Friday, July 21, 2006

culinary disappointment

One of the things I miss most about living in Vancouver is knowing where to go to eat.  The restaurants in Vancouver change as quickly as the shoes in my shoe closet!  While we were living in Vancouver, it was so nice knowing where to go to eat from the plethora of restaurants of every different cuisine in every neighbourhood.

Last Friday, Brian and I found ourselves in the unusual circumstance of going out for dinner in Vancouver.  We were in the Broadway & Oak/Granville area and we just did not know where to go!  A friend told us that there was a new restaurant closeby on Broadway, so we headed there.

We knew from the cheesy valet parking and the patrons that were dressed-to-impress at 6:00 pm (!!) that this was NOT the place for us, but without other options, we found ourselves looking for parking.  It turns out that the place is a chain called Joey's Mediterranean Grill.  It is an updated version of Joey Tomato's in Coquitlam (which, were were told by the waitstaff, has also had a facelift and is no longer a pasta joint).

It reminded me of Cactus Club - the waitstaff is HOT, the menu offers a nice variety and it's all OK, but it is definitely not worth the prices!  And I'm still wondering why they call themselves a "Mediterranean Grill" when their dishes seem hardly Mediterranean, except for the dishes with the word "Med" or "Mediterranean" in them!

Anyway, I think I'm mostly disappointed because in the past, we definitely would have found something better.  Instead, in our once-in-a-blue-moon dining experience in Vancouver, we ended up in a mainstream restaurant that did little to satisfy my palette but at the same time cleansed my pocketbook.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

DATE: 7/27/2006 7:13:18 PM
Go revisit Banana Leaf .. it rocks!