Schokolade

The Schokolade Cafe on East Hastings in Vancouver offers a chocolate high tea! What a great gift for your girlfriend who's a chocoholic! They have high tea coming up on December 19th, 20th, 23rd & 24th. Or, treat yourself in bleary January: in 2010, Schokolate Cafe will be offering high tea every Friday and Saturday!

You can find out more at http://www.schokoladecafe.com/high-tea--winter-news.

The City's Best Fashion and Art Market

It has to be time for Portobello West's new season!
In less than two weeks, this awesome market will be opening again, and to celebrate, they're open all weekend (instead of just Sunday).
www.vancouver.portobellowest.com
The market is held at the Rocky Mountaineer Station, which is near the Science World Skytrain station. A shuttle picks up marketeers (?) from the Skytrain Station and drives them right to the door of the market, but if it's not raining you could walk.
Admission is $2, there is a coffee cart out front, in case you're like me and can't function without.
This market is my favourite place to purchase jewelry, and every time I get something here I get a zillion compliments and people asking me where I got it. As well, everything is made by local (or nearby-local) artists. Can it get any better?

More Italian Coffee

I surprised myself by finding and trying out not just one, but TWO Italian cafés this week, without specifically looking for them. The first was Caffe Buongiorno, and the second is Sciué Italian Bakery Caffe, at Pender and Howe.

I was actually headed for the Bread Garden at Pender and Hornby when I noticed Sciué and decided to head there instead. No offense to the Bread Garden, but this place actually looked Italian and there was a huge line, which I took as a good sign. I was in no hurry, so I thought I would try it out.

I didn’t try the pastries today, as this has been a pretty sweet-laden week for me already, but I did try the coffee.

This was possibly the most amazing latte I have ever had in my life. I think the best way to explain it is that normally, I take sugar in my coffee -- two packets per cup of coffee. But this latte was so divine, so frothy, and the coffee so perfect already, that I added no sugar.

I have to reiterate that I can’t even think of one single time in the past when I have not added sugar to my coffee. This latte was absolutely amazing.

My European Café

I discovered a delightful little café this week, the Caffe Buongiorno (I may be spelling that incorrectly) at Pender and Richards. It reminded me of a little European café that you might find in that French movie Amélie, with a high coffee counter, little tables and chairs with curly-cue legs and a mosaic tile floor.

I tried a chicken panini for lunch, and I was a little worried when I ordered it, thinking there might be nothing but chicken inside. Thankfully, I was wrong, and my panini had some grilled veggies and a mild but gooey melted cheese, too.

My latte was also fantastic, and it was served in a wide coffee cup with a saucer. These always remind me of Europe because when I was going to school in France, the only place you could get coffee in a paper cup (à la Starbucks) was from the cappuccino machine at the university. And I don’t mean a fancy cappuccino machine like you would find in a café; this was what could probably be considered the European equivalent of the coffee machines you can find in hospitals here.

The Caffe Buongiorno is highly recommended for the next time you feel like having lunch in a European café without actually going to Europe.

Return to Café Crêpe

So last night was not bad. Of course, I headed out to Café Crepe. Again. And we had the surly waiter. Again. He alternated between mildly nice and surly through the evening. I can’t blame him, really, it was super busy and he was saying that there were a ton of groups of six or more coming in all night. If you’ve been there, you know that it is not very big and most of the booths can’t really fit six people. Although, we managed quite nicely. It was cozy.

The music at some points turned into what I like to think of as “euro techno background” music. How to describe it? It sounds like what I think would be playing in European night clubs. I have to use my imagination on that one, mind you, because I have never been to any European night clubs, but it’s exactly what I would imagine them playing there.

I actually got a crepe this time. It was a dessert crepe – because crepes were not meant to be savoury. I just don’t understand why you would put meat or vegetables in a crepe, it destroys it. But if you fill it with Nutella and coconut and dump some whipped cream on it, then you get a truly delicious crepe. Absolutely amazing.

Do I need to describe the martinis again? I branched out, and this time instead of just drinking cosmopolitans, I mixed it up with a sour apple martini. It took a couple sips before the Nutella taste washed away, but once that was gone it was a great martini.

The weather this weekend has been delightful, and I think it was almost 15 degrees here today. I saw a girl on the Skytrain yesterday wearing a strappy summer dress with no coat! It really is spring already! Fantastic!

I have some time off this week and am hoping to check out some new cafés downtown and try to find some good ones that aren’t chains. Although I find it hard to believe that Starbucks haven’t driven everyone else out of town, apparently there are still a few other places kicking around so I am going to check them out.