Yet Another Blindingly Tricky Game Of “Guess The Restaurant”

The last one was La Quercia, solved by reader Fabien Mimi. Leave your educated guesses on this one (which I hope proves a bigger challenge for you freaks) in the comments after the jump… Read more

Smoke Break #742: On “Ad Freak” Taking A Turn For The Violent

AdFreak is a great site for marketers and adsacks to stay ahead of the water cooler curve of what’s new in their immensely bizarre world. Sometimes, however, they go off the reservation. Their take on this Campari advertisement is a case in point.

Yeah, these self-absorbed scenesters are in no hurry at the local hotspot. They can wait forever for the camera to flash and for those cocktails suspended in mid-air to spill on the floor. The tinkly ambient music, so annoying in other ads, fits perfectly here, lending the tableaux an extra icy aural dimension. Best of all, by standing completely still, these jerk-wad Euro-trash hipsters are sitting ducks for crazed gunmen who might want to mow them all down. C’mon, gunmen…those tools are just standing there!

Unnecessary, sure, but I suppose if I had to view ads like that every damn day, 100 times a day, my fantasies would get the better of me, too.

The View From Your Window #41

Reader “G.H.” | Main at 16th | Vancouver, BC | 9:30am | SHARE YOUR VIEW

BROWSE READER VIEWS

Mission Hill To Pair With Fleuri Kitchen At Sutton Place Hotel

News from Scout supporter Mission Hill Family Estate

Vancouver, BC | Join Mission Hill’s Director of Wine Education Ingo Grady and Fleuri Executive Chef Michael Deutsch as they showcase the classically inspired Okanagan Valley wines of Mission Hill Family Estate and the progressive Northwest cuisine of Fleuri Restaurant at Vancouver’s Sutton Place Hotel. Date: Tuesday September 28th 2010. Time: 6:30pm. Cost: $120 per person. Reserve after the jump… Read more

Zulu Report: This Week’s Ammo For Discerning Vancouver Ears

Our friends over at Kitsilano’s Zulu Records once again present their weekly Scout feature, the Zulu Report. Within, staff from the West 4th music store provide The Track, the song that is on heavy rotation that week; The Playlist, which is pretty self-explanatory; The Gig, the must see show of the week; and The Glance, a view ahead to music on the horizon. From their ears to yours, enjoy…

The Track

KLAXONS’ Echoes video from the new album Surfing The Void (Polydor).

The UK music press is renowned for making and breaking the career of many a pop band. NME magazine in particular can oscillate pretty wildly betwixt adoring a group and destroying that same group, within a short span of time. Let us know prepare a more measured, North American critique of UK “nu-ravers” Klaxons. To be honest, I have no idea what nu-rave is supposed to mean – that micro-genre didn’t cross across the Atlantic I guess. I don’t know what genre Klaxons fall under as their colourful, bouncy music encompasses elements of post-punk dance, straight up pop, and also a skewed sort of post-millennial psychedelia. Surfing The Void is an album as at home on the dance floor as at home or through ear-buds, a colourful and clever blend of poppy harmonies and trashy dance floor rippers. All of a sudden surfing the void doesn’t sound like such a scary prospect. Read more

“Fresh From…” Celebrates Corn & Crab at Four Seasons’ “YEW”

News from Scout supporter YEW restaurant + bar

Vancouver, BC | Fresh From British Columbia’s oceans, rivers, fields and farms Diners in British Columbia are blessed with an impressive variety of fresh local produce grown and raised across the Province throughout the year. Feel good about enjoying sustainably sourced seafood and flavourful meats, fish and poultry that are thoughtfully raised and prepared. We hope you’ve been making the most of summer – indulging in BC’s juicy cherries, sun-warmed peaches and impossibly flavourful heirloom tomatoes at home, on the road or here at YEW. This September, enjoy our ultra-fresh, local and seasonal dinner concept for dinner nightly at YEW restaurant + bar. Known as “Fresh From…” this three-course, prix-fixe menu focuses on in-season ingredients sourced close to home. Each month the menu will feature a starring ingredient with supporting roles played by complementary in-season produce. This month Executive Chef Oliver Beckert is featuring two much loved ingredients, crab and corn. View the menu after the jump… Read more

