Target 2.1: Vong Gac - Now Closed
Address: 663 East 15th Ave. (map)
Phone: 604-872-6650
Menu: Page 1; Page 2; Page 3; Page 4
Price: $5.25 small; $5.75 large
Condiments Photo
Fishtank Photo

Visit date: January 24th, 2008
Visit time: 7:20 PM

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Phodown 2.0
a nail in the coffin

Monday January 28th, 2008

By Jason Chin
Eat Vancouver Writer

After awaking to find a frosted over car for the past few days, I couldn’t help but get a very clear message: Winter is here, and she’s not catching her return flight anytime soon. While there’s no way to put and end to that bitch’s icy reign, there is one thing we can do to wait it out. And as you may have guessed from the kick-ass banner, that one thing is a phodown.

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Dear Virginia
Une lettre d’amour

Friday January 25th, 2008

by Jason Chin
Eat Vancouver Hack

Dear Virginia,

By the time you get this letter, I’ll be gone. I’m going back to that other ‘V’ in my life. Don’t look so surprised – we both knew this was coming.

But there are so many things I’ll miss: moments, tastes and experiences – all of them unforgettable. Do you remember the pupusa trucks?

Those shiny family-run vehicles peddling all manner of Salvadorian delights? Yeah, I know they sell tacos as well, but those were never the main draw were they? Of course you’re right, they were tasty little creations, full of beef fried with onions, topped with a healthy portion of pico de gallo.

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Chef writer Anthony Bourdain has a popular show on the Travel Channel called No Reservations. He’ll travel to a city to dine, live and just experience its culture. He went to Vancouver recently and well, he learned a lot about how video games are made. I think he also went to Vij’s and tried a Japadog. I’m not sure, because we don’t get the travel channel at my place. Luckily, there are some nice people on the internets sharing this episode, so you can see if he gave an accurate representation of Vancouver!

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Target 1: Chen’s Shanghai Restaurant (Bai yu lan canguan)
Address: 8095 Park Rd (map)
Phone: 604-304-8288
Menu: Page 1; Page 2; Page 3
Price: $4.20 for 6 baos
Hours of operation

Visit date: January 29th, 2008
Visit time: 8:00 PM

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Introducing: The Xiaolongbao-down
an introduction

Saturday, January 19th 2008

by Jason Chin
Eat Vancouver editor

Xiaolongbao are steamed Chinese dumplings filled with soup. It’s really as simple as that, but for some difficult-to-explain reason I’m obsessed with them. If I had to guess at the source of my affection for these little pillows of soup, I’d say it has to do with the sheer ingenuity of them. As impossibly thin little wrappers precariously encapsulating a spoonful of piping hot soup, the xiaolongbao defies all known laws of physics. Of course, it probably also doesn’t hurt that they are completely delicious. Properly made, the soup inside is incredibly rich, thickened a bit by the flour from the pastry and highlighted by a morsel of fatty pork. They’re also fun in that there’s a variety of strategies from the asbestos-mouths who will down them in one bite, to the method I personally pioneered. In short, what you do is put a little ginger-spiked vinegar in your spoon, plop a bao in the spoon, make a little hole in the pastry and then suck. Once enough soup is extruded, it’s time to bite down and finish it.

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Eat Vancouver Presents: Restaurant Membership
a news item

Friday January 16th, 2008

By Jason Chin
Eat Vancouver editor

I am very happy to announce a new Eat Vancouver feature tonight, one that I believe can change the way Vancouver’s dining public receives information about the city’s restaurant scene. This feature will allow restaurateurs that may a have limited, or non-existant advertising budget to quickly and efficiently publish information about their restaurant. That new feature is Eat Vancouver’s new restaurant membership program. In application, this system works much the same way that Urban Diner’s restaurant community operates, except for one key difference: Our program is free. That’s right, Eat Vancouver restaurant members get all of the same benefits as Urban Diner community members (or any other restaurant guide for that matter) including sample menu publication, photos, links or quotes from recent reviews, except this time I’m footing the bill.

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49th Parallel Coffee Roasters
(604) 420-4900
Address: 2152 West 4th Avenue (map)
Homepage

Pastries Without Parallel
a Quick Bite

By Mark Freeman
Eat Vancouver writer

Since I arrived in Vancouver, I’ve been trying to find a decent coffee shop in my area where I could write but have been consistently disappointed with the overpriced, generic cafe food in the coffee shops along 4th. But after discovering 49th Parallel Coffee Roasters, I haven’t had to go anywhere else again. They have great coffee, a regular for 1.69, and even better espresso, a double for 2.25, but it’s the pastries that keep pulling me back every week.

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Home for the Holidays
a holiday special series

No Country for Old Phở
Wednesday January 9th, 2008

By Michael Chin
Eat Vancouver writer

I’ll be honest. I had trouble finding an angle for this piece. It seemed odd because there certainly isn’t a shortage of angles on Vietnamese Beef Noodle Soup (case in point: The Phởdown). I guess it would be more appropriate to say I was burdened with an overabundance of angles. In picking one I had to keep in mind that I have lived in the DC area all my life, so I can’t really talk about things like they are new or at least like I am re-experiencing them. I have, however, eaten phở in Vancouver, which does give me some sort of unique perspective, albeit a little lame. I’ll do my best to keep it snappy.

The third most important thing to know about phở here is that, in general, it’s not much different than Vancouver. There isn’t really a colloquial difference, like chowder. Just like in Vancouver you are bound to find a strip mall dedicated to the stuff. The fixins are the same, the cafeteria setup is the same, and the locations are plentiful. One such location, and arguably the best representative for phở in the Metro area is Phở 75. With several locations in Virginia, Maryland, and Philadelphia it borders on a mini institution on the East Coast. I go about twice a month. I used to go more.

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Home for the Holidays
a holiday special series

Thanks be to Cod
Saturday January 5th, 2008

By Jason Chin
Eat Vancouver writer

Following the precedent of eating stuff that’s difficult to find in Vancouver, I went out searching for a good brick oven pizza a couple of nights ago. The DCist (a DC area blog) in conjunction with Don Rockwell recently did a comparison of the area’s top brick oven pizzas in what they called a Fab Forno Smackdown, no doubt a spiritual cousin to the Phodown. They compared places like the Associazione Verace Pizza Napoletana (AVPN) approved 2 Amys, and Roberto Donna run Bebo. I won’t get into specifics here, but it’s a pretty good read. Long story short, I couldn’t make it to any of the places mentioned in this article but I did get to try Ellla’s in Penn Quarter, a pizzeria that is supposedly no slouch itself. Quite importantly, Ella’s also boasts a hoppin’ happy hour with $5 pizzas and reduced-priced beer, something that is certainly not available in Vancouver

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