Don’t get me wrong, there’s a lot of food that we had in Vancouver that we do think of fondly, of course: Simba’s African grill, all the Japanese Isakayas, the Bulgarian place, the Chinese noodles, the Moroccan place, the fresh fish, etc. , etc.  The list goes on for all the food things we really enjoyed in Vancouver.

But then there is something that I bought in the grocery store that seemed typically Canadian. So it seemed reasonable to try. At least for blogging purposes.

I mean, maple is good, bacon is good, and potato chips are good. What could be bad, then, about Maple Bacon Potato Chips?

Maple Bacon Potato Chips Bag

Maple Bacon Potato Chips

They weren’t the worst chips in the world, but they were a bit odd.   And I think it’s telling to say that Chris — who loves potato chips of most any kind — decided they weren’t worth finishing.

Contrary to what people say, bacon does not make everything better, apparently.

It was the only misstep in our fabulous nearly 8-week-long food odyssey in Vancouver. Ah well – 99% of what we had there I’d rank as anywhere from pretty good to great, which makes the Maple Bacon chips remarkable in the fact that they really weren’t very good at all – but at least worthy of note for a Food on Friday.

Just a quick house-keeping note to follow-up on my post from the other day: My computer is still not really all back together – let’s just say it’s not been a good week for me and technology. In addition to the hard-drive complete failure, it turns out a major thing that I thought was being backed up wasn’t. So, I’m still trying to sort out how to put back as many of the pieces as possible, but it’s going to take a bit longer. Until I get more of it organized and installed, I won’t have a date for when regular posts will start. Hopefully soon. Stay tuned for any breaking developments on that front.

OK, well, hopefully not breaking developments, exactly … but you know what I mean…

I find it a bit odd that lunch trucks are now all the rage.  There was even a whole festival of them here for a week in January, where a bunch of them were outside the Vancouver Art Museum. However, that week was a typical Vancouver week, weather-wise, i.e. it rained all week. So, eating al fresco at a lunch wagon didn’t have much appeal.

But this past Tuesday the weather was absolutely gorgeous — not a cloud in a sky, not much wind, not too cold. Just a perfect day, weather-wise. And it turned out that a couple of the trendiest lunch wagons actually park by the Art Museum all the time, not just during that festival.

So on that perfect weather day this week, Chris and I were lured out to play hooky from our tasks (job-hunting for him, working on my women photographers project for me). We headed downtown and tried lunch from a food truck while sitting outside in the sunshine. The truck we picked had an upscale take on a traditional American (and I assume Canadian?) favorite: a grilled cheese sandwich.

Mom’s Grilled Cheese Food Truck, Vancouver

Yes, it’s a truck that has a few variations on a grilled cheese. And yes, those people are all waiting for food from that food truck. There was actually quite a line-up (=Canadian for a “line” or a “queue” ). It seems to be quite popular.

The menu had a bunch of combinations (e.g. grilled cheese with tomato, grilled cheese with bacon), and most of them had cutesy names. Unfortunately, the only name that stuck with me to report to you today is one of the few non-grilled cheese options, something called the “Elvis”,  peanut butter and bananas on grilled white bread.

We didn’t order  that.

We didn’t order any of the cute-named ones, actually. Instead, we opted for 2 “Classics” (that was the name): our choices were sourdough and cheddar for one, swiss and multi-grain for the other.  The sandwiches are served in a paper cone, with a pickle spear and potato chips included underneath the sandwich.  In the photo below, I’ve rearranged a single cone to include one half of each type:

Cheddar on sourdough (top), Swiss on Multi-grain (bottom)

The sandwiches weren’t great, but they weren’t horrible, either. And it was a nice day to sit outside and try it — although I think trying it once is enough.

At least these trendy food trucks are better than the one I recall seeing outside one place where I worked in California.  It was shortly after we moved there,  and it was my first up-close encounter with a lunch truck. I don’t think I ever ate anything from that one, though. Everyday when it pulled up outside the office, our secretary would announce its arrival by calling out “the roach coach is here.”

Luckily, Mom’s Grilled Cheese was better than that.

The mystery was not about the food on the table, though,  but rather what I saw when I looked through my cell phone camera to take photos of the food on the table.

