Posts by: pat&kat
There’s a lot to love about this heritage site on the edge of Gastown, with its building just as full of character as its menu. The restaurant has a ton of rustic decor and plenty of seating since it also has a cozy lower floor. If you’re as lucky as us, you can get a table at the far end where trains pass by right outside the window. It’s not something you get to experience all the time, but it was definitely neat.
Boasting an impressive beer menu, we couldn’t settle on just one. They have the option to create your own personalized Beer Frat Bat – a set of four beer tasters of your choice. Needless to say, we were in. Being the indecisive individuals we are, we told our server to please bring us his recommendations based on how hoppy we like our beers.
From left to right: Seedspitter Watermelon Witbier, Farmhand Saison, Rise Up Organic Red Ale, Naramata Nut Brown
It helped that the Frat Bat was organized according to hoppiness. Our favourites in order were the Naramata Nut Brown, Farmhand, Seedspitter then Rise Up Red – the darker ale we particularly enjoyed because it tasted lighter than it looked. We would recommend the Farmhand to try as your next lager as it’s not too hoppy and paired well with everything we ate. So if you’re looking for beer heaven, Alibi Room just might be it.
And for our meal, we opted for the cheese plate with various Canadian cheeses, house condiments, and breads. Since the cheese plate changes daily, we’ll probably order it again. But for now we trust Alibi Room in putting together some wonderful cheeses and spreads to complement their selection of breads, which we found completely delicious!
So according to Nikole and Kat, here’s how to have the perfect Alibi Room Experience:
- Give your server parameters on levels of hoppiness (or happiness) you’re aiming for, to create the perfect Beer Frat Bat combo.
- Order amazing share plates such as the cheese platter and bucket of fries. Why have wine and cheese when you can have beer and cheese?
- Realize that the cheese-to-bread ratio is not going to work, so you’ll have to get creative.
- Make ridiculous combinations of bread, apple, jam, and cheese (but it’s okay cause they pair well together, we promise).
- OPTIONAL: Proceed to make a beatbox/rap about bread, apple, jam, cheese in any given order.
You can probably tell we are an easily amused group of friends. We eat together, share stories, and laugh about random and usually epic things. And we wouldn’t have it any other way! So Alibi Room, kudos to you for creating a lovely atmosphere for get-togethers and great conversation.
So don’t think twice about trying Alibi Room if you haven’t been. Have a great weekend everyone!
After finishing one of our many design projects, we visited Acme Cafe for some celebratory food action. This restaurant can be found in Gastown right before you enter the Downtown East Side, and has a really retro, diner-like feel to it.
As we were seated right by the window, we witnessed many interesting people walk by and even more interesting scenarios (think firefighters, travellers, funky outfits). Always something new every day, right?
Now for the delicious plates we ordered:
Chef’s feature
Spinach portobello mushroom and cheese cannelloni
Turkey sandwich with a side of mac & cheese
Brie, cranberry-Grand Marnier sauce, grainy dijon mayo and arugula on panini grilled Ciabatta
We have no idea how we ate all of this, it was a LOT of food. Of course we concentrated on eating the main courses, and our reason being “there’s no need to fill up on SALAD!” But don’t get us wrong, the salad was a perfect palate cleanser. The cannelloni was packed full with multiple cheeses, and distinctly feta. It was a tad on the bland side, but overall nothing really to complain about. Here’s what really stood out for us: the turkey sandwich. Acme Cafe did a fantastic job at merging Thanksgiving’s turkey and cranberry with brie and dijon mustard, to create a nice twist to this classic. Many restaurants already offer similar sandwiches, but hardly do we find any that live up to the grand holiday. Our take on it is do it well or don’t do it at all! We give Acme brownie points for creating a killer Thanksgiving-in-a-sandwich combo.
Chocolate Cream Pie
Acme’s Twitter description says “keep your fork – there’s pie!” We were wise to take their advice, and settled on the chocolate cream pie. It was extremely rich, so we only recommend it if you have a severe case of sweet tooth. We loved the oreo pie crust! If it’s one thing we agree on about Acme Cafe, it’s to always ask what pies they’ve baked that day to complete your meal, you won’t be sorry.
For a reasonably priced and more than filling dinner (around $40 for beers, entrees, and pie), we would probably go back. The turkey sandwich alone has us convinced that trying their other ones wouldn’t be such a bad idea.
After a lovely meal at Finch’s Tea & Coffee House one afternoon (see review here), it was absolutely necessary for us to go get something sweet as a pre-class snack so we hit up Cartems Donuterie (Pop-up Shop). We’ve heard a lot about this little spot recently and decided that we needed to check it out! Boy, it was worth the trek.
Cartems makes their donuts fresh every morning and is open until they run out of donuts for the day. What makes them even better is that all their ingredients are sourced locally! They have staple donuts that they make almost every day but once in a while they get creative with some and have an interesting donut of the day.
1. The Green Tea & Mango Donut
This was their special creation of the day. And if you’re reading this Cartems, please make more of these! It was an interesting combination that was deeeeelicious. We both tried it and loved it. Pat then decided to include one more with the other five she brought home for her family.
2. The Classic
I firmly believe that the classic/plain flavours tell the full story. Bringing everything back to the basics if you will. The classic is anything but boring. As it says on their website, it’s nothing but straight goods. It’s a simple vanilla donut with vanilla bean glaze.
3. Triple Chocolate Threat
For all the chocolate lovers out there, this is for you. This baby doesn’t mess around. It’s a chocolate cake, with chocolate ganache, drizzled with little balls of chocolate. Drool.
