New Restaurant Friday: Wild Wing

This was where we decided to take our New Restaurant Friday this week. Originally on my meal plan for this week we were going to try somewhere else, but after much deliberation and Thursday night hubby mentioning wings no less than three times we changed our minds!

Boy were we glad we did! Wild Wing located on Granville St in Vancouver is a cute little joint located between Nelson and Smithe. When you walk in it is set up very much like a Hooters for those of you that have been to one; roomy booths, a bar, and lots of televisions.

We were seated right away, which surprised me since there was a hockey game...or maybe that is why we were seated right away. Our waitress was great, very attentive.

When you look at the menu you are offered wings three ways: traditional (breaded), naked, or boneless. We chose traditional.

This is what we had:

 Garlic Parm, Sweet brunette which is a combo of the two flavors we got, and Honey BBQ. I only tried one and it was the sweet brunette really tasty. Great combo of the two flavors.

This was my meal, coconut shrimp and caesar salad. The shrimp were as good as any from back home in Florida. Crispy, not greasy and the dip was fantastic, really complimented them. The salad was tossed in the garlic parm dressing, 'twas perfect! 

These two goobers enjoying their wings. The teenager was acting a fool as any good teenager does when out to wings with her parents! 

At the end we got these tasty little candies:

Wild wing is great for groups and families. The booths were large, it wasn't quiet, and the food is for the fingers! Make sure you go check it out!

New Restaurant Friday: Pizzaria Ludica

Hello! This weekend we did our regularly scheduled New Restaurant Friday. We tried a restaurant I had found thanks to a FB "suggested pages" ad! Normally I ignore those things but it was marketed as a "board game restaurant". There is nothing more the teenager & I love more than board games...the husband, well, he's in games for a living so he's always up for a fun new experience that involves games.

We ate at Pizzeria Ludica. I'm a terrible blogger & didn't take a picture of a logo, or the outside because. well, I'm terrible.

I made a reservation on their website. Super easy and fast, and we were guaranteed a table this way.

This place was very welcoming when we walked in. Lots of long tables, great for groups. The entire back wall was games.

Teenager selecting a game. They had everything there from super easy family games like mousetrap & yahtzee to more complicated, intricate games like Settlers of Catan.

She chose Munchkin. It was one she had been wanting to try so it was the perfect time!

Hubby had to actually look something up as the game in the restaurant had no tokens so we wanted to make sure we could play without the tokens! We could, it was no problem.

At one point I was a half-breed halfling elf! There are treasure cards & battle cards. You never know what you will get and if it will be a blessing or a curse-quite literally!

So this picture looks super sweet right?! He's "helping" her through a battle, great father/daughter time...right after this he got to choose two cards from her & won the whole game! We have to get more savvy when playing games with this guy...you would think after 15 years I would have figured it out...

So, the game was super fun but the food was amazing as well. My expectations were pretty low because many times at restaurants like this you go for the atmosphere, not the food. Here though, you can rest assured you will go for atmosphere & food!

Four cheese calzone! For a dollar you can turn any of their pizza's into a calzone...my fave!

This was the meat pizza. The crust was delicious, very fresh. The meat on it was ham, pepperoni, and bacon. A perfect combo for my meat lover husband! He is still talking about it two days later.

Since it was New Restaurant Friday we could not pass up dessert. This is a nutella pizza. It had nutella, walnuts, and a caramel drizzle, and was sprinkled with cocoa powder. It was amazing. 

Then we each got an Americano. Very good espresso and they served with fresh cream.

This was a fantastic experience and I cannot rave about them enough! Great place for groups, families, or just to shake up the regular ole date night. They are just steps off the Chinatown Skytrain station in Vancouver, BC. Very convenient location for any one using transit!

New Restaurant Friday: Moderne Burger, Vancouver, BC

For our New Restaurant "Friday", which seems to be occurring more and more on Saturday these days was at a place called Moderne Burger, in Kitsilano area of Vancouver, BC. My 14 year old actually found this place when browsing Bored In Vancouver! This was her first time choosing our restaurant for New Restaurant Friday and it was a total success, she was so proud of herself!

When you see it from the street it is all lit up with a neon sign out front, at night hard to miss. When you walk in it is a classic diner experience. Mint coloured booths, a counter with stools lining the food prep area, and a lots of cute pin-up style diner art.

