Taste of Summer in a Scoop

A generous scoop of roasted strawberry

I went to The Park Theatre to watch the documentary, Steal This Story, Please! and I was a bit early so I walked around the area and saw Rain or Shine Ice Cream on the next block!

Perhaps I was one of the last people in Vancouver to realise that the ice cream brand had opened a shop here, and despite having finished lunch I wanted to squeeze in some dessert.

I sat outside and watched people go in and then emerge a few moments later with ice cream cones or scoops in cups. One woman told her golden retriever to sit patiently outside as she went in and then she came back outside. A staff member gave her a pint of ice cream and a pup cup for her dog!

Needless to say he lapped it up very quickly before they went on their way.

Inside it's fun to see a cow's head with a unicorn horn on its head, and there are several staff members busy with either making waffle cones, making ice cream or serving customers wearing different ice cream-related aprons.

The latest flavours were posted outside to get taste buds excited: lemon raspberry swirl, blackberry iced tea sorbet, blueberry lemon curd, brownie chocolate cherry, and roasted strawberry.

Customers can try two flavours before deciding and I tried the blueberry lemon curd which is made with local blueberries and is on the tart side, but the roasted strawberry blew me away. It was definitely the taste of summer in a cone.

You can have a choice of a sugar cone, waffle cone, or cup, and the kid's size scoop or adult-sized.

I should have opted for the former, but felt I deserved the indulgence, and received quite a large scoop!

The roasted strawberry flavour is made from the strawberries at Mandair Farms. These local berries are slowly roasted with a bit of balsamic vinegar to intensify the flavour. This is no ordinary strawberry flavour!

Rain or Shine Ice Cream

3382 Cambie Street

Picture of the Day: Taking a Risk on Ice Cream

Orange calamansi creamsicle ice cream

The other day I was on Commercial Drive for a media tasting at a restaurant, and I was always curious of an Asian-inspired ice cream shop called Elephant Garden Creamery and wanted to check it out.

So even after I was full from trying a 10-course tapas menu, I waddled a few blocks down to Elephant Garden Creamery, which was still open. Unfortunately they don't allow customers to sample flavours before choosing, nor are you able to see what the ice creams look like. So I ordered blind and chose what sounded delicious -- orange calamansi creamsicle.

I like calamansi and creamsicles are a taste of my childhood. What could go wrong?

But the generous scoop of ice cream didn't have a strong orange or calamansi flavour that did not result in a creamsicle taste. It was a milk ice cream with a very faint taste of calamansi for $6.30 plus tip... it was not worth the extra calories!

In hindsight perhaps I should have tried the signature mango coconut sticky rice, durian, butter sweet corn crunch, or malted milk choco (reminiscent of malteasers)...

Elephant Garden Creamery

2080 Commercial Drive

Vancouver, BC

(604 251 6832

Lighting Up Chinatown with Delicious Grub

Delicious curry fish balls and XO siu mai

Today Light Up Chinatown kicked off, just as the epic rainstorm finally ended and the skies turned blue. The Chinatown event is an annual weekend initiative to get people to come visit the neighbourhood, eat some food, patronise some shops and maybe even bump into some friends.

Visitors can get a "passport" and visit specific shops to get a stamp. Get eight stamps, two in each of the four zones made them eligible to put their name into a lucky draw to win prizes like a Lululemon gift card, an Arc'teryx hoodie, and the grand prize of two tickets to see John Legend in concert.

The weather cleared up for Light Up Chinatown

I arrived shortly after the opening ceremonies began, but instead of listening to the speeches, I focused on the food offerings. Along Columbia Street were several stalls and I tried a few of them.

First off was Mama in the Kitchen with chef William Lew, who presented four dishes, and I tried three of them.

The typhoon shelter calamari was a great idea, the calamari tender and a slight crunch to it, and not too spicy. The portion is good to share -- too much for one person. The same could be said of the salted egg yolk pork belly in terms of portion, and while the pork belly was slightly caramelised, the salted egg yolk flavour wasn't pronounced, which was a pity. 

