Inspired by our brunch-blogging friends Catie and Dave at Late for Breakfast, Early for Lunch, I thought I would do a post about where we’ve been eating while we’ve been mostly staying home. We like food and we like to support local businesses, so it’s a win-win.
Our new routine is actually pretty similar to our old one. We typically cook at home the majority of the time, and venture out to eat once or twice on the weekends. In the old days, we would usually go out for dinner on Saturday night, and sometimes go out for breakfast on Sunday.
I have written a couple of posts about brunches in the past, which can be found here and here. We haven’t gone out for breakfast at all during this time, but we’ve more than made up for it with delivery orders from some fantastic bakeries, and quite a bit of home-baking.
Here are the places we’ve patronized over the past couple of months, all in New Westminster unless noted, possibly in order of when we went, but that part’s a bit fuzzy:
Kozak Homemade Ukrainian Food – Home of our favourite cinnamon buns and a great local bakery that (in normal times) donates all their day old bread to Souped Up Swing to use for their community outreach programs. They started doing deliveries while their shop was closed, so we ordered enough cinnamon buns (which freeze well) to keep us going for a few weeks, plus some cabbage rolls and pyrizhky buns.
White Spot (Burnaby) – I have a love-hate relationship with this chain. They have a few menu items that are comfort foods to me (mostly of the burger variety) but their prices have gone up a lot over the past few years and it bugs me. I know, realistically we are probably paying too little for most things at restaurants and I’m acting spoiled while they all try to stay afloat, but I’m just giving my side of it here.
When everything was shutting down, White Spot was offering take-out with a discount if it was your first time ordering, so we gave it a go, partly due to limited options and partly to try to feel like we were doing something normal. Burgers and fries, watery fountain pop – it was exactly what we were looking for and it hit the spot.
Ki Sushi – Our preferred sushi restaurant in New West. We go there when we want more than just a few rolls because they have excellent cooked dishes too. That being said, if we can’t go in and sit down, we limit our choices because some items don’t travel as well as others.
We’ve ordered from Ki twice in the past couple of months. The first time we had it delivered and the second time we decided to go pick our order up. We prefer to pick up because it’s less than 10 minutes from home and our food is still hot when we get back – it can be hit or miss with delivery. Our favourite hot dish is the Teriyaki Chicken Yakisoba.
Re-Up BBQ – Fried Chicken Fridays! Everything at Re-Up is good, but the bucket of fried chicken is also a pretty great deal. For about $30 you get chicken, coleslaw and biscuits. It’s enough for two people to eat for dinner and still have enough left for lunch. It’s as good cold as it is hot too, so it’s like a whole new thing the next day.
Rocky Point Ice-Cream – We got a New Westminster location of this Port Moody ice cream parlour last year and it has definitely been a popular addition to the area. While they were closed, they offered curbside pick-up of pre-ordered pints one day per week. I got the Earl Grey and Honey, which is my go-to, and it didn’t disappoint.
Yianni’s Greek – After trying numerous times to get through to our favourite Greek restaurant across the border in Coquitlam, we gave up and ordered from Yianni’s website. We had eaten there once, ages ago, and it stood out in our memories because from our table we saw a drunk guy on the street peeing on a parked car. Unrelated to that, we haven’t been back since, but we were set on Greek food and our options were limited at the time. It was okay, but wouldn’t do it again, given other choices. I feel a bit bad saying that, but the competition is pretty fierce.
Ca Croustille (Burnaby) – I accidentally stumbled across this French bakery on Instagram. They don’t have a storefront; they can be found at Farmer’s Markets around town. They have been doing deliveries on Fridays, and I don’t know if that’s temporary or if they always have, but since I discovered them I have found it very difficult to not order every single week. Croissants are my weakness and theirs are amazing. I also love their Pineapple Coconut Swirl.
Golden Boot Caffe (Coquitlam) – Best pizza ever. We order the same thing every time. I get a Modenese (mozzarella, prosciutto, parmigiano, arugula) and Michel gets a Maranello (mozzarella, Italian sausage, ham, mushroom, olive) and we split a Caesar salad. This time we even went all out and grabbed a Tiramisu for dessert too. They have never disappointed us yet, and we get leftover pizza for lunch the next day.
Royal Tandoori – This was our first time having a socially-distanced dinner with friends. We visited some fellow swing dancers and sat on their back deck enjoying our take out. Michel and I had never ordered from or been to Royal Tandoori before, so we decided to keep things straightforward by ordering the ‘Dinner for Two’. Everything was good, and I would eat their food again, but I would probably make different selections next time. It was super nice to hang out with people again though!
Anny’s Dairy Bar – If you haven’t been to Anny’s, I would definitely recommend it. It’s a little place in Uptown New Westminster that is run by a woman from Quebec. The menu is pretty limited, but everything is good. Her claim to fame is her maple twist cone. It’s a soft-serve vanilla cone with maple syrup from her family’s farm running through it and it’s amazing.
We met some friends at Anny’s a couple of weeks ago and ate our steamies (hot dog in a steamed bun, loaded with mustard, onions and pickled cabbage) and poutine while sitting six feet apart on the edge of a cement planter box. It was pretty great. We, of course, had maple twists for dessert.
Starbucks (Coquitlam) – We were just about two full months into this thing before we drank any coffee that we hadn’t brewed ourselves. I have to say, I didn’t really miss it much, but after an early morning (pre-breakfast) jaunt to Home Depot last weekend, we rewarded ourselves with grande half-sweet vanilla lattes. The fact that the drive-thru is right in Home Depot’s parking lot was definitely a big influencing factor, but I have no regrets, it was delicious.
Marutama Ra-men (Burnaby) – We regularly hit the Robson St location of Marutama when we are downtown for Broadway Across Canada shows, but we had never been to their new Metrotown location. It’s a little hard to compare take-out ramen that you assemble yourself to a freshly prepared bowl straight from the kitchen, but it was pretty darn good.
When COVID hit, Michel, my mom and I were 2 ramen places into a plan to try every one in the Metrotown area. I can’t remember how many we have left, but Marutama is my favourite so far, and I’m glad we’ve been able to continue on our tasting journey.
I don’t know if that is every place we’ve eaten at, but it must be pretty close. I have a vague memory of getting pizza at Panago right at the start but it was pretty unmemorable. As this list is made up of a lot of our favourite places, we’ll definitely be making repeat visits to quite a few of them, isolation or not.
I have no plans to start buying a bunch of things to ‘stimulate the economy’ but I will continue to help eat a path to recovery in New Westminster, if that’s what it takes.
Dancing In Irreverence 