It is great that we have just had 2 new restaurants go live in the last week: the famous DB Moderne Bistro and the equally enticing Latitude.

Latitude

The former owners of Tofino’s critically acclaimed RainCoast Cafe bring their new offering to Vancouver’s Main Street with a menu inspired by the wine regions of North and South America. Located on a hip stretch of Main Street, this friendly restaurant serves fantastic food and great wines.

DB Moderne Bistro

I was fortunate enough to be taken to DB Moderne Bistro after skiing on Sunday and I was the first person to use the Letsgofordinner card there.  I had great expectations about the meal, the service, ambiance and interior – it is not a let down.  Lets start in reverse order – the interior – not opulent but restrained, sleek wood everywhere and none of the noisy sounds  associated with other contemprary locations where the sounds bounces around like kangaroos on acid.   The ambiance is set off well by the decor and complimented by the staff who are friendly, clear spoken and knowledgeable.

The meal lets put it across clearly it is not as expensive as you think $25 -30 Mains $10 – 12 for starters and deserts.    I was suppose to go to Bray where a school mate lives and visit the Fat Duck as we had heard so much about Heston’s scientific and precise cooking.  Now I could not see the benefit of such things until I ate at DB.   I choose 2 of the toughest things to cook well:  lobster and souffle and they were perfectly cooked.  The Lobster had a perfect texture and the souffle rich and light.  I will not go on as there are sites dedicated to reviews but you should all treat yourself to some of this food.

Oh forgot to mention the wine list the White Burgundy – Saint Verain yum and the La Frenz Cab Sav – big fruit and the cherry flavour was stunning

Please stay tuned for future Letsgofordinner.com contests with certificate give aways!

The Elixir bar area has two adjoining rooms, allowing for easy food service and many places for people to sit, stand and chat.  The decor is done like a 50’s Parisian bistro but shiny, big and Canadian like.

The staff were constantly swirling around offering food and drink and both were snarfled as quickly as they could be offered.  The steak frite on a frite was delicious, the Thai chicken sticks were superbly spiced and this description is akin to calling a Ferrari just a car.

The sushi was tucked away and tasty.   The deep fried coconut shrimp with prosciutto, was a Rothko with picture frame – unnecessary.   The pizza with fennel sausage was very good with the sausage avoiding the bitter liquorice taste of the  similarly named. The mini burgers were two bite morsels of joy, the cheese, bacon and pickles were a lovely balance and avoided the gastro lead feel of many other burgers.  Whew one of the few times I will be allowed to comment on the food, it has been building up.

The last thing required for all good parties is interesting people capable of great conversation.  People able to string sentences together about many subjects without delving into the overly famaliar patter of home prices, TV shows and politics makes for  a great evening.  Further, the abscence of descriptors – like, cute, hilarious and it was really funny made for completely engaging evening. Hurrah.

Evenings of such balance rarely occur and I look to go back again to try a real meal.

Catch a few images of the event.

We signed 5 restaurants this week: Juno Sushi and Diva about to go live with S Restaurant, Rockwells and Atithi live now. DB Moderne has just gone live.  A few more are in the hopper with emphasis on bars and more casual dining, keep coming back

Atithi Overview

As a way of improving the quality of the customer experience we are experimenting.  One thing we are trying is visiting recently signed restauarnts to make sure everything runs smoothly.  The by product of this is that we can tell you a bit about the restaurant. I attended Atithi, an Indian restaurant on Burrard almost at West Broadway.  We were referred to it by Vanfoodster (Richard Wolak – thanks).  Starter was a daily special the wild cod pakora -  a must try.  Lamb Palak and Chicken Chettinad both above average.  The service was very good and  the Keiths Indian Pale Ale was well chosen compliment.  The price was $40-50 for two with good portions.  I refer you to Vanfoodster,  above for a more detailed review.  The redemption of our certificate went off without a hitch. It is the policy of letsgofordinner.com not to be a review site, but to offer a richer and perspective on the restaurant

Atithi – Launched in Record Time

We were introduced to Atithi on Wednesday and we had them live by Friday and the first redemption was on Saturday.  Great work guys.

Certificate and Christmas
Do not forget to use your certificates before the Christmas blackout period…but the Glowbal Group is staying open with www.letsgofordinner.com for the whole season.. yeah.  So you can visit Sanafir, Italian Kitchen, Society, Trattoria, Coast, Glowbal Grill and you go all holiday season

The Glowbal Bar and Satay Grill – will be closed over the Christmas break for upgrades.