Everyone was super nice from the minute we walked in to the restaurant. Our waitress even gave us a tip since we were all getting shakes, burgers, and fries for my daughter & I to just split the fries. Glad we took her up on the tip because it was a lot of food. I still have half a shake in the freezer and half a burger in the fridge!

Here are some photos from our meal:

Amazing chocolate shake!

Strawberry shake the husband enjoyed!

My platter...the kiddo had already taken about half the fries! o_O Unreal, right?!

Regular steakburger with two types of cheese. The beautiful part about Moderne is there are no additives to their beef and everything is made fresh in house!

Bacon cheeseburger & fries. 

We cleaned house! It was so tasty!

Moderne is a place we will go back to time and again. Affordable food, good for the whole family. Can't wait until our next visit.

New Restaurant Friday: Rain City Grill-Vancouver, BC

Happy Monday all!!! I am getting a late start today. This weekend the hubby and I were busy, busy on date nights and just spending time together and with the teenager so I wasn't on the computer too much...which honestly was fine I was feeling like I needed a technology hiatus!

Anyway...I wanted to give this review it's own post because as you all know we typically do "New Restaurant Friday" where we pick a new restaurant somewhere in town and see if we can have a new favourite! The past couple of weeks we have actually been going back to some favourites so we haven't been trying anything new. But, since I am doing the 21 Day Sugar Detox, I was looking for something a little more paleo friendly. This definitely was! Here is some info about it:

Rain City Grill is located in Vancouver, BC. It is about a 20 minutes walk from us. It is in what is called the "West End" neighbourhood, where as we live in the "Coal Harbour" neighbourhood. This place was much nicer than I had anticipated. We went at 5pm when they opened for dinner and were extremely casually dressed (jeans, t-shirts, nice shoes...decent, but had I known we probably would have dress up a bit more). Also, make sure to make a reservation. I was also a bit ticked that we weren't offered the "Dine Out" menu, I didn't realize it was available until after we had placed our order and heard the hostess ask someone if they also wanted the "Dine Out" menu. Since we had a child with us it would have been nice to get a prix fixe price.

Everything was very good and we even go to try something new-Cornish Hen! We were a bit disappointed thought because we checked out their menu online and they are listed as having a Wagyu Beef Burger, but apparently they hadn't had that since the summer. So I think I should take the time to mention their menu does change weekly as it is a "farm to table" restaurant so all the food is local.

So, here we go. We started off with some bread. It was quite delicious. They brought butter that was very soft (this is a pet peeve of my husband when we go to a restaurant and get cold butter that can't be spread so they got about a million points here in his book) and some sea salt.

I started with the butternut squash soup.

It said on the menu it came with a walnut and apple cookie. It was just crumbles of a cookie in the bowl so that was a bit disappointing as I was looking forward how that would taste! It also came with some apple panna cotta, which was amazing. It was all quite delicious and not terribly sweet like many places tend to make butternut squash soup. 

For my main I had the salmon. It was quite delicious and cooked very well. The mushrooms it came with were delicious, and it had a little sauce with kale underneath. The little squares on top are cauliflower puree hash-browns! I didn't realize it until my very picky husband said they tasted "vegetable-y" lol It was very delicious I still have half of it in the fridge to munch on for lunch.

This is the teenager's plate. I will say she was quite disappointed by the serving size. Being american and used to eating at such places as Chili's and Red Robin the fact this didn't take up even half her plate was a bit surprising to her. But, she ate most everything. She loved the Cornish Hen. She said it just tasted like chicken, but was tinier. It came with some tasty fingerling potatoes.

The husband had a rib eye. It wasn't overly expensive for a local steak. Places such as Coast & Black & Blue charge much, much more and theirs are not local to my knowledge. He got a delicious sauce over it and it came with fingerling potatoes. They were delicious. But, being picky he didn't care for them and instead opted for french fries. They came in a super cute tiny looking fry basket. I forgot to get a picture unfortunately.

