OH MAN, so much food. The latest Tasting Plates event was the most generous one yet. So much deliciousness.

The evening started at A.G.R.O. Roasters for registration and coffee but I didn’t take any pictures there because I don’t care for coffee. We basically just took the coffee samples and ran back to the car to get to the next restaurant anyway.

La Mezcaleria

My plan was to have a margarita at each restaurant, semi-serious. It started off well, I had margaritas at the first two restaurants, but then the rest of the places didn’t have them, so my crazy margarita crawl ended up being pretty responsible. Haha.

La Mezcaleria drinks are really really good. I love lime.

Red snapper ceviche, guacamole, and a chicken tinga tostada.

Everything was awesome. Very fresh and nicely put together. This plate of food was almost enough for a whole meal on its own! We started to realize we were in trouble.

The combination of the tasty food, the live band, and being able to watch the chefs cook made this our favourite stop of the whole evening. I’ve been there before and I definitely will be returning again.

El Azteca

Margarita #2. Half the price, but too sweet.

Ceviche, guacamole, and cochinita pibil.

This plate was fairly similar to what we had at La Mezcaleria. So much food! The ceviche wasn’t as nice (the strange sweet red sauce ruined it) but we thought the pork tostada was really good. And the chips were nice and extra crunchy.

Las Tortas

Cochinita pibil torta (sandwich), chips and salsa, and a churro.

The sandwich was pretty good, but I think we were already so full we didn’t enjoy it as much as we might have on an empty stomach. My sandwich was ULTRA spicy, but the rest of the group didn’t seem to be. My lips were tingling!! The salsas had great flavour. The churro was kind of dense and not great. I’m sure they would be better if they were prepared fresh.

Chicha

Quinoa salad with mango, cheese and chili croquette, calamari and chorizo skewer, basil mashed potatoes.

I had been wanting to try Chicha for a very long time. It’s right across the street from where I change buses on the way to work and I think their restaurant sign is very visually appealing, plus I knew they had great reviews on Urbanspoon. It did not disappoint, this was a great plate of food.

Chicha is a Peruvian restaurant so the flavours were different than everywhere we had been so far. The salad was refreshing, the croquette was indulgent, the skewer was intriguing, and the mashed potatoes were comforting.

Guanaco Food Truck

Horchata while waiting for our food. Sweet but not tooooo sweet.

Pork and chicken pupasas and fried cassava.

Cheesy corny goodness. These were nice but I was basically exploding at this point so I didn’t have that much.

Sal Y Limon

Last stop. Shrimp ceviche, and chicken tinga tostada.

The ceviche was actually not very nice. But the chicken tostada was pretty decent. Again, I was pretty much in a food coma so I just had a bit of each and gave the rest to Lauren.

Lauren basically thought it was the best night ever because he got to eat all his food plus all the food Rosemarie and I couldn’t finish, hahaha.

Their horchata was very sweet.

SERIOUS FOOD COMA. A great night of eating. It was the best Tasting Plates event yet, I think.

Our aunt and uncle came to visit last week. So Rosemarie and Lauren came over too and we played games on the patio and ate vegetables (to counteract our future dinner). We had asked MEP to bring her 5-6 player expansion for Settlers so everyone could play, and she let us keep it. Thank you!! It was an intense game of Settlers. We also played a mildly awkward game of Cards Against Humanity, haha. A good catch up session overall!

Then we all headed to the Richmond Night Market. Even though it was Sunday it was sooooooo busy!! I was worried that the n00bs would feel overwhelmed by the crowds, but luckily they are all really tall people… so maybe it wasn’t so claustrophobic? It was also really easy to find them in the crowd. :D

Started with some traditional takoyaki. Very tasty, after you get over the lava hot aspect.

Paul bought a sweet chilli “fish stick”. None of us really knew what it was, but it was delicious!! Crispy fried sweet spicy salty on a stick. The vendor said it was white fish, but the texture was unlike any fish I have seen before. But if you don’t think too much about what it is made out of you can focus on how good it was. Would eat again.

We all split a jumbo serve of chicken karaage. Also sweet and spicy. Really good.

Rotato!! The line for this was sooooo long. Also the price has gone up to SIX BUCKS!! So expensive. They are good but that wait and price is getting out of hand.

Richmond Night Market = EVERYTHING FRIED. But it’s ok cuz they deep fry all the bad stuff away. ;)

Even the desserts are fried.

Rosemarie had been waiting for YEARS to try a deep fried cheesecake. She was very very excited.

And it did not disappoint. Her and Lauren chose the nutella banana option. It seems like they use the same deep fried cheesecake base for everything, and then just put different toppings on top of it. That cheesecake pocket might not look that special but once you cut it open and the warm gooey liquid cheesecake starts running out… you see why it is amazing. I think this is one of the better value items at the night market.

Finally Scott grabbed a corn ice cream snorkel for dessert. They use some kind of injection tubing system to fill the tubes with soft serve. The novelty was better than the taste though.

We had some other stuff too… bubble tea, a sundae, fish waffles, ha gao… probably more that I forget. It is awesome going to the night market with a big group because you get to try so many things!

Eat Vancouver is going on at BC Place this weekend. Scott and I went yesterday after work to check out all the samples. My first impression was that it was exactly the same as previous years, but when walking around I found a lot of new vendors that I hadn’t seen before.

The Maille mustard booth was pretty impressive! Check out that seared tuna sample! I really enjoyed the spicy Provencal mustard. Very delicious.