A signature dish for Mama in the Kitchen is the curry fish balls, and this was a portion that can be eaten by one person, with two pieces of siu mai topped with a small shrimp and dressed with XO sauce. It's a good combination of street food with spice.

Typhoon shelter calamari

Torafuku is celebrating its 10th anniversary and made its debut at Light Up Chinatown with its beef rendang taco. It looks like a simple dish, but the beef has been braised for a long time and infused with curry flavour that is then wrapped in a soft tortilla. It's relatively easy to eat, though the oil drips out...

Also supported Holy Duck Chili Oil that collaborated with Ember HK BBQ with a cart noodle concept. Customers can choose one, two or three toppings out of a total of six, and the kind of noodles -- Japanese instant noodles, spaghetti or vermicelli.

I chose peanut satay pork and honey char siu with Japanese instant noodles. After about five minutes my name was called out and it was a decent portion. The char siu was in chunks instead of slices which would have been better in terms of eating it with a plastic fork, while there wasn't much taste of the peanut satay pork. There were quite a lot of noodles that soaked up the sauces though.

By this point I was almost full and was curious about the ice creams by Hype Chocolate. I tried the White Rabbit milk chocolate ice cream and it was creamy and easy to eat with chunks of chocolate on top. However the white rabbit flavour was completely lost in the chocolate ice cream. Perhaps vanilla ice cream would have worked better? 

White Rabbit milk chocolate ice cream

It was good to bump into a few acquaintances and catch up briefly with them, while supporting the event. 

Steveston Treats

Fish and chips served in a cone at Pajo's 

Yesterday I was in Steveston, the southernmost tip of Richmond, and decided to check out Pajo's Fish & Chips, which just celebrated its 40th anniversary. It was started by two women, Patricia Branch and Joan Wettlaufer in 1985, making battered fried fish from the catches made by Branch's husband Larry, who was a fisherman.

Since it was overcast and a weekday, I figured I should take the opportunity to check out Pajo's, as it's quite popular and there was no lineup.

Picnic tables have holes to place your cone

Located down on the waterfront, customers need to walk down the gangplank to the shop on the water. The menu is extensive, with fish and chips made from wild rock snapper, cod, sockeye salmon, and halibut, and burgers, tacos and hotdogs.

I got one piece of the cod and it was presented in a cone with fries at the bottom. At first I wondered how I was going to eat it when I quickly realised there were holes in the picnic tables for people to place their food! How ingenious.

However, when you're eating outside, you need to beware of others keen on having some of your food. I had two crows eyeing my fish and chips. They paced along the railing and at times came closer. I looked them in the eye and put an arm around my cone to show I wasn't sharing.

The fish was a thin fillet that was bland and under seasoned, though the batter created a thin casing around the cod. The fries underneath were a bit on the soggy side, but again appreciated they weren't too salty.

Another cone... of ice cream!

For dessert I headed to Sally's Homemade Ice Cream and had a scoop of the passionfruit sorbet, a deep golden colour and tasted slightly tart and not sweet. As I was eating my ice cream cone, one local came for ice cream and admitted he was swinging by there twice a day!

Summer's Time for Ice Cream

Strawberry ice cream is the taste of summer

The official start to summer is this Saturday but it's already that time of year when people start eating ice cream.

Last night after a friend and I had dinner, her husband picked us up and immediately made a beeline for Earnest Ice Cream, a well-known local ice cream brand started in 2012.

So many flavours, it's hard to choose

At first we swung by its Quebec Street location and saw the queue went around the block -- we promptly headed to the original location on Fraser Street. There was a line there too, but not as long, and it actually went quickly.

I hadn't been to Earnest Ice Cream for years, the last time was before the pandemic!

Everyone, like us, was there to have a sweet dessert before going home. 

The flavours they had included: whiskey hazelnut, cookies & cream, London fog, Tahitian vanilla, matcha green tea, lavender shortbread and birthday cake.

