Yesterday, John Chow (with his wife Sarah), Ed Lau and Stephen Fung and myself checked out the media kick-off party for the 4th Annual Taste of Yaletown.
The event runs through October 14-26 and features a list of twenty-two participating restaurants. Much like the Taste of Vancouver the restaurants offer special three-course menus at fixed prices of $25, $35 and $45, but the Taste of Yaletown features only restaurants within this trendy Vancouver district.
Yaletown used to be a light industrial zone and now the old warehouses have all been converted to modern lofts with retail and restaurants anchoring the ground floors.
Taste of Yaletown is sponsored by American Express, who will donate 5% of purchases charged to its cards during the event to the Canadian Association of Food Banks. In addition, each restaurant will be donating a portion of the proceeds to the Greater Vancouver Food Bank.
The media party was held at the cozy, little Tequila Kitchen. Kind of a small venue for a media event but the invitations to the party were scarce, so the attendees managed to comfortably pack the place in nicely. Nice enough that Ed knocked my red wine all over me and he almost backed into the servers and guests a few times. Can’t take that guy anywhere, I guess he’s just too use to Richmond 
We sampled various dishes from the participating restaurants, my favorites being the Peking Duck Clubhouse and a wonderful chocolate mousse/peanut butter brittle dessert. Both were concoctions of Rob Feenie, who came over to our table to explain the dessert in detail as he is now working with Cactus Club.
I look forward to taking advantage of the Taste of Yaletown to sample some more restaurants and reviewing them here. But I was still hungry and couldn’t wait, so Ed, Stephen and myself headed down the street to Pinkys Steakhouse. What can I say? I felt like having a steak 
That is until I saw their menu. The Kobe Beef Smoked Cheddar BBQ burger sounded too good to pass up. At $18 with onion rings and a side of fries (your choice of regular potato or yam) it was reasonable considering Kobe beef often goes for about $3 an ounce. Ed settled on a Jumbo Prawn appy (and they were huge prawns!) and Stephen went with a boring fettucine carbonara. However, it must have been good because Stephen Hoovered those noodles up.
I expected my Kobe beef burger to be rich and a little greasy but it was surprisingly, well, regular. It was delicious but didn’t taste different from any other gourmet beef burger I’ve tasted at other fine establishments.
Posted on October 9th, 2008 by Leo
Filed under: Lucid Thoughts, Reviews
[...] sorts of different food and run by some of the best chefs in the business. Tonight, Stephen Fung, Leo Chiang, John Chow (with wife Sarah) and I went to the opening night of A Taste of Yaletown, held at the [...]
[...] more commentary on the evening, check out posts from Leo Chiang, John Chow and Ed Lau. More pictures from the event are below. Enjoy! .gallery { margin: auto; } [...]
Note to self: don’t wear white if I am going someplace where Ed is going to be…especially if there is red wine involved…..
For what it’s worth Leo, even though you didn’t stay and eat at the event, I enjoyed your coverage of it more than John’s.
Nicks last blog post..Hams And Bloggers Share Some Attributes
I actually did stay and sample the food, it was just all small bite-sized samples. I needed more cause I felt like I just had some appetizers.
Leos last blog post..4th Annual Taste of Yaletown
[...] that might be because he is too busy enjoying some of the finer things in life – such as the 4th Annual Taste of Yaletown with a few of the Dot Com Moguls. Hopefully Leo escaped without too much damage at the hands of [...]
It sounds like a fun event, and that chocolate peanut butter dessert sounds divine.
Haven’t heard from you on the blog recently … hope that means you’ve been busy with work?
Molly Glasgows last blog post..Nostalgia in a Box