Tag Archives: pickles

Fast food cravings

Every once in a while, I get this inexplicable craving for McDonald’s.  The thing that stops me is the memory of the acute physical reaction that I get about five minutes after eating it, which is a lovely combination of nausea and feeling like my stomach is full of golf balls. 

I usually crave very specific things at McDonald’s.  Sometimes it’s the pickles on the cheesburger, sometimes it’s a hot fudge sundae (my God, do you know what they add to the ice cream to make it soft serve?) and more often than not, it’s a Filet-O-Fish.  Most people think that’s weird, but it’s what my parents got me when I was a kid, and that branding experiment sure worked on me.

Thankfully, the craving usually passes and I can be rational about the whole thing. 

I’ve also really been craving an A&W Teen Burger lately.  That can probably be remedied by a trip to Vera’s Burger Shack.

nuba, land of pink pickles (pinkles?)

I’ve walked by nuba a million times and it’s always packed. Now, I’m not big on middle eastern food. I like it enough, but I’ve had enough bad late-night falafel experiences to be a little bit wary. Clearly, nuba is in a different category entirely.

The menu consists of mezze, pitas and plates – that is, small, medium and large portions. The mezze plates ($5 – $6.50) come with pita and pickles; the pitas ($5.25 – $9.50) come with lettuce, tomato & pickle; and the plates ($9.00 – $11.00) come with taboulleh, salad, hummus, pita, and your choice of brown rice or roasted potatoes. There are lots of vegan, vegetarian and meat-containing choices, and they serve organic vegetables whenever possible.

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Pickles and pigs! (Piggles?)

I’m a big fan of The Greedy Pig for its thoughtful, well-executed food. The menu’s simple (mostly sandwiches and salads, lovely mains, and an excellent charcuterie selection) but everything is really tasty and well-executed.

Yesterday’s special was the pulled pork sandwich with side salad. The sandwich was…fine. It wasn’t the best I’ve ever had, but it was good. The pork was beautifully tender, but the pulled pork sauce was a little too sour for my liking:  very spicy and flavourful (hints of bourbon, maybe?), but too sour and too tomato-y.  The rest of the sandwich was nice: the squishy bun soaked up flavour from the pork and the creamy-but-not-sickly coleslaw added a great crunch. If the coleslaw had been cut a little bit finer, I would have been happier.

But my god, the pickle. The sandwich is served with a half-pickle: sliced diagonally, speared with a toothpick, and quite honestly the best pickle I’ve ever had. It embodied pickleness in its full glory: it was crisp, crunchy, refreshing, salty, sour and tasty. They’re made in-house, and I want to go back and buy jars of the stuff.

Go for the sandwich, stay for the pickle.

The Greedy Pig
307 W. Cordova Street, Vancouver
(604) 669-4991

http://www.thegreedypig.ca

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New York goodies, day five

I was in New York for five days. This is what I ate on day five.

-Pickles from the Lower East Side Picklefest (no joke).
-A croissant from a random Italian cafe.
-A giant lox bagel with scottish smoked salmon from Russ & Daughters, a high-end shop(pe?) that sells caviar, smoked salmon, handmade cream cheese, and chocolates.
-Sandwich fixings from what is reportedly New York’s most famous deli/grocery store, Zabar’s. It was packed full of people, no matter what aisle I chose.
-Matzo ball soup from Katz’s Deli. For some reason I was expecting several little matzo balls in soup, and not the giant softball-sized matzo ball that I was served. Katz’s Deli is where the, ahem, diner scene from When Harry Met Sally was filmed.