4. The Carrot Cake
This one came out of left field. Carrot cake isn’t usually up there in favourite flavours, but this one ended up being Pat’s favourite! They embed carrots into the dough itself and glaze it with caramel. It’s finally topped with toasted oats. Would go great with a cup of coffee. Just sayin.
5. The Mexican Mole
I picked this one out of pure intrigue. Typically when people say chili and chocolate you don’t really imagine them together. But this worked. It had four kinds of chilis, cumin, coriander, star of anise, cinnamon and dark dark dark chocolate. Yum.
Say hi to the super friendly people at Cartems Donuterie! We’ll definitely be going back because we didn’t get to try their Earl Grey Donut that they were unfortunately out of for the day we went (stay tuned for review once we get our hands on it).
Cartems Donuterie (Pop-up Shop) is located at:
408 Carrall St
Vancouver, BC
www.cartems.com
As you know, we took a little bit of a hiatus during the month of May because we immersed ourselves in a Graphic Design course we absolutely loved. Again, apologies… but we were never too busy to squeeze in finding some delicious eats in and around Gastown. To make up for lost time we’re going to do features on some of the places we found in a little something called “Gastown Eats”.
First, we’ll cover Finch’s Tea & Coffee House where we found this gem: The blue brie, roasted walnuts, pear, prosciutto, oil & vinegar baguette.
This tastes as delectable as it looks exquisite. You can really tell that the people here at Finch’s take their time and really put their heart and soul into each sandwich they make. It’s like a piece of art! So as they say, if you’re in a rush call ahead so they have ample time to prepare your order. The combination of the sweet pear, salty prosciutto, brie cheese, and everything else in between is just perfection. Pat was feeling under the weather that day so she decided to pair the baguette with their Jasmine tea (just one of the many teas in their extensive selection).
We believe that this is definitely “a must try” for everyone and is now one of our Vancouver favourites that we will definitely be coming back for more! It was absolutely necessary for us to top this meal off with something sweet so we trekked over to Cartems Donuterie for some donuts (see review here).
Finch’s Tea & Coffee House is located at:
352 West Pender St.
Vancouver, BC
This is definitely one of those days, where you have a million things to do but you’re going to write about something anyway. Because when you have something great to share, you should share it :) So the story goes, we were studying for our CMNS 473 final at Waves in Steveston. And from past experience the chances of us heading towards the direction of Hog Shack after are always EXTREMELY high. You’ll see why we enjoy this barbecue cook house so much when you scroll down!
Their menu, which on most days we never usually get past the first page. We also approve of the Hog Shack Sweet Rub if you are feeling like wings!
The nachos with pulled pork is our go-to appy from Hogshack. It’s guaranteed to be piled high with all the good stuff – three types of cheese, tomatoes, onions, olives, and jalapeño peppers. While best shared with a handful of good friends, Pat & Kat are tanks so we had no problem (almost) finishing this.
And together with sour cream and their in-house fresh salsa, who could go wrong?
At the end of our feast Owner/Chef John made fun at us and said “You guys aren’t going to leave five nachos are you? There are starving kids you know.” Pat: “It feels like you’re my parents right now.” Felt horrible after, but appreciated the humour and laughed about it anyway.
Good service, their delicious pulled pork (seriously it tastes good on just about anything), and proximity to the prime studying areas are reasons we come back again and again. If you’re heading over and decide to try the nachos, let us know what you think as its our favourite plate from Hog Shack!
P.S. we were too excited when we realized their kitchen was playing One Direction’s CD.
WAYF Meter: 4.5/5
Hog Shack is located at:
3900 Bayview Street
Richmond, BC
http://hogshack.ca
Hey everyone and welcome to eat with pat & kat! You may know us through our consignment shop over at the pat & kat shop and see that we’ve decided to branch out and take on food blogging. Reasons for this are simple: we LOVE to eat and talk about food.
We’ve laid out this site based on features where you can follow our food adventures, see the best places for a given category, and read on our favourites at the moment. While we aren’t experts in the field, we believe there’s something here for everybody. That said, we hope you enjoy this blog as much as we had creating it! If you have any suggestions for what you’d like to see, we’d definitely be excited to hear from you.
Happy eating!
Paige & Kathrene
info@thepatandkat.com
If you aren’t Filipino, eating fried chicken with rice and gravy may be a foreign idea to you. This was definitely the case with our friend Kyle, who up until that point thought fried chicken only went with fries. But did that ever change ;)
Here’s the reason we set our calendars weeks ahead of time to prepare for this day:
Red Pocket was giving out a deal for $10 worth of Church’s for only $5. Five dolla! And seeing how we like to eat, we bought two of these. So yesterday the plan was for Kyle and Kat to head over to the Terra Nova location and slap our coupons on the counter, and for Pat to prep the rice. Obviously when the 3 piece combo came up to $8.90 there was nothing on the menu that would be the exact difference. But with Kyle’s great logic, he ended up buying GRAVY! This is a must for the ultimate Church’s experience.
So here’s the damage we did, mind you it was 11 am. Too much deliciousness :)
And the glorious plate of fried chicken, rice and gravy:
What was the verdict? According to Kyle, “The flavours of the rice and gravy harmonize with each other…the flavours of happiness.” With Kyle giving the okay, we definitely suggest giving this a try for when you are in the mood for comfort food!
And here are the two fwenz happy as ever:
High five! What a great morning with the WAYF buddies. As Pat had said, it was “bwekfast at its finest with fwenz.” It most definitely was.
WAYF meter: 4/5
P&K Features
