Meat & Bread (Pender Location)

This place does not need an introduction because if you live in Vancouver, you know that Meat & Bread is the place to be when your craving basically meat and bread! The idea of putting meat and bread is simple but the flavor and quality that you get is over the top good! I'm sure almost everyone has tried, heard of and loved this place as much as I have but if you haven't yet and your reading this now.. I would suggest you to put this on your list of go to places here in Vancouver and go now! (ok maybe not now but go out and try it when you can! you won't be disappointed!)

Meat and Bread is a small sandwich shop that packs a heck of flavor and quality into their sandwiches. After getting rave reviews on their sandwiches (especially their Porchetta Sandwich) and also being featured in articles and on Food Network (Diners, Drive Ins and Dives). They have recently expanded their sandwich awesomeness into a new location on West Pender and like their Gastown location, customers are still lining up like crazy out the door! Compared to their store in Gastown, this place has a bigger counter area. Seating on the other hand, is more limited unlike the long table that the other location has. However there are benches outside the store for you to sit on so it's not as big of a deal if the seating is full inside especially during summer time. When fall/winter comes however, I'm not so sure if sitting outside may be the best option but for now since Vancouver is getting warmer, eating outside is one of the best ways to enjoy both your sandwich and the beautiful weather that were starting to have. The menu in this location is a little bit different than the one in Gastown. They still serve their signature Porchetta sandwich and their always changing daily specials but instead of the meatball and grilled cheese, they have corned beef and a weekly changing vegetarian option.

Porchetta

Tomato Braised Fraser Valley Veal Breast, Sauteed Peppers and Onions, Lemon Caper Aioli

Jade Seafood Restaurant: Dim sum

I would describe this restaurant as one of the busiest Chinese restaurants here in Richmond and the most pain to find parking for especially on the weekends! Located on the busiest street in Richmond (Alexandra Road), Jade Seafood Restaurant has already won quite a handful of awards from best dim sum restaurant to best fine dining restaurant.

Living in Richmond, there are countless Chinese restaurants to choose from that are pretty amazing and unique in their menu but Jade Seafood has a better edge in their food dishes than some places. Why? Because of the quality and taste of their food. Service wise however, it depends. Now before going to Jade, I made an effort to call in a day before to make a reservation for four at 12:45 for Mother's Day and I was talking to a nice lady on the phone who surprisingly speaks very good English too. Also, since Mother's Day falls on a Sunday I wanted to make sure that we won't have to wait that long because for sure the place will be jam packed the whole day with a lot of  people wanting to celebrate mother's day as well. However, when we went the next day the hostess that was working was very rude to us and angrily told us in a loud voice that we did not make a reservation even though I did the day before. It was kind of annoying how she would act that way towards customers plus it was mother's day too which kind of killed the happy celebration mood for a bit. Luckily however our story had a good ending! One of the managers know my mom pretty well and was able to very nicely handle our situation and give us a table. Other than the rude hostess, the service that we got after that was incredible which in the end still made it quite enjoyable for our mother's day celebration.

For four people (all girls btw) you would be surprised at how much we could eat! We ordered 12 dishes and almost everything was finished except one of the baked bbq pork buns and two of the deep fried sweet buns that we had to take home, but other than that most of the plates were wiped out clean! There's a lot of stuff to choose from in their menu but when you get a chance to go there for dim sum I would highly recommend trying out their Baked Mushroom Pie, Pickled Ginger with Century Egg Prawn Roll, Portuguese Egg Tarts, Pan Fried Bean Curd Roll w/ Mushrooms, Shrimp Dumplings, Steamed Layered Cake with Egg, and their Blueberry Glutinous Ball (it's mochi like cold dessert). Although there's still a couple more items that I haven't tried and wanted to try out from their menu, I only have one stomach and sadly there's no more room after ordering 12 dishes (I'll order more on my next trip!). With numerous awards, never ending customers and great tasting food.. what's holding you back from trying out one of the top rated Chinese restaurants here in Richmond? A little warning though.. parking might be a challenge especially on the weekends so be prepared!

Baked Almond Cream Bun

Vegetable Congee

 Condiments for congee

Pickled Ginger with Century Egg Prawn Roll

 Deep Fried Sweet Buns

Condensed Milk (for deep fried sweet buns)

 Pan Fried Bean Curd Roll with Mushroom

Steamed Vegetable with Preserve Vegetable

 Steamed Mushroom Dumpling

Baked Bbq Pork Bun

 Baked Mushroom Pie

 Portugese Egg Tart

Steamed Pork Dumpling

Blueberry Glutinous Ball

Bubble Waffle Cafe

Bubble Waffle Cafe is a small restaurant located in the same mall as Alleluia Cafe at Westminster Hwy. They offer practically a mix of food trends that's popular in the Asian food scene: Bubble waffles, shake shake fries, hurricane fries, teppanyaki, noodle soup (similar to deer garden), and etc. Since the semester is over, my sister and I decided to go have lunch to celebrate the end of final exams and projects. She felt like eating Teppanyaki so she suggested to just eat at Bubble Waffle Cafe. I actually wanted to go somewhere else because my last experience at Bubble Waffle wasn't as great as I was expecting it to be and this time, it isn't much of a difference either. The place is pretty small and squished so parking was an issue. Being located beside alleluia cafe wasn't the best either since a lot of people were eating there when we went which meant less parking spots were available. Upon entering the place however, there was this strong fishy smell that occupied the entire restaurant so not only was the parking a pain, now my nose had to suffer as well! The food is actually okay, it wasn't the best but it's not the worst that I've had. They also give out complimentary bubble waffles to each table which by the way you can also take home if you don't finish. There are both good and bad sides to Bubble Waffle Cafe, maybe more bad than good compared to my last visit here, but if I were to crave these food trends I would rather go some place else to eat than go back to Bubble Waffle.

Complimentary Bubble Waffle

 Hot Lemon Tea

 Hot Milk Tea

 Chicken Teppanyaki Rice with Egg

 Beef Teppanyaki with Egg

 Noodle Soup Combo: Spicy Soup, Instant Noodles, Pumpkin, Chicken Sausage and Fish Puff

 Noodle Soup Combo: Tomato and Pumpkin Soup, Vermicelli, Gai Lan, Vietnamese Ham and Fish Tofu

Shake Shake Fries: Ketchup Flavor

Ikea (Richmond)

Ikea never fails to make us happy with their awesome meatballs and reasonably cheap prices! Having just recently opened their brand new store in Richmond, located just a block away from their old place. Ikea is still one of the best places to go to for furniture shopping, decorating ideas and as everyone knows.. their food! With a bigger and better store, their new place can now serve 5x as more people compared to their old bistro. With more tables & chairs, condiment/drink kiosks, cashiers, and with even two food service lines now, they could fill up a lot of hungry stomachs faster! They also have mini push carts for you to use which is quite convenient especially for people who have a hard time carrying heavy trays around.

 Meatballs

 Borscht soup (upper right) & Broccoli Cheddar soup (lower right)

Pop and Salad that comes with their 10 piece meatball combo for only $5.99!