City of Glass

They call Vancouver, British Columbia the City of Glass - and it's pretty easy to see why. Though only slightly larger than Seattle in population, there are about ten times as many high-rise condos, as downtown Vancouver is built on an island.
It's Josh's 30th birthday next week, so Josh, Katie and I went up to Canada for the weekend. We stayed at the Marriott Pinnacle in downtown Vancouver, with a splendid view of the water and the local mountains.
The above picture was taken on from the Banana Republic on Robson street.

We arrived Friday evening, and had dinner at Vij's, a very popular Indian restaurant that was featured on Anthony Bourdain's show No Reservations. Although they told us it would be a 90 minute wait for a table, they put us in a nice area of the bar - and every 10 or so minutes the waitresses come around with various sample foods on a platter. In reality the wait was under an hour, and we were rather enjoying the beer and samples!

It really was the best Indian food I've had (try the beef short ribs!) - I bought their cookbook, as well as some of their take out food. We went a little nuts on the wine though, spending like $200 on wine. Oh well, it was good.
There are two restaurants in one building (Vij's, and Rangoli). Rangoli is more a lunch cafe style joint. Along the walls are these giant refrigerators like what you'd see in a convenience store. They have pre-packaged food from their restaurant that you can take home and heat up (which I plan on doing for dinner tonight!)

Satruday we had breakfast at Inlet's, a restaurant in the lobby of the Blue Horizon Hotel on Robson St. I had a BLT style eggs benedict with avocado - I really liked it, though Katie says she remembers the food being better.

Later that day we strolled around Granville Island - we visited a really cool marketplace that in some regards was even more impressive than Pike's Place. We also went to Granville Island Brewing company and sampled much of their wares, as well as doing a tasting at a local Sake manufacturer. We walked around the main shopping areas of Robson St - we tried to find Japadog, a Japanese style hotdog stand that Tony Bourdain went to on his show, but after an hour of searching, we found out they weren't set up when we were there. Instead we went to Cafe Crepe, which are all over the place. They were OK, but not great. I had this foot long hotdog with a bechamel sauce on it - good idea, but not well executed. I plan on improving upon it.

That night we had dinner at Sanafir on Granville St. While we were walking around Granville Island I picked up one of those free tourist magazines called "EAT". I saw an add for Sanafir inside which billed it as Vancouver's newest and sexiest tapas bar. I promptly made reservations under my alter-ego (Cornelius Ambercrombe) for 9:30pm. One crazy ass cab ride later, we're inside what I would describe as a dance club tapas bar. The ambiance was quite nice: hot chicks in skimpy outfits, club music, candle light - and the food was very good. You order a style of food (say, "Beef"), and they bring you three dishes from that style from along the Silk Road route from the Medeterranean to Asia- one dish from Lebanon, one from Tripoli, and one from somewhere I don't remember. We had the Beef, Chicken, and Pork dishes - plus a few other random ones from an ala cart style side menu. The drinks were weak though, and we skipped desert because nothing on the desert menu sounded all that appealing.

We left Sanafir around midnight and headed over to Shenanigans - an Irish bar. Figuring Monday was St Patrick's day, we figured it would be fun. Basically that place sucked - a bunch of 19 year old tards drinking green Moslon - we choked it down, went back to the hotel and crashed.

Sunday morning we had breakfast at Paul's Place Omelettery Restaurant - which was a pleasant surprise. I picked up a dining guide in the hotel lobby, and it was the only breakfast place listed (I suppose they want you to eat breakfast at their lobby restaurant). Josh and I both ordered the Cornbeef Hash, which was excellent. Katie had some apple pancakes which she really liked too. The food was freakin' HUGE, though still very good.

After that we pretty much pulled out of Vancouver and headed home - overall, a fun weekend!