What’s a quick, easy way of grabbing a healthy, meal in Downtown Vancouver within a 90-minute window? Try Tractor Digital!

Tractor’s seventh location, Tractor Digital, is a cashless restaurant. You make your order online and swing by their location at 666 Burrard, grab the order with your name on it, and go!

You can select your desired pick up time at check out, thereby eliminating the lines and wait times typical during the weekday lunch rush.

No lines and no waiting. Pre-ordering is also great for the kitchen team as it allows them to prepare customers’ meals precisely for when customers walk in the door.

While Tractor Digital will share the bright, modern aesthetic of other locations, the new eatery is grab-and-go style and will not have dine-in seating.

All of its 1,800 square feet is dedicated to the full kitchen serving seasonally inspired and locally sourced salads, sandwiches, soups, stews, and bowls made-to-order.

Tractor Digital is open from 10 am to 8 pm Monday to Friday for lunch and dinner.

Disclosure: I was invited to try Tractor Digital.

A few months ago, I attended a wedding held at the Four Seasons Hotel in Vancouver. The dinner reception featured a 10-course Chinese banquet. While a wedding at the Four Seasons is certainly grandiose, I thought the dinner was quite lackluster and fel short of my expectations.

According to this article from 2012, the Four Seasons Vancouver has a dedicated Chinese kitchen. The food is prepared in partnership with Grand Dynasty restaurant in Burnaby.

To start, the dishes tasted really bland and needed salt and seasoning. I don’t know if this was requested by the hosting families as low salt is favoured for the health of elders.

The presentation of the dishes certainly lacked oohs and ahhs. The dishes came in individual portions and were served in more of a Western-style. In a traditional Chinese banquet, the dishes as a whole are presented to the table first and then subsequently divided. Perhaps this is not as logistically feasible in a hotel setting.

I also thought the compartmentalized dinner plates looked a bit odd. It made some of the dishes looked rather sad especially the rice and noodles. They sort of looked like food served for toddlers on a kid’s plate.

One of the dishes that was simple yet poorly executed was actually the fried rice! It had a burnt taste to it. I had others taste it and they also concurred. However, it just seemed that my dish was one of the isolated cases.

Service was terrific as the pace of the dinner was good and servers were friendly. It was unfortunate that the food was only about average considering the price tag.

My sense is that the Western-style plated dinners or buffet might fare better than the Chinese banquet. It was a good effort but the food and its presentation could be improved in my opinion.

Here are the dishes we had for the 10-course dinner:

Four Seasons Signature Platter

The platter featured roasted pork, cold jelly fish with sesame oil, mixed diced seafood in bean curd, and pastry with whole abalone.

Sauteed Chicken & Squid with Baby Bok Choy

Conpoy, Dried Seafood & Bamboo Piths in Soup

Lobster Cooked in Superior Broth

Sauteed Three Kind of Fresh Mushrooms & Season Vegetables

Roasted Crispy Chicken

Braised E-Fu Noodle with Abalone Sauce & Assorted Fresh Seafood Fried Rice

Baked Lotus Paste Pastry & Deep Fried White Sesame Pastry

For a wonderfully delicious and well-executed Chinese banquet dinner, see my post Peninsula Restaurant:

Things got really “out of hand” at the Halloween party this year…

I picked up these Halloween goodies from Breka Bakery: Pumpkin Dule De Leche Donut, Long-John Ghost Donut, Chocolate Spider-Web Donut, and Finger Cookies.  Hope you had a spooktacular Halloween!