When we got to the front of the line, I had a spoonful of the cream cheese flavour to try. While it was tangy, it was also quite rich, and couldn't possibly finish a whole scoop of it.

I opted for strawberry on a waffle cone; my friend had London fog, and her husband had baklava and another flavour I can't remember.

Yes it really is seriously good

It seems the scoop size you get depends on the server scooping them for you -- it appeared some people had smaller scoops than others. Luckily ours was a decent portion! 

As we ate our ice creams inside, the line outside eventually disappeared and it was 10pm, closing time. 

Tokyo: Eating Well in the City

Eating lots of seafood at Andy's Shin Hinomoto in Tokyo

We ate pretty well in Tokyo, but probably not as good as most Japanphiles who specifically head to the Land of the Rising Sun for the marvellous food at cut-rate prices.

Last Thursday we arrived in the evening and by the time we checked into the hotel, it was almost 8pm. Before I went on my trip, my Japanese hairdresser suggested that I try the food at McDonald's because the items would be different than in Vancouver.

McDonald's food in Japan is... different

Even though I hadn't eaten McDonald's in years, that's what we did -- with mixed results.

We tried an ebi filet-o or Filet-O-Shrimp, chicken teriyaki Filet-O, a grape soda, medium fries and two desserts, one that looked like mini churros with a strawberry filling, and strawberry daifuku pie in sakura pink packaging.

The Filet-O-Ebi substituted fish for shrimp with lettuce and mustard and it was not bad, tasting slightly sweet, while the chicken teriyaki burger was smothered in the dark sweet sauce to make the chicken patty palatable. 

Meanwhile the Qoo white grape soda was far from natural juice, but still refreshing, though the fries seemed undercooked, but we ate them anyway. 

Like other McDonald's meals, you wolf down the food, but then don't feel full. For dessert, the chocolate churros, called hitokuchi kuro churros were baked rather than deep-fried, and the strawberry filling was not jam, but artificially flavoured pink. The pie, available for a limited time, had a filling that was part mochi, part strawberry jam which was strange. Nevertheless it was the latter that made the pie taste extremely sweet. I finished off the fries to balance out the saccharine taste.

Meaty king crab served cold

Needless to say, we did a lot of walking afterwards to try to keep the calorie count down.

The next evening we went to an izakaya called Andy's Shin Hinomoto in Yurakucho. It is located under a train overpass, so you can periodically hear trains going by. There are several eateries in each of these moon-shaped deep alcoves that are quite cozy. 

Andy is Andy Lunt, an Englishman from Leicester, who in 1978 married the izakaya's owner's daughter and in 1986 came to Tokyo to help out with the business, and then taking over in 2010.

People can put their bags and umbrellas in little nooks or up above in fishing nets suspended from the ceiling. What a great idea to save space!

Our host had already ordered the king crab and it was boiled, but served cold, and the parts chopped up, but not cracked liked they would be in Chinese restaurants. Instead they were cut open with incisions here and there to help make it easier to extract the sweet meat aided by a skinny long metal tool.

Large plump clams cooked in sake

We were also served a plate of sashimi, long, meaty gyoza, tempura, and wagyu croquettes. The tempura were subpar, same with the croquettes, which were actually three patties of minced beef mixed with mashed potato. However, the highlight was the large clams cooked in sake, and the meat was so plump and juicy.

With beers, highballs and a plum drink, the total came to 26,000 yen for three. Again we walked off the meal by walking to the Imperial Palace, which had strategically placed strong headlights to prevent people from coming too close. 

We walked to a place near the subway station that sells taiyaki, a fish-shaped pastry that has different fillings. We had the custard and red bean one. They were very hot out of the waffle iron, and a good way to keep warm as the temperatures began to drop. 

Tender cuts of beef for yakiniku

Another excellent meal was at Yakinikutoraji Honten, which has several branches, and we ate at the one in Shibuya that had three floors. Our host did the ordering and we didn't mind not knowing what we were eating over a hot charcoal-fired grill.