The first photo might not look that puzzling at first, as it appears to be just a photo of my water-glass, with the window decorations in the background:

Water glass, Simba’s Grill

The thing is, almost that entire photo is a reflection in the glass piece that was overtop of the tablecloth on table.  That makes the photo a mix of the reflection from the window (the lines of beads pulled together and the yellow that’s the awning outside) and the reflection of the water-glass (yes, that’s a reflection of the glass you see there), plus the vague flower patterns show through in spots from the tablecloth (which, again, is underneath a piece of glass.)

Oh, and I did turn that photo upside-down to show it to you here. But of course.

But here’s a different look a the reflection in the table, without the water-glass, and without turning the photo upside-down:

Through the table, Simba’s Grill

I think this one is even more puzzling, as it looks like we’re looking through the table to the floor.  But we’re not. Once again, everything there except for the vague flower pattern (from the tablecloth) is a reflection in the glass that sit on top of the tablecloth.  What looks like the floor is the ceiling; that thing that looks like a painting is actually attached to a ceiling tile.

The next photo also involves the glass top on a table, but this time it’s on a neighboring table, and involves a different mystery:

Beads on the table

I should note that this photo is not turned upside-down, but that’s probably obvious from the car you can see through the window. But look at the beads in front of the window.  Then look at the beads on the table — they don’t line up with the real beads.  Except they should, shouldn’t they?  I mean, the beads on the table  are just the reflections of the beads in the window, right?  Except … well,  I don’t quite understand why the reflections are so far off the real things.

So that’s 3 for 3 in oddities showing up in my photos of the tables topped with glass at Simba’s. A worthy topic for a Monday Mystery if ever there was one.

We had quite the feast today, too:

Spicy fried casava

Barbecued Chicken Livers

Goat curry

Ugali, the fine corn meal side dish

condiments tray (coconut cream, shredded coconut, hot sauces)

All of that was very, very tasty. We didn’t really need to get so many things for lunch, of course, since the portions were quite large.

But then again, we have enough left over for another meal tomorrow. Which means, I guess we’ll have Food on Friday on a Saturday, too. Tough work, but somebody’s got to do it…

Anyway, while you ponder the weather wherever you are, I hope you enjoy these two views of English Bay:

On the Water, English Bay, Vancouver

Quiet day by English Bay, Vancouver

Here’s the photo version of the photo. Take a quick glance and then keep reading:

Mysterious Tree – Photo #1

The tree in the middle looks plausible, right? But is that a tree behind the rocks on the left?

Or did you guess that’s a bit of a trick question? I will admit there is a bit of a trick in that photo.

Now, that photo is not turned upside  (as you may think I always do), but it’s not in the orientation in which I  took it, either.  Here’s the photo turned back the right way:

Mysterious Tree – Photo #2

I did the vertical orientation (photo #1, above), though,  to show that there’s actually quite an illusion going on in the water. Not only is the whole tree’s trunk reflected in the water, but also the dipping branches  that seem to be curved are a combination of the real branch and the reflection.  It’s harder to see where the real small tree branches end and their curved reflections begin in photo #2, but if you look again at photo #1, it becomes a bit clear (I think) to draw a link down the photo and see the division “line”.

Well, at least I think it is. In person it was actually quite hard to realize at first that the small branches weren’t really curved.

FWIW, here’s the original photo without cropping, but I don’t think it helps sort anything out:

Mysterious Tree – original photo

Anyway, I like the way the reflection meets the branches, giving a fun little photo  for a Monday Mystery post — although I guess it’s really not much of mystery that I like water reflection photos.

We’re currently staying just off Denman Street in the West End. I may have mentioned already that when we lived here before there were at least 80 restaurants within an easy walk 5-10 minute of this area. There are now even more, I think.

So the fun has been  both discovering some of our old favorites are still in business 8 years later as well as trying some new ones that are quite good as well.

I’ve already mentioned Guu with Garlic and Legendary Noodle as two of our favorites from before. Today we went back to another favorite for the first time, Simba’s Grill, an African restaurant. Simba is the owner and we thought maybe he would have retired by now. But no, he’s still there, and still in the kitchen. Today was the first time we’d been back on this trip, though, as Simba took a month off for vacation the day after we arrived in town. But we finally go to back and sample the food in a place that used to be one of our favorites:  goat curry with ugali (a pounded flour starchy side-dish), and spinach and lamb cooked in tomato. Still all delicious!  I’d show you photos, but Chris and I were so excited to be back in one of old haunts (Simba even remembered us!), we were pretty hungry when the food came. So, it wasn’t until we were almost done that I realized I’d forgotten to take a photo. Ah well – I’ll try to get a photo or two the next time. And there will be a next time, since we still have a couple more weeks before we leave.

