Restaurant Review!

Wood Fire Bakery l Kelowna BC l 2041 Harvey Avenue

Do you know what the perfect sandwich is my friend?

It’s plump, moist chicken breasts with a generous slop of mayonnaise. It’s sitting on a bed of smoked ham. The ham has to be salty and smoky and thinly sliced so that it never overpowers the rest of the ingredients. The whole thing is then finished off with Swiss cheese and then placed in a bakery fresh bun before being thrown into a hot oven to finish off. When it comes out, the bread is crisp, the chicken still moist and each bite hits you with the onslaught of cheese, mayonnaise and ham.

The perfect sandwich is a Chicken Cordon Bleu sandwich at the wood fire bakery in Kelowna.

May the Schwartz be With You

How could I say no? The Ridge Theater was showing a documentary on the famous Montreal smoked meat eatery complete with a sandwich flown in from Montreal. As part of the Jewish Film festival, “A Year in the Life of Schwartz’s” drew a nearly packed crowd on a sunny Saturday Afternoon.

The documentary followed the daily events of the staff and customers of the Montreal icon for a period of a year. Venerated eateries often have a timeless feel with menu items virtually untouched for decades. The tables, stools and signs may not changed much but the customers did. Generations filtered through the doors but the food remained unchanged. There’s a real sense of family and community that can develop with both customers and staff bringing a sense of pride to a place that they know and grew up with.

As touching as the movie was, people immediately lined up for the sandwiches once the lights came back on. And who could blame them? The just spent 90 minutes watching people eat the perfect Schwartz’s smoked meat sandwich with a black cherry coke. Sadly, my friend was unable to attend so I held onto her ticket so that I could bring her a sandwich. The line was immense but Frank Silva, the general manager of Schwartz’s, sliced the smoked meat quickly while answering questions from the audience. When I reached the sandwiches, I laid out two paper plates and explained to the organizer that my friend was unable to make it to the movie. To my surprise she told me that only attendees would receive sandwiches. I showed her my two tickets and explained that I had paid for two tickets. Luckily Frank Silva intervened and provided me with the second sandwich as there was plenty of food to go around.

It was hours later before I realized that it may not have played out so well at the Jewish Film Festival, if I had stuck with plan A and asked the lady why she had to be such a Nazi about the sandwiches.

Restaurant Review!

Lucky Fortune l Richmond l 1211-8338 Capstan Way

The next time you go to your favorite Dim Sum restaurant in this city, be aware that you’re participating in a blood sport. You have to wonder how we can support so many Chinese restaurants and the truth of the matter is; we can’t. Places follow an unfortunate cycle of opening fast and hard with amazing prices, excellent food and gathering crowds. Soon prices need to go up, service suffers and the whole thing falls apart. Many of places don’t even make their own Dim Sum as the amount of preparation involved becomes prohibitive at cut throat prices. Let me illustrate the cycle of bust and boom for you.

Lucky Fortune Seafood restaurant opened in earlier this year and I got the chance to sample their Dim Sum. Their shrimp dumplings were amazing with thin, clear wrappings and perfectly springy prawns crammed within. The Siu Mai, with its filling of ground pork was also supported by a generous serving of prawns while the braised beef tendon we had was perfectly steamed, giving it a jelly like texture.

We were so enthralled that just a few days later we went back for King Crab which was in season. Served three ways, the legs were split, piled high with garlic and steamed. Wonderfully sweet, this was a bit overcooked but still reasonable for the price. The joints were deep fried until the shells became crispy and served with a spicy, sweet glaze. When crab is fried at a perfectly high temperature, the shell becomes so brittle that it shatters like phyllo and you can easily get at the sweet succulent package within. The shell was filled with fried rice and baked in a coconut curry sauce. Absolutely divine.

And then came the fall.

Line ups became unmanageable and the quality of the food suffered. The food was becoming over cooked and previous stalwarts like the beef tendon became a gooey mess. Suddenly, as brightly as it had lit up, this star began to fade and fall. Other restaurants opened up with cheap prices and wonderful quality drawing some of its luster.

This is why it has been so hard to find long standing stalwarts that have withstood the test of time. There is a real difficulty in holding talent and quality in this fickle market. The fate of this restaurant, like many before it, will be a steady and unglamorous decline.

Vaisakhi Me!

I love local festivals. The food, the people, the excitement of seeing something new around every corner. I love seeing the Austrian slap dance at the European Festival and the cute kids in Kimonos at Powell Street festival. However, Vaisakhi seemed to elude me over the years. I would always remember, a little too late, that the Sikh celebration of the creation of the Khalsa was being marked with a street festival and parade around Main and Fraser Street. I would show up just in time to find stalls closing up and stores and sponsors fresh out of food.

This year would be different. I made note of the date and showed up with plenty of time to walk the crowded streets. Families were out while businesses, associations and families were handing out free food to the crowds. Everything from pakoras to chai was freely provided while children got masks and balloons. Sweet rice puddings and spicy lentil dishes made the rounds and a generous, boisterous attitude filled the streets.

I watched the slow, methodical parade of floats, bagpipers and drummers pass me by only to find that I had completely missed the activities on Main Street. Through the steady sounds of shouts, laughter and bhangra music I walked towards the other half of the festival to find that most of the stalls had already shutdown.

I guess this means that I’ll have to come back next year to see the other half of the festival.