Here, in chronological order, is a list of our dining and drinking activities while we were there:
- Breakfast at O'Doul's Restaurant & Bar on Robson Street. I had a smoked salmon scramble. Can't remember what Bill had. All I remember is that both were really good.
- Super-late lunch at Sammy J. Peppers on Granville Island. We both had this awesome appetizer made of miniature Chilean lobster tail swimming in a cheese and cream sauce, served with dipping bread.
- Dinner at Hamilton Street Grill. Of course! If you remember my last entry on Vancouver, I could not stop praising the food here. This time around we shared a whole bottle of Blue Mountain pinot noir. We each had the fantastic New York steak with green peppercorn sauce and the best-dessert-ever-holy-crap-it's-awesome gingerbread pudding. The waitress didn't think we could each finish a whole dessert serving. Ha! We proved her wrong!
- Snacks at the ferry terminal. Good fast food. Nothing to write home about.
- High Tea at the Empress Hotel in Victoria. How very civilized and proper! They served their own custom blend of tea, which was very, very good. All of the frou-frou sandwiches and pastries were fantastic as well. Definitely want to do again someday! We even saw an old (as in OLD) English lady having tea. She was dressed to the nines, complete with a frilly hat. Bill wanted to have his picture taken with her but was too shy to ask. :)
- Dinner at O'Doul's. This restaurant was across the street from our hotel, so it was convenient. Plus, they were the only ones who had Cedar Creek pinot noir for sale! Looove the Cedar Creek! Bill had a mixed seafood pasta while I had veal oso buco. We shared half a bottle of CC wine. They had a jazz lounge singer that night. She was pretty good. Sang barefoot.
- Lunch at The Keg on Granville Island. We just decided to try this one out since I didn't want to go someplace we had already tried. It was pretty good. We had a cute young waitress who didn't know how to open a bottle of wine. We shared a bottle of Quail Creek pinot noir and each had an open-face steak sandwich and some Dungeness crab. I wish I had just gotten a whole crab, although the sandwich was also good. Man, I'm SO over my crustacean-phobia!
- Dinner at Zin, the terminally hip fusion restaurant that also happened to be in our hotel (Pacific Palisades). Which meant we got a 20% discount. Wheee. Cool, dark interiors. Servers all dressed in black. Food was pretty good but a bit too "fusion" for my taste. I had steak tartare (which of course Bill found disgusting). We both had pan-seared halibut. The fish was delicious.
- A bag brunch of BC smoked sockeye salmon (from Granville Island Smokery) and fresh-baked Italian bread from the island's public market. We ate outdoors, sitting by the dock and watching birds and dogs at play. I also had some rugelach.
- Pre-checkout wine - half a liter of Cedar Creek Platinum Reserve Meritage - at O'Doul's.
- In between all of the above, of course, we snacked on MANGOSTEEN!!! Hooray to Canada for allowing the importation of this awesome fruit. We bought some at the gourmet grocery in Yaletown and brough it back to our hotel room. Yum.
- We even had some Thai dragonfruit, which I thought looked absolutely scary. Bill thought it looked cool. The taste was... eh. It looked more interesting than it tasted. Not bad. Not good. Just... eh.