I met Keisha at her house and we took off for Canada, but not before making a pit stop at the Shoreline Starbucks, where we got our delicious caffeine beverages before getting on the interstate. Our first rest stop was to Little Cheerful Cafe in Bellingham for breakfast. I had the crab cake eggs benedict: homemade crabcakes made onsite twice a week; homemade hollandaise sauce; perfectly poached egg; English muffin toasted to a light crunch. On the side I had California browns, which had spinach, mushrooms, onion, tomato, sun-dried tomato and jack, topped witht avocado and sour cream. I was only able to recite all of the ingredients because the menu is available online. The browns were good but not anything spectacular. The benedict though was pretty thrilling, as I had never had crab cake eggs benedict before. The dish was a generous portion including two eggs benedict and the browns took up half the plate! The second benedict lacked sauce, but overall I was very satisfied with my meal.
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| Jealous? |
Once we did find the Village Taphouse we were relieved and excited to rest and eat! I met Keisha's friend, who is a total sweetheart and natural mom, and got to hold her baby who is stinkin' adorable. And didn't fuss the entire time!
As for what I had to eat (this is, after all, a food blog) I got noodles sauteed with chicken, chilis and veggies. {I was counting on the restaurant to have an online menu so I can provide all of the dish specifics but the online menu seems to be outdated.} The noodles were excellent! The portion size was out of control and thankfully I put down my fork before I had a self-induced a food coma. The sauce was a pleasant mix of sweet and spicy and did not drown all of the ingredients but flavored everything well.
After our late lunch, Keisha and I headed back to the car and passed by Whole Foods (the restaurant was in a strip mall) so we knew we had to stop in to grab a dessert. We decided to share a cookie pie, made by local bakery Butter Baked Goods, and little did we know that this dessert will be life-changing!
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| That beer was awesome! |
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| Drinking from the tap |
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| This was on one of the restaurant walls |
We got in the car and headed for the hotel, thinking we were giving ourselves plenty of time to make it in time for the wine reception. Little did we know that streets would be blocked off and we would be driving in squares throughout downtown! After being stuck in insane traffic, I decided that I didn't want to wait to have dessert with wine. I wanted to have it right there in the car. I took a bite and oh my goodness. The world was right again. All of my traffic worries floated out of the window. The intoxicating goodness of the dessert consumed every muscle in my body. At least for those few moments.
Back to reality again, I eagerly kept an eye on the clock, counting down how many minutes we had left to arrive to the hotel to give us enough time to enjoy at least a couple glasses of wine at the reception. When we finally arrived, we had 10 minutes to check in, park the car and head to the reception. And we succeeded! The wine host was nice enough to continue refilling our glasses even though the wine hour had officially ended.
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| At the hotel restaurant bar |
After wine and finishing off our life-changing dessert, we headed to the room to get ready to go out to dinner. Keisha had already picked out a restaurant for us, one which is on a Top 10 Vancouver Restaurants list and was frequented by Twilight movie star Robert Pattinson when he was on location for the movie a few years ago.
The restaurant? Glowbal Grill. Very hot, hip, happening. When we got there we were seated right away, and we ordered a satay platter to share and toasted with a signature drink called Sanifir Lights. The platter had all of the satays offered on the menu: lamb shish kabob, mushroom, albacore tuna tataki, tiger prawn, buttermilk chicken, kobe meatball, short rib, fried oyster and wild salmon. Served with Thai slaw, ginger white soya and hot Chinese mustard. My favorite satays were the fried oyster (with herb crust, garlic aioli) and the albacore tuna tataki (with soy glaze). I wasn't thrilled with the short rib, wild salmon or kobe meatball. The lamb shish kabob I made no attempt to eat. The mushroom was overly greasy and salty. And the tiger prawn was very average. From my recollection, the Sanafir Lights had vodka, champagne, cointreau, raspberry Red Bull and lots of maraschino cherries. It was a great night-on-the-town, sassy sort of drink that I could've had a pitcher of but not at the menu price.
Stay tuned for Part Deux of our trip!
