Five Loaves

supercook.com — helping you use what you’ve already got

The Gadget Show, from the UK’s Five TV has released what they feel are the “top five websites you’ve never heard of”.

You can view them all here, but one of interest is called www.supercook.com. The site is basically a giant recipe search engine that allows you to search for recipes based on what ingredients you already have at home, since not all of us have everything we need to make a beef bourguignon whenever we feel like it..

All the pho you ever wanted

Just came across an interesting site called LovingPho.com.

It is a pho lovers paradise with everything you can think of related to pho, from history to recipies. You can check out the glossary to brush up on your pho terms, or even do a whole bunch of pho related polls.

The amount of info on this site is actually completely mind-bottling! If you love pho, I’m sure you could waste a few hours digging through all the stuff that this site has to offer.

2010 Chinese Restaurant Award Winners in Vancouver

CBC has just posted a neat map of the winners of this year’s 2010 ‘Chinese Restaurant Award’. The awards are given by what is described as the ‘authoritative Chinese dining guide’ in and around metro Vancouver; although I’m sure that could be up for debate.

The voting lasted for about 6 weeks, and resulted in about 10,000 ballots. You can find more details on the awards on their website here.

After checking out the map, I can definitely agree with a lot of the award winners. For example, Chubby Lamb Hot Pot on Alexandra has a great AYCE Hot Pot menu and great quality beef. The service could be better, but what do you expect from an AYCE Chinese place. Other deserving award winners include Garden City Hot Pot, which is awesome for quality fresh seafood hot pot, if you don’t mind paying the fresh seafood prices.

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Good-bye Milestones on 3 Road [Delayed]

I know this is old news by now, but Milestones on 3 Road and Westminster in Richmond has decided to close down it’s doors.

I’m not sure of all the exact reasons, but I for one can say that they won’t be missed. They had intense competition from all around their area, including Cactus Club, Sammy J’s, Earls and BP, and I guess they just couldn’t stay afloat. Although I’m no expert in restaurant management, each surrounding establishment seemed to have a certain competitive advantage; a different reason to go.

Cactus Club, given new life by Rob Feenie, is actually doing some things right now. A few of their new ‘RF’ designated menu items are pretty good, and I no longer cringe at eating there expecting sub-par food. Then again, they also have those cool auto-toilet seat covers in the washrooms..

Sammy J’s has.. well.. let’s call it.. really, really nice ’silverware’; and boy’s love silverware.

Earls has always been a favourite spot of mine. They have great appetizers, good food, and with probably close to half a mill in recent renovations at the Lansdowne location, they almost look good enough to charge the outrageous prices that they do.

BP on the other hand caters to a slightly different crowd. With a light, sporty atmosphere, ample TVs, and decent specials for cheap eats and drinks each day of the week, they seem to have themselves covered.

What did this leave for Milestones? Not much. The location was slightly more inconvenient, being nestled on the second floor of the London Drugs plaza, but that wasn’t their biggest problem. Despite finally updating their aging logo, their food was below par with nothing special, exciting or enticing. Their prices were approaching Earls, but the same couldn’t be said about the ambiance or service.

Milestones, you won’t be missed. OK, maybe your Calamari with Andouille Sausage will be… but thats it.

Japadog is opening on Robson

Japadog is graduating from street food to Robson retail. The new store will be located on 530 and 536 Robson Street. Japadog is a hot dog with a Japanese twist. The top three best sellers include Terimayo, Oroshi and Misomayo Japadogs. Its quite a popular hit with the Vancouverites. They have been featured CBC, CTV, Global, and Georgia Straight.

Source: SCOUT