Dine Out Event in Vancouver

A good weather forecast along with the Dine Out Vancouver event were enough to prompt us to hop on the ferry for a weekend getaway in Vancouver. The Dine Out event, organized by Tourism Vancouver, is a delicious celebration of BC food and wine with 180+ participating restaurants offering 3-course dinner for $18, $28, or $38.

After browsing a few menus along Robson Street, we chose to go to Il Nido (their menus are $38).


Yannick started with beef carparcio with marinated artichokes, cherry tomatoes, olive oil and grana padano cheese. His second course (sorry, no photo) was fettuccine with Alaska scallops, vegetables, thyme, in a light vermouth lemon cream sauce (also no cheese, please). And he finished with warm rustic apple, pear pie with vanilla gelato, blueberries and caramel sauce. I started with stuffed baby calamari (don't know what it's 'stuffed' with), braised in tomato, capers, red vermouth. It was followed by ravioli stuffed with fresh lobster served with brandy cream sauce (yum yum yum!).


My dessert was tiramisú (I think that was why I had chosen this restaurant), but too bad it turned out to not be a traditional tiramisú (made with phyllo instead of lady fingers, and I couldn't really taste mascarpone). Overall we enjoyed our dinner, but were a little disappointed with the desserts.

The next day we met with my cousin at Shabusen which is an all-you-can-eat sushi and korean bbq house. Doesn't an all-you-can-eat establishment always seem like a bad idea, after the fact?

Vancouver trips for me must include a trip to an Asian market, either the Yaohan or Parker Centre in Richmond, or the Chinatown. So before heading back to the ferry we made a stop at the T&T supermarket in Chinatown and I picked up a few goodies.


Pretty, aren't they? From top-left clockwise (according to the labels), we have bean paste with plum flavor, rice cake with plum paste, mungbean paste rice cake, and rice cake with mungbean paste. Are these names generated by some random number algorithm?

Victoria also has its own dine-around-town event. This year it starts on February 19th and runs til March 8th. I have already checked out all the menus. And made the list too. Yup.