Veggie Bunch Vegetarian Restaurant - Taiwanese Vegetarian Buffet

We've been waiting for Veggie Bunch to reopen ever since it decided to relocate. It's been reopened for a couple months now at its new location on Buswell Street, between Park and Cook Road.

I find that their food is even better than before. The dishes are less greasy and even more delicate. My favourites have always been the stir fried cabbages and veggie sweet and sour porks. Couldn't find cabbages this time, but the sweet and sour porks are still great :) Their soups are yummy too. Hot and sour soup and Chinese herbal medicine soup were the choices that day and I had both. Oh, and they also have the sweet red bean soup, steamed dumplings inside bamboo steamers as well as a big selection of tasty vegetarian dishes. And of course, how can a buffet be completed without ice creams :P Yes, they have a fridge full of buckets of ice creams too!

Some pictures I took of my plates :D and the buffet dishes.

High Tea - The Secret Garden

Second time back at The Secret Garden for high tea with the girls. It is definitely a cute place to relax and sit down with your girl friends and catch up. Or to celebrate special occasions with the girls ^^

I had the Ginger Lemongrass Tea and the Vegetarian High Tea set :) The bottom tier has mini egg salad sandwich rolls, mini croissants with grilled veggies and goat cheese (not my favourite type of cheese >.<), and mini bread thingies with Brie and tomatoes fillings. Middle tier has mini scones and banana breads served with jam and devon cream. Finally the top tier contains a lemon tart, and two other mini sweets that I don't remember the names for, sorry. I enjoyed the tea a lot, it was very refreshing. I also liked everything except the little bit of goat cheese. I was, however, full already after almost finishing the second tier. So I brought the rest home for gorilla.

They also have a large selections of tea you can buy to take home. I haven't bought any yet but my friends have. Next time when I have the chance to try more, I will write about it :)





The Secret Garden

Top of Vancouver

The first time I went to Top of Vancouver Revolving Restaurant was more than 15 years ago... yes... that long ago. Honestly, all I remembered from my first visit was a buffet for dinner and the agony of my parents making me wear this ridiculous formal dress. This is the second visit thanks to a big group dinner. And the second time around was a lot better.

They only have one vegetarian Entrée, which is the 'Daily Vegetarian Dish' under pasta. I ordered an appetizer from one of the two veggie salads they offer, the Tomato Bocconcini Salad. The Daily Vegetarian Dish that day turned out to be Mushroom Ravioli and now I can't remember why I didn't take a picture of it. I just remember that it wasn't very good, a bit on the salty side. For the dessert, I picked Strawberry Napoleon. I also took a picture of my friend's dessert, Chocolate Frangelico Tower. Mine was enjoyable but nothing special I have to say. The view was wonderful up there and we had good company, so I didn't mind the food too much. Besides, it is always fun to be touristy once a while :)

Ali Shan Restaurant (Crystal Mall)

This Taiwanese restaurant is pretty small so I would recommend avoiding the crowds so you don't have to wait to get a seat. It's funny that one of the big reasons why I like this place a lot is because there was this waitress who's really polite, but I don't think she works there anymore. But the biggest reason we keep going back is that they have very good food for pretty good prices and they can make a lot of things on their menu vegetarian.

We would always get the Soy Bean Hotpot. It is vegetarian but the dipping sauce has garlic in it so if you don't like that, I think you can just ask them to give you some plain hot sauce. The hot pot comes with a bowl or rice and has plenty of good stuff in it. It is really a big yummy meal for under 7 dollars. We usually get the Hawaiian fried rice too but this time we felt like trying something new so we ordered the Japanese Style Curry Fried Rice Omelette with no meat.





Sorry I forgot to take pictures before we digged in. After the first few bites I remembered I wanted to start writing a food blog, but like this time, I always forget to take pictures. So I just thought I should take pictures anyway as a start.



Ali Shan (Urban Spoon)