The gift memberships and certificates are still available – Do not forget to order your gift memberships and certificates before it is 2 late – $50 gift certificate and 1 year membership is $40.00- order before Dec 21 at 5pm  and we will get them to you.

Volumes
After crunching the data we were up across the board with 50% increase in new members November over October this year.

Directory Update

We will be releasing a directory update shortly .. thanks for all the feedback and next release will also have a ranking….watch this space.

Consumer – Marketing
Letsgofordinner have agreed to sponsor the Vancouver Brunch Meet Up Group and a Coffee Meetup- thanks Lee for all your help

We are talking to some of the leading Vancouver food reviews site and bloggers to get the message out.

BNI team - Richmond and Downtown Vancover – great to meet you all and hope to do some business together.  Thanks for the restaurant leads and enjoy the meals.

Thanks Stephanie, James and Alvin student interns from UBC and SFU for the help with raising the profile on campus

Consumer – Website
About to start a revamp of the website, improve the tracking and messages.
We have just begun offering the ability to buy our certificates and memberships as gifts.

Easier way to use card in restaurants. We just started promoting our preload capability to our 4000 members.  You can now reload your card with money and then go to any of our restaurants and prsnet your acrd, the card will then be swiped and automatically a certificate will be purchased and redeemed

It has been one of the fastest periods for sign ups with over a 100 sign ups in less than 2 weeks

Like to thank Cec  for printing posters for the different Charity events we are involved in

Consumer – Charity
We just donated two full menberships and certificates to the Rocket Builders Charity event for November 26th event. It was a very good fund raising event. I had a great time talking to everyone there.

We are in a dialogue with Givernation and it would be great to work with them – great team and novel concept.

Restaurants
Wanted to thank Zach for joining us on restaurant sales.  Zach has joined us from a restaurant supply that works with 140 of Vancouver’s best restaurants.  Zach is lining up some delicious and new restaurants check out www.letsgofordinner.com in the next 10 days for new restaurants.

Society, Sabatinos just went live and DB Moderne should be going Live in the next few days .. fingers crossed

Bistro Pastis – already live this month

That’s it for a delicious month.  Watch the tweets at FrancisSteiner

Went to Nuba restaurant last week, which I enjoyed very much.  I had as main Lamb Nibbeh plate and some Majdra, hummous and goat feta with olives as starters.. very tasty.  It was probably amongst the best lamb spiced patties I have that covers TO, Tel Aviv and London.  The service was efficient and accomodating.. even some smiles.  Would go back again.  The 7 other people seemed to enjoy too.

Vancouver’s pink pearl world restaurant on fire last week ….it was strange reading on twitter about people arranging to go there  after the fire… did not get the news?

Tojo’s restaurant founder was on Knowledge channel talking about how he invented california roll in 1971 to hide the seaweed from Vancouver customers; great short but I thought it was invented in thelate 60’s in California… oh the contraversy… knives at dawn in Portland .. neutral territory.

Vancouver Asian cuisine featured in the NYT – a good story on all things Asian food restaurants with an emphasis on value and Vancouver’s hot dog

Cooking

Dirty_Apron – was pushing out across twitter that it only a few spaces left for its cooking course. I have to swing by and visit the new shop. I hear it is suppose to be quite an amazing selection of food.
Looks like another Observer food magazine out last week with a few veggie specials by Nigel Slater .. also food event
Was reading an old May Sunday NYT and found what appeared to be a cool cook book – Ratio The simple codes behind the craft of everyday cooking Michael Ruhlman for stocks, doughs and sauces.  I like the idea of knowing the correct ratio of x to y to make anything you felt like.. just remember the ratios. Makes it easier to do lots of different food… feels like a food geeks power trip.

Made the extended family Nigel Slater mixed leaf salad with coriander and an Asian influenced dressing- getting the right amount of ginger  was the big challenge… very enjoyable.

Reading another NYT found this recipe for baked cinnamon puffs by the now Paris based David Lebovitz – sounds delishes and appears to be a great alternative to donuts

Miscalleneous

Stumbled across this interesting article on TGIF restaurant using social media – facebook page – sign up for a free burger, it can’t hurt

Funky and single purpose technology get a tweet when pastries are fresh from Shoreditch London – what the white cube gallery wants fresh sweets?

Starbucks launches pilot programme to recycle cups  – very good …