Frozen Green Tea with a funny after taste (Tim Horton's Davie Street Review)

It's scorching hot (well more like 28 degrees, but for Vancouverites, that's pretty hot), and I was downtown near St. Pauls' Hospital doing a research study. I wanted some caffine in my system because I was feeling tired (did two Grouse Grinds this morning).
  This Tim Horton's Location was famous for an incident that happened a while ago when someone smashed the windows, so I decided to check it out. The broken window was fixed and the Timmy's looked in any other Timmy's. There were a fair amount of chairs for people to sit at, and they had a freezer with Cold Stone's Ice Cream.
  I was at the counter and I noticed on the overhead menu that there was a new Frozen Macha/ Green Tea and that caught my attention. I was afraid of it being over sugary (because many of these frozen drinks usually have way too much sugar added to them), so I asked if the Green Tea had sugar added. The lady at the counter sort of smiled (abit awkwardly) and said it all comes as a syrup. I thought to myself, how bad can Green Tea be?
  When I got my frozen Green Tea, the sight of it immediately sort of raised a red flag. The colour was a bit on the alien light green colour and it didn't seem very appetizing. Part of it was when I saw the bubbles on top, it reminded me of when I was cleaning my fish tank at home that had a lot of algae on it... For Frozen Green Tea to have bubbles made it physically sketchy to look at.
   Since I paid $2 for it, I decided to not judge a book by its cover and take a sip. I have never tasted anything like this before. It was not sweet, but somewhat bitter. It wasn't the Macha kind of bitter (if you know what I mean with regards to how bitter pure Macha can be). It was a type of bitter that had a bit of a fruity taste to it. At the same time, it sort of tasted like the drink was trying to be sweet, but there was just not enough sugar to make it taste sweet. Mind you, I had a free Slurpee at 7-11 so my taste buds could have been a bit biased when it comes to sweetness. That said, It wasn't too good to be honest, and there was a funny after taste too.
   Afterwards when I got home, I decided to check the nutrition facts on the medium Frozen Macha and at a whopping 200 calories and 49 grams of sugar, it is definitely something that I will avoid in the future. Not only because it tastes funny, but because it's packed with tons of sugar.

Hot like a sauna (Denny's on Davie)

   Once you've been to a Denny's, you can almost say that you've been to all of them. However, depending on how each location is run, every Denny's can be different.
   It was Canada Day and a group of friends and I were walking around town to find a place to watch the USA vs Belgium game. At first we were at Fountain Head across the street, but because one of my friends forgot her ID, we were not able to go in. After,walking around for a bit, we decided to go for Denny's. Denny's had a menu where it included drinks (for the people that didn't want to eat) and food (for those who wanted to eat. In addition, they also had a TV that had the game on.
   Walking in, I noticed the place was abit swampy feeling. The waitress already have the menu in her hands and was taking us to our table, so we decided to stay. After sitting down, I was curious if the air conditioning was broken, so I asked the waitress. She informed me that the reason that all of the windows and doors are open was because the air ventilation system was broken. On a day that is about 25 degrees+ outside, the restaurant felt swampy.
   Opening the menu, everything was what you would expect on a Denny's menu. The Grandslams, all day breakfast and burgers. I had my eye on the avocado burger (because avocados are really high in nutrients). The burger was about $12. Then I took a look at the "Make your own burger column", and I realized that it was cheaper to make my own burger.
   The burger cost $9.79 to make your own burger and you had the choice of different meats/patties and then toppings. With the avocado added with that burger, it is only $1 more, meaning that making your own avocado burger is cheaper than getting the avocado burger.
  When we were ready to order, the waiter who came to take our order took us by surprise. When he asked my friends whether or not they are eating food, my friends replied to him that they are only getting drinks. He made this expression that was sort of a fit, and grabbed the forks and knives from the table. It was honestly a bit rude.
  After waiting for a good few 15 minutes, the waiter brought us our food. The burger portion was pretty big (I had a hard time fitting it in my mouth), and the portion of fries was very generous as well. The fries tasted pretty fresh and the chicken burger was really good. It was a bit on the tall side, so I had to squish it down really hard. I'm not sure if it's because I have a small mouth, but after squishing it, it was still too big. At the end I decided to just take out the vegetables and eat it separately.  Finally, I was able to eat the whole thing.The other benefit to custom making the burger is that you can choose real cheese instead of the processed cheese that they put inside the burger.
   Overall, I would probably not visit this Denny's again. There are plenty of good places to eat around here, the food is pretty satisfactory, however the environment and service could be improved. 

