Coast Restaurant, located in the Yaletown district of Downtown Vancouver, was the next stop on our Dine Out Vancouver adventure. Because it is located in Yaletown, Coast is naturally a very hip and trendy kind of place, so don’t expect to have dim candles and quiet conversation. You don’t get white tablecloths either, because this (somewhat) fine dining establishment has kept the atmosphere rather casual. There’s even trendy music playing at a reasonably high volume throughout your meal.

Although I don’t mind the casual atmosphere, I prefer a quieter restaurant when I want to enjoy my meal. Even FigMint Restaurant and Lounge was considerably quieter than Coast, despite the former having a definite bar/lounge area adjacent to the main dining room. Oh, and as you can probably tell by their name, Coast Restaurant is all about a West Coast flavor with a little bit of chic on the side. Let’s have a look at what they offered for this year’s Dine Out Vancouver menu.

Hawaiian Ahi Tuna Tartar: Yes, more tartare. The ahi tuna itself was reasonably smooth, almost like chopped up sashimi, but the deep fried (rice-based?) part underneath was quite chewy and stuck to my teeth. Interesting concept that could have been executed a little better.

Dungeness Crab & Halibut Cake: Nothing all too special here. If you’ve had crab cakes before, these will taste very familiar. I did enjoy the pickled vegetable salad in the middle.

East Coast Fresh Shucked Oysters: This was not included in the Dine Out menu, but Susanne and I decided to add a few fresh oysters to our meal. You can choose between East Coast, West Coast, European Coast, and Japanese Coast oysters, although only the first two options were available on the night of our visit. Clean and refreshing.

Moroccan Spiced Lamb Sirloin: This was my main course and I was surprised by the size of the portions. It’s not huge, but the size of sirloin medallions were larger than I was expecting. The meat was slightly overcooked (I asked for medium-rare) and the Moroccan spices were actually quite mild. The pureed potatoes were very smooth.

Miso Glazed Queen Charlotte Sablefish: The flavor of the sablefish is similar to a Chinese-style black cod. The meat was firmer but silky smooth. And no, that’s not a sausage in there; that’s a fingerling potato.

Peanut Butter Bar and Warm Milk Chocolate Fondue: I thought that we were going to choose between one or the other, but the server told us that we would get both desserts! The crust on the peanut butter bar was flaky like a thick wafer and the chocolate fondue was delectable. Hidden behind the bowl of chocolate were a couple of (I think) blackberries.

I was reasonably happy with my Coast Restaurant experience, although there was nothing that made me go “wow.” Service was good and we were finished our meal in just over an hour. That’s pretty speedy for an establishment of this kind. The total bill for two, including the four shucked oysters, two cocktails, taxes, and tip came to $115.

I’ve already talked about how much I enjoy playing Guitar Hero III and how the rhythm game is one of my favorite things of 2007. More recently, I picked up Rock Band for the PS3 and that’s been a heck of a lot of fun too (the drums are so much harder than singing or the guitar). As much fun as these music games are to play, I’ve come to experience one of their greatest side effects too.

Having enjoyed a variety of Bemani-branded music games in the past, in addition to Dance Dance Revolution and Pump It Up, I’m no stranger to timing button presses to the beat, but most of those older Konami and Andamiro offerings featured Japanese and/or Korean songs that we’d never hear on North American airwaves. Where Guitar Hero and Rock Band found success is that they include songs that are more familiar to us. There’s no denying that playing Paint It, Black by The Rolling Stones (Guitar Hero III) and Enter Sandman by Metallica (Rock Band) are crazy fun to play. In fact, Enter Sandman was one of the main reasons why I was interested in Rock Band in the first place; Timmy and the Lords of the Underworld was a close second.

So, what’s this Guitar Hero side effect that I’m talking about? It’s the exposure to a number of songs I probably would have never heard otherwise. This isn’t only restricted to North American bands either — although I never listened to much of Radiohead or Soundgarden before, I think they’re great after playing Creep and Black Hole Sun in Rock Band — but also international groups that are totally foreign to me.

Easily the best non-English song available on Guitar Hero III is Hier Kommt Alex by Die Toten Hosen of Germany. The name of the song translates to “Here Comes Alex”, whereas the band name literally translates to The Dead Trousers (though most say it means The Dead Beats). I’m thinking that Danielle would totally dig this song. Check out the music video.