We started off with thin slices of beef tongue that were delicious and then moved onto other cuts of beef that I was unfamiliar with, but everything was tender, despite not being marbled. Some cooked meats we wrapped in lettuce or shiso leaves, and grilled the odd slices of peppers.

Service was great, as after each round the staff came by to replace the metal wire rack over the charcoal. For dessert I had two scoops of soybean ice cream with a caramel sauce drizzled on top. This meal cost 2,000 yen less than the izakaya!

Our final dinner was at Savoy after our visit to Tokyo Skytree. The pizza place opens at 5.30pm and we didn't know we could make reservations so when we arrived there was luckily a short lineup ahead of us. The first group ahead of us was eight people including four young children; the parents couldn't decide if they wanted to order take away or eat in... Luckily we didn't wait too long, perhaps half an hour or so and we were the next batch of people to go in.

The best seats in the house were near the entrance where the pizza oven was located, with a roaring fire, but we were led to the back kitchen where salads were prepared and dishes were washed. It was kind of strange to have a open view of the back of house, but perhaps they felt they could take advantage of hungry diners eager for any kind of view.

A watery Margherita pizza at Savoy

The pizza menu had changed since my friend last came, with fewer pizzas to choose from. Nevertheless we ordered the classic Margherita and the Blue fin tuna from Yamayuki which looked intriguing. But first we ate an appetiser of octopus with peppers and fennel lightly dressed with oil, vinegar and parsley. Delicious.

We also had some meatballs covered in tomato sauce and some sprinkled melted parmesan cheese that were very tender and total comfort food.

Not long after we finished the meatballs the Margherita pizza arrived. It looked great, with the slightly burnt crust. But when I pulled a slice away to eat, I could see the tomato sauce was quite watery, which dulled the taste of the pizza. I still liked the crust which was airy and held up to the watery filling.

Excellent blue fin tuna pizza

Our waitress thought we were finished after this pizza and began collecting our plates when we told her we were still waiting for the second pizza. Guess they are in a hurry to get the next batch of hungry customers in.

Finally (and giving us a bit of time to digest), the Blue fin tuna pizza came with a side of wasabi and we were not disappointed! This was definitely a memorable pie. Since there's only a few slices of tuna, they were all bunched up in the middle and seared from being in the pizza oven; some bits were still a bit raw. 

The combination of the slight sashimi taste of the tuna combined with cheese was so smooth and sweet, and the roughly chopped spring onions added a bit of crunchy texture. We did not need the wasabi to liven things up. It was already so good.

For dessert we didn't only have one but two tiramisus, very light, almost fluffy light and a hint of the espresso-soaked ladyfingers underneath. We walked out feeling sated and happy to make it to this place. Our total eating time: 45 minutes. 

Eating Local at Farmer's Market

Blueberries, raspberries and blackberries on sale today

This afternoon I checked out the farmer's market at Riley Park, next to Nat Bailey Stadium where the Vancouver Canadians play baseball. I hadn't been to this farmer's market for decades and was keen to see what the different stalls had.

I managed to get a parking spot in the community centre connected to Hillcrest Park, where there is a library, swimming pool, ice rink and playground.

My lunch of two samosas with chickpea sauce

A short walk away I could see small tents and many of them were selling berries -- strawberries, raspberries, blueberries, blackberries and even boysenberries. Others sold vegetables like corn, kale, zucchini, English peas, beets, and potatoes. 

Others sold breads, donuts, and cookies, or perogies, meat pies, frozen salmon fillets, and fresh pasta. One had a slow day selling mushrooms -- the guy wore a T-shirt with a large mushroom on it and it said "funguy". He was offering lion mane mushrooms, oyster and shiitake, and even sea asparagus or salicornia, a crunchy but salty vegetable that looks like a mini asparagus.

There were also exotic foods like Balinese sauces, Cambodian seasonings, Indian chilli sauces. 

