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I'm in Vancouver now, visiting my mother. She took me out for a slightly belated birthday dinner at one of my favorite restaurants, Kirin, a Cantonese spot just up the hill from her condo.
I have yet to go to a better Chinese restaurant outside of China, but I do wish they had a little better handle on the concept of fine dining. This does not include screaming toddlers and older children running about. Or thuggish looking youth in tight teeshirts spending more on dinner than seems reasonable for men their age. It seems that all Chinese restaurants here are automatically "family restaurants" with all that implies. Kirin in particular is extremely loud.
Anyway, we had the chef's suggested menu for 2, which caused the staff a bit of anxiety since it's the kind of menu that white people don't like (which of course means that it's what you should definitely order). Squab, sharks fin and fish maw soup (yeah I ate all my ecological karma in one bowl), steamed lobster with garlic, snap peas with pork jowl, and pea shoots with bean curd. The latter was especially interesting, the freshly made bean curd had a delicate and remarkable texture. Great service, too, though perhaps a little strange for round-eyes like us.
No more trucker adventures, but I do plan to head up to Whistler tomorrow for my last stab at snowboarding for the year. The weather looks to be fantabulous. I found a wad of forgotten Canadian cash folded in my passport when I left, so it won't really cost anything. ;-)
I have yet to go to a better Chinese restaurant outside of China, but I do wish they had a little better handle on the concept of fine dining. This does not include screaming toddlers and older children running about. Or thuggish looking youth in tight teeshirts spending more on dinner than seems reasonable for men their age. It seems that all Chinese restaurants here are automatically "family restaurants" with all that implies. Kirin in particular is extremely loud.
Anyway, we had the chef's suggested menu for 2, which caused the staff a bit of anxiety since it's the kind of menu that white people don't like (which of course means that it's what you should definitely order). Squab, sharks fin and fish maw soup (yeah I ate all my ecological karma in one bowl), steamed lobster with garlic, snap peas with pork jowl, and pea shoots with bean curd. The latter was especially interesting, the freshly made bean curd had a delicate and remarkable texture. Great service, too, though perhaps a little strange for round-eyes like us.
No more trucker adventures, but I do plan to head up to Whistler tomorrow for my last stab at snowboarding for the year. The weather looks to be fantabulous. I found a wad of forgotten Canadian cash folded in my passport when I left, so it won't really cost anything. ;-)
