Dining in Victoria as good as it gets #1 · Monday May 26, 2008 by colin newell
To describe the restaurant, Brasserie L`ecole as unpretentious is like pontificating on the genuinely modest nature of the Dali Lama.
Shut up and eat already.
This is one of the reasons I find Eat magazine so amusing – whenever it appears on the stands that is.
They gush and genuflect on restaurants like Brasserie L`ecole, Cafe Brio and Zambri’s…
And others. They back slap. They self reward and worship.
It is a veritable love fest.
But I digress.
Brasserie L`ecole is a great restaurant with some amazing pluses, twists and turns in what should be a stuffy and boring French restaurant.
Starters: It appears that guests can order 2 glasses of wine from virtually any bottle in their cellar. Name one other restaurant in Victoria where this is an option?
We go for the Steak-Frites… Steak perfectly prepared served with a bassinet of skinny Belgian fries, anointed with salt, baptized with truffle oil and parmasan.
Expect to book 2 weeks in advance for a good seating during the dinner hour(s).
In this 1st in a marathon of local restaurant reviews, diner Colin Newell hopes to educate, entertain and reveal some of Victoria’s gems. Bon Appetit!
Food on the table #2 · Tuesday May 20, 2008 by colin newell
Our Monday to Friday morning coffee circle is an enigma.
Imagine one or two tables pushed together at the Finnerty Express (our UVic hang-out) at 10:00AM.
Ironically, I show up with coffee brewed in my lab and healthful treats that I baked in my kitchen. The only redeeming thing is that my posse (entourage and extended coffee family) are a combination of retired and semi-retired faculty and working professional stiffs – that buy stuff in this hallowed campus canteen.
It is a pretty modest affair; mugs of whisker scalding black coffee and Texas sized multi-grain bran muffins share the formica with dentine Necrotizing rice-crispy squares, carrot cake, green tea, lattes and cappuccinos. Each personality at the coffee table is pretty much matched to his beverage (and snack) of choice.
Topics of conversation run the circuit from World conflict, pestilence, plagues, pleasures, local politics and politics abroad.
Todays topic (one of several actually considering the number of times we change direction per minute!) was food portions in Canadian restaurants versus the ones in American restaurants.
Before I transcribe our findings today, let me start with this snippet I picked up this evening via BoingBoing.Nets link to lileks.com as James riffs on Disney World…
Dinner was large. The portions are huge. They might as well put the plate down and say “here’s more than you can possibly eat, and here’s nine potatoes on the side. Would you like another gallon of high fructose corn syrup? Okay, well, don’t forget to leave room for six pies.” There’s something a bit sad about seeing childless adult Disney fans, lanyards spattered with pins, eating slabs of prime rib thick as a Tolstoi novel, the chairs about to splinter from their enormous fundaments. On the other hand, what gives them happiness? Food and Disney. This is the happiest place on earth after all – even though there seems to be a subset of Disney nerds who appear immune to the very thing they’ve come to experience.
Wow. Yea. Wish I could think and write like that.
One of our cafe crewmen recently returned from a motorcycle trip to Washington state – the interior of which (Yakima, Walla Walla, Ellensburg, Wenatchee) appeared to have been sucked into a surreal black hole and spat out by a David Lynch novella — dusty roadhouses where middle aged dance girls sport feather boas, drink tequila fizz, disappearing into back rooms with muscle shirted men – smokes rolled in sleeves James Dean style while men with alarming big white teeth tend bar…
My kind of place.
And the adjacent eatery might as well have been named The Terminal Diner for its artery clogging, indigestion inducing and gastric lavage promoting coterie of all things Too Much Food!
Order the Pork chops? You get 4 6 ounce chops with 2 baked potatoes and enough rice pilaf to feed a family of five.
Dessert? Their 7-layer cake is $4.95 and is a whopping 10 gravity-defying inches high and 3 inches wide.
I would go on… but I have lost my appetite for words.
Point being – Our brothers and sisters to the South eat way too much stuff… and we are quickly falling into their size grande shoes.
Thankfully, there are still a few eateries (fancy and not so…) in Victoria where you can come away feeling somewhat peckish. Oh yea… and if there is anyone out there that can explain the disparity between Canadian and American portions… please dish me up some opinions!
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Red Fish Blue Fish Seafood in Victoria B.C. Canada · Sunday May 18, 2008 by colin newell
Victoria B.C. Canada is ground zero for Fish and Chip shops.
And let me clarify that…
Fish and Chip shops that serve Halibut or Salmon or Cod.
We can dismiss pretty much any place in England because the fish they serve is awful .
Red Fish Blue Fish has an interesting concept: They are Ocean Wise
What is Ocean Wise?
Ocean Wise is a Vancouver Aquarium conservation program, created to help restaurants and their customers make environmentally friendly seafood choices.
The Ocean Wise label on a menu item assures you that item is a good choice for our oceans. British Columbia is known for its fresh, high quality seafood and Red fish Blue Fish is proud to be 100% Ocean Wise when it comes to the seafood they serve.
I used to think that I was Ocean wise living next to an ocean and all…
Maybe now I will just settle on Ocean savvy. Yea. I think that will do.
Check the menu. And then look at the competition over at Barb`s Place Yea. 24$ for 2 Pieces of Halibut and a drink at Barb’s – $17.50 at Red Fish Blue Fish.
That is a car payment! Red Fish Blue Fish is not only affordable – it also offers a killer view of our working harbor (Seaplanes and all…)
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This is the modern World - Panasonic microwave oven · Sunday May 4, 2008 by colin newell
We just got our first microwave oven. No really. The sales guy (aged about 60) at the Victoria Sears sales center in appliances was incredulous.
I may as well have suggested that a legion of vacuum cleaner shaped electro-beasts from the Planet Zontar were disembarking onto the parking lot…
And were they angry.
Seriously though. As shopping goes, there are few Men that shop faster than I do.
Recently I selected new frames in an optical place… within 7.2 seconds.
Which begs the question: At that speed of visual acquisition, did I really need new glasses?
Fair enough – I did some online research and determined that this particular model of Panasonic microwave (in stainless-steel, 1.2 cubic feet, 1200 Watts, etc) was the right one for us. And I was in and at the counter talking to sales-guy within a minute – and ordering one within 2 minutes.
“Would you like to order one”, he asked, somewhat skeptical of my technological lineage…
“Yes, but first I need to consult with my C.F.O on this newfangled…” now gesturing towards my Motorola RAZR, “…wireless device!”
“Oh. You have one of those… How bold! …he improvised.
Long story short – We now have a device that will help us save lots of electricity. We do almost 100% of our cooking from scratch. No pre-prepared anything – and very few tins. And being able to do tertiary stuff beside our regular electric grill will be very useful.
Oh yea – while I was at the mall for this purchase, my wife asked me to pop into Bolen Books and size up some good microwave cook books.
I might as well have been looking for a basic Pet Rock users manual or the latest step-by-step guide to Disco dancing. Microwave cook books, it seem, went out of print around the advent of MTV and are about as fashionable as polyester stretch pants.
But I found one microwave cook book, at our Chapters Book Store (your Barnes and Noble)… printed in England… about 20 years ago.
With timely recipes like; Leek terrine with deli meats, Pork Crumble, Herby Baked Tomatoes, and Austrian nut pudding…
So this is what the Brits ate during the last great war!
In addition to this cook book and appliance, I now need a historic culinary translator.
One thing at a time.
Look forward to more food oriented blogs on this website (as time permits).
In all fairness, the cookbook is titled The Microwave Kitchen Handbook by Carol Bowen first printed in 1998. Bon Apetit!
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