YEW: Last dineout-- datenight!

To end our Dine Out adventures this year, we decided on YEW, located at the Fairmont beside Pacific Center. They offered a $40 3-course menu with optional wine pairings for each course (various prices). The inside decor is classy but felt comforting. Our server was very friendly and started us with some hot water. Adorables said that he looked familiar, almost like a person he had met during a volunteering mission many years ago!

We were provided with bread to start, Adorables and I gorged on their bread with herb butter.

I ended up dipping my bread in their Yew Lobster Bisque with crispy leek and croutons. I enjoyed this dish the first time I came, but it had been so long I didn't really remember the taste, only "it was good". This was a very creamy but thin bisque. Rich lobster shell flavor. Although it was a small bowl, it soon proved to be a little much all for myself (of course I shared the rest with Adorables).

I talked Adorables into getting the Albacore Tuna with green lentil salad and winter vegetables. Plated as a tower of fish on top of a green lentil salad and garnished with winter vegetables, it was a beautifully colorful arrangement.

Tuna was nice and fresh, lentil added texture to the mushy tuna. Gotta say their plating was simple yet elegant.

I knew it was a silly idea but we both chose more fish for our meal, with Adorables getting the Roasted Salmon with Greek style vegetables and coriander. The fish was cooked perfectly, flakey and not overdone. A golden sheen on the outside on a bed of veggies and soup. Adorables enjoyed the pairing of soup to his fish. I was impartial to this.

I had the Pan Fried Sablefish with vegetables spaghetti, coconut and bouillabaisse. This was a magnificent dish. The sablefish was flakey, moist, and melted in my mouth. Paired with the delicious bouillabaisse-- the dish was well enhanced. I liked this "soup" base more than the one Adorables had since it was more fragrant and full-bodied. The vegetable spaghetti was fine and nicely twirled on my fork.

Onto the dessert round! Their Green Mountain was made with green tea, chestnut, and vanilla yuzu creme. It was a smooth, creamy explosion of green tea flavor in my mouth. The chestnut was very sweet but in small amounts was fine with the rest of the dessert. I loved the shape of it, so cute!

Couldn't decide on the other dessert, our server recommended the Jitters Gateau made with coffee and brown butter Pain de Gênes, coffee cream, and coffee hazelnut streusel. It was amazing! I don't know what made the crunchy bits, but along with the cream and cake-- this was a wonderful dessert experience with a variety of sweet and bitter and textures too!

By the end of the night, we had fully enjoyed our meal and spent some time looking through old photos trying to remember the name of the guide who led the volunteer mission in Morocco-- it turns out our server was indeed the same person! He was still building the school, and it had expanded to become a community center with healthcare included. What an amazing end to our evening, and what a small world it is to reunite with old faces halfway across the world!

Spoon Kitchen: Keep spooning!

Took us a while to finally arrive here, but here we are! Heard lots of good things about Spoon Kitchen from SexyNapkins, so I decided to snag the coupon deal from BigCityPerks and try it out with Adorables.

Restaurant: Spoon Kitchen (visit their website here)

Location: 1909 W. 4th Avenue, Vancouver
Cuisine: Thai, Malaysian
Price range: $15-20





Date of visit: June 17, 2014
Atmosphere: 4/5
Staff/service: 3.5/5
Food variety: 5/5
Food quality: 3.75/5
Buck worthy? 4.5/5

So the dealio online said 9 courses, but after asking the waiter, he said it was a typo, and it was $25 for 8-course meal for 2 people. I was fine with that, since there was no point arguing anyways xD First to arrive were the appetizers (3 courses).

There was Thai Shrimp Cakes, which were very crispy and fresh. Crispy Fried Calamari was tender and moist inside but I prefer it to be crispier on the outside; the sauces complimented both dishes well. Then there was Roti Canai with coconut curry dipping sauce, both very generic and average. I enjoyed this dish a lot though =)

The Shredded Mango Salad with lime dressing arrived shortly after. It was hard to find the mango, and when I did, they weren't very good. The mango was hard and tart. The whole salad was tart actually. And hard. There were carrots, cucumber, shallots, jicama and mango.

Then came the main dishes (3 courses). Having arrived at the same time, I couldn't decide what to eat first! Everything was getting cold =(

Anyhow, nibbled on the House Green Beans first, they were crunchy and well-done. There was dried shrimp and tomato with some sauce. A little salty for my liking, would've been delicious with some white rice! :)

Moved onto the Gulai Seafood, which was delicious. Could've been spicier but it was plentifully packed with seafood such as squid, shrimp, fish, and mussels. The pineapple, string beans, and peppers complimented the dish well to add some color and tanginess to the sauce. The sauce itself was flavorful with spices and the coconut curry base just shone. I ended up mixing the sauce with the Nasi Goreng, and it was quite interestingly delicious.

Last of the mains was the Nasi Goreng. It was moist and appetizing, great way to finish off my meal before dessert! Tasted even better when I mixed it with the Gulai Seafood hehe =D It was sweet and sour, kinda tomato-y, rice was a bit too soft and broken though.

Finally, dessert! The Pisang Goreng turned out to be deep fried banana with ice cream. It was really good! The banana was lightly battered, crispy, and not overcooked. Ice cream cooled it down just enough in my mouth not to be burned by the freshly deep fried banana! Yum yum!

Oh! Also ordered a Guava Juice ($2.75), tasted like the Sun Tropics stuff you can get from grocery stores haha, but it wasn't too overpriced, so I was fine with it :)

Very satisfied with the meal, took some stuff home as we couldn't finish it, so I would say it's a pretty sweet deal!! Servers were nice albeit a bit hard to flag down (it was nearly empty by the time we got there).