Beyond the Rhetoric

Vancouver is known for its world class food, but that doesn’t mean that you have to break the bank to get a decent meal. There are many places in and around the city with good deals. You might know about Happy Pho from our Dot Com Pho exploits, for instance.

Getting beyond my old stomping grounds of Main Street, I’ve started to explore my new neighborhood in North Burnaby. I heard about a place called X-Site Grill & Bistro a while ago, being told that they had really cheap lunch specials. Yes, you’re probably more inclined to go to a bar in the evenings to catch a hockey game, but that doesn’t mean you can’t visit during lunch too.

Easily the biggest appeal here is the assortment of $4.95 lunch specials. These are served Monday to Friday, 11am to 4pm. The only catch is that you have to order a drink. In my case, I got a glass of Coke and that cost $2. In effect, my total lunch cost well under $10, including tax and tip.

The lunch specials themselves are not exciting or innovative. You get a range of chicken, a burger, some salad, and a few pasta choices. Given the price, I was expecting relatively small portions and sub-par quality. After all, what can you buy these days for less than five bucks?

On this particular visit, I opted for the cheese burger and Caesar salad. Granted, this is nowhere close to the $60 foie gras burger I had a few years ago, but it’s also less than 1/10th of the price. The burger itself was on the salty side, but it was reasonably juicy. The healthy-sized portion of Caesar salad wasn’t bad either.

Susanne opted for the chicken souvlaki. There’s no shortage of Greek food in Vancouver, but you’ll be hard pressed to find a proper sit-down restaurant where you get this much food for less than five dollars. In addition to the chicken, you get rice pilaf, Caesar salad, potato, tzatziki sauce, and a full pita bread. This could have easily been a dinner-sized portion for $10-$15 anywhere else.

Again, the flavors and quality are anything but breathtaking, but they’re not bad at all either. The chicken was well-seasoned, though you can tell the grill is a little on the dirtier side. Given the price, you can’t really complain.

No, X-Site isn’t going to win any awards. It’s not going to be featured on a travel guide to the city. However, if you are looking for a decent meal at a decent price, you can do much, much worse than this. They have daily $5.95 dinner specials too, including New York Steak on Monday. I’ll be back for sure.

Tags: burger, cheap eats, vancouver restaurants

Filed under Food and drink.