Last night, the weather was perfect for a sweet and savoury Tasting Plates YVR walk through the Fraserhood, around Fraser Street between King Edward and Kingsway.
Starting at one of the city’s most unique speciality shops, Main Street Honey Shoppe has everything that you could think of, made from honey. Liquid local honey, royal jelly, beeswax candles and body care products. For Tasting Plates, they sampled a selection of liquid honey and offered an example of other ways to get the flavour of honey in a morsel of honeycomb with cheese on a cracker. Served alongside an Tea Farm Monkey Iced Tea, sweetened (of course) with clover honey.
Next we made our way to Nammos Estiatorio the recently opened Greek restaurant on Fraser near King Edward. It’s only been open since spring but the recipes tasted like they’ve been there for generations. Classic good flavours of Spanakotiropita, Kokkinistro with Greek egg noodles, and mushroom fava beans topped with grilled octopus. We opted to add a refreshing glass of white sangria too.
Across the street, Commodity Juicery served a big selection of their dairy-free menu. A couple of their unique Teatails; Sangria (hibiscus berry tea, basil infused maple syrup, apple and lemon), Pink Lemonade (lavender tea, rosemary infused maple syrup apple and lemon). I chose to try a sample of Golden Mylkshake smoothie, a wholesome creamy blend of banana, coconut, turmeric, ginger, dates, almonds, vanilla bean, cinnamon, nutmeg, cardamom, black pepper and almond mylk. Along with the beverages, we sampled a Greens 2 Go Smoothie bowl, incorporating the ingredients of a smoothie into a spoonable thick blend; kale, banana, avocado, romaine, cucumber, lemon, cilantro, parsley, ginger, spirulina and apple juice.
A bit further north on Fraser, we find a double shot location. Chomp Vegan Eatery and Fairy Cakes share a location serving dairy, egg, nut and gluten free bites on their Tasting Plate. Savoury mini Chomp slider, creamy Caesar salad and a sweet Fairy-o chocolate biscuit sample what the eatery offers on their food delivery service. Certainly living up to their slogan “Vegan Food That Doesn’t Suck”!
At the junction of Fraser and Kingsway, we find a location of Straight Out Of Brooklyn pizzeria serving up their classic NY style slices. From the oven tonight was the Original (Margherita), Classic (Pepperoni), White (4 cheese) and Spice (Capicollo/Spicy Salami).
Tasting Plates always does a great job of enticing us to visit neighbourhoods other than our own to see what’s tasty and when it’s a perfect summer night for a stroll, it’s even better.
Take a stroll of your own on the next Tasting Plates in the West End on August 24th, watch for tickets to go on sale now