Cafe De Waraku

After checking out sand sculptures (which was quite nice, pic below) at Aberdeen centre, we decided to head for lunch at a nearby recently opened cafe called "Cafe De Waraku" on Hazelbridge and Browngate Rd. This place is marketed as a fusion Japanese Italian pasta place. I must say, it certainly sparked my interested as this is probably the first place in Vancouver to fill this niche.

Decor is decent, fairly "HK cafe" like. It is quite clean as expected of a new place. Service was friendly but they did not seem to speak english that well and I assume the owner and all the workers are Cantonese as all the servers spoke it. The menus has lots of visuals which I like so I can see what I am ordering. There is even a big screen TV with scrolling photos of their food. You can see their whole menu on their website: http://www.cafedewaraku.com/menus.html For lunch until 4pm, all pastas (ranging from $5.99 to $8.99) come with a complimentary drink (cold add $0.75) which was nice.

I ordered the Crab and Fresh Tomatoes with Creamy Tomato Sauce because Sayaka cooked something similar once and it was really delicious. Presentation looks decent with REAL crab meat. However, other than that, I have to say the taste was decent at most. The pasta is missing a unique "kick" that makes authentic Italian pasta taste good (not the ones at HK cafe). Having cooked something similar, Sayaka suspects that they specifically did not pre-panfry the ingredients and sauce with garlic and italian herbal spices, and is also missing parmesan. The ingredients and sauce are most likely pre-prepared and slapped together with cooked pasta like the way subs are made at sub-way.

She ordered the Asparagus and Scallops also with Creamy Tomato sauce and tastes similar to mines except with aspargus and scallops. I felt the scallops were cut a little too thin to taste any texture from the scallop.

For dessert, they have a good selection of cakes and cheesecakes for $5.50. Since there were ads of their famous homemade Panna Cotta stickered all over the walls for $2.50, I decided to try one. The taste was again, decent but the texture needs more work as it was very rough. I was expecting a creme brulee sort of smooth texture and this was nothing like that. As in the picture below, you can see a "skin" on top. I suspect that it might have been sitting in the fridge for awhile.

Overall, the price and taste are good and we left full. But, at the end we felt leaving a little bit disappointed and probably won't be back. Another thing is that I was not thrilled they did not accept the coupons they posted on their website. The reason given to me was that they are only for dinner which are stated no where on the coupon. One of the coupons that specifically allow you to use during "Tea-time" was also rejected as they say they do not have "Tea-Time" yet. We were at the place when it was 2pm. The place definitely had a good marketing plan but failed to execute in the final product.

On the other hand, the sand sculpture displayed at Aberdeen that day was spectacular (just look at the details!):

Negative Space Chinese Restaurant

Our first post is going to be a about a newly opened Chinese Tapas restaurant called Negative Space located at the corner of McKim and Odlin in Richmond. It is located on the outside corner of "Tai Gu" complex (free 3 hour parking).

The first thing that came into my mind was the name, Negative Space, which was awkward name to promote a positive first impression I thought. Based on the Chinese name which directly translates into "Black White Smell", I can certainly see where they were trying get. Regardless, the place is actually quite nice and definately a niche!

The decor is best described as chique modern with a fusion of Chinese, Japanese, and Taiwanese tapas place. We were greeted by a friendly server. When we were seated, we are served with what tasted like a mixof Jasmine and Green tea, very unique.

We first ordered the deep fried taro dish.

It was very flavourful and crunchy, but not something you want to eat by itself as it is quite strong in flavour. We ordered a bowl of rice to go with it which is the way I recommend it. Also, most of the dishes are a little bit spicy, so if you don't like spicy, ask for no spice. I would prefer if they cut the taro into thicker pieces so I can taste the texture of the taro instead of all crunch.

This mango salad was very refreshing as it was a hot day. Underneath the mountain of mango are thin slices of cucumber and carrot, simple but tastes good. As you can see they give you generous amounts of mango.

Next came the BBQ Rib Eye Beef skewers, this was as I expected. Meat texture was decent and taste was perfect for me. The dip was not really needed as the marination was fairly strong as is. The dip seemed to taste like a mix of those hotpot "Sa Cha" sauce with abit of other sweet spices.

Last came our Sticky Rice Stuffed Squid which was not bad. Flavour
again is very good. The texture was slightly chewy for the squid and
slightly too mushy for the sticky rice. We had a coupon for $5 off
which was in the Sing Tao newspaper and our bill came to $21.63 and we
were comfortably full.

All in all, our experience was here great and I would come back here
with friends to try out their other dishes. Supposedly, they have set
lunches for $8.50 and up. There some things that can be improved on
but given the reasonable price and it's niche unique fusion asian
food, ambiance and good service, I would definately go there and try
at least once.