[Go to Beyond the Rhetoric if you can't see the video]

Anyone want to translate the lyrics? Here’s a YouTube clip of the song on expert in GH3, in case you’re curious.

UPDATE: I found the English lyrics translation! It’s not just “Here Comes Alex”, it’s the “Return of Alex”. Whatever that means. The band also has a song called “Bye Bye, Alex”.

I’ve seen it! It’s alive! It’s huge!

I’ve been fascinated with the Cloverfield movie ever since I saw the teaser trailer that preceded Transformers: The Movie six months ago. The JJ Abrams-headed project captivated my interest and it simply would not let go, largely because of all the mystique and intrigue that has been surrounding the secretive movie. In fact, it wasn’t until November that we discovered Cloverfield wasn’t just a codename. With all this hype and viral marketing, you’ve got to wonder if Cloverfield can live up to expectations.

By and large, I think it did. For those of you who haven’t heard, Cloverfield is basically a monster movie, but the story is told from the perspective of a single handheld camcorder. What results is a lot of shaky shots and the potential for motion sickness, not unlike the surreal experience we had with the Blair Witch Project several years ago. The key difference is that Cloverfield never claimed to be real and it holds a lot more production value than its snot-filled counterpart.

You know all along that this is a Hollywood production, but they’ve managed to sneak in the very expensive Hollywood special effects in a very seamless kind of way, integrating it with the intimate experience of a handheld video camera. You would think that the characters would be little more than cardboard cut-outs, but this isn’t really the case either. We never get much in terms of background information on the main characters — the principal actors and actresses are all relative nobodies — but we know enough to care about them, at least a little.

Yes, you get to see the monster. And yes, it really is unlike anything I’ve ever seen before. The monster in Cloverfield is not Godzilla; it’s something different altogether, although you could say that there are certain arachnid, reptilian, and Alien features about it that may feel familiar. I’m not going to ruin this aspect of the film for you, because it became a big part of why I wanted to watch Cloverfield in the first place. I wanted to see the monster.

The first 20 minutes or so of the movie introduce you to the main characters through the party scene you’ve seen in the trailer. After that, you’ll be on the edge of your seat for the remainder of Cloverfield (total running time is about an hour and a half). It’s absolutely thrilling, unnerving, and definitely exciting. The terror and horror has some parallels to the events of 9/11, but I’ll leave that up to your interpretation too.

In many ways, Cloverfield leaves you with a lot of questions, but this only makes sense. If you were trapped in the middle of an alien monster attack, you wouldn’t know about the origins and nature of the monster either. You wouldn’t really know how things turn out. And that’s exactly the level of knowledge that Rob, Beth, and the rest of the cast have. Even so, Cloverfield was thoroughly enjoyable and I recommend it to any special effects and/or action junkie. I just wish the ending was a little more satisfying.

Rating:

 
On a side note, did anyone else think that Beth McIntyre (played by Odette Yustman) was similar to Jennifer Love Hewitt’s character from Can’t Hardly Wait?

It could be that I’m still feeling a little jet-lagged from my trip, but this week has gone by in a sort of hazy blur. Don’t get me wrong. CES 2008 was a lot of fun, even if the monorail decided to bust on me. You’ll definitely see me at next year’s show with a camera by day and a bottle of beer (or three) by night.

I’ve been meaning to post up more pictures from my first CES experience, so where better to start than my first day (and night) in Las Vegas, nearly two weeks ago. I arrived in Sin City on Sunday, which was a day before the Consumer Electronics Show officially kicked off and opened its doors. This was also the day that I got to experience a busted monorail with no refunds. Anyways, I’m still feeling a little out of it, so it’s probably in both of our best interests that I just proceed with the pictures.

For actual coverage of the products on display at CES, check out the articles on FutureLooks, The TechZone, OCIA.net, and ThinkComputers, among others.

As you may have heard, Dine Out Vancouver is an annual celebration in our city wherein several fine dining establishments put out three-course menus at a substantially reduced price. This gives you an opportunity to try out some restaurants that may otherwise be outside of your budget… or just places that you’ve never really thought about visiting before. The latter is true with FigMint Restaurant and Lounge, one of the restaurants I’m hitting up during this year’s Dine Out Vancouver.