But as I said, part of the fun of the food here is also trying something new.  Earlier in the week we went to lunch at a new-in-the-last-8-years Moroccan restaurant.  We had quite a feast:

1. Chickpea soup:

Chick pea soup at Moroccan Restaurant

2. Ful Medames and Pita Bread

Ful Medames and Pita Bread

3. Lamb Tajine (we’d wanted to try the seafood tajine, but they didn’t have it available the day we were there,  so we ordered this one instead):

Lamb Tajine

Delicious!

In the 5 weeks since we’ve been back in Vancouver on this trip we’ve had the following types of cuisines, some more than once:

• Bulgarian
• Chinese dim sum
• Chinese noodles
• Japanese (multiple times and multiple types)
• African
• Seafood
• Pacific Northwest
• First Nation (Canadian Aboriginal)
• Indonesian*
• Trendy Canadian for lunch*
• Trendy Canadian for brunch
• Funky Vegetarian
• Very Funky Vegetarian*
• Mexican*
• Spanish

(a * indicates that Chris wasn’t there for that meal; I’ve been very lucky and have been taken out to lunch by people who used to work for me – thanks, everyone!)

Anyway, as you can see, in a very short time we’ve been able to eat our way around the world, most of it here in our own neighborhood, too. Fun to have so many options to choose from,  for both eating and deciding what to spotlight in today’s Food on Fridays post.

If you guessed the end of the krapfen season in Bolzano, you’re correct, as today is the first day of Lent. And that, of course, is  the day that krapfen (“jelly doughnuts”) disappear from the bakeries in Bolzano. (Click here to access a few old blog posts about krapfen traditions in Bolzano).

In Tübingen that style of doughnut was called a Berliner. While their disappearance wasn’t quite so complete in Germany as it was in Bolzano, the special only-for-Carnival kinds of Berliners available between Christmas and  Fat Tuesday did always disappear during Lent. [Click here to see a few old blog posts about Berliners in Tübingen].

Now I don’t know about you, but this season snuck up on me this year. I’m not used to thinking about the last day for doughnuts happening in early February!  But fortunately for the Doughnut Diaries I did manage to remember just in the nick of time yesterday evening. I went to a branch of Tim Hortons, the Canadian doughnut shop, in oder to purchase a couple of their krapfen-like varieties.

Raspberry & Maple Canadian krapfen

The one on the left is a jelly doughnut, filled with raspberry jam, and covered in powered sugar.  That one was remarkably like the ones found in Bolzano and Germany (in form at least). That surprised me, as I thought North American jelly doughnuts were traditionally covered in granulated sugar, instead of powdered sugar like they are in Europe. But this Tim Hortons model was covered in powdered sugar; it was the only style of jelly doughnut they had at 6:30pm.

The other doughnut was called a Canadian Maple.  It was topped with a maple-flavored glaze, but filled with a regular (non-maple) custard creme.  Interesting to try, but not my favorite.

Anyway,  I don’t think that Tim Hortons stores are closed starting today, so I don’t think we’d have trouble finding jelly doughnuts here, even though it is now Lent.  So it wasn’t quite as critical to make it there yesterday. But it is tradition, after all – at least the tradition we learned living in Italy and Germany, and one we were happy to keep alive last night with a couple of Candian krapfen. 

Raven Totem Pole, Stanley Park, Vancouver

Trees in the forest, Stanley Park

Under cloudy skies, Lost Lagoon, Vancouver

Of course, the photos should more accurately be called “Vancouver Underwater”. But that gives away the secret: you see, every one of them in a reflection in water, with the photo turned upside down. I think that the photos above, though —at least at first glance — don’t give that away.  Here are different versions of those same scenes that don’t quite have the illusion perfected:

Raven Totem Pole, Stanley Park, Vancouver

Trees in the forest, Stanley Park

Under cloudy skies (uncropped), Lost Lagoon, Vancouver

Under cloudy skies through “a window”, Lost Lagoon, Vancouver

So the idea here is that I’ve taken  a photo and wind up trying to fool the observer into believing that the scene is real, and not a reflection. That is hardly a new thing for me and my photography, of course. Which is why I decided that these weren’t enough of a mystery for a Monday; but not a bad way to celebrate a Travel Tuesday.

Now it’s not a ghost ship like those ghost cars I wrote about before. Nope, it’s much more substantial. It looks like a giant cruise ship that appears only in the evening whenever the weather is clear enough to see North Vancouver:

A cruise ship in North Vancouver?

