Ayoub's Dried Fruit and Mixed Nuts

love the chandelier in Ayoub's

If you love nuts and dried fruit, you'll have to check this place out.  Ayoub's first of all is beautiful. It's like walking into another world.  The white shelves, silver urns filled with fragrant spiced nuts and the huge candelier hanging in the centre of the room make for an impressive first impression.

Parthenon Greek Supermarket, Vancouver & a GF rant

Spanakopita (Spinach pie) 

The best part of living in Vancouver is my proximity to good authentic eats if I'm craving it.  I live within 10 minutes of excellent foods from India, Greece, China, Japan, the Middle East, Italy, France and practically every other major country you can think of.  I'm so lucky. Today, the crave of the day was Greek.  The Parthenon is a Greek supermarket that's been around for ages.  It's always been there on W. Broadway as long as I can remember and I was born and raised in Vancouver.  Let me google it for you and see if I can find out.  Oh! Over 45 years!  that's pretty close to my age (which I shall stay mum about).

LATE NIGHT NOSHING AT THE RICHMOND SUMMER NIGHT MARKET

Spicy Grilled Squid Tentacles

LE MARCHÉ ST. GEORGE, A HIDDEN GEM

Le Marché St. George is a quaint little corner store and cafe hidden in a quiet residential neighbourhood.  At once you are struck by its rustic French charm.  The shop is located on St. George Street and E. 28th Avenue in East Vancouver (between Main and Fraser).  

The building is surrounded by potted herbs and plants.  In the back, my friend tells me that the owner has a bee hive and is growing veggies.

RECCHIUTI CONFECTIONS, FERRY BUILDING SAN FRANCISCO

Rose Caramel. 


One bite of this Recchiuti confection and I knew it was quality stuff.

See that one lonely square of Fleur de sel caramel from my bag of many that didn’t get squished in my carry on luggage (it’s the little square with the white diagonal lines at each corner)?  They were very tasty squished anyway.

SAN FRANCISCO CHINATOWN AND R&G LOUNGE

R & G Deep Fried Salt and Pepper Crab.

This baby is what we came for. 

But first, let’s take a peek at the area that R & G Lounge is located. 

JELLY BELLY FACTORY, FAIRFIELD, CALIFORNIA

Belly Flops, from the Jelly Belly Factory in Fairfield, California

Each visitor to the factory tour receives a bag of jelly bellies upon leaving the factory.  The factory requires you to wear their little paper hats during the tour and does not allow photography of the factory facilities.  You can take pictures of the shop and surrounding area though.

In the Jelly Belly shop, I found these interesting jelly beans.  They’re like those energy drinks, except they’re in jelly belly form.  How cool is that?  I bought a few to see if they’d give me “quick energy”.  I imagine the sugar would be doing that anyway, right?

MIETTE PATISSERIE, FERRY BUILDING SAN FRANCISCO

Macarons from Miette Patisserie, Ferry Building SF

I purchased Lavender cookies, Vanilla marshmallows and Pink Rosettes at Miette.

I thought the Rosettes were a gorgeous pink colour and thought they would taste like meringue.

GHIRARDELLI SQUARE, SAN FRANCISCO

On the walk towards Ghirardelli Square from our dinner at Scoma’s, we passed by another one of these “In-N-Out” burger restaurants.   I now regret not having eaten a burger here as my cuz said this is the place you would eat a fast food burger if you wanted a fast food burger.  I asked if it compares to White Spot burgers.  My cousins have tasted White Spot burgers and said it’s really not as good as White Spot, but way better than McDonald’s.   I suspect that White Spot has an edge because of its special sauce. 

This is the walk along Jefferson Street towards Ghirardelli Square. 

The SF trolleys had a huge lineup! yikes!

You can kind of see a part of the lineup in the left of the picture behind the trolleys.  I imagine it would be over an hour wait.

Getting closer…

SAN FRANCISCO JAPANTOWN, AND AN ALMOST DINNER AT BURMA SUPERSTAR IN THE RICHMOND DISTRICT

Japantown, San Francisco, located about 1 mile west of Union Square.