Tag Archives: tuna

Jax Fish House

If you’ve been following Top Chef, you know that Hosea Rosenberg is the season 5 winner. His restaurant, Jax Fish House, is conveniently located in Boulder, where I spent a week post-conference. Jax offers a wicked happy hour from 4-6 pm that features $4 martinis, $3 tapas and $1 oysters, so I figured I’d take advantage of that.

The tapas were overwhelmingly…underwhelming. The polenta is nice and creamy and smothered in some kind of cream sauce, the house-cured (Atlantic) salmon is nice enough, and the braised lamb is passable. The tuna potstickers were rather disappointing, consisting of cold, under-seasoned tuna in crunchy, dried-out wonton wrappers.

Having said that, I can’t complain about $1 oysters. They come freshly shucked on a bed of shaved ice (bonus points for presentation), with horseradish, lemon and a shallot vinaigrette. The happy hour oyster rotates, so that day it was Apalochicola oysters from Florida.

And, I really can’t complain about the selection of infused vodkas, which includes strawberry, raspberry, coffee, horseradish, chili, and a few more. The fruity ones are nice in an adult lemonade, while the savoury ones are better suited to a Bloody Mary.

And the key lime pie is absolutely kick-ass. It’s creamy, perfectly smooth, and scandalously tart. The graham cracker crust tastes of butter, brown sugar and honey, and has just a hint of something crunchy. The contrast of creamy and crunchy, sweet and tart is delightful.

Too bad the happy hour tapas aren’t up to the same standards. I hope that the regular menu delivers something more worthy of a Top Chef.

Jax Fish House (Boulder)
928 Pearl Street
Boulder, CO
(303) 444-1811
Jax Fish House on Urbanspoon

Voya’s petits fours: lemon spritz cookies

The lounge menu at Voya looks quite tempting. I mean, it’s all cute tasty things that look beautiful. We had rare tuna with ponzu sauce, on a bed of pickled daikon. The pickled daikon was really nice. The tuna was…acceptable, but not amazing.

What is amazing is that they have a petits fours plate on the lounge menu. Otherwise known as mignardise, they’re typically served after dessert with coffee. Back in my restaurant days, it was my favourite part of the meal because you got to plate so many cute things – and it was fun thinking of new things to put on the plate.

Now, there’s no mention of pastry chef Maurizio Persichino anywhere on the Voya website. It’s a shame because the pastry chef should always get billing wherever the executive and sous chef are, but it’s even more of a shame because he does such beautiful things.

The petits fours selection changes with Chef’s whim, but on this night there were lemon spritz cookies, sparkly coffee cookies, pineapple pate de fruit, cherry cordials, hazelnut praline chocolates, and coffee chocolates.

The lemon spritz cookies are beautiful. They’re little rosettes of moist, lemony goodness. The cookie has an almond base, which adds enough body and richness to the cookie without being overpowering. The best part about this cookie is the texture: the outside is crisp and slightly caramelized, while the inside is moist and slightly chewy. The whole thing is dusted in sugar and garnished with confit orange. So simple, but done so perfectly.

Voya (in the Loden Hotel)
1177 Melville Street
Vancouver, BC
(604) 639-8692

‘Wichcraft is a lifesaver

The thing with travelling is that sometimes you can’t be picky. Sometimes you’re surrounded by tourist traps and fast food, and you just want something good. Not fancy, not expensive, just good.

Well, if you’re in New York City, you can rely on ‘Wichcraft. I thank my stars that Tom Colicchio started this chain of shops that serves fresh, tasty soups and sandwiches at a great price point.

When I was there, I ordered the tuna sandwich on baguette. They manage to toast the baguette without making it all crunchy and painful to eat. The tuna was nicely accented with thinly sliced fennel and lemon, which made the whole thing fresh and bright. I also had a cauliflower soup with parsley oil. The taste and texture were exactly what they should have been.

They serve bread sticks on the side, which is cute. The walls are covered in giant food photography (can you say food porn?), and there’s a great selection of pop culture, fashion and food magazines to read while you’re munching away.

I wish I had tried the grilled fontina with morels and truffles, but oh well.

Note that the location at 60 E. 8th Street is dangerously close to Broadway Panhandler. Broadway Panhandler (65 E. 8th Street) is a fantastic kitchen store – one that I could easily spend hours in.

‘Wichcraft
various locations
New York, NY (also San Francisco and Las Vegas)
'Wichcraft on Urbanspoon

Toratatsu Japanese Tapas Bistro

Thank goodness that half of Elisa is Japanese, because she finds little gems in Vancouver that otherwise wouldn’t make it on my radar. The other half of Elisa is good for ranting, stories and gossip, so overall she’s a pretty useful person to have around.

For Elisa’s un-birthday dinner, we hit Toratatsu Japanese Tapas Bistro. It’s not really an izakaya because they serve sushi, so I’m guessing that’s why they decided to go with “japanese tapas” instead.

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Dine Out Vancouver: db Bistro Moderne, take two.

Yesterday’s post was about my first, and rather disappointing, visit to db Bistro Moderne. Today’s post is about my second, and rather enjoyable, visit to the same restaurant.

Right off the bat, I noticed that the service was better. This is probably because we had a late table on a Wednesday night, and the restaurant wasn’t nearly as busy as it had been on Saturday. We were seated in an alcove away from the rest of the restaurant, which afforded a little bit of privacy.

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