“Refinery” Readies For Part 3 Of Their Cocktail Kitchen Series…

News from Scout supporter The Refinery

Vancouver, BC | As one one of the most innovative cocktail programs in Canada, The Refinery is proud to start the third segment of a six month interactive and educational competition called “The Cocktail Kitchen Series”. Launched on July 8th 2010, “The Cocktail Kitchen Series” aims to promote niche craft cocktail development, through the expertise of Vancouver’s best veteran and up and coming bartenders who have demonstrated creativity and leadership in their cocktail craft, as well as being the best in their field as “restaurant bartenders”. Read more

Another Hard Game Of “Guess That Restaurant” (Solved)

In case you missed the last one, which no one answered correctly, it was The Naam. No hints for this one, either. Best of luck to you. Read more

Smoke Break #742: On Punk Not Being Dead In The Forbidden City

When the Olympics came to China the world spotlight turned to a country synonymous with human rights abuse and by any measure a totalitarian police state. But under the surface is a growing movement of punks and misfits, the irony of which is not lost on Jefford as he roams this rebellious sub-culture a scratch under the surface of bustling Beijing.

This trailer is blocked in China.

The Message To Vancouver City Hall From Anthony Bourdain…

My friend Miguel recently loaned me his copy of Anthony Bourdain’s new book Medium Raw. It was a bit of a rambler, jumping from his sordid past to his comparatively shining presence, but one passage stuck with me, ringing as it does very applicably to Vancouver in the wake of City Hall’s recent baby steps toward bringing street food to local curbs (led by Councillor Heather Deal). Let me preface it by saying that I’ve been pretty hard on them in recent months – perhaps even hysterically so in some recent media interviews, saying among a great many other unkind things that our municipal government’s “.22 caliber imaginations were insufficient for our .357 Magnum city”. What I haven’t been is very constructive, and I regret that. So I offer this Bourdain snippet in the hope that it might prove useful to them if they really do want to cement Vancouver’s reputation as one of the world’s most exciting food cities. In the middle of discussing the impact of the recession on restaurants in New York, Bourdain writes,

If any good comes out of all the pain and insecurity, I can only hope that the Asian-style food court/hawker center is one of them. This institution is way overdue for an appearance (on a large scale) in America. Scores of inexpensive one-chef/one-specialty business (basically, food stalls) clustered around a “court” of shared tables. When will some shrewd and civic minded investors (perhaps in tandem with their city governments) put aside some parking lot-size spaces (near commercial districts) where operators from many lands can sell their wares? Sharing tables, as in classic fast-food food courts? Why, with our enormous Asian and Latino populations, can’t we have dai pai dong – literally, “big sign street”, the Chinese version of the indigenous food court, like they do in Hong Kong – or hawker centers, like in Singapore or Kuala Lumpur? Or “food streets,” like Hanoi and Saigon? The open-to-the-air “wet” taco vendors and quesadilla-makers of Mexico City?

Food preparation areas could be enclosed, as they are in Singapore, so food handling and sanitation issues can hardly be an unsolvable impediment: Singapore is the most rigorously nanny of the nanny states – with the most vibrant hawker culture. The hawker center could be an answered prayer for every hard-pressed office worker in a hurry, every blue collar worker on a budget, every cop on a lunch hour, as well as obsessive foodies at every income level. “Authenticity”; artisanship; freshness; incredible, unheard of variety – and for cheap? All under one roof? This, let us hope, is at least part of our future – whatever happens.

I usually won’t reference Singapore as a positive (not least because one small narcotics offense comes with a mandatory death sentence), but if they can do it, we most certainly could, too. Indeed, why stop at mobile food trucks?

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