Pizza Sushi?! (Sushi Maro Yaletown Review)

   Across the street from the Yaletown-Roundhouse Station, this is a very convenient location. Walking into the restaurant, one thing that I noticed was that the lighting (not that it has a lot to do with anything but just an observation) is not very good. In addition to the dark lighting, the place appears to be quite cramped in space. Today, my running group and I went to this restaurant after a practice run at Yaletown Roundhouse Community Center.
   The service was pretty decent. We were greeted by the waitress the moment we entered the restaurant. We sat down immediately after we came in and the waitress brought us the menu. She also asked if we would like water or tea. Initially everyone in our group ordered water. However, I must say the water tasted a bit funny. It was definitely tap water (I know, Metro Vancouver is trying to promote people to drink more tap water. The downside with tap water is that some building's pipes are really old and some copper may get into the water). After taking a sip or two, we all decided to grab tea instead.
   Looking at the menu, the prices of many of the items seems to be a bit on the higher end. On average, the cheapest maki sushi, like a California Roll costs $3.50. What I did notice was that some of the items seem very special. They had this appetizer called "Pizza Sushi".
   The funny thing was that all of us flipped to the specials page and the six of us all ordered bento boxes. I ordered a chicken teriyaki bento box. The menu describes the bento box comes with chicken teriyaki on rice, a roll of sushi, tempura, miso soup and salad. When the order came, it was exactly as described.
   The chicken teriyaki was good because it did not contain the hard-to-chew fatty skin that many other places include with their chicken teriyaki. The salad tasted pretty fresh as well and the tempura was moderately fried (not too overly fried, yet not raw).
    The only downside with the bento box is that the portions were small. The chicken teriyaki only had a few bites of rice with it. In addition, there was generous layer of sauce on both the chicken teriyaki and salad... at the end of the meal, the left over rice and vegetables looked like it was swimming in an oil field. Otherwise, the quality of chicken and salad was pretty decent.
   Overall, I would say this is a fair Japanese restaurant. There really is nothing too much to complain about, it has some specialties, but it also has its downsides like the crowded spaces and slightly higher pricing.

In France, they say "bon café" (Baguette & Co French Bakery & Cafe)

I think this is the first bakery that I've been to in Vancouver that is actually French. It was a rainy afternoon and my friend and I were looking for a place to sit down, have coffee and also work on an assignment that was due. There were many places in the area we were in, but all of them seem to be full. When we walked by Baguette & Co, we were immediately attracted by their wide assortment of baked goods.
   The moment we decided to go in, we were greeted by the barista who was extremely friendly. We had a conversation and she told me that they bake all of their baked goods freshly everyday. I noticed that many of their baked goods are pretty special. For example, they had a few varieties of croissants. The one that was very attractive was the chocolate croissants. Not only was the shape different but the layer and texture of it seemed to be really well made as well. My friend decided to get a croissant while I got a cup of Americano Coffee.

  The price of the Americano was pretty decent, at about $2.50 for a medium. I should also note that what I liked was that they didn't decide to give their cups a bunch of random names like how some places would call their cup sizes after words from other languages that are confusing. Their coffee sizes were purely small, medium, large. That said, they don't have a big assortment when it comes to drinks. It's not like Starbucks/ Blenz where they have hundreds of drinks. it seems like Baguette & Co only have at most 12 types.
Besides the croissants, they also have a wide range of baked goods and desserts. I noticed in a separate display fridge, they have little snacks that were $1.25 each and you get a discount if you buy more. They also have more of the traditional types of breads like baguettes (which makes sense because it's a French bakery and it would be silly to call themselves Baguette and Co if they didn't have baguettes), bread loaves and traditional buns. The prices are fair, but I find that the price is slightly on the higher side when it comes to the baked goods. That said, they do make their baked goods instore. Compared to alot of the major coffee chains where they make their baked goods in a huge factory and attention to detail is sometimes non-existent, the price difference isn't too bad.
  The only downside to this place is that the location is very small, so it is not ideal for parties that are too big. Otherwise, I highly recommend Baguette and Co.

Yuko Maki Japanese Restaurant (Davie Street)

I've passed by this restaurant a few times but I haven't gotten a chance to check them out. Today I decided to give their All-you-can-eat(AYCE) a try. The restaurant atmosphere was pretty calm, there weren't many people. As we were seated, I noticed that they had quite a few things on their AYCE menu. They had two different types of menus, the A menu, which was the regular one and the A+B menu which contained more things for $1 more. We decided to get the A menu because it wasn't too different from the deluxe menu. During the first round, we ordered 1 of every item to see what the size was like.  They had a pretty good variety of of sushi's. Each of the portions were pretty big when they came. I liked the fact that the nigiri sushi had less rice in comparison to the sashimi on it. Usually alot of AYCE places will put alot of rice with the sashimi to fill up their customers faster. In addition, the chicken teriyaki came in a big portion as well as the different sushi's.

However, that said, the sanitation of the place isn't in the best shape. The dishes aren't exactly the cleanest, and some of the food seem like it's been in the freezer for a while. The chicken especially seems like it's been sitting in the freezer for quite a while. You can tell that it's sitting in the freezer for a while. Other than that the service was average, it wasn't too special in that sense. For $14.95 for AYCE, the quality of the food was decent (like what you would expect for an AYCE), but overall it is slightly above how much I would pay.