But … how could that really be a cruise ship over there? It would have to be a huge one, even bigger than that container ships that go back and forth to the Vancouver Harbour.

Night after night, however, the cruise ship appears. Here’s another look:

A cruise ship in North Vancouver?

Of course, during the day, when the clouds and fog lift high enough to show what the buildings look like on that side of the Burrard Inlet, it does somewhat clearer what is going on. You see, by day the “cruise ship” appears to be merely a cluster of pink buildings. You actually saw them yourself a while back, as they were right under the rainbow in a previous post. Here’s another look at that area in the daylight, minus the rainbow, however:

North Vancouver seen from our apartment

“Cruise Ship” (aka the pink buildings) seen by day

OK, so it’s not a real cruise ship. The only real mystery here is, I guess, the intent of the architect — did he or she design the buildings to resemble a cruise ship? During the day, the effect isn’t that obvious. But was the effect intended only to appear at night?

I have no idea what those buildings are, and therefore no way to look up who the architect was.  Until I make it over to that side of the water on this trip, those questions will just have to remain  an unanswered mystery on this Monday.

But hope you enjoy the nighttime illusion nonetheless.

Anyway, the menu is organized into different possible toppings for the types of noodles, with a selection ingredients and sauces to choose from. The photos below show what we ate on a visit a couple of weeks ago, our selections based on what we remembered liking in the past:

Thick noodles with green beans and peanut sauce

Hand-cut noodles with shrimp and vegetables

Chinese restaurants that offer fresh noodles like this exist in the Richmond district in Vancouver, which is an area with a lot of Chinese restaurants and shops. Legendary Noodles, though, is still the only one that has opened a branch of this type of shop in the West End.  Over the years, we have included it in our stories about the wide variety of food we enjoyed when we lived in this are of Vancouver. So it was a delectable discovery to find it still in business after all this time. Legendary noodles, indeed.

Well, sort of. The fact that Chris and I had a chance to go to the Stanford Theatre in Palo Alto last month to see a screening of The Wizard of Oz on the big screen — well, that might have put the lyrics from a certain song from that movie into my head.  (Click here to view the movie clip of a song by Harold Arlen and lyrics by E.Y. Harburg, sung by Judy Garland).

But the inspiration for including that song reference in today’s post was a real rainbow we saw here in Vancouver last week. A rather spectacular rainbow, actually:

Rainbow over North Vancouver, January 2016

Note that the photo above is a “sweep” panorama, since the rainbow was too wide to be captured by my (fairly wide-angled!) camera phone. That fact accounts for a little of a shakiness in the arc if you click to view it at a larger size.

Here’s another look just the top part the arc, taken in a single, non-panorama photo:

Arc of a Rainbow, Vancouver, BC

The title of this post actually comes from lyrics to an intro to the song that wasn’t performed in the movie, but was written by the original composers:

When all the world is a hopeless jumble
and the raindrops tumble all around,
Heaven opens a magic lane.

When all the clouds darken up the skyway,
There’s a rainbow highway to be found
Leading from your window pane
to a place behind the sun
Just a step beyond the rain.

Of course, we’re usually not quite a step “beyond the rain” here in Vancouver, as in winter there’s a lot of rain to go around.

But sometimes, just sometimes, when you’ve made it through the rain, you wind up with a rainbow as your reward.

Which makes Vancouver a  very nice place to be on a Travel Tuesday.

When Chris and I lived in Vancouver years ago, Chris often walked by and photographed things at the Lost Lagoon in Stanley Park.  I sometimes had a chance to walk over there as well. So it’s not like the two of us hadn’t seen a lot of Lost Lagoon, back in the day.

However, when walking by there last week, we happened on a little island that’s just off the bank of the lagoon  — the thing is, neither Chris nor I have any recollection of there being an island in the lagoon.  Odd, eh? I mean, maybe it was really there before, but maybe the water level is different at the moment – or has changed over the past few years. Not sure what to make of it. However, whatever its origin, with the late afternoon sun providing the lighting for a  dramatic shot of the buildings of the West End silhouetted off in the distance, it certain makes for a nice setting for a photo these days:

The Mystery Island, Lost Lagoon, Vancouver

However, take a closer look at the far side of the  island in the middle-left.  In person, it looked like some kind of odd statue or something was there among the thin reeds. However, as we watched, it became clearer that it was a heron, with its head bent over. I waited patiently for it to raise its head. Well, somewhat patiently… Anyway,  the following photo doesn’t give a perfect view of the heron, but at least I think it’s more identifiable as a bird with its head lifted up a bit higher:

Heron and its Mystery Island, Lost Lagoon, Vancouver

Well, it’s identifiable enough, at least, to solve today’s Monday Mystery of the odd lump — on the mystery island — in Lost Lagoon.

