Dine-Out Vancouver started this week, an annual food festival that involves wickedly-worth-it expensive restaurants offering three course menus for either $15, $25, or $35 per person. (This doesn’t include drinks, tips, or taxes). Running from January 16th to February 3rd, it’s a wonderful opportunity, delicious, cheap, and super fun. There’s almost 200 restaurants involved, which can make it seem a little over-whelming, but they all have searchable on-line menus posted, and easy to find phone numbers for reservations. (The trick is to always call them in. The place you pick might claim on-line that they’re full up, but anyone with experience with this knows better.) They’re sorted alphabetically, by price, or by the type of cuisine they offer.
I almost always forget, of course, until it’s practically too late, but not this year. Ellen reminded me in time to keep an eye on the date, so tonight Mishka, my mother, and I went to Feenie’s this evening to take advantage. I’m a bit of a secret foodie, so it’s one of my favourite restaurants. You can keep your salty Kettle of Fish, your over-hyped Gotham Steakhouse, I’ll take Feenie’s any day. They may serve deceptively simple dishes, but it was started by a fellow who appeared on Iron Chef and the food, of course, is lovely, utterly lovely. Tonight didn’t disappoint. I had braised veal cheeks with an exquisite sour cherry gelati I would love to have enough to bathe in some day. My blood-stream’s still singing, hours later, a little happy song of contented tasty yum. Obviously I need to start roping other people into dinner.
So now you’re all properly In The Know, where are you planning on going?