Review: Wa-Bagel Sandwich

The Pacific sandwich with salmon and pickled vegetables

The other day I was downtown and grabbed a late lunch at Wa-Bagel, a shop that sells Japanese-style bagels. There are interesting flavour combinations like matcha cheesecake, sweet potato and black sesame, and red bean and cream cheese.

I ordered one of their sandwiches, the popular Pacific, which features smoked sockeye salmon with interesting garnishes like plum paste, pickled red onion, cured cucumber, shiso and caper crisps that cut the richness of the cream cheese on a plain bagel that I requested it be toasted.

These Japanese bagels are softer and less dense than western-style bagels, so the focus is more on the filling, which looks colourful, appetising and was refreshing. The salmon slices were thick rather than thin, while the portion size was just right.

I've tried the Montreal smoked meat sandwich, but the Pacific was better, probably because I'm partial to the pickled and cured vegetables in the latter.

Wa-Bagel isn't a restaurant, but a take-out shop; that said, there's a common area just outside the shop where customers can eat their bagels.

As for the other flavoured bagels, I have yet to try them, but hear the matcha cheesecake is pretty popular!

Wa-Bagel by Aburi

Concourse Level, Park Place Building

B09-666 Burrard Street

Vancouver, BC

Marimekko-inspired Finnish Food

The salmon chowder is served in a Marimekko bowl and plate

I have a friend in Hong Kong who is a devoted Marimekko fan. She wears the large dresses featuring the block flower prints, and has the tableware at home too. 

Like many people I was surprised to discover it is a Finnish brand, not Japanese! Marimekko is actually a textiles, clothing and home furnishing company started by Viljo and Armi Ratia in Helsinki in 1951.

The cafe has the Unikko poppy decor

This year marks the 60th anniversary of the Unikko, or poppy pattern, and Canadian high-end retailer Holt Renfrew has a mini pop-up selling some Marimekko items from clothing to handbags to bowls and tea cups, as well as offering Finnish-inspired dishes at Holts Cafe.

Curious to see how they tasted, I went to the cafe today for brunch. Holts Cafe opens at 10am and I was there half an hour later, the only customer! It's a nice space, with lounge seating mostly for two and a dining room area to the left of the entrance. 

The cafe is decorated with a pillar in the grey Unikko design, as well as some cushions, alternating with blue striped ones from Marimekko as well. For the special menu, all the dishes are served on Marimekko tableware, a great way to promote the brand.

Perusing the menu, there are bites for the ladies-who-lunch crowd, such as a spring pea and cucumber salad, salmon chowder, and open-face smoked whitefish sandwiches called tartine. There's also cabbage rolls, and shrimp on toast.

Smoked whitefish tartine with salad

Keeping with the Finnish theme are drinks using Finlandia vodka -- but who is drinking vodka during the day, and especially at 10.30am? I asked for the non-alcoholic berry caipiroska, and it was served in a tiny (Marimekko) glass with lime juice, syrup and blueberries. Refreshing, but considering it's zero-proof, how about a larger glass or a discount on the drink (C$15)?

The salmon kasu chowder (C$18) arrived smelling fragrant from the fresh dill. The cream-based soup, featured chunks of kasu-cured salmon, leek, carrot, and potato. It was a delicious soup that wasn't too heavy on the cream, but the small potatoes were not bite-sized. Even though they were sliced in half, they had to be fished out and cut in half again.

I also ordered the smoked fish tartine (C$19) that came with small strips of smoked fish with thin slices of radish and red onion on yogurt and rye bread. The fish was a tad salty, but the flavour was flat -- it could have benefited from pickled red onion to elevate the taste. Nevertheless I enjoyed the mini butter lettuce salad on the side.

Finishing these two dishes left me feeling quite full for the rest of the day! 

The Marimekko pop-up and takeover is until July 31.

Holts Cafe

Holt Renfrew

737 Dunsmuir Street

Vancouver

604 678 0316

Live Like a Local Alaskan

Blasphemous Bill's tagline is "Rest in Pieces"

As I signed up for some excursions as part of my Alaska cruise, the tour guides tried to give us a sense of what life is like where they live and gave suggestions of where to hang out in our precious few hours in each port.