We really enjoyed the restaurant. I can't say the wait staff was very friendly. They were helpful, but not very friendly. They also didn't seem to pay a whole lot of attention. I ordered a drink and then the husband and daughter ordered cokes and I asked the waiter to put Grenadine in their soda's and somehow my drink came with grenadine. I know they were going to be busy that evening and we didn't have a reservation but in that case they should have just said they couldn't seat us, where as it almost seemed like we were more of a bother. It was a bit frustrating. I do hope to go back and try their brunch or lunch menu and hopefully get a better feel of the place.

If you have been to Vancouver or live here and have a suggestion of a place we should try please fill me in!!!

What we ate in Whistler

When we were in Whistler last weekend we obviously had to eat! So, this is dedicated to all the delicious food we had that evening! If you want to read my reviews of each place you can visit my yelp page and check them out. 

On our way out of town up to Whistler we stopped in Squamish at The Campfire Grill. We ate here once during the summer and it is the best BBQ we have had outside of the southern U.S. It really is amazing. The guy who runs the kitchen (maybe the whole place, not real sure) definitely knows what he is doing...everything we get, every single time is amazing. If you are out that way you HAVE to stop there, seriously, it's not optional! LOL During the summer you can eat outside and view the mountains, during the fall this time we ate in doors and the have an adorable wood burning stove, it is all quite charming.

Our view out the window, the hotel is a little weird,
but very small town. Love the mountains though!

Inside of the place, it's small, but that's why we like it!

View out the back windows, that is where we ate this summer when we came.
They also have heaters set up all over the place, it can get
chilly in there so I was glad for the heater!

The food! It was so delicious! There was chicken, pork, brisket, ribs, roll, sweet potato mash, and mac and cheese. I wish the mac and cheese was creamier, but I honestly think that is the southerner in me because no mac & cheese I get up here is like southern mac and cheese.

The first place we ate at Friday night was 21 Steps. They managed to seat us right away, service was meh, they definitely could use to work on that, food was average. It was good, but not spectacular. Definitely a great place to chill and enjoy company. What drew us here was the meal special they had going on it was 3 courses for $35...really great for around here!

Starters:

Caprese Salad

Some sort of chicken wings, sadly the sauce they put on them was cold so we only ate one.

Mains:

Fish, veggies, and rice & beans

Ribeye...was cooked just right, the husband enjoyed it!

 Desserts:

Espresso Mud Pie! I pretty much just ate the giant chocolate chunks!

Creme Brulee

 The next morning we ate at the restaurant that was in our hotel, Elements. When we got on the wait list they said it would be about 10 minutes, but I don't think we waited quite that long. Once we were seated the service seemed a bit slow, but our waitress was great and given how busy they were I don't think it could be helped. Of course we hadn't eaten since about 6pm the night before, so by 10:30 am we were pretty much ready to chew our own arm off, 5 minutes felt like an eternity! So, take my "slow" service comment with a grain of salt ;) Here's the food...

Coffee! This was very, delicious. I find it hard to find
good coffee at restaurants, this was delicious though!

Crab Eggs Benedict. Can you believe that in my 32 years of life this was the first time I had ever had eggs benedict! It was a great first time!

Saturday night we dined at a great little Italian place called Quattro Formaggi. This was pretty good! Servings were HUGE!!!

Giant pepper grinder (found a Winners lol) highlight of the night I think! ha!

Spaghetti bolognese with beef and lamb and herbed ricotta. It was really good, but a huge portion, I only ate about a quarter of it! 

Fried polenta with fried prosciutto. Quite tasty!

Sunday for breakfast we went to Wildwood Cafe, but I didn't get any pictures, it's right near the village so it is worthwhile going over there. Prices were good and the food was amazing! Sunday night we ate dinner at Ric's, it was awful. I do not at anytime recommend eating there. Service was terrible, food was terrible, just an all around terrible time. Completely disappointing.

However, just around the corner from Ric's is Bear Foot Bistro. Inside they have an Ice Room with many, many different vodka's for tasting! The guy running it is a gem...full of personality and ready and willing to answer any and all questions. This was my favourite vodka of the night....

My favourite vodka at the tasting in the ice room. It tasted like pie, I thought apple but others thought cherry and pecan, we all felt like it tasted different...it sure was good though!

To wrap up this spectacular weekend I ended it with nothing but...

These are from Crepe Montagne . They were amazing and a great way to end the weekend!

All the places, with the exception of Ric's were really good and we would definitely dine at them again if we visit Whistler again.

