My close friends, Grace, Jeff, and Eddie suggested back in January that we go on a food trip to Vancouver BC over Memorial Day weekend. I booked an Airbnb early on to secure a place for 3 nights. The trip also was a few days from Jeff’s birthday so we made it a foodie birthday trip. Jeff usually is not excited about traveling unless it’s Japan so when Grace said that Jeff suggested it, we were like, “this is a rare moment and we should make it happen.” Grace and I planned and booked all of the restaurants and planned the itinerary. I always look forward to Grace’s detailed itinerary charts. I had personally made reservations at Kirin, one of my favorite dim sum restaurants back in March during my last visit. I also called to book Fish Man, an amazing Chinese seafood restaurant I ate at in March. Grace also ordered a mango birthday cake for Jeff ahead of time. She also reserved gigantic mango mochis for all of us.
I literally flew back on Thursday morning from San Francisco and Grace stayed with me for a night. We picked up Jeff the following morning from PDX and headed up north on our drive to Vancouver. We made a pit stop at Federal Way for my favorite seolleongtang, Korean beef soup place and charged the car. The traffic through Seattle was horrible and took me 3 hours just to inch through. The carpool lane did me no good in this situation. Eddie had already arrived around 1pm and he checked into the Airbnb listing around 3pm. I feel that my bladder is no longer as resilient and so we had to make a few bio breaks, one of them being McD. Grace and Jeff ordered a McGriddle and breakfast sandwiches. I’m not that into McD breakfasts and rather save my stomach for soup later. I find it hard to listen to podcasts while driving with others cause I need to have it super loud to drown out the freeway noises, so I opted for a general Spotify playlist as ambient noise. I saw that Grace fell asleep a few times in the back seat.
I thought we’d miss our Fish Man reservation cause it took us so long to reach Vancouver BC but Eddie said he would take a Lyft to meet us there. Good to know that Vancouver BC has legalized rideshare now. I managed to back into a super tight parking spot and was there exactly at 7pm. We ordered black cod cooked two ways: pickled cabbage soup and grilled with mala spices. We added geoduck two ways: sashimi slice and quick stir fry with green onions. It was spot prawn season so we got a lb prepared in a poached style. I requested a veggie dish which was an asparagus mushroom stir fry. Also can’t go without white rice. The black cod came out to be 5.5 lbs. It was massive. The spot prawns were poached perfectly and we dipped the succulent sweet meat into a green onion soy sauce dip. The pickled cabbage black cod was also buttery silk and it went perfectly with rice. We finished everything. Jeff proclaimed that this is probably the best Chinese food he has had in the last 10 years. We were shocked as he is usually highly critical of all food and drink experiences. So that is high praise coming from him. The trip was kicking off well with this amazing meal.
We had Kirin Saturday morning with another lb of spot prawns (which were cheaper than Fish Man) but the consensus was that Fish Man prepared them better. I still got to enjoy my favorite yuzu malay sponge cake, lotus root meat patty, and rice noodles. Eddie, Grace and I may have hyped it up for Jeff. He was alright with it but we may have tainted his experience as we had him eat a durian mochi to start with, which he hated. 😂 For dinner, we went to an omakase restaurant that a friends’ friend recommended, called Tekkaba. It was in Gastown. The first step we walked in we all noticed the odd eclectic mish mash style of decor. On the right wall, they had Russian style faberge-like eggs on display. On my left, there was a huge poker table. We pre-ordered the premium omakase and sat at the bar. We noticed that this was run by a Korean family. Chef Tom greeted us enthusiastically and jotted down all of our names. He mostly got them right except when Eddie introduced himself, Tom wrote down Eric instead of Eddie. It turned into a running joke. We all shared a sake pairing. The sake quality was a bit odd. Then the first dish was a chawanmushi, steamed egg. It was rather bland and tasteless and the texture wasn’t silky smooth. He proclaimed he made his own soy sauce and you top it with pistachio nuts. The next dish was tartare was a bit overpowered by gochujang or a Korean style sauce and the tartare was very mashed up. All of us except Eddie still ate it all but Grace and I could hear Eddie and Jeff making side remarks. Then the fried whole shrimp was served but the shrimp head wasn’t crunchy enough and the shrimp body was a bit overcooked. Eddie just skipped it cause he noticed the “poop” was still there. It just seemed off. Chef Tom speaks in hyperbole and notes how expensive the fresh wasabi is, but then he scoops it out pre-grated, which defeats the purpose of fresh wasabi. I noticed that his hands were always very wet so the sushi became mushy when he was creating handrolls and nigiris. He spoke highly of his complex sauces but most were overpowering for the delicate sashimi slices. All the fish slices also were already precut. He also torched half of the sushi he prepared. He asked to use my dish of hotate,scallop as a demo and I said sure not expecting that he would take the scallop and massage the buttery lemon sauce with his bare fingers and then sandwich this dollop of caviar over a ball of rice. I didn’t know how to digest what I just witnessed. I still ate everything but my dining companions were flabbergasted. He had an extravagant story behind his presentation but it didn’t quite live up to or deliver the way you expected. He drove up high expectations with fibs but to only be followed by confused disappointment. I swear I read many many positive reviews. Eddie was digging through the reviews in real time and found some poor reviews further down. The power of paid social media and food influencers really leads to misleading food experiences. It was an expensive, poor experience and we paid more than Fish Man! At least we got a birthday song and birthday hat for Jeff out of it and for sure jokes as well except Eddie got diarrhea that night.
Travelogue 