The towns of Juneau, Skagway and Ketchikan are very small, with populations of a few thousand people each, but the numbers double when cruise season starts; students and young people with a yearning for adventure come to Alaska to earn money (though food and lodging can be expensive) and have a few good stories to tell their friends and family back home.

Spruce tip soda is among four flavours

Our rainforest tour guide from Montana asked us to write a Google review of our visit and to mention her name so that her mom could see her daughter was still alive and well in Ketchikan.

The guide who took us kayaking also asked us to review the excursion on Google too and if their name was mentioned they would get US$10 extra from his employer. What an incentive.

One of our guides who took us around Skagway was decades older, but it seems he enjoys the lifestyle in Alaska too much. He is happy to take tourists around to see mountains and glaciers from May to October, and after that he and his dog decamp to San Diego and enjoy the sun in the winter.

He suggested that we go to the Skaguay News Depot & Books to get a copy of The Skagway News for US$2 where we can read the section called "Police and Fire Blotter". 

It lists the police reports of what happened in a two-week period. Some are mundane like someone losing a mobile phone or a credit card was found in a store and reunited with its owner. Some involve passengers on cruise ships like losing their ship identification badge, or a medical emergency on the ship.

Colourful donuts assembled upon ordering

Others are more bizarre, like the one about a suspicious pill found on the floor of a bar and was turned over to the police. It turns out it was arthritis medication.

Someone called the police asking about the legalities of standing next to the Alaska sign dressed up as a bigfoot, or how about a person asking the cops to do a welfare check on a friend; the friend was fine but wanted to be left alone...

Another guide in Ketchikan suggested getting a salmon donut (US$10) from Jellyfish Donuts near where the Ruby Princess was docked. He also suggested trying spruce tip beer, bitters and even gin. We could get spruce tip soda from Blasphemous Bill's. 

So after my tour ended and dropped us back at the pier, I walked back to Blasphemous Bill's to get the spruce tip soda. I had to ask for it because I couldn't find it but it was in a small bar fridge near the cashier. 

Having tried pickled spruce tips that taste like capers, I was hoping the soda would have a pine-like smell or taste. Instead it was more of a lemon-lime soda that was quite sweet.

Salmon and maple bacon donuts

Then I hit Jellyfish Donuts and it's a small quaint shop and the donuts are actually brioche buns with creative toppings like sour patch kid and peanut butter and jelly. The signature one is salmon which I had to try. It's actually a smoked salmon spread with a few chopped spring onions on top. 

It's actually pretty good, fluffy donut that's a bit sweet and balanced with the savouriness of the salmon. I also tried maple bacon with actual bacon bits on the glazed donut, but it was more on the sweet side with a lot of icing on top.

Nevertheless, it was fun just to try these items even if they are a bit of a touristy gimmick!

Spotting Black Bears in the Ketchikan Rainforest

Looking up at the many trees in the rainforest

This morning we arrived in Ketchikan, Alaska, the last port of call on our cruise. It's known as the salmon capital of the world because five species of salmon can be found here: chum, sockeye, king, silver and pink. Apparently chum is nicknamed "dog salmon" because it's only good for mushing dogs to eat.

And we are one month away from the start of the salmon run, where the fish return to their birthplace to spawn and then sadly die... 

Black vertical bear claw marks

The town is also known for having the most totem poles in the world and you do see them around town, though they seem to be much smaller than the ones found in Vancouver. They are made of cedar too, the wood of choice for carving.

Ketchikan's population is around 8,000, while the entire island is 14,000. When it's tourist season the population doubles to service thousands of tourists who come daily. That's right. Today there were five cruise ships docked in Ketchikan. 

I signed up for a walk in a rainforest, named the Alaska Rainforest Sanctuary, which was about a 20-minute ride from the pier. Both our drivers to and from the sanctuary were funny and entertaining with their stories of living in the town. Almost all the young people I've encountered here are in Alaska to earn money, but also some genuinely love the outdoors and the lifestyle. 