Guu with Garlic is part of  a local chain of restaurants which specialize in izakaya food.  Izakaya is a type of Japanese bar food, offering small plates to go along with the beer, sake and other  drinks.   Interestingly, over the past 8 years, the Guu restaurants have gotten big enough to commission their own line of sake, which was fun to try:

Cold sake developed with the Guu restaurant staff

However we go to Guu for the food. The Guu branches are  only sort-of-a-chain of restaurants, since each locations seems to specialize in different styles of foods. For example,  there’s one in downtown Vancouver  which has more meat-based dishes, while at Guu with Garlic there are a lot of fish items on offer. One of our favorite things is any type of grilled fish, which is simple, straightforward, and grilled fresh while you wait:

Grilled Mackerel

Our favorite dish, though are Udon noodles, pan-fried with kimchi (a spicy cabbage dish originally from Korea) and cod roe:

Yaki udon (pan fried noodles) with kimchi and cod roe

All the Guu restaurants do make some Guu signature dishes, including the Pumpkin ball: mashed pumpkin wrapped around a hard-boiled egg and then deep-fried.  It’s served hot:

Pumpkin Ball – a signature dish at Guu

Pumpkin Ball – cut open to reveal the hardboiled egg center

Plus, the fried octopus fritters are a standard:

“Tako Yaki” (Deep-fried octopus fritters)

On our last visit, one of the daily specials was unexpected: a “pizza” prepared with flatbread and topped with melted cheese, a  very atypical Japanese dish. However, under the cheese was a creamy scallop-mayo dish was provided a cream accent under the cheese.

Flatbread topped with melted cheese and scallop-mayo mixture

While those dishes may seem a bit unusual if you’re not familiar with izakaya food, I can assure you that an experience at Guu is always a highlight. So, it was fabulous to find out they were still in business — and also still quite good.

Or, as they now put it, guuuu’d.  

Chopstick wrapper with Guu slogan

We’re staying the West End part of town.  Back when we lived here (2005-2008), there were at least 80 restaurants within a 5-minute walk of our house, offering different ethnic dishes. If you widened that radius to encompass a few more blocks — an easy 10 minute walk — there were over a 100 restaurants.

The West End in Vancouver was — and is — my favorite place to be to try food from all over the world.

Chris and I really thought that the last 8 years would have seen the area change quite a bit. However, while it’s true that some areas of Vancouver have undergone a renaissance and are now filled with new high-rise, fancy condos and expensive, fancy restaurants, the West End hasn’t undergone such a cataclysmic change in food offerings. To be sure, not all of our favorite restaurants are still around – but that’s the nature of running a restaurant. What has been a pleasant surprise is just how many of our favorites did make it and are still here, 8 years later.

On our first night we zoomed over to a place we really didn’t think would have survived.  It’s a really tiny place called Acacia, run by a couple (Vera and Ziggy) from Bulgaria. They opened up their restaurant during the time we lived here, and Chris was one of their first customers. What a delight to discover that they were still in business — and still making delicious stuff Phylo foods. Note that the 2 photos below are of just half the serving size of each; we were so hungry that we ate half before I remembered to take a photo.

Bulgarian Banitza (Phylo with leeks and bulgarian cheese)

Phylo stuffed with halibut, spinach and shrimp

The couple actually has done well enough to hire staff for the evening shift so they no longer have to work all hours of the day and night. We went back the next morning and had the pleasure of chatting with them both, a nice moment to reconnect with “people-who-we-sort-of-knew” in Vancouver years ago.

Plus, Vera hasn’t lost her touch for making her delicious “Morning Glory” muffins.

A perfect start to the morning: Morning Glory muffin and cappuccino

Sooo good! We’ve been back several times in the past couple of weeks for both more of the Phylo and more of the muffins.

But as good as that is, we haven’t just limited ourselves to Bulgarian food, of course. Tomorrow, in a Food on Friday post that’s actually on Friday, I’ll let you know what our favorite restaurant in Vancouver is and what we ate there.

Stay tuned….