Minerva Restaurant – Vancouver

During covid, it’s difficult to find a restaurant to eat in comfortably, even now when more and more people start to head out again. To support the local businesses we still went ahead to order takeout when the restaurants started reopening again. This day, we were really missing Greek food, so we ordered from Minerva on W41 st Ave.

• Minerva Restaurant

We ordered ahead from their website which had all the prices conveniently listed. It was a busy evening and the wait would be about 30 minutes. When we arrived we saw they had setup a pickup window for takeout orders. This was great as we did not have to step indoors and made it easy for social distancing.

When we got home, we opened the boxes to let some steam out. For appetizer, we ordered fried calamari. For the main, we shared a beef souvlaki platter. The platter comes with pita bread, potato, Greek salad, rice and tzatziki dip.

We then split up the food onto our plates and prepared to chomp down.

The calamari unfortunately was aleady a bit soggy by the time we got home. This was not the fault of the restaurant. I suppose we could have eaten at the nearby park to prevent this from happening next time.

The salad and the tzatziki dip appeared to be a large serving when compared to eating in. We asked for the feta cheese to be on the side, and they gave us quite a large serving.

The rice and potatoes were well prepared with the traditional Greek lemony flavors to it. The beef was quite tender and well seasoned.

Minerva has a convenient online ordering system and if you take out, there is a 10% off discount. Parking on 41st ave is not that great but there are side streets nearby where you can park for free.

Overall this was a nice take out experience and despite the calamari being not crispy, the food was great as Minerva is able to keep up with their standards even with takeout.

SFDD gives 4 out of 5 Delights.

LA Chicken – Richmond

After hearing such great things about the fried chicken at LA Chicken, we finally had a chance to give it a try to see what it was all about.

• LA Chicken

We got there early evening on a Saturday night and there was already a small line up out the door. I don’t think they take orders through the phone and didn’t see an online ordering system so you’d have to walk in to do the order.

We ordered 10 pieces spicy. This was recommended since we were told spicy is more crunchy.

The batter is really crispy and evenly distributed. Even when we got home, which is a 15 minute drive away the chicken was still very crispy.

We were very impressed. All the pieces were consistently juicy and crunchy. Also it was flavorful up to the bone. Although we ordered spicy, it was not too spicy. Maybe 3/10 for spicy.

We were unable to finish the chicken but the next day, we reheated the chicken in the conventional oven for 15 minutes (uncovered) and it was just as tasty. The batter was still crispy and was not soggy when reheated.

LA Chicken is located in a small strip mall so although there is a parking lot, it is best to avoid it and park on the street instead. The parking lot was quite a gong show.

The service was also friendly and we did not have to wait too long for our order to be prepared.

SFDD gives 5 out of 5 Delights.

John 3:16 Malaysian Delights

We wanted to try out John 3:16 for a while now and finally had a chance to do so on a Friday evening.   The restaurant is known for Malaysian style food.  It was quite packed already with quite a few parties waiting for a table.

We were a bit surprised to see the restaurant is quite big.  It looks like 2 restaurants combined into one since there is a divide in between.  There were people waiting at both the front and back of the restaurant.

We started with the Roni Canal.  It comes in 2 pieces with dipping sauce and some white sugar.

This is the first time seeing this served with white sugar.  It did have a unique taste when combining together with the sauce.  The roti were both very fluffly.

Next we had the beef satay.  It comes in sets of 4 skewers and you can choose the meat.

The beef was very tender and had good flavour.  It was a bit too tender for our liking.

For our mains we first had the Nasi goreng ayam.

It is a piece of fried chicken thigh over some fried rice.  The fried chicken was juicy and flavoured well while the batter was not too thick.  The fried rice was a sweet and spicy flavour bu a tad too oily.

Next we had the Mamak mee goreng which is a fried noodle dish.

The noodles were cooked to the right tenderness and mixed well with the meat and veggies.

The prices here aren’t too expensive which is probably why it is so busy.  The portion sizes of the mains we ordered today were a tad small though.  Even the plates they used were small, like side plates.

Overall, service was good and the food was not bad at all.  Portion sizes could be a bit bigger.  They do have a good selection of food o the menu you can try.  If you come on a weekend, be prepared to wait especially if you have a big party.

SFDD gives 3 out of 5 Delights.

Ramen Hachi – New West

We came to New West to do some errands and ended up at Ramen Hachi for some Ramen.  Ramen Hachi is just located under the New West skytrain station.  It was late in the afternoon so there were plenty of tables available for our late lunch.

They don’t have a big selection of ramen here.  We ended up ordering the takoyaki to start. It comes with 5 pieces.

The takoyakis were prepared well, nicely rounded with tasty octopus filling topped with Japanese mayo.

We ordered the basic shio ramen.

It was a fair size with pork.  What was unusual was that the soup was super clear.  Too clear from the norm, like canned chicken broth.  The noodles were also super thin.  You don’t get a choice of type of noodles here.

Next we got the Kumamoto ramen. The main difference is the black garlic oil on top.

The garlic oil gave the ramen a bit more kick compared to the basic Shio ramen.

The ramen here is out of the ordinary when compared to the other ramen shops.  This is mainly due to the super thin noodles, as well as the clear and light soup broth.  It would have been better if they provided a choice of noodles and broth richness.

It’s convenient to get here if you take the skytrain regularly.  If you drive, you’d have to do pay parking in this mall complex.

SFDD gives 3 ot of 5 Delights.

Coffeeholic – Coquitlam

We were looking for a non chain coffee shop to meet up along North Road and found this Coffeeholic place from google maps.  Reviews seemed fair so we came to try it out.  It was a Friday early afternoon and there was not much of a crowd.  It looked to be family run.

There was quite a few parking spots outside in this small strip mall. Just behind it is the Executive Inn Hotel.

We ordered a mango slushy drink:

It was made fresh and we saw them use some fresh mangoes to make this.

We also ordered a regular sized latte.  They use JJ Bean coffee beans here.  There was also some nice latte art.

Latte could have used a bit more espresso kick.  I couldn’t quite taste the signature JJ Bean flavor though.

Coffeeholic is a good place to meet up. They also have a nice selection of pastries too.  Aside from the relatively week latte, the service here was friendly and premises were well maintained and clean.

SFDD gives 3 out of 5 Delights.