I have been avoiding Cactus Club for a little while now. I think I overdid it

It’s a great vibe. But one can only eat the food at a particular establishment so much before your taste buds tire of it.

So while the boys are just drinking tonight, I’m sticking with Cranberry and Soda and eating instead. Food is always higher on my priority list than alcohol.

Thai Red Curry with Chicken.

Currently my favorite item on the menu, nicely grilled chicken in a red curry sauce with chili oil, veggies and Jasmine rice on the side.

The whole plate just works really well together. The red curry has a lovely South Asian flavor with a little kick from the peppers and enhanced with the fragrant Jasmine rice. Honestly this is a better red curry than a lot of the Thai restaurants I’ve been in.

London Fog Creme Brulee for dessert.

Flavoured Creme Brulees are not my first choice, most often due to the texture being off from a traditional custard. And it was in this case as well. Not as creamy as it should be.

They fired the top a little too long as well. The custard was too warm in spots underneath. It’s a tricky thing to get right though.

Nevertheless it was Creme Brulee, and it was still good.

One thing I can always count on at Cactus Club is good service. It’s Saturday night, it’s packed in here, and the food came quickly and my drink never sat empty for long.

Cactus Club isn’t the greatest restaurant around, but it’s always consistent.

8/10

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Merilynn is kicking off the weekend with a Spicy Margherita.

I’m honestly a little surprised she picked this. I’ve had them and they’re not my favorite but she said it grew on her. I still have to work tomorrow so I just stuck with a cranberry and soda.

This month they have a special dish and apparently it’s very popular.

Lobster Francese

A parmesan crusted lobster tail in a lobster cream sauce with asparagus and tomatoes.

I really enjoyed the lobster tail, nicely cooked with lots of flavour from the parm. The pasta was al dente and the tomatoes and asparagus added a nice touch. The sauce had just a little bit of a kick to give it some intensity. A solid pasta dish.

Merilynn jumped all over the Shrimp and Brie dip, like I figured she would.

This was really delicious. I mean damn good. Only one problem. It’s rich. Too rich. I mean it’s hard to eat more than three bites rich. Tender, succulent shrimp in creamy, melted brie.with bacon and artichokes. Great combo.

We both scored this a 10 initially, but dropped it to an 8 as it’s honestly too hard to eat much of it.

My last visit here was a bit of a disappointment. Tonight’s visit was much, much better.

8/10

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Going to have a quick snack of the Sticky Thai Chicken bites happy hour special.

Sweet and savoury, it has some nice crunch to it. The Thai basil adds a very nice element.

I could do without those plain noodles though. Would be better with rice.

Goid value for happy hour. $14. Hard to beat that.

8/10

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We are in The Olympic Village today visiting one of the better liquor stores I’ve shopped at. They must have 80 (or more) different gins in stock.

And while we are here we are going to grab a snack at one of the neater gastropubs in the city.

Not only for the great vibe, the food, but If I remember right they have 140 beers on tap. Too much selection if anything

This is a peach sour from somewhere I don’t remember.

But it was very good .

Crispy Salmon Sushi

Almost every restaurant of this class seems to have it variance of this type of dish on their menu these days. But Craft Beer Market has put an interesting twist on it.

No it’s not the mango sauce. Or the peppers.

It’s the crispy rice.

To be honest I wasn’t exactly sure what was coming. But mind blown.

Perfect little rectangles of crispy on the outside but moist on the inside.

I’m still trying to wrap my head around how they did this. It has to be deep fried but I don’t know how they kept it so perfectly rectangular.

At any rate it was phenomenal.

The two sauces compliment the salmon very well. Mango has always gone well with salmon, as has soy.

Add a little heat from the peppers and you’ve got a really tasty appetizer here.

When you do come be sure to pop downstairs and check out the display. This is a heritage building, it used to be a storage location for salt. They have windows into the basement that you can see the creosote coated timbers.

9/10

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