Fist Feast 2: Red Fish Blue Fish

Welcome to the second installment of what I hope will be a weekly feature!  Red Fish Blue Fish continues to be bar against which all  Victoria street food locales are measured.  Operating  at 1006 Wharf Street in Victoria, British Columbia at the foot of Broughton on the pier below Wharf Street, they are tucked away on an old part of the wharf out of view of the tourist throngs and pedestrian traffic; yet they still manage to draw a HUGE crowd.  My bud Erica and I met up for our first taste of fresh, locally caught seafood of the Spring and arrived to find a decent line.  The line can look daunting but is well worth the wait. The service is fast, efficient and above all consistently delicious. They also are an Ocean Wise eatery so you know not only is the seafood fresh but also sustainable - BONUS.  I was disappointed to find that they were out of my favorite order - Quallicum Bay Scallops- so I settled for the daily special- smoked tuna tacone  (perfectly seared smokes tuna ensconced in grilled tortilla hand rolls - taco-cone- with a custom aoli) and their new feature and an absolute MUST deep-fried pickles.  Modest dock-side seating arrangements of overturned Ikea garbage cans encourage fervent protection of your order from skeazy seagulls- an aspect that turns the experience into an unchecked sport.  

Red Fish Blue Fish is never hit or miss - I've never had a bad experience. In my opinion, they embody all that is fresh and good about Victoria food and easily demonstrate our cities food culture. It's one of my most recommended spring and summer must-eat locales. So, if you are a tourist or were born and raised here put the time in to standing in line and battling the bad-mannered gulls and get some fish for your face.  It'll thank you.

Lady Marmalade - Unexpectedly mediocre

I don't know what possesses me to get up at 7:30am to conquer both a mountain and breakfast before noon on my day off but there is something to be said about making the time for a guilt free afternoon of bedcapades and cake - even if it's sunny - that what blinds are for.
Locally loved, Lady Marmalade is an ideal choice to jump-start such a morning. Heavy on organic ingredients and unassumingly health conscious they pride themselves on  local farm products and serve up bread from Victoria's staple organic bakery, Wildfire.  The menu is diverse but slender offering hearty home cooking with a heavy Mexican tilt. From what I've seen in the past the service is usually pretty laid back without being to smug or lazy- a balance rarely achieved in such an atmosphere. After only being open for five years in Victoria and two in Toronto, Lady Marmalade is an established institution regularly packed around late breakfast and lunch time.
Chris and I rolled down there Friday morning just after 8:30 and watched their first table pay their bill, leaving the restaurant in our hands.  We leaned hard into a pot of coffee and ordered a couple tofu scrambles with sides of chorizo. Well, we ended up with plain old-spiceless sausage that were good nonetheless but the mistake wasn't corrected despite the order being pretty damn straightforward.  I've had the tofu scram before and it'll really get a fire lit under your ass packed with bockchoy, shitake, spinach and basmati brown rice but this time THE SAAAAAAAAAAAAALT...made me want to soak my eyeballs in saline.  Lucky Chris likes salt so he he had no arguments on that front. I've come to the conclusion that a high volume restaurant are used to just pumping out multiple orders at a time but when it gets down to individual orders the ball gets dropped from time to time. It was tolerable and as I've had good experiences there before, I'm going to cut them some slack. But maybe take a note if you run a restaurant in the area...you never know when some over-indulgent Gen Y'er is going to review your food and post it to her modest blog page...and if it's not even modest...word of mouth travels fast in a city like Victoria..
 So, all said, I do suggest you go get yourself fueled up there and go do something with your day - even if it's only going down to Fisherman's Warf to watch dogs bark confusedly at the domesticated seals.   End it at 2pm between the sheets with a piece of cake and you've got yourself a day in the life of the Unmanageable Oven.

Addendum: My friend Hannaha went for lunch there today and texted me saying the service was HORRENDOUS but the soup was amazing. And when I mentioned this post to Tired Tim from work he said people were walking out the last time he went in because the server was chatting up some girl at the bar...not impressed, guys.

First of a new Regular Feature: FIST FEAST: La Taquisa...aruba!...i mean Ariba!

