Ladies Brunch at Epicurean Caffe Bistro

Recently a group of girlfriends and I bought tickets to the Arts Club's "It's a Wonderful Life"and they suggested I pick a good place to go for lunch near Granville Island before. It didn't take me very long to suggest Epicurean Caffe Bistro. It had been a while since my last meal at The Epicurean, but I felt pretty confident that it was a good choice for this group of ladies.

It's a cafe/bistro/deli in Kitsilano on West 1st and Cypress, offering traditional homemade Italian meals for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. They also offer up bakery and deli items for take out. I've only been for breakfast (LOVED it) but my friend Tacia says they make the best pizza.
It's a charming, cozy space, and quite popular. Luckily, they took a reservation for a group of 6 because it was quite busy. Their service is friendly and efficient and the food is mouth watering and beautiful to look at.

I ordered the Calazione Romana breakfast; scrambled eggs served with bocconcino, tomato and grilled eggplant flavoured with olive oil and balsamic vinegar, organic greens, toasted bread, butter and jam ($11.45) This is a beautifully balanced plate, everything tasted fresh, flavourful, and fantastic and all of the elements of the meal went so well together. The buttery, fluffy scrambled eggs, the fresh caprese style side salad, the crisp greens with slightly sweet and tart balsamic, the smoky, rich eggplant. For most of their breakfasts, you can choose your side bread- multigrain, rosemary foccacia, ciabatta. I went with the rosemary foccacia and loved it- great flavour, texture, and heavenly rosemary smell.

Other items at our table were:

Margherita Pizza; Bocconcini, Mozzarella, Tomato sauce & herbs $11

Prosciutto & Rughetta Pizza; Fresh Arugula, Prosciutto & Mozzarella (no tomato sauce) $11

Flavor and Color Panini; Fresh milky Bocconcino cheese draped with a delicate slice of smoked salmon and layered with tomato and sliced onions. Served with organic mixed greens. $11.95

Lunch Meeting at Ceili's in Kits

The boss and I took a meeting with some friends of mine. My boss had visited Ceili's Irish Pub (Burrard and 7th) recently for a fundraiser event and was blown away with their burger, so he recommended the pub for a meeting location.

Was really impressed with the big, open space, friendly service, casual vibe, and the great looking beer list. I had pretty low expectations for the food- figured it would just be typical heavy, greasy pub grub, but I very impressed when the food arrived at our table. It tasted as good as it looked. Definitely better than your typical pub grub, you can definitely taste that they use quality ingredients and are putting some effort and love into their food.

Fish Tacos- Soft flour tortillas, cajun Pacific cod, prawns, key lime chipotle aioli, pineapple mango salsa, melted Canadian monterey and cheddar, shredded lettuce, tortilla chips, valentina hot sauce $15.75

Short Rib Grilled Cheese- Shredded Guinness braised short rib, honey dijon, aged white cheddar, sourdough $15

Belfast Burger- Maple Peppered bacon, sauteed mushrooms,  stout & ale onion ring, melted aged Canadian white cheddar, lettuce, tomato, garlic aioli, roasted red pepper relish, pickle spear $16.75