The Oikos yogurt truck was there again giving out samples of greek yogurt and granola toppings. Super thick creamy yogurt. I saved one for my breakfast this week.

As usual we attended a cheese tasting from the Dairy Farmers of Canada. I love these seminars, they are generous with the cheese and you can learn new stuff from Reg. He walks you through different aspects of each cheese and it’s great. This time I liked the camembert, feta and pepper Boursin the most.

They have really ramped up their booth this year, with a new set design and long tables giving out tons of samples of dozens of types of cheese all the time. You can buy the cheeses right from them this year too, which is new.

I had a mini cone of Birthday Cake ice cream from Island Farms. It tasted like icing and sprinkles. AKA, SUGAR. I enjoyed it.

After eating lots of hummus and pistachios and pickled products you get thirsty. Luckily there is a four sided drink tasting booth in the middle of the floor. I love the lemonades. The other sides have tea based drinks, sodas, and… something else that I forget. Oops.

We bought a few tickets and tasted a few beers and ciders in the alcohol section. I always forget that they have great (free) seminars going on in the alcohol section too, dang it. We just missed a whiskey tasting session which I’m sure would have been awesome.

I didn’t get a picture of it but we bought some Bruce Cost ginger ale on the way out. It’s all natural and SUPER TASTY. Looking forward to making some cocktails with it.

The swag bags were pretty great this year too, I got a big bottle of Reggae Reggae Jerk BBQ sauce, a gummy vitamin, some coupons, and a 1L carton of juice.

Disclaimer: our entrance tickets were provided complimentary, but all opinions are my own.

Before we even attended the Tasting Plates Gastown event I bought tickets for the next one… Tasting Plates Main Street. And I’m glad I did because it was awesome! Now I want to get tickets for the next one, Tasting Plates Latin Flavours. I’m addicted! (Early bird tickets on sale until the end of May, who wants to come?)

Tapas 23

First stop was Tapas 23 for  registration and (L-R):

• potato crusted wings – tasty but you couldn’t tell that it was potato crusted
• albondigas (meatball) – okay but not memorable
• brussels sprouts with balsamic, almonds and cheddar – ultra delicious! brussels sprouts are so trendy
• braised pork belly – the best part. sweet and perfectly cooked

Miura Waffle & Milk Bar

I was very excited for Miura Waffle since it has been on my Restaurants To Try list for like 2 years. How did I not know that it’s located right next to the bus stop where I change buses on the way home??!! We got to try (clockwise from top):

• dessert nachos (nori chip, chocolate, banana and strawberry) – way better than I expected. the nori taste worked well with the sweet strawberry
• kachan karaage waffle sando (ginger fried chicken with asian slaw on a waffle) – nice and juicy on a great waffle
• nori nachos (nori chip, salsa and sour cream) – kinda tasty
• teri-vani waffle sando (ice cream with teriyaki sauce on a waffle) – was scared to try this, but pleasantly surprised! good ol’ sweet salty combination!!

Rosemary Rocksalt

This place is also located right next to where I end up spending MANY minutes waiting for the bus on the way home. I can’t believe I didn’t notice it before because it’s really cool looking inside. Very hipster. Their bagels and rugelach were AMAZINGGGGG. We tried:

• Montreal smoked meat sandwich on a rosemary rocksalt bagel – piled high with meat, nice smear of mustard, on a GREAT bagel. the flakes of salt complete it
• lox and cream cheese on a bagel – really nice
• chocolate walnut rugelach – AMAZING. crunchy, buttery, sweet, perfection. please send me 9000000 more of these.
• chocolate raspberry rugelach – Scott loved it

Will 100% be returning to Rosemary Rocksalt for more bagels.

Main Street Honey Shoppe

Have you ever tried raw honeycomb? I hadn’t, but the little cracker with gouda and honeycomb was da bomb. I would love to eat this again but where the heck would I get some honeycomb??? Scott had cheddar with honeycomb. We also had little samples of almond cake, brownie and a ginger buckwheat cookie. Everything was made with their honey and very nice. I especially enjoyed the super moist bouncy almond cake.

We also got to try like 15 kinds of honey which was really cool. They all had different flavours depending on which flowers the bees visited. The honey tasting wasn’t special for the event, you can go in any time and try them, which I recommend! I didn’t even think I liked honey but now I know I do!

I also spent a while chatting with one of the staff about local honey for allergies. Apparently the belief that local honey can help with allergies because it contains local pollen in it and you build immunity from ingesting them is false. It is actually the phytochemical nutrients and propolis which help increase the body’s immunity, remove toxins, and act as an anti-inflammatory. Cool!

Rocky Mountain Flatbread Co

Next stop, pizza! We had:

• farmers market pizza (balsamic marinated rhubarb, tomato, pesto, goats cheese) – really tasty. I looooooove cherry tomatoes and goats cheese!
• naturally meaty (beef, sausage, tomatoes, green pepper, red onion, asiago, fresh herbs) – ok but I don’t care for one of the herbs they use, not sure what it was though

Shaktea

Last stop was tea and treats. I only tried the non caffeinated African dream rooibos. It smelled great but I didn’t like the taste as much. We also tried a chilli brownie that was pretty spicy! And a matcha date ball.

All in all, tons of great food. We didn’t have to wait at any of the restaurants like last time, which was a bonus. Can’t wait for the next event!!