I ordered lunch from an Indian food truck: a dish called samosa chaat, featuring two samosas with a chickpea sauce drizzled on top with a bit of tamarind chilli sauce. It was delicious with a bit of pickled cabbage.

Vegan chocolate ice cream bar!

And hankering for an ice cream I had a vegan cookies and cream ice cream bar. It was covered in white chocolate shell and underneath was a black ice cream bar, as if you had crushed the black cookies of an Oreo and froze them with a bit of plant-based milk. 

I enjoyed the food while listening to a group of singers performing songs a cappella.

While the prices are a bit more expensive than supermarkets, many people come here for organic produce or want to support local farmers. There's a warm community atmosphere here!

Army of Cooks Feeding Cruise Ship Passengers

Showing off some cool knife skills

We ate all our meals on the Ruby Princess this past week and I can attest as a cruiser that the novelty fades quickly; the breakfast buffet looks pretty much the same everyday, and in the fine dining restaurant, ingredients are used in different ways. It's best to eat something fresh on the menu -- and asking your waiter for tips on what's good that day.

Nevertheless we have to say running the food outlets on a cruise ship is no easy task. Executive chef Russell Clarke explained that half the staff are related to food and beverage, either cooks or waiters from some 50 different countries.

Pastry chefs busy making cakes for the day

During a culinary presentation in the theatre, Clarke quipped that he spoke Australian, not English, while all the other cooks and waiters spoke at least two or three different languages.

On stage, Clarke quickly made three dishes for the audience of passengers: shrimp cocktail with mango salsa, lamb chops, and pavlova with berries and coulis.

However, we weren't invited to try the dishes -- the pavlova looked rock hard and dense -- but to go to the galley kitchens to take a look. Apparently this is a popular tour and some people raced to the kitchens! In the end there wasn't much to see, except lots of empty work spaces, stainless steel everywhere and only a handful of chefs working at 11am.

Perhaps the cooks were shy, or Clarke wanted the area cleared out, we could only look at a distance though some areas were decorated with creative carvings of vegetables and fruits. Some were constructed to look like mice and birds, but the flowers carved out of the side of a watermelon were most impressive.

A hearty slice of prime rib with potato, beans

We were given a fact sheet on how much food is produced on the ship, and it involves ordering 110-115 tons of food delivered on a single cruise.

Three butchers clean and cut 1,700 fish into portions daily, while five butchers, three assistants and helpers prepare beef and poultry. On a cruise, 1,400lbs of poultry, 1,700lbs of beef, 1,400lbs of pork and pork products (like sausages); 300lbs of veal, and 200lbs of lamb are cooked daily.

While I had a large slice of prime rib that was pretty good on the last night, the lamb rack I had was overcooked. Interestingly the cream of whatever vegetable soup like cauliflower, or lentil, and the Alaska seafood soup were really good. These are made by 13 staff, preparing 550 gallons per day.

Some 1,600lbs of salad are served daily along with 400lbs of shrimp, 13 gallons of mayonnaise, and 1,500 sandwiches. The Caesar salad was consistently good and what I ate the most.

The bread served on board is made fresh daily by 10 bakers, including the bread rolls we ate everyday that had a light crunchy exterior and fluffy interior along with whipped butter. I did not try the pizza nor the croissants. The bakers use some 1,500lbs of flour daily! I saw some dough being proofed when we went through the kitchens.

Breads are made daily on the ship

And there are 13 people working in pastry making desserts, ice creams, cakes and pies. Around 6,000 pieces of pastries are made everyday, along with 100 gallons of ice cream, and 300 cakes and pies. The blueberry crumble with vanilla ice cream was a favourite at our table. The souffle on the first day was more like a steamed cake, but there was baked Alaska (a giant one sliced up, to individual ones that were sloppy). The safest bet was peach melba or ice cream with fresh fruit sauce like pineapple or strawberry.

