Service is comically brisk, but dang, the crispy duck is soooooo delicious. I believe it's made…read morewith woodear mushrooms. Would totally recommend if you're craving Vietnamese food.

To begin, I'm a chef specializing in Asian cuisine, so I know what I'm talking about!…read more Last night we went to Hestia and ordered three items. The Garden Rolls were absolutely the #1 worst ones we've ever eaten! We've had hundreds of fresh rolls at dozens of places and sadly, none were as tasteless as these. They consisted of noodles, a bit of flavorless tofu and cucumber. Fresh rolls MUST have at least one or more of the following: fresh mint, fresh cilantro or fresh Thai Basil. Hestia's had NONE!. To add insult to injury, the watery sauce also had NO flavor. To add more insult, they were baggy and poorly wrapped and the innards kept falling out. Not fun and definitely not good. The king oyster mushrooms were very good, but there was a ton of pink mayo dousing it. I would have preferred the sauce be in a separate bowl so we could choose how much dipping we'd like to do. The saffron tofu bowl was sensational! Perfectly spiced and full of a huge variety of well-cooked veggies plus the saffron rice was good too. No one came during our meal to ask if we needed anything or to ask how our meal was. The customer service is in need of some work.

As the weather gets warmer, I am craving something fresh and refreshing. After browsing the menu, I…read morewas convinced the mango salad was exactly what I wanted. Unfortunately, the menu doesn't have side dishes, so I ended up ordering the lemongrass vermicelli along with a guava juice instead. The guava juice was a bit of a surprise--not quite the freshly made tropical drink I had imagined. It turned out to be the same bottled guava juice you can easily find at the grocery store, just served in a glass and at restaurant prices. Then my lemongrass vermicelli arrived, and the server warned me to be careful because it was very hot. That definitely caught me off guard! When I think of vermicelli bowls, I picture cool noodles, crisp vegetables, fragrant herbs, and a refreshing meal perfect for a sunny day. This version was served piping hot, making it feel more comforting than refreshing. That said, the dish was still packed with flavour. The fragrant lemongrass aroma filled the bowl, the vegetables added plenty of texture, and the savoury components came together nicely. It just wasn't the light, cooling meal I had originally set my heart on when I walked in, dreaming about mango salad on a warm day.

This is a great vegan Vietnamese place on Kingsway I have recently tried. Everything is really…read moredelicious. Service is fast as well and I like the ambience too. I tried fried oyster mushrooms they were delicious and went well with all the side garnishing. The black garlic eggplant is something new to try and went with rice and salad. It has fried tofu too which was nicely cooked too. Quantity and portion size is justified for the price. Overall a great Vietnamese restaurant on Kingsway. Will-definitely go back and highly recommend this place!

A friend took me to the restaurant for the first time last Sunday on our walk. I'm glad she…read moresuggested the place for lunch. We shared:the Prawn Sando and the Chicken & Crack Rice. I like Torafuku's rendition of the prawn toast that i grew up with. The toasts were done perfectly golden. The bread pieces were crispy on the outside and soft on the inside. There were chunkful of prawns in every bite. Personally, I wish the prawn filling were a bit more springy. We both loved the chicken and cracked rice. The fried chicken pieces were well balanced with seasoning and tender. I was also very happy with the broken rice used in the dish. There is more surface area with broken rice to pick up the flavours in the seasoning. I hope the soon-to-be-opend new hospital nearby will help revitalize the neighbourhood.

Crack Salad. The name is simply on the nose. My partner and I each got one and could have eaten…read morethree a piece. Parmesan galore with capers and citrus playing a strong supporting role. Unreal. We think the vegetables could have been roasted a bit longer for optimal chewiness but they were still divine--especially the way the dressing clung to the brassicas florets. As a kale lover, I would take much more kale, but that's just personal preference, not any denigration of the dish (more kale would make it more of a salad and less of a share plate). The service was friendly and the space had a peaceful minimalist appeal. I imagine other dishes are wonderful too, but it'd be hard not to repeat the salad over and over. We're from out of town but if and when we return to Vancouver, this will definitely be on the itinerary.