Our guide for the rainforest walk wasn't a local but from Montana. Nevertheless, she seemed to know what she was doing as she took a dozen of us on a 1 mile walk around the trail. We were told this area gets 13-16ft of rain per year, which compares to Seattle at 5-7ft of rain. In addition Ketchikan only gets 2-3ft of snow per year, so it's more wet than cold.

The rainforest, which is part of the Tongass National Forest, reminded me of Pacific Spirit Park but with a lot more moss and narrower trails. The guide told us interesting facts about things we saw along the way, such as skunk cabbage grown on the ground are eaten by bears as a laxative, and there are berries grown here such as salmonberry, huckleberry, and blackberry. The blackberry's leaves have medicinal uses too.

A tree that grew from a nurse log

She told us 90 percent of this rainforest's trees are either the western hemlock or the sitka spruce. How can you tell the difference between the two? The western hemlock has stripey bark like bacon, whereas the sitka spruce's bark are shaped like fish scales. 

The forest floor is not deep when it comes to soil, so the roots spread out, or in some cases, young trees will gain its nutrients from fallen or dead trees called nurse logs. They can have up to 100 years' worth of nutrients stored up for "baby" trees. 

Our guide showed us a tiny sapling and explained it was 5-7 years old, and a "teenager" was about 50 years old. A mature tree could be up to 500 years old or even 1,000 years old. And the moss hanging on many of the trees? They are called "old man beards" and they are sterile enough to be used to bandage wounds; I was told a while ago that they make good toilet paper!

She also showed us a tree trunk that had bear claw marks on it, as the bear had climbed up the tree!

Not long after we saw a live black bear in front of us which was quite the excitement. Our guide advised us to wait for a few minutes to give the bear some space to leave. And to our left we could see two cubs running around in the forest. 

See the young bear in the stream in the middle?

We spotted the bear again this time under the wooden elevated walkway we were on, and then further in the distance in a grassy area in low tide. There is a stream that leads to the salmon hatchery and this is where the bears are waiting for the salmon to return. The area gets high tide and low tide twice a day which is an interesting fact. 

There were also two bald eagles in the distance circling around in the sky. Hope they didn't think we were lunch...

All of us on the tour were so thrilled to see the black bears, while our guide was probably relieved nothing happened! She added we were so lucky to have blue skies as it had been raining for three weeks straight!

Alaska Rainforest Sanctuary

4085 Tongass Avenue

Ketchikan, Alaska

Learning About Abandoned Spaces Part 3

The railway tracks along Arbutus Street that lay idle for years

Our last stop on the photo walk was a neglected railway track near the entrance to Granville Island. It was part of a track that ran from False Creek, where there were factories, to the Pacific Central Station to transport the goods elsewhere in British Columbia or outside the province.

Pedestrians and cyclists use the Arbutus Greenway

There is also another railway that used to run parallel to Arbutus Street that was nicknamed "the Sockeye express" or "Sockeye special", where trains ferried salmon from Steveston in Richmond, all the way into Vancouver, up the second Granville Street Bridge (demolished in 1954), and into downtown, at the intersection of David and Richards. The same train line was used to carry fresh milk and spring water too.

I remember as a kid my brother and I would leave pennies on the railway track and after the train ran by we would collect the stretched pennies, still hot to the touch. That train stopped running in 2001 and was unused for a long time. 

There were calls to turn it into a pedestrian and bike path and in 2016 the City of Vancouver bought it from the Canadian Pacific Railway for C$55 million. The tracks were taken out and the path was blacktopped. Today people can walk or ride leisurely along the path, now called the Arbutus Greenway, from West 5th Avenue and Fir all the way south to East Boulevard and Southwest Marine.

Which takes us back to the unused track at False Creek. It was used during the 2010 Olympics to transport passengers from Olympic Station to Granville Island on a replica street car for exactly 60 days. After the international sporting event was over, so was the railway track at a cost of C$8.5 million.

Can the rail track at Granville Island be revived?

A local heritage group is hoping to gather enough interest in it to revive the use of the track by putting a street car on it; there would be more foot traffic to Granville Island and Olympic Village, not only by residents but also tourists too.