Spring has sprung...burrito juice all down the back of my leg. The sun is out and so is the street food creep - FINALLY! My girl Hannah and I ventured into the blossomed streets of the Cook St Village to hit up La Taquisa.  In the heart of the village in an ample outdoor alcove, La Taquisa sits solo (they where neighbored by Red Fish Blue Fish last summer...why they are not there? answers please!) with a great seating area and standing fire pit - still needed for the chilly breeze.    The two cooks running the show (I want to say Bret and Derrek but I;m embarrassed to say that I think I'm wrong - corrections welcome) were super sweet even though I harassed them with a barrage of whiny questions regarding the sorry state of food cart numbers and Victoria's tardiness in following the Portland trend of parking lot food courts.  This is when I got some friggin killer news: that alcove is going to be full of food vendors very soon! I am floored. You guys do get how amazing this is going to be and how much this could open up street food culture in Victoria, right?? I just know yer all with me on this one...so definitely more on that in the future.
We both ordered burritos straight up, with chicken - mine espicy.  We struck up a conversation with another apparent connoisseur and thoroughly enjoyed the dripping mess that snuck out of the burrito (which I opened upside down...shocking - I know).  This to me, is what street food is all about - making minute-to-minute friends, shooting the breeze about food and community and hanging out in the sunshine, or the rain or climate-change -rapture- induced deluges of blood - whatever.

La Taquisa is doing it right, in my opinion. they make their own flour tortillas right in front of you, the service is fast, friendly and engaging, made to-order and they actually ask you if you are enjoying it. It was fantastic...It's not just about what you eat but how the experience went down.  I think sometimes people get confused and think that I just love to eat.  Not the case...it's a lovely bi-product, but it's really about the way food is experienced as an aspect of a strong culture.  La Taquisa is a fine example of this.
I look forward to getting back there to try the 5 tacos of your choosing for $10 and to trying out the other vendors set to make their debut, shortly.

Check out La Taquisa on facebook to have some say in their expanding menu and to SUPPORT LOCAL BUSINESS!

Simply Chaotic Cafe Fantastico - Parkside

Breakfast Board (10)

Poached Eggs & Beans (6)

Scrambled Eggs & Chicken (8)

As many of you know Fantastico is one of my personal favorites for it's commitment to working with great local food makers.  At the Parkside Victoria at 810 Humbolt, this location offers a breakfast menu that capitalizes on contemporary simplicity with neatly streamlined breakfast menu. Like it's other locations, it is tucked away humbly out-of-view  with a slightly smug confidence that their followers will take the time to visit.
The menu, on paper, is ideal in my mind, offering casual high quality ingredients such as local farm-fresh eggs, fresh artisan breads and cheeses and house made compotes.
Being relatively new, I'm going to cut them some slack as the set up is awkward and the service organization a bit adhoc. Two small rooms, one for the service counter and one for dining are connected by a narrow hallway, off of which the closet of a kitchen is housed. We sat down in the tiny but bright dining room and waited while we watched one service person buzz around in a state of busy confusion.  We searched for menus or some sign of the ordering process until we were informed that all orders were self serve at the counter.  After getting traffic jammed in the hallway, I found the main room  packed with people coming, going staying and ordering. It would be really simple for them to put in a POS system in the dining area and have a service person dedicated to running orders but for the time being that's just the way it's gonna be.
I wish I could say that the food was worth the minor frustration but it does need some work. The Breakfast Board ($10) was a bit sparse but offered  a nice local selection of meat, cheese and eggs. The Poached Eggs and Beans ($6) was a rustic country style presentation but somehow, while spiced, had an overpowering blandness to it that spicy-heavy beans sometimes do and was not calmed by the generous dose of hot sauce I treated it with. Chris had Scrambled Eggs with Chicken Confit and Potato Leek Gallette ($8) and it was intensely good but the presentation was a bit too simple bordering on diner-slanged eggs and over-fried hash.
Overall, it's worth a try but maybe give it a couple months to let them get used to the volume they are serving.  Further, with a menu that simple but with an orientation towards local fare I hope to see perhaps a bi-monthly feature come in with the Spring season.