I'd browsed through the Chickpea website a few times already and I'd had my eye on the Hafla…read moreexperience for awhile. Finally managed to get over there and try it. Went with my family for a bday brunch. So for anyone who doesn't know, the Hafla experience is an AYCE experience. Not the kind where everyone in the restaurant is walking around, selecting all of their foods to put on their plates and then walking back to their own table with it. For this experience, each person chooses one main entree for themselves and then the restaurant brings a whole bunch of other dishes to accompany that main entree. Everyone at the table has to participate in the Hafla. You cannot have 3 people ordering Hafla, and 4 people ordering from the regular A la Carte menu. It's meant to be a family style sharing experience. Oh my goodness. What an experience this was. They brought sooo many dishes to the table. If I could make one suggestion to the restaurant to improve the experience for their customers, it would be to get bigger tables for the Hafla! Holy smokes...there was sooo much food on the table. At one point, the waitress came out with some baskets of pita bread to go with our food and asked where to put them. Ummm...wherever you can find space?! We had lots of leftovers by the end of the meal. I think my daughter said she counted at least 15 boxes of leftovers! This wasn't just All You Can Eat. This was More Than You Can Eat, cuz we were all super full from everything that they brought to us, and we never needed to ask for anything to be refilled as we couldn't even finish what they'd brought to us initially. What a feast! As for the food itself. I think the one thing that kinda fell short a bit was the Chickpea fries. I'd had these once before from their food truck a few years ago. I really enjoyed it back then. This time however, the Chickpea fries were not as impressive. Everything else on the table though was excellent. I don't know where else in Vancouver you can get a plant based AYCE meal, and this one was very impressive. Some standouts for me were the Cauliflower of Life, Hatzil Baladi (charred eggplant), and Baba Ganoush. A few of us ordered some drinks and those were pretty impressive as well. My daughter's Lavender Lychee Lemonade looked so lovely and refreshing. For myself I ordered a Chai Latte made with oat milk, and that was excellent. Oh, and you know how sometimes restaurants have menus on their websites and the menus don't match what's on the printed menu in the actual restaurant? Well this was the first time I was actually happy to see that the menu in the restaurant was different cuz online it says that the Hafla costs $42 per person but when we got to the restaurant it turned out to be only $40 per person. In this day and age, when things are usually only ever getting more expensive, it was a real treat to see that something had actually gone down in price for once! Highly recommend this place. I'll be back sometime for sure to try their regular, non AYCE menu!

I love this restaurant and have never had an experience here that made me want to leave a negative…read morereview, but last night came very close. We came in around 9:00 PM, ordered quite a bit of food, and were enjoying our meal as usual. Around 9:45 PM, our server approached us with takeout boxes and told us we needed to be out in four minutes because they closed at 10:00 PM and she doesn't get paid after that. I understand wanting to leave on time and be compensated fairly for your work, but at that point there were still 15 minutes left before closing. Even after I pointed out the time, we continued to feel rushed throughout the remainder of our meal. As someone who has worked in the service industry for over 10 years, I could never imagine treating guests this way. I completely understand that staff want to finish their shifts and go home, but that is not the customer's responsibility. Rushing people out before closing, especially without any prior warning, can completely change the dining experience. The food was still fantastic, and my love for this restaurant remains, but this was one of the most disappointing and disrespectful service experiences I've had in a very long time. I'm genuinely saddened that an experience like this happened at a place I have always enjoyed and recommended to others.

What's a great way to celebrate Mother's Day? Avoid the Mother's Day crowds by doing early Mother's…read moreDay lunch one day before Mother's Day, and picking any good restaurant that's offering their regular menu and not some overpriced Mother's Day brunch menu! To be fair...I still like the Mother's Day brunch menus, buffets...etc. However, I am also just as happy going to just any good restaurant that serves food I like and isn't necessarily Mother's Day themed. So...this is what we did with my family. Bro chose Dosanko. I'd only ever been here one time for dinner and had always wanted to come back for their lunch menu so I happily agreed to Dosanko. We all ordered individual dishes for ourselves plus a few dishes for us all to share. We shared a Vegetable Tempura, Egg Salad sandwich and an Omu-Rice with Tomato Sauce on it. Egg Salad sandwich was better than the ones we now get at 7-Eleven stores here, but not sure it merits the price they charge for it. Then again $16 for an egg salad sandwich here is still a lot cheaper than paying for a ticket to Japan, plus hotel accommodation just so I can eat 7-Eleven Egg Salad sandwich in Japan! For my own personal dish, I had the Onigiri combo with a Crispy Cheesy Onigiri and a Kinpira Onigiri. So many tempting choices on the menu. It was a hard decision to make but I was quite happy with my choice. I'd forgotten how good their Cheesy Onigiri was. This was soooo good! The Kinpira Onigiri was also very tasty. My daughter ordered a Curry Rice and added Pork Tonkatsu to it. The rice looked sooooo cheesy. I might have to come and try the Vegetarian version sometime. It looked really good! I shared a Yakigori with my husband and daughter for dessert. This was a shaved ice dessert but it also had merengue, passion fruit curd, ice cream, and brandy for a bit of flame. Kinda like a Baked Alaska but way better!

I picked this restaurant for one of the stops on our bachelorette tour. The menu looked delicious…read moreand there were so many items that everyone wanted to try. The staff were very friendly and accommodating to our large group of 7. Even though the dishes were not all meant to be shareable in style they were easily split amongst the party. While we may have not gotten huge portions of each item, we at least got to try everything. If ordering individually I would say the portions were good, not oversized. My favorite items were the two different omurice (curry and tomato) but you really couldn't go wrong with anything you ordered. And the drinks, they were fun creative combinations that fit well with the Japanese menu.

