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!

I’m a fan of Notch 8 restaurant having tried their afternoon tea a few times as well as dinner.  This past weekend, we celebrated my friend’s birthday with a breakfast get-together at Notch 8 Restaurant inside the Fairmont Hotel Vancouver.  For breakfast, there is the buffet option as well as a la carte options.  Here’s a look at my breakfast experience at Notch 8.

Notch 8 offers two breakfast buffet options.  There is the Continental Buffet ($28 per person) which includes a selection of breakfast pastries, cereal, granola, fresh fruit and berries with your choice of fresh juice, freshly brewed coffee or Fairmont teas.   You can also opt for the Full Breakfast Buffet which includes both hot and cold morning selections ($34 per person).  The hot and cold items are in separate sections of the buffet area.

In general, I thought that there was a lot of variety with the breakfast buffet.  It was nice that they offered gluten-free breakfast bread and muffins.  For the hot section, there were buttermilk pancakes, Irish steel cut oatmeal, crepes with poached pear compote, porchetta hash, herb roasted nugget potato, and chicken & apple sausage.  There were even some dim sum: steamed pork and shrimp dumplings.  The hot food were kept warm in oval stoneware dishes as opposed to the usual stainless steel buffet tray.

One standout was the hot maple smoked salmon toast with poached egg and hollandaise sauce.

In general, I really enjoyed how everything tasted and the type of food offered.  Below is a photo of my plate from the buffet.  We had one main server for our party and service was excellent.  All hot drinks were ordered through her and she brought them out in a timely manner.  There was an automatic 15% gratuity which was added to our bill.

What was also great about dining at Notch 8 was that our party could opt for the buffet and a la carte.  That is, they did not enforce everyone at the table to have the same thing.  It was really nice of them to be flexible in that sense.  One of girls in our group had this lovely Ricotta Honey Toast featuring honey fig walnut whole wheat loaf, stone fruits, vanilla mascarpone, pistachio brittle and maple syrup.

Thanks to Notch 8 restaurant, the birthday girl received a special dessert platter featuring some of Notch 8’s popular desserts.  This included the following:

Birthday candles were placed on the two #OMG cake slices.  After we sang Happy Birthday, the birthday girl blew out the candles.

Overall Impression

I really enjoyed the breakfast buffet experience at Notch 8 restaurant.  Food tasted great; options were plentiful; and service was 5-star.  Our party of 10 had a wonderful time and I would definitely recommend Notch 8 for special events and group dining.  Rating: 5/5

Related:

• Canada 150 Afternoon Tea at Fairmont Vancouver
• Game On Afternoon Tea at Notch 8
• Silver Screen Hollywood Afternoon Tea

Notch 8 Restaurant & Bar
Address: 900 W Georgia St, Vancouver, BC
Website: www.notch8-dining.com‎