Canada Day Weekend Recap

This weekend in Vancouver was a beautiful one! It was in the 20’s all weekend (for you Fahrenheit-ers out there that’s in the 70’s), but due to our local it felt way warmer than that! So, I've come to the conclusion when we get into Florida on Friday my dad should just bring three buckets with him when he comes to get us at the airport as I am pretty sure we are all going to just melt upon stepping off the plane!

Anyway, for our New Restaurant Friday we just sort of winged it and walked around in the more West End area, about a 10 minutes’ walk from our house. We weren't too impressed by anything (prices seemed sort of high as some of the places) until we came across Rio Brazilian Steakhouse. We love these places. They typically have an amazing salad bar, amazing meat, great customer service and some even have great entertainment. Sadly, this place was severely lacking in all of those area. Which, is unfortunate because it’s the only one of its kind in the area (that I know of at least) so it has the potential to be quite successful. But, we walked in and were seated right away but didn't get a waitress until 20 minutes later. We placed our drink order and I went to the salad bar. It was okay. They had great paella; otherwise I honestly would have liked to have seen a bigger selection of cheeses and greens. I’m more of a spring greens type of gal and the greens they had were a bit tougher. There were quite a few hot dishes that I had never seen at a salad bar at other Brazilian Steakhouses, so that was unique which is why I would love to see this place succeed! So, after the salad bar it was still another half hour (so we are now 50 minutes into our dinner) before we saw any meat come to our table (we were honestly ready to leave by this point). The meats came around and they were okay. We've definitely had better. I think we got to try one of everything and I think hubby even got the top sirloin twice. But, that was it really. For the cost, it definitely was not worth it like it usually is at the other one’s we've been to in the states. I've emailed the restaurant so I hope they take what I have to say seriously as we are huge fans of these types of restaurants and to have one just a 10 minute walk from our house, they would see a lot of business from us! Plus, they had great entertainers and they have a fantastic patio area! 

On Saturday we just did some shopping. I had never really got a summer wardrobe going on and with Canada day around the corner the kiddo talked me into doing some shopping…was I ever glad I did! I picked up a bathing suit, a couple of great, bright shirts, a nice pair of white shorts and a super cute bohemian top, the kiddo also managed a few cute things for herself, and the Mr. even bought a new pair of shorts which is shocking because he hates buying clothes!

Sunday we started the day with a great vinyasa class as Lulu Lemon. The kiddo always comes with me when I go. She has never been to a hot yoga class though and this class they did have the heat on (keep in mind it was already 19 degrees by 8am) so she moved a bit slower as she wasn't prepared and the heat bothered her a bit, but she was glad for it after once I explained what it was to her, I just think being mentally prepared for that sort of thing is key. I then treated hubby and the kiddo to doughnuts and we just did a few household things before heading off to the food cart fest. I checked online and it says it is open until 6pm, however, this is not the case. It is only open until 5pm and most of the stuff was sold out by that time anyway. So, when we get back from vacation we will choose an overcast day and go at noon, when they open. We closed the day with strawberry lemonade martini’s at sunset on the balcony…..

Look at those colours! It was such a beautiful night!

Keep in mind sunset here is at 10pm ;) …can’t beat long summer nights!

Monday

Some of you may be wondering why Monday is included in my “weekend recap” well, that would be because Monday was Canada Day! Canada Day from what we've read online is a fairly recent holiday starting at some point around the 60's and celebrates the four maritime islands becoming part of Canada; there is some speculation as well that it celebrates Canada becoming independent of Great Britain, but I'll have to do some more research as that's a bit iffy from what I have been taught in University and what not. Anywho, enough about what I don't know I will say I’m really fortunate we got the chance to move here because prior to moving here I obviously knew pretty much nothing about Canada except for it was part of North America and a part of the North American Free Trade Agreement. Sad, but true. I know a bit more now, though. ;) Anyway, we live in the most perfect area- I think-so we were able to get in some breakfast on the patio....

 a great workout this morning, a swim, some beach time.....

That water looks refreshing right?! Oh, it was refreshing alright...a little too refreshing ...ha

 walked down two blocks for some waffle cones and ice cream, then we then sat down to eat and waited for the fireworks....

Our weekend-that we had anticipated being overcast and rainy-turned out quite nice...what did you all do?