Our last full day in Vancouver was pretty jam-packed. When you're in the city for only a few days, every second counts. And despite it being rainy all day, it was probably my favourite, food-wise.
The day started with a trip to Beaucoup Bakery for a coffee and pastry. I've always wanted to visit this place but it's always been out of the way. Although it's close to two major hubs, Kitsilano and South Granville, there's not much else surrounding it.
The shop is quite small and narrow but there are so many goodies lined up in their display. Pastries galore! Croissants, scones, scrolls, cookies, and tarts.
We shared a ham and cheese scroll ($6.00), a gargantuan pastry with ham and gruyere cheese rolled in croissant dough. Have you seen anything more beautiful? They brush the scroll with a bit of maple syrup after it's baked, so there's a slight sweetness to balance the savoury ingredients. The outside layers are crispy and flaky, but as you work yourself towards the center of the round, the dough becomes soft and cheesy. Almost like a cinnamon roll where the center is the best part. So good!
After a short trip, we found ourselves in line at Saku. Saku is a Japanese tonkatsu restaurant situated on Robson Street. It's a very popular spot so we made sure to get there right when they opened. To make things as efficient as possible, they took our order in line. That meant our food was pretty much ready as soon as we were seated.
I ordered the ebi hotate katsu ($22.50) which comes with three jumbo prawns and two scallops. The breading was flaky and light with the most satisfying crunch. My only gripe was that the breading slid off the scallops pretty easily.
Each katsu set is also served with unlimited rice, tonjiru (pork miso soup), and shredded cabbage. I fell in love with their sesame dressing! They should totally bottle it for sale. Our server came around a few times to ask if we wanted any refills of anything but we were pretty stuffed.
LT went for the rosu curry ($22.50). This was a breaded pork loin served with their signature curry over rice. Such a good comfort meal. Japanese curry will taste good on anything.
We had some time left on our parking meter so we decided to take a walk around. It was a good idea since we had such a heavy meal and needed to digest. Coal Harbour is so lovely, even in the rain.
Time passed fairly quickly and we found ourselves power walking back to the car before the meter was up. We planned to stay on Robson Street but decided to park over at Pacific Centre to be closer to all the shopping.
Daiso was the first shop on our list! The downtown store is a bit smaller than the old Daiso in Richmond, but there was still plenty of cute goodies. You bet I snagged a few Rilakkuma hand sanitizers.
Dank Mart was another cool place we found. They sell rare snacks and exotic drinks from around the world. Some items are pretty overpriced, but I would bet the import fees require such a mark up.
My haul!
- The Dunkaroos didn't hit quite the same way as it did in childhood. They sadly replaced the cinnamon graham cookies with vanilla cookies. Basic.
- The Muddy Bites are such a unique concept! Bite-sized waffle cones filled with chocolate. Basically the best part of an ice cream cone. I can't remember the exact price but these were going for about $10 a bag. Quite overpriced in my opinion.
- Skittles Chewies and Giant Skittles were exactly what you think they are. These are from the UK so it was interesting to see that purple was blackcurrant flavour.
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I've been to Laduree a couple times already but I wanted to see if the macarons were as good as I remembered. Specifically the Marie Antoinette ($3.60 each), which is a tea-based flavour (black tea, citrus, rose) similar to an earl grey. Unfortunately the macarons got a bit soggy during our rainy walk.
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Last stop before heading home. Machi Machi for their Instagram-worthy drinks and backdrops. We got the fresh strawberry latte with panna cotta ($9.20). Yes, this drink is $9. Was it worth it? No, not really. But you do get to keep the cute plastic bottle it comes in. I enjoyed the creamy panna cotta but the strawberry drink was pretty weak in flavour. I asked LT, did they only blend two strawberries in this? Skip.
Later that night, we hit up Potluck Hawker Eatery, a hip, fun eatery inspired by the street food and hawker markets of Southeast Asia.
It's not a big restaurant so we didn't anticipate how busy it would be. I think it was around a 30 minute wait for our table.
We started with an order of roti canai ($9.50). Two pieces of hand-stretched pastry with a side of curry sauce to dip. The roti was flaky, although a bit on the stiffer side for me. The accompanying curry had a good kick to it.
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For a noodle dish, we chose the char kway teow ($19.00), wok-fried rice noodles with prawns, fish cake, Chinese sausage, egg, and bean sprouts in a sambal and house soy blend. We just asked them to omit the Chinese sausage since MH is a pescaterian. We noticed there were two different types of noodles in the dish, one that was rice and the other that was perhaps tapioca. Both of them had a good texture, soft and slightly chewy. LT loved this dish.
Our last item was the uni fried rice ($33.00), a special for the night. It included green sea urchin stir fried with jasmine rice and their house-made shrimp chili paste and sweet soy. It was topped off with more fresh sea urchin and ikura. Creamy with pops of salty brininess. It did not disappoint.
Another day done! And one more to go...
- CT
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