Good Friends

Went for lunch with my family for some korean food in Coquitlam. Good friends is pretty decent with their food, selections and pricing. If I'm in the Coquitlam area I would choose to come here. So, first arrives the side dishes. The side dishes here all taste very similar using different ingredients. It was the same flavour and the same level of spiciness. It was tasty but I prefer my side dishes to taste different and unique on its own. The overall meal tended to be a little too spicy for all of us. Everything we ordered was spicy. But I really love the individual flavours of each dish. My favourite was the spicy kimchi soup which I usually choose to eat when eating at a korean restaurant.

Side Dishes: (left top: radish, potatoes, tofu and peas, bottom left: radish, fish tofu and kimchi)

Korean spicy cold noodles

Spicy Kimchi Soup

Kimbap with Calamari 

Pork Belly Wrap (the leafy green was already soaked in salt so it made the dish a little too salty)

Good Friends
Location: 535 Clarke Road, Coquitlam
Rating: ☆☆☆☆/5

Pearl Castle

Me and my sisters plus kevin and devo all went to get together at Pearl Castle in Richmond. We had Chicken Knee and Taiwanese sausages for appetizers. Then I order my usual which is the honey milk tea without pearls. All the main dishes come with grass jelly for dessert. 

Chicken Teriyaki Fried Rice

House Special shredded pork fried rice

Shredded beef w/black pepper plus 3 vegetable sides with rice and grass jelly

Coconut Seafood Hot Pot with sliced pork and rice and vermicelli on the side plus grass jelly

Kimchi Seafood Hot Pot with Sliced Pork

Pearl Castle

Overall Rating: ☆☆☆1/2 /5

Location: 3779 Sexsmith Rd. Richmond

Deer Garden Signatures

Before I went to dodgeball, I went to have dinner at Deer Garden Signatures on Fraser. I've never been to any of the Deer Gardens before so I decided to try it out. I had the noodle soup combo for $8.50. This included the soup broth of your choice, noodles, 2 toppings and a drink. Extra costs for a cold drink and extra toppings. I order the Tom Yum Goong soup base, "haw fun" flat rice noodles, choy and mushrooms. The bowl was huge...I barely touched it when I was getting full so I had to pack it to go. I had a coffee milk tea that was way to bitter and not enough sugar...it definitely kept me up all night even after dodgeball.

Deer Lake Signatures
Overall Rating: ☆☆☆1/2 /5
Location: 6270 Fraser St. Vancouver

Octopus Garden

Today, I finally tried my first ever Omakase Japanese experience. This is basically a Japanese tasting menu where you leave the menu up to the chef and you just experience the best of the best the restaurant has to offer. We went for the $100 per person option. Octopus Garden is a small restaurant in Kitsilano. The Omakase option isn't in their menus so all you had to do is mention that you want to try the Omakase and they offer two choices a $65 or a $100 experience. We started off with choosing a tea. We had the pear green tea. It was light in flavour but it complemented the whole dinner. We then had our first dish of the day we had the Bluefin Tuna Salad. This dish consisted of greens with a few pieces of tuna dressed with a ponzu vinaigrette. It was light and the sourness opened my appetite for more. The next item up was the Uni Shooter which I found out just now that it is Sado-san's signature item. Sado-san is the sushi chef at Octopus Garden. I had bad experiences eating uni and I wasn't a big fan of uni after eating it at restaurants such as Guu and other tapa places but I had to try the one here. The shooter consisted of yam, rice, quail's egg and uni, you mix it all together and you just down it all in one shot. I started off tasting the uni by itself first and it wasn't that bad. Then I mixed it all together and attempted to shoot it in one shot but I ended up eating morsels of it one at a time. My bf didn't end up eating his so I took his. We also had a sashimi course consisting of Albacore Tuna, Amberjack, Tako. We had lobster sashimi which was on top of a still moving lobster body which we grew very sad when eating so we tried to demolish the sashimi asap. The Lobster had edible gold flakes on top with fish eggs and more uni.We had lobster tempura which was light in flavour but the tempura batter did not stick to the lobster pieces so it was still very wet. Not as crispy as I would have liked it. We also had nigiri, we had geoduck, albacore toro etc. We had a Wagyu beef which is slow cooked, tender and melt in your mouth textures with veggies as well. For dessert we had green tea ice cream with red bean and blueberries on top of a matcha green tea brownie. This dessert was unique I never thought green tea brownies existed till this day. Overall a unforgettable experience with great service, quality food and a combination of different flavours dancing in your mouth.

Octopus Garden
Location: 1995 Cornwall Ave, Vancouver
Rating: ☆☆☆☆1/2 /5