I didn’t have anything to bring for lunch the other day so I decided to check out Shizen Ya on Broadway for a quick lunch. It’s super close to my work and the reviews were good.

I ordered the Sushi & Udon lunch combo, that comes with chicken udon noodle soup, 3 pieces each of dynamite roll and salmon roll, and salad.

The salad was good. It had a lot of different ingredients. I liked the dressing.

The sushi is made with brown rice. The rolls tasted very good and fresh.

The udon noodle soup was good too, once I added in a lot of that yellow and red seasoning. I have no idea what that is, but it enhanced the flavours. I liked the shitake mushroom.

Good service, good quality food, decent prices. I enjoyed my lunch and would return for sure.

I got driven out to Abbotsford yesterday with a bunch of other Vancouver bloggers to check out the Fraser Valley Food Show. It was smaller than Eat! Vancouver, but in some ways that is a good thing. It wasn’t nearly as crowded and you get way more of a chance to talk with the vendors and meet people. It was cool to learn a little more from the companies that are based in the surrounding areas, where I don’t often get out to.

One of the highlights was the sausage making competition. For $2 you could try a dozen different types of sausages, and get a little glass of Erdinger.

Most of the sausages were pork based, but this one was a shrimp sausage. I thought it tasted ok, but it was pretty weird. The people around me didn’t seem to like it very much.

I voted for the Altmaerker sausage because it had a nice strong flavour. They’re a German shop in Delta. I also really enjoyed the Beast & Brine sausage, from Surrey. The two guys really sold me on their shop when they told me about their carefully curated selection of cheeses. I’ll have to check it out when we get a car.

Of course I attended a cheese seminar from the Dairy Farmers of Canada. We tried 8 different types and it was great, as usual. I like that they give great big samples of the cheese so you can really get a good taste.

The BC Cranberry people had a creative exhibit booth. I learned all about cranberry harvesting… something that I knew nothing about before yesterday. Apparently the cranberries grow on little bushes like in the picture, then when they are ready the farmers flood the whole field with water. Then they push a rolling cranberry knocker thingy through the field that removes the cranberries from the bush. Because cranberries have four air pockets on the inside (kind of like the hollow parts in an apple) the cranberries float up to the surface of the water. Then they can easily scoop up all the cranberries with a rope pull thingy. Pretty cool.

There was a big gluten free area but I didn’t spend much time there because it was REALLY CROWDED. I think it’s great that there are so many more products for people who can’t have gluten and it definitely seems like it’s getting people excited!

I had a lovely mango lemonade from An Indian Affair Restaurant (Langley) and an open faced Montreal smoked meat sandwich with mustard from Dunn’s Famous BC (Vancouver). PS I really love mustard these days.

And I had a very random selection of wine, beer and liquor samples in the alcohol tasting area. I don’t have a lot to say about that because I was paying more attention to getting to know the other bloggers than what I was drinking, haha. That was a lot of fun, although it made me realize I have a lot of work to do on this blog.

The Richmond Night Market is still open for another few weekends. Scott and I went last weekend and had a great time! It wasn’t as crowded as in the summer and we made excellent food decisions and ended up with a really awesome meal.

The first thing we had was chicken karaage. It was MEGA DELICIOUS! It was sweet and spicy and super juicy! Perfection. $5 for 3 pieces.

Lobster something or other. This was our least favourite thing we got. It was a little overcooked. $5.95.

While eating the lobster I noticed this stand and got REALLY SUPER EXCITED. IT’S JIAN BING!!!! AKA something I ate every week in Beijing and have not been able to find since leaving Beijing (except for a weird version in Box Hill mall in Melbourne). It cost 10x as much as I used to pay in Beijing but WHO CARES!

Look how happy I am!! It tasted just like I remembered. Basically it’s a thin pancake with an egg cracked and cooked on top of it, with green onions and cilantro sprinkled on one side. Then you flip it over, brush a couple sauces on it, add a strange crunchy thing and then fold it up! I missed jian bing so much, and this one was great. $5 (I probably would have paid $20 for one, haha.)

We got a couple bbq pork buns too. They were fine, not much to say about them. $3.75 for 2.

Then it was dessert time!! This monstrosity is a deep fried smores cheesecake. I had low expectations for this (because of our sad PNE deep fried Mars bar experience) but it was FREAKING AWESOME! It was ginormous, bursting with warm cheesecake goo, with tons and tons of graham cereal, marshmallows, oreo crumbs, and chocolate on top. Very tasty. Very nutritious. $6

I got a passion fruit lemonade on the way out too. Then we stopped by the casino on the way home but didn’t stay long because casinos seriously weird me out. I want to pull the people away from the tables/machines and tell them STOP THAT YOU’RE WASTING YOUR MONEY!!!! All I can think about is how fast the casino is raking in cash every second. Crazy.

Anyway I’m super glad we went to the market before it closed for the year. The Richmond Night Market is way better than the Summer Night Market, I know that for certain now. I highly recommend going!