Coffee, coffee, coffee, car, dinner

Well time is certainly going fast now. It is less than 2 weeks until I leave Vancouver. This week I have been tying up loose ends like paying my GST, transferring money back to NZ and giving my laptop back to my work (glad to get rid of that awfully slow laptop. I will never by an ASUS computer).

Today after giving back the laptop I decided to visit a bunch of my favourite coffee shops, for some of them it will probably be my last visit. As I have a rather annoying cold at the moment I decided to stay away from lattes, as I have found dairy products have never helped much with colds I have had in the past. So for the last week I have been sticking with americanos and straight espressos. For those of you in NZ an americano is a long black.

First stop was JJ Bean on Main St. This was by far my favourite americano of the week, they didn't water it down nearly as much as the others I have been drinking lately. The ginger and molasses cookie I had with it was rather forgettable though, very chewy and not much flavour.

Next stop was Wicked Cafe. I don't think I have ever had a non-milk based drink there before sticking to lattes in the past. They use the Black Cat blend roasted by Intelligentsia in Chicago. People rave about this blend on coffeegeek. It is probably a lot better as a straight espresso, but I didn't find it all that great as an americano. The Intelligentsia mug was pretty cool though, wouldn't mind getting me one of those.

The final stop was my good old favourite the Elysian Room. I was kind of over americanos by this stage and had an espresso instead and a glass of water. As per usual it was very nice.

The main reason for all these coffees was that I was filling in time before my rental car was ready to be picked up at 5:30. I got myself a nice new Chevrolet Impala with only 500K on the clock. It has been pretty nice to drive so far, it should be pretty good for highway driving too, so that will be handy for my trip to Seattle and to Whistler on Monday.

This evening I went out for dinner with Roz and Reuben. It will probably be the last time I will be out at a restaurant with them before I leave. I got to pick the restaurant, and went for Bishops, the restaurant owned by John Bishop. He is a pretty well known Vancouver chef and is responsible for a lot of the recipes I have been trying this year as I got his cookbook for Christmas from Roz and Reuben. I had salmon for starters, served three different ways, all of which were amazing. Next I had a lamb dish with four different types of lamb, a lamb chop, a meatball, a slice of roast lamb I think, and some braised lamb. It was pretty good, although not quite as good as the salmon was. Finally for dessert I had a apple, fig and honey bread pudding with a slice of blue cheese. It was very small, and very, very nice. I can't remember having any blue cheese that was as nice as that piece. I believe it was from Salt Spring Island, so hopefully I will find some there next week. The service at the restaurant was very good. The waiters were very friendly and helpful. There was an interesting looking contraption on display next to our table. When we asked the waiter what it was he said it was a duck press. They were really popular in the 1920's. Basically you cook a duck, cut of the breast for plating then put the rest of the duck in this machine and press all the juices out of the duck to be used in the sauce. Bishop's will prepare a duck in this way for you on special request, and you get to go out in to the kitchen to watch it being done. Would be a good evening I am sure.