Looking around the world for the best in food. We spend more time on food than almost anything else in life, it is the core of our identity and culture.
Deciding what we eat is one of the most political acts we do each day.
I am a huge fan of the return of the cocktail culture, though with a bunch kids and other responsibilities in the community I really have not had the time to enjoy the lounges that there are in this town. I am sad to say I only been for drinks at Clive's once and then I had a beer..... What I saw of the atmosphere impressed me, what I know of the bartenders gives me confidence this is a good place for a drink.
Clive's is located in the Chateau Victoria which will be host to many of the events of the Art of the Cocktail October 13th-15th.
Next in the series of the Shaw TV local foodie series Delicious hosted by Aaron Hall is a visit to the new2% Jazz location in the new Hudson development on Douglas.
I stopped in the other day when I was downtown to get a coffee so I can not speak to the quality of the food, but the location lives up to what friends have told about it.
This place defines what a great hang out is to me. My only regret is that it is not in my neighbourhood. This places feels more like hanging out in the home of a friend with a funky style than anything else. There is no sense of rush, no tension, just a laid back vibe.
The coffee is good, the goodies are hippesque in style but still good to eat. The live music is never so much a performance as a jam session you were lucky enough to be able to listen to.
I have only been in the Parsonage once for coffee, but I have been buying their coffee for years. The Fernwood Coffee Company grew out of the Parsonage. I really think that you can only get the best coffee if you have it roasted on site and done well, I have had dodgy small scale roasting though never from these guys. It was about 20 years ago in Kitsilano at the venerable Yoka coffee that I first truly understood how much fresh roasted by a good roast master matters - which I only just found out moved to Victoria in 2010!
I really need to go to the Parsonage for the food.
Here is a bit about being a barista and more of a focus on the Fernwood Coffee side of things.
This episode is Cafe Fantastico at the Parkside - Tre Fantastico. I really like this location but so rarely got the area to spend any time there. This location allows for beer, something that we really need to lighten about in this province and let more places sell it.
I very much enjoy all the locations of Cafe Fantistico and what I really love about the chain is that each location is so very unique. I also very much like there coffee, I find their roast one of the best in town.
We have been getting better and better at making pizza at home, the Neapolitan style. Sheila has a naan bread recipe that we use as our pizza cough and it is working well for us. When we recently made them I quadrupled the recipe and we ended up with 21 shells.
Having a pizza peel and good pizza stones has made the process easier. We bouhgt the pizza peel for like $25 at the Real Canadian Wholesale Store in Esquimalt. The pizza stones are from Amazon.com.
It took some time for Sheila to work out how to best get the done pizzas into the oven, but that is a skill she now has. We have also had to figure out what temperature to have the oven at. At 475 the oven gives off smoke from the residue on the stones and sets off out smoke alarms, at 425 they do not cook fast enough
We are finding the oven is working better than working with the barbeque. The fact the heat only comes from the bottom does not allow the bbq to properly melt the cheese.
On Saturday our 17 year old took on the task of installing the new to us dishwasher in the house and since he managed it by himself and needed no oversight we told him we would take him out to lunch. Daniel wanted sushi, no surprise there.
We headed out just before 2 pm on Saturday and ran into a major problem, most of the places we had need to were all just closing for lunch. We finally found out that Shizen Sushi would remain open long enough and had a decent rating on Urbanspoon.
The side of the street Shizen is on is mainly rather run down establishments, you could easily lose them because of the neighbours which is why none of us in the car could think of where it was located.
Once we were inside I was impressed with the look and feel.
We were in a rush for a number of reasons so quickly ordered about 8 different roles. The were decently done though not stellar, but this is Victoria and not the sushi Mecca that is Vancouver. The only complaint we had was that on the tuna and salmon rolls the nori was ripped and they were falling apart - I assume being there at the very end of service and this being Victoria they figured it would be ok. It was not serious enough to send back even if were not in a rush.
We also ordered some udon noodles for Max, which, because it came with a lot of veggies, Sheila and Daniel shared with him.
The prices were decent for what we got.
One odd thing, the website seems to be uncompleted because the pages are all filled with place holder text.
Could we do better at home? Not really, our knife skills and rolling skills are not good enough.
Will we go back? I suspect so because it is in a reasonable location and does decent food.