PidGin delivered the best dining experience during our stay in Vancouver. We opted for the tasting…read moremenu, which is absolutely the way to do it. Every course showed real intention, but two will stick with me: the A5 Wagyu & Duxelle Nori Cappelletti was a small masterpiece, and the Duck that followed was perfectly cook and seasoned. Out of this world. What elevated the night beyond the food was the team. The chef, the kitchen, and the front-of-house were all genuinely knowledgeable and engaged. Every course came with context delivered like a conversation, not a script -- the kind of confidence you only get from people who actually love what they do. A stellar night out. We'll absolutely be back.

Loved this French-Asian place when I visited Vancouver. Super cute place tucked between gastown and…read moreChinatown. Everything I had was cooked well, and had the perfect amount of Asian flavors. Our server was great. I could tell really wanted our honest opinion on the dishes. I will say the meal in total was on the more expensive side, but would recommend this place for people to try! Also, our dinner service ran long. I felt like we waited a long time in between dishes.

Returned for dim sum with a group of 6. Many of the dim sum dishes are portioned in 3's so this was…read morethe perfect group size. I was the only veg-inclined person in the group and didn't realize some of the others didn't know the place was fully vegetarian before arriving, but it didn't seem like anyone was disappointed with the vegetarian offerings. We tried a large variety of dishes, and I won't list all of them because I don't think I'd even remember everything. My favourites were the walnut custard buns, the pea tips rice sheet roll, and the new tapioca pudding (I'd never tried this kind of baked tapioca pudding before and I loved the texture). They also brought out fresh baked barbeque buns which were nice and soft. Others really liked the vegetarian chicken nuggets and black truffle mushroom dumplings, so I think it's safe to say everything is pretty good. I felt like I ate a lot, but at the end, after they split the bill 6 ways, everyone only paid $22 (before tip). So if you go with a big group you can try lots of things at a pretty good price. Service was pretty good. They did try to push some dishes on us, but I think they were just trying to be helpful with most of us not being familiar with how to order for dim sum, and their patience was appreciated.

Our waitress Cindy was patient, kind, and helpful. The manager Man was also helpful…read more My vegan husband was delighted to find a vegetarian restaurant, and my aunt likes that the food is free of garlic and onion. Hubby liked the fake steak with black pepper. I liked the shiitake mushroom dish. The tofu and eggplant dish was OK too. My cousin's sweet and sour dish was good.

Been wanting to try this place out for a long time now and a fellow foodie friend finally asked to…read moretry it together, so here we are. I ordered the Seoul Sour. It had all the ingredients I like in a cocktail, so couldn't really go wrong with this drink. We ordered the yuk hwae/ beef tartare (delicious), crispy ga-ji/ eggplant (also delicious, especially if you have a bit of a sweet tooth like me), but the rest of the food that we ordered was pretty average/ mediocre. Did not enjoy their kimchi arancini. It wasn't horrible, but definitely a miss for me. The curry base did not marry well with the arancini. Definitely prefer the OG Italian arancini's. This fusion twist was a great attempt, but was meh. The Jeon Kal Guk Su (1st time ever trying a Kal Guk Su, but after googling it, I'm pretty sure I prefer the real deal), was okay. I liked the spice level. Noodles were ok. But the egg and meat pancake was a bit off-putting, sides were all pretty unappetizing. I only finished it, cause I already paid for it. But yeah, definitely would not order again. Service was stellar, waitresses kept refilling our water and got us new bowls when we requested it (without flinching). I was not about to mix the noodles into the curry I don't like. Decore was nice and upscale. Very open and welcoming, but if privacy is what you're looking for, perhaps not the ideal place to dine. I felt like my overall dining experience was a 3.5 stars. Elevated it to a 4 due to the service and the fact that we didn't order 2 of the dishes that were most raved about in different reviews (I.e. truffle japchae) because my friend didn't want them. We also didn't order any dessert since by that time we were full, so thankful we didn't order 2 mains. And the food didn't really give us high hopes for the dessert to be stellar. Side Note: another friend of mine mentioned that I had to order their tofu octopus soup. I didn't see it on their menu, so perhaps I missed out and just ordered incorrectly. So, 4 stars seems reasonable to me.

The restaurant is beautiful. The staff very attentive - I dropped a chopstick and got a new one…read morepractically before it hit the ground! The food was creative and delicious. We had a drink Bori? that was exquisite. But if that's not your thing, the corn tea was freely poured, also delicious. Our friends from Los Angeles are not easy to impress and they were impressed and planning to change how they make a few dishes at home, inspired by our tasting experience. The staff answered all of our questions and were very patient. If I lived here, it would definitely be one of our top 10.