Nourish in the Harbour, James Bay, Victoria

Nourish has two locations. One is out at the Horticultural Centre of the Pacific in the backroads of Saanich (and a short run from the Vancouver Island Tech Park, having passed it many a time while running). The second newer location is in an old converted house in James Bay.

It's a BIG converted house.  We aren't talking a small starter home.  It's a heritage house, a big wooden building, stretching over three storeys (I've been in the unrenovated attic.  It looks like my crazy great aunt's attic.  If I had a crazy maiden great aunt). The first floor has space for 40-50 covers and a coffee bar.  Plus the fully functioning kitchen.  On the second floor, there's more dining space and meeting space if you want to book a nice, vintage feeling area for an intimate cocktail reception.

Back on the ground floor, there's the main business of the general admission cafe/restaurant, pushing out brunch.  The philosophy is natural ingredients, nutrient-rich foods and seasonal choices.  Combined with a desire to make interesting food, and not just quinoa, kale and aubergine stew for everyone.

There was plenty of tasty, tasty kale for those that want it.  One of our group didn't, choosing to pass on the option of an Eggs Benedict piled up on a green-bean-and-kale base (Benny in the Moment), instead of the normal muffin.  Even my love of the green leafed 'super food' passed at that option.  We also passed by on the small cups of bone broth that were on the brunch menu.  It's all very good, I am sure, but not before I have had my coffee!

Instead, I went for a standard breakfast, paired with an americano coffee.  The coffee was good, rich and smooth, with a big flavour to wake up my morning.  So it didn't last to long in the cup.  Was offered plenty of refills of drip coffee, but decide to hydrate with the rosemary infused water on the table.  I assume it was meant to be in the milk bottle, and not a poor cleaning job by the Avalon diary from whom the bottle had been purloined (those things have a big deposit on them, wonder if they know there's about $100 of glassware here?).  The water didn't really taste of rosemary.

The breakfast was a platter of good stuff: a fistful of kale dressed in a light dressing, two soft poached eggs with thick golden yolks, a slice of seed toast, some potatoes and a herb and leek sausage.  The kale was kale.  If you like kale, you'll like it.  If you don't, this is raw kale.  It tastes of raw kale.  The seed toast was crunchy and mostly seeds.  One slice with a smear of butter and little bit of the soft apple was tasty.

The potatoes were rich and earthy and flavourful.  They probably could have been fluffier or crispier... they weren't new waxy spuds, so the consistency of them was -like- they were slightly undercooked. They weren't but, something didn't seem quite right.

The sausage was a let-down (my fault for not choosing the bacon).  It had no flavour beyond the seasoning, and tasted like it had been boiled or steamed, with very little time on the grill.  Grill time makes meat taste better (in general) by the chemical reactions that occur when it browns.  And when the fat in the meat gets a chance to melt and merge around with the rest of the filling.  Wasn't impressed with whatever they had done here instead.

Two of my friends had the pancakes.  These were more like big slices of fresh cake.  Huge thick triangles of oatmeal.  There wasn't much of them, though.

The dining room is great, bright airy and comfortable.  The food is served to please the eyes, the staff are bright and cheery, and everything seems to be working in the right direction.  The menu is encased in an old hard backed book.  Maybe there's just a little sense of trying a bit too hard to be different that unsettled me a little?

That all said I think I'd go back to try some other dishes out.  I like the concepts and the rest of the menu looked good, and I did feel good and ready to face the world.

I Kyu Noodles, Downtown Victoria

I Kyu Noodles is a rather unassuming location in Victoria's Chinatown.  It has got no neon banners, or gaudy scrolls.  Just a window and a menu posted in it, with a sign above the door 'I Kyu Noodles'. Inside, it's also the same basics.  Chairs and tables that have seen far better days, with nasty looking fabric covering in the booths.  The chalkboard lists the about a dozen options on noodles, all of which are echoed in the simple menu.  There are another dozen starters, ranging from fried spring rolls to small pork dumplings.

Nice and simple.  The noodle options range from udon to rice noodles and stringy egg noodles.  I went for the house made udon with chicken, while my friend ordered the coconut curry dish.

The chicken udon was delicious. Chewy, but not tough noodles, made as thick strings of dough.  This is how I imagine udon to be, hearty and solid and just slippery enough to slurp up a little.  The chicken and sauce was savoury and coated the noodles just enough to get the flavour in, without soaking the dish.  We had crisp broccoli florets, too. To complete the dish, there were chunks of onion cooked to tender, to add a little bite to the flavours.  This chicken was tender but had been browned enough to add a little more umami to the dish.

Really good.  And washed down with plenty of green tea.

My friend's coconut noodles were large enough to float a small inflatable boat in.  In fact, after we finished, members of the Navy came in and practiced a few emergency rescue exercises.  Unusual, I know, but it takes all sorts on Fisgard.

The London Tube, Downtown Victoria

A restaurant so new, it is not on Zomato yet.  Zomato (aka Urbanspoon lobotomised) has not yet updated their listings to include this place, or the fact that City of Victoria and Downtown Victoria are pretty much the same place.