Every morning I ate fruits -- honeydew, cantaloupe, watermelon and pineapple. Sometimes there was papaya. Towards the end of the trip there was more canned fruit like apricot, peach and pineapple. I ate those anyway, and once had canned figs. Around 6,000lbs of fresh fruit is served daily, while 400lbs of butter are used everyday!

For those who drink coffee, 470 gallons are consumed, 62 gallons of coffee cream, and 400lbs of sugar for the coffee.

After consuming all that food, someone has to clean the dishes. Fifty-seven people wash china, glasses, silver, and pots and pans. Everyday 70,000 dishes are washed, while 21,500 glasses are washed. 

And that's just the passengers. There are also 1,1000 crew who need to eat too!

Picture of the Day: Singaporean Ice Cream Sandwich

Beat the heat with an ice cream sandwich

I walked towards The Fullerton Hotel Singapore with the aim of finding the Merlion, and came upon an uncle selling ice cream sandwiches!

His mobile stand featured many ice cream flavours that are in a rectangular shaped cardboard box. When someone asks for a particular flavour, he digs it out and then slices a brick off of it and then either places it in between two thin wafers, or a slice of bread.

This uncle served many flavours

It costs S$1.50 (US$1.10) for the wafer and an extra 20 cents for the bread.

He had flavours like yam, chocolate chip, mocca chip, mango, sweet corn, tuti fruit, vanilla, raspberry ripple and chocolate, and the customers before me preferred having their mini ice cream brick in a slice of rainbow bread, which is a bit pink and pistachio coloured.

I chose the cheaper option of wafers holding a slab of durian ice cream.

He dug into his cart and found a fresh box, opened it and slid his knife along the edges to make it easier to cut. Then he sliced it about an inch and a half thick before putting it in between two thin wafers smaller than the ice cream, and placed the sandwich in a small plastic bag to catch the drippings.

The ice cream was fragrant and creamy, and paired with the wafers gave it a bit of a crunch, much like an ice cream cone, but thinner. You couldn't savour the ice cream sandwich for too long as it was hot and so within minutes it had disappeared into my satisfied stomach!

What a fun treat to have if you can find it!

Picture of the Day: Cows Ice Cream

My scoop of Royal Cownadian Mint!

Ice cream! Ice cream! 

We all scream for ice cream!

At Whistler there's one place that regularly has lines out the door.

It's called Cows ice cream and its location in Whistler Village is the only one in British Columbia!

My parents' friend alerted me to this shop -- he makes a pilgrimage to the place every time he's at Whistler and I can see why.

First off is the flavours. There's no boring vanilla or chocolate, but fun-sounding ones like Nanaimoo Bar (custard flavoured ice cream with a hint of coconut, chocolate marble and chocolate wafer pieces; Orange Cowsicle (vanilla ice cream with orange creamsicle sauce); and Black Angus Forest (chocolate ice cream with cherries and marshmallow sauce).

After my epic hike on Whistler and Blackcomb, I felt I deserved some ice cream and headed to Cows ice cream where there was a relatively short line of about 10 people in front of me.

I tried to check out the flavours, but could only see the names posted on the wall, while the actual tubs of ice cream were halfway to the cash register.

In the end I settled with Royal Cownadian Mint (chocolate ice cream infused with pure peppermint oil, with chocolate marble and chocolate wafer pieces).

Customers can have their ice cream in a cup, a regular waffle cone, or ones decorated with chocolate sauce,  or chocolate sauce with nuts or sprinkles. 

At over CAD$6.00 a scoop, it's almost double the cost of a regular ice cream.

However, many appreciate the ice creams are much creamier -- they boast having a higher fat content at 14-18 percent compared to regular ice cream at 10-12 percent.

That said my scoop of chocolate mint ice cream wasn't too rich-tasting and not too sweet either.

If ice cream is not your thing, there are other things to buy in the shop, from cheese to chocolate-covered potato chips, and cow-themed merchandise from children's books to calendars, hats, socks and even beach towels.

A pity there is only one shop in Whistler! 

Cows

4313 Main Street, Unit #1

Whistler, BC

604 938 9822