My next door neighbor is from poland and she would occasionally invite us over and cook eastern european food for us. Last time, she made homemade perogies and cabbage rolls.. They were soo delicious I was hooked. I was never a real big fan of perogies because of a really bad experience but then I had them in Oświęcim and Krakow and realized that my bad experience was probably due to the fact that I bought them frozen from a small valley farm. Authentic is the way to go!
Ever since the gracious dinner from my neighbor, I've been craving said perogies, cabbage rolls, schnitzels..all that good stuff.. So a visit to Translyvania Flavor was obviously in order! This was a restaurant I had wanted to go to numerous times but no one would come with me.. ughhh . whyyy!!
Okay, I guess it had to do with the fact that from the outside, the restaurant is pretty hidden except for a little glowing sign on the side. It doesn't look like anything special and that sushi place next door takes most of the focus away. and I guess when I say the name of the restaurant, most of my friends are like huh? why can't we just go to normal places like milestones and moxies. UGH be adventurous guys! So I finally found a friend who was up to try some european food. Although he was thinking more like swiss swedish (though the only swedish place I can think of in van is ikea..), but I think he was pleasantly surprised.
The restaurant is operated by a family and we were greeted kindly by both at the door. The restaurant looked a little dark so we opted to sit by the window (i need the best lighting I can get for a p+s camera). Presented with our menus, there were numerous choices to choose from including borscht goulash and schnitzels. There were also several specials of the day to choose from. friend got one of them (grilled platter of various meats) while I obviously ordered the cabbage rolls and perogies.. what I was craving for a couple months now.
Perogies were yummyy. There was a bit of a sauce overload, but I quite liked the red pepper sauce so I just scraped most of the sauce off. no biggy. The Cabbage roll had too much saurekraut on top but it was tender with the right amount of filling inside. The meat platter was just a selection of various grilled meats. Some of them was a little chewy and not too good, so we weren't huge fans.. For dessert, she told us the special was a custard cake made by her mother. Although the fried doughnuts sounded tempting, the custard cake was the way to go! It was definitely something I've never had before. The custard part was bouncy and different but it was good.. though it got a little filling at the end. It was a large piece!!
I genuinely enjoyed this restaurant and I recommend everyone to try it out as well!!
I went to Granville Island one sunny day and went on over to Perogy Place. The place was ran by asians ..which was already a red light to how good the food would be.. We ended up just getting one cabbage roll to share because it was Massive. Upon cutting inside, it was FILLED with rice. The cabbage wasn't tender and I wasn't a fan of rice filled cabbage roll. This place was a thumbs down for me.
Couple days ago, we went on over to Ukrainian Village for a shared lunch to give us some energy for pre biking (Great times, cept I fell off and now have a huge bruise..glad it's raining the next couple days at least). The restaurant is quite small and homey with a ton of cactus plants by the window. During lunch time they have a specials menu and we just ordered the 5 perogy and cabbage roll to share. There was only one waitress and she was really nice.. I thought she was not going to be pleased at us for sharing one thing, but she didn't mind :) The food came quickly and the perogies were okay. We had a selection of saurekraut, potato, and cheese I believe. We both thought they were nothing special..Seemed like the ones bought at superstore.. We found the cabbage roll also to just be good but nothing greattt. I think I was spoiled by my neighbor's homemade ones so it'll be hard to compare. I guess it was filling though, I wouldn't be opposed to come back and try the other items on the menu. Lots of people were stopping by to look at the menu and quickly coming in. I guess Ukrainian food is a hit after all :)