The London Tube is the hotel restaurant for the Best Western on Johnson Street. This was also once home of De Dutch and later 'Stones throw'. It has been open for about a month now.  I fear no-one yet knows of it's existence, instead lining up for worst food in other locations that don't really deserve it.

This Sunday, after running an easy (ha!) 21.1 km around the city, myself and 3 other finishers of the run met with friends in the London Tube.  We had out pick of any table in there, so we took a big long table near the back. There's several big comfortable booths, and 2, 4 and 6 place tables.  They are riding on the London theme, with fake signs from London landmarks, like Carnaby Street.  I am not sure what the London Underground would say about their use of the Underground logo, but no-one should get too confused... this is Victoria, Canada, not Victoria Station.

The menu is just long enough, with several brunch options, a pile of burger choices and some British inspired main courses.  You got your scotch eggs, fish and chips, and chicken curry.  They say people reckon the chicken curry is the best in the city.  That's a very large claim to make... but I saw enough today that I am curious to see if they can back it up.

I ordered the Three Pancakes.  At some point on my run I got a craving for pancakes. I'd normally have chosen the full english or what has the most chicken in it.  But this time, my head said pancakes. I then got bacon, scrambled eggs and sausages added to it. Minor nitpick: when I get additional sides, it is always nice to have them on the same plate as the main course.  Two rashers of bacon don't look as attractive as three big pancakes with two rashers of bacon fitted onto the plate.  Admittedly, with the eggs, bacon and sausage, they'd have needed a bigger plate for me this morning.

The pancakes were, soft and fluffy and most edible.  The sausages were breakfast sausages, slightly herby. They had that bite of the skin done just right so your teeth sink through it with a satisfying piercing of the tube.  The eggs were scrambled to the turn, still moist.  The bacon was bacon.  There are better rashers to be had in town, but this was done decently. I got a nice jug of syrup to pour over my pancakes, which was better than the single serving packet of butter.  Again, it just looks nicer to have two pats of butter rather than a plastic package.  They brought out hot sauce, and had all the other condiments you need for breakfast ready to go.

The coffee... tasted like it had been stewed a little too long.  Was not a fan of the coffee.

My friends had the breakfast poutine, which was a pile of country-fried potatoes, big cubes crisply fried, then smothered in a gravy .  Inside that mess was a lot of cheese curds, some eggs and a few chunks of meat too.  I tried a bit.  I liked it.  I also got favourable reports of the the breakfast sandwich and the beans.  I wonder if they home bake their beans?

Overall, this was an improvement to the Stonesthrow.  There's a bit more passion and care on the plate.  It's not going to blow you away on the breakfast side, but your going to get something decent, with new cue and good service.  Now, they just need to fix the TV to go away from the Shaw music channel...

Revisits, Downtown Victoria

SuLT Perogi Bar.

So it was only two weeks ago I first went. But had to go back with the lovely Brunette to try out the evening menu.

I was happy, but not impressed, by the breakfast. The dinner I had was fantastic.  3 Green Kale perogies, 3 Clam Perogies, a mushroom gravy with cheese curds (the Poutine topping) and a small bowl of green salad.  Under $20.  Plenty enough to feed us both happily.

The perogies were deep fried under the poutine topping.  The kale ones (Green) are fantastic... that deep savoury flavour of kale I love, with a red chilli spice.  The clam and bacon ones were good too, with the filling flavours mingling and working well together.  It'd be easy to make everything lost in the sauce and the doughy outer.  They don't do that here.  The gravy on top was tasty too.  I will go back again for this meal, with a different sauce on top... and see how the dumplings come out when not fried.  I suspect excellent.

Oh, and full marks to the green salad. Plenty of different leaves and veg, to make it interesting, and just a light vinaigrette on top.  I really hope this place grows and grows.


The Churchill

Been over a year since they opened.  I love the Church.  I love their fine range of beers, their staff with the knowledge of what they are serving, the hundred yard long polished bar, and the cost booths.  I loved the Oktoberfest special night we walked into.  I loved the Paulaner Salvator beer special I had two pints of. I love the accordion players and the massive beer steins my friends won. And the smaller Paulaner glass I won.

I hated the next morning when I woke up from them and the other couple of pints I tried.

But I also love meeting friends there and being able to chat in an environment that's busy, up-tempo, but not over-burdened by loud tunes or a echoed buzz of other people.

Long may they thrive as well

Cora's

Speaking of places that I hope thrive, I am not talking about Cora's.  I will however upgrade them from truly terrible to merely bad.  I don't get the long line ups there.  There's nothing exceptional about the food.  There's nothing exceptional about the service.  There's nothing exceptional about the environment. There's not even anything great about the price.

It's a refectory that serves a lot of food.  They have this gimmick of piles of fresh fruit.  I guess that's the part that sets it apart, and as I don't like fresh fruit, it's lost on me.

But still, if I want a dried burger, topped with a smear of electric yellow, flavourless hollandaise, I know where to go.  If I want my cheese processed and my eggs pre-cooked into a folded sheet, I know where to go.  If I want staff too busy to serve their customers well, I know where to go.  But seriously, Victoria, there's a hundred places in town that do breakfast better than Cora's.  I bet Hawk and Hen was half empty at the same time.  So why the line-up?  It's a mystery to me.