulled apart. His favourite was the lamb. After trying a small bite of his lamb taco, I'd have to agree. I'd definitely get the lamb and crispy fish tacos next time.

He found the ox tongue to be a bit on the bland side compared to the other two tacos. It wasn't gamey though.

Andrew: "My tacos are dripping!"
Lucy: "Mine didn't drip."
Me: "That's because you inhaled your tacos so quickly!"

We'll definitely be back to El Camino. Hopefully it will be sooner rather than later.

It was fun celebrating my birthday with great food and better company! Thanks everyone!

~*~