FigMint is located at 500 West 12th Avenue, across the street from City Square, inside the Plaza 500 Hotel. Part of the reason why I chose to go to Figmint was because of their name. You’ve got to admit: that’s a pretty creative name for a restaurant, and it’s only fitting that their menu features significant use of both figs and mint. In terms of decor, you could say that Figmint is going for the contemporary chic look. If the tables weren’t so spread out, the appearance of Figmint would fit in perfectly in Yaletown. You can tell that they’re trying to be trendy, but it all just works.

I went with Susanne, so we were able to try twice as much food as a person would be able to do on his own. The only items on the Dine Out menu that we didn’t try were the prawn bisque and sunchoke risotto.

Susanne started with the salad as her appetizer. More specifically, the menu calls it Mixed Leaves with Figs, Goats Cheese, Lemon Dressing and Reduced Balsamic. I thought the goat cheese would be a little overbearing, but it actually works quite well with the light dressing. The big chunks of fig made for quite a different salad too.

I had the Beef Tartare with Quail Egg and Purple Mustard Aioli. Seeing how I typically enjoy beef and I like a lot of my meat rare (ahi tuna is one of my favorite dishes), I knew that I would enjoy the beef tartare. It was very refreshing and I would highly recommend this dish to anyone who isn’t adverse to eating raw beef.

For the first main, we had the Duck Confit with White Bean Cassoulet. The skin on the duck was very crispy and it seemed to have undergone some sort of salt rub. As such, it was definitely on the saltier side of things, almost tasting like Chinese-style roast pork. Underneath was the white bean cassoulet, which was similar to a duck chili wrapped in duck meat.

The other main was the Pan Seared Arctic Char with Butternut Squash and Amaretti Ravioli and Almond Smoked Buttered Green Beans. Again, the skin was very crispy and the sauce made for a rather unique flavor. You could say it fit somewhere between chutney and squash. The ravioli was surprisingly sweet, but I found this dish to be too oily overall. You can see the oil quite clearly in this photo.

The Pear Tart with Thyme Custard and Lemon Sorbet as the first dessert was nothing particularly special, but I did find that the sorbet was quite cleansing. A great dessert after a heavy dinner for sure.

And here is the highlight of the night for me: Sticky Toffee Pudding with Walnut Tuile and Vanilla Ice Cream. It was warm, not too sweet, and absolutely delectable. You don’t want to know how many calories are in here, but after taking a single bite, you don’t care how many calories this contains. I really like bread pudding and similar desserts, so this sticky toffee pudding was totally up my alley.

All in all, I’d say that FigMint Restaurant and Lounge is a solid and lesser-known option when it comes to Dine Out Vancouver. I particularly enjoyed the beef tartare and the sticky toffee pudding, and while I applaud FigMint on trying something new with the Arctic Char, the flavor didn’t quite come out the way I wanted. Then again, I’m not a big fan of squash to begin with.

The total bill, which wasn’t a figment of my imagination, came to $110 for two people, including one cocktail each ($10 a piece).

That’s right, it’s time for another contest from Beyond the Rhetoric. In the past, I’ve given away things like an iPod nano and a USB TV tuner, but we all know that I’m a gamer at heart, so this month’s contest is particularly appropriate.

As part of the swag that I got from CES 2008, Sony Online Entertainment gave me a copy of Pirates of the Burning Sea for the PC, which is basically a swashbuckling MMORPG. It features swordplay, port exploration, economy development, character customization, full online interaction, and even ship battles at sea. You can find out more about Pirates of the Burning Sea at FutureLooks.com.

Even though the game doesn’t technically launch until next week, I’m giving it away to one lucky reader! Everyone could use a free video game, right? I want to make this contest as easy to enter as possible, so it is comprised of just three steps, one of which is optional.

    1. Subscribe to Beyond the Rhetoric by email
    2. Click on the confirmation link you’ll receive from Feedburner
    3. Leave a comment below saying that you entered (optional)

The third step is there so that I can announce you as the winner by the name used in the comment form, instead of publicly displaying someone’s email address. Please note that if this is your first time leaving a comment on BTR, it will be held in moderation. If your comment doesn’t appear after a couple of days, contact me.

That’s it. No blog posts or backlinks needed.

 
The contest runs until 11:59pm PST on February 14, 2008.

If there are 50 or more contest entries, I’ll throw in a second place prize: a black Bloghaus t-shirt from CES 2008. If there are over 100 entries, I’ll include another t-shirt as a third prize.

Good luck! The winner(s) will be drawn at random on February 15th with the announcement coming shortly afterwards.