Pacific Institute of Culinary Arts Bistro 101

Restaurant: Pacific Institute of Culinary Arts Bistro 101

Area: Vancouver, BC

Address: 1505 West 2nd Ave, Vancouver BC

1: Poor 2: OK 3: Good 4: Very good 5: Excellent

Food: 4.5

Service: 5

Price: Fair

So for some reason I couldn't find these photos in my computer until now! Apparently I put them in the wrong folder >.<

So my mom really wanted to come here when she came to visit us from Taiwan, she kept going on and on about this place and since Faith and I also really wanted to come here for a long time, our dad decided to take us! This post would be slightly different because I'm not going to discuss much about the food because every day they change their menu, which I personally really like because then you'll never get bored of the food they serve there!

water

Tea

On the table:

complementary

This was a cucumber wrapped with BBQ duck with cherry tomatoes and green onion. It was really nice and refreshing to eat.

This was also complementary, there was a mini baguette, cheese stick with rosemary, goat cheese and green onion scone and bacon bread. The breads was all flavorful and we liked how they had a lot of different flavors and they were all nicely presented.

 

This was the butter that came with the bread. There was herbs, curry, smoked paprika and salted butter. We liked the curry one the best (it tasted the best) and they all complimented the different varieties of bread.

Asian Mixed in Radicchio Cup, this had (from the description) pan fried scallops, bacon bits and honey Dijon vinaigrette. Faith didn't like the salad, it had too much vinaigrette and overwhelm the whole salad.

Grilled Lamb Chop on Baby Potato Salad. The grilled lamp chop was soft and tender, medium rare, smoky and was simply nice to eat.

Pork Tenderloin, this had (other than the pork tenderloin wrapped in bacon) blueberry gastrique ( a thick sauce), mashed sour cream yam, bok choy and cherry tomatoes. The yams were really good but Faith didn't like the blueberry sauce tasted kind of weird and out of place (her opinion might not be yours), she said it was like eating meat with a sweet jam...

Oven Roasted Cornish Game Hen, had a tomato basil Veloute and Purple Potato. The chicken was really soft/tender but a little dry, the yam was steamed and were also really soft but nice to eat, the tomatoes when you bite into it gave you a burst of juice.

Pan Fried Mahi Mahi Cubes, had mint sweet pea pilaf. (I don't remember how this one tasted)

Chocolate Ice Cream on Biscotti Crumble.This was the most simplest desert that they had but I liked this one the most.

Summer Fruit Shortcake. I found the shortcake way too dry but it had a nice lemon flavor to it and crunch on top.

Pistachio Cake. This had goat milk ice cream, fresh figs and a piece of crystallize sugar with pistachio. Faith found the goat milk too strong (but it was mainly because she wasn't use to the flavor)  


The service was excellent, they answered all our questions and explained/ talked about the food and what it was. They were polite and always checked up on us (but not to the point that it was annoying) and asked if we needed anything else. The food was good, everything was flavorful! They help find the answers to the questions I had on their classes and teen camps! We would definitely come back to try out their new menu!

Thierry Chocolaterie Patisserie Cafe

Restaurant:  Thierry Chocolaterie Patisserie Cafe

Cuisine: Desserts, Pastries, Sandwiches, French

Area: Vancouver, BC

Address: 1059 Alberni St, Vancouver, BC

1: Poor 2: OK 3: Good 4: Very good 5: Excellent

Food: 4

Service: 3

Price: Fair

For some reason I forgot to post this when I finished it >.< Anyways this was in summer. 

Faith and I had been wanting to go to Thierry in downtown Vancouver forever! So when boredom became unbearable we decided to go on an impulse trip to downtown to eat!

Thierry is a cafe that specializes in Parisian baked goods and desserts. They offer handcrafted chocolates, macarons, pastries, and desserts. It is opened by Thierry Busse, who led the pastry programs at their two sister venues: CinCin and West.

When we got to the cafe it was packed with people! Luckily when we finished ordering a couple had just left so we were able to get seats.

There was so many pastries that Faith and I wanted to try! If we could we could buy all the cakes that they had, we would but since we obviously couldn't do that we had to settle for only two instead.

 

 On the table:

The first one that we got was the Passion Fruit Mousse ($5.95). The passion fruit mousse had a sponge cake/foam-like cake at the bottom with passion fruit mousse on top and passion fruit jelly on top. Around it, it had raspberry macarons on the side and a piece of raspberry on top.  Just by taking one bite into it you know it was real passion fruit not some artificial favors, the jelly on top was really sour and there was real seed in it. The mousse was soft and pillowy and was perfect with the macarons that were on the side.

The second one we got was the Lemon Tart (around $5). 

 The lemon tart is a light lemon curd with shortbread crust. The lemon curd had enough sweetness in it to balance the sourness it had, it was really refreshing to eat, it went really well with the buttery shortbread crust.


This would be a great place for coming for a coffee to meet up with friends. Faith and I would definitely come back to try out more of their cakes and maybe some macarons when ever we're in downtown!

Mean Poutine

Restaurant:Mean Poutine

Cuisine: Specialty Poutine and Gourmet Hot Dogs

Area: Vancouver, BC

Address: 718 Nelson Street, Vancouver BC

1: Poor 2: OK 3: Good 4: Very good 5: Excellent

Food:4

Service: n/a

Price: Moderate

It been so long since I posted here! We been busy with summer school so we didn't have  time to go out and then we had all these appointments after summer school so it had been a little hectic but now it's more calm, meaning I have time to do some blogging! :)

Faith had a craving for poutine for some time and I have really wanted to go Downtown for a while so Faith looked up some places for poutine in Downtown (there is a lot!) and we finally decided after debating that we should go to MEAN POUTINE (I'm pretty sure Faith just choose it because she liked the name of it and the logo).

 Mean Poutine is partially  a small kitchen in the wall with a glass case. It's run by a nice lady who makes everything by herself and to the order (fresh). The shop specialize in poutine and gourmet hot dogs. The poutine are fried in beer batter instead of normal batter. They also have a build your own poutine that we thought was cool.

They also have a website that shows you the menu http://meanpoutine.ca/Home_Page.php

 On the table:

We ordered the Fried Chicken ($8 + tax). It had beer battered fries, brown and white gravy, fresh cheese curd and buffalo chicken chunks with green onions on top. It took a while but it was worth it! It was in a box and there was a lot in it!

The buffalo chicken chunks were a little spicy which was a surprise but it was nice and totally matched well with the fries. It was crispy and nicely fried. The fries were also crispy and there was a good amount of cheese curd. The cheese were very melty and stringy which Faith liked a lot.Faith thought that there wasn't enough gravy on the fries though. The green onions were a nice touch on the fries. 

I think we would come back here to try out the yam poutine because Faith had been talking about how she really wants to try it which is really annoying right now...But I think it would be a long time before we come back though because there is a lot of places in Vancouver that we heard that sells awesome poutine that we need to try!