For the longest time now I’ve been meaning to stop in at the Pourhouse Restaurant in Gastown to check out there awesome lunch deal that I’ve heard tons about from other bloggers and boy they weren’t wrong!
The menu on its own looked really good and I’m definitely coming back for more but on this visit I wanted to check out the $14 lunch special, for that price you get your choice of 5 or so draft beers, a sandwich and a side.
For my beer choice I went with something that I like to drink but don’t find on tap many places-White Bark Wheat Ale, it’s a local beer and usually sold in liquor stores in large single bottles. It’s light and easy to drink with a floral note to it, this is a beer that I would recommend to anybody especially someone who doesn’t drink beer often.
For my main and side I went with their pulled pork sandwich and cream of cauliflower soup.
The soup was really good without being to rich, it was drizzled with EVOO and garnished with chives and fresh ground pepper, the cauliflower taste was nice without being too pungent.
My pulled pork sandwich was moist and juicy, the smoke flavor wasn’t too strong and the slaw helped cut the richness of the meat, the bread was also pretty good and did a great job of holding together while I ate my sammy-I’m used to having my pulled pork on a bun of some sort so this was a nice change.
The Pourhouse is known for their classic cocktails and since it was after 4PM someplace in the world I decided to have a Jefferson County:
It contained gin, lillet, St Germain, fresh lemon juice, some simple syrup and grapefruit bitters topped with some sparkling wine and garnished with a lemon cheek in this case, the drink is a creation from bar manager Christopher Flett. This hand shaken bad boy was a pleasure to drink, it was mixed perfectly and all the flavors balanced each other out, at $12 it was worth every penny.
I’m already looking forward to my next meal at the Pourhouse-they have a burger that is highly rated by the wonderful Sherman’s Food Adventures, you can read his post about the Pourhouse here.
On my first visit I had the classic clubhouse with fries. For $11.75 you get the usual suspects in a classic clubhouse-freshly roasted chicken, fresh tomatoes and lettuce and perfectly cooked bacon. This was one of the best clubhouses I’ve ever had and it’s simply because of the fresh ingredients. The fries here are hand cut and tossed with salt and pepper and are totally addictive.
One of the more unique food trucks on the Vancouver street food scene is the Juice Truck, operated by Ryan and Zach with help from the smoothie queen Aviya, they’re putting out some of the healthiest street food you can get.
As I mentioned above-this is the banana bread smoothie, it contains the killer banana bread, soy milk, cacao nibs, frozen banana’s and topped with macadamia nuts. It’s the perfect treat and you can taste all the different flavors of the banana bread as well as the other delish ingredients. This smoothie is only around for the month of November and $1 from every banana bread smoothie sold goes to the 
This smoothie really shows off the boys creative side, it’s an avocado pineapple smoothie!, it has avocado and fresh pineapple of course but also contains coconut water, lime, vanilla and agave. The avocado isn’t the star of the show here-it’s the pineapple and coconut, this smoothie blew me away and I’d totally order it again in a heart beat.
The guy’s gave me one of their raw cacao coconut bars to try and I wasn’t sure if I was going to like it but that was changed at 1st bite-it was delicious. It’s a great mix of walnuts, pecans, cacao, coconut meat, coconut flakes, raisins & maple syrup.
I can remember this place from years ago when it was serving up North American food with a 50′s twist so the place has undergone a complete change. It’s an odd space-when you walk in there are 2 small booth’s and a sushi bar you can’t sit at then you walk down some stairs and you’re in lower area of the building-the Guu is upstairs and the design of the building makes Momo like a sushi dungeon.
From the moment I walked in I was seated quickly and the place was busy with a few tourist groups, the one thing I did notice from the minute I walked in was how warm it was in the restaurant and how loud it was also and the picture above is the reason why-it’s a completely open kitchen area concealed by bamboo window shades and a couple framed posters-sushi restaurants aren’t supposed to be hot like a ramen joint.
The miso soup was ok, it was a bit on the salty side but I would say it was pretty standard.
green salad came with the lunch box. It had a soy vinaigrette on it but the “from bag to bowl” aspect of this made it a complete turn off.
Lunch Box A $7.95, chicken teriyaki, California rolls, sunomono salad, gyoza, tempura and a bowl of rice.
Sunomono salad-it was pretty standard and there is better out there.
California Rolls were up next. The imitation crab mix for these wasn’t very fresh. I asked when I ordered my lunch box if I could swap out the California rolls for something else like a yam tempura roll or a kappa maki roll but no substitutions were allowed.
In the box you get a gyoza filled with some kind of meat filling, it tasted good but from being placed in a pool of sauce it was soggy.
Mixed tempura was in the box and was actually my favorite thing in the box, the batter was a bit thick on the ebi but the other tempura veg made up for it.
Now this is where things went really wrong. When my spicy tuna came to my table I totally thought they used salmon from the color and more specifically the smell, I looked a bit closer and realized that it was very chunky fish rubbed with a chili paste that gave it that color but it still smelled like salmon so I ate a piece and immediately spit it out, it was the one of the most disgusting thing I’ve ever had.
Now the old spaghetti factory has turned more tourist destination than local joint but can that be a bad thing-let’s find out shall we. I used to think the restaurant was unique till I was down south in Atlanta and walked past one on the way to eat some killer Mexican food at Rosa Mexicano, it was filled with whimsical antiques and decorative items like velvet armchairs, vintage-looking fringed lamps and booths made from iron bedsteads filled the dining room.
Coming back here was like walking back in time-it’s just the same as when I was here as a kid, I was greeted and seated really quickly and the restaurant was packed with family’s finishing lunch so my server took a bit to get over to me and take my order-no big deal because it gave me some time to check out the newspaper style menu
Complementary bread and whipped garlic butter & regular butter. This is a staple of the Old Spaghetti factory, the bread here isn’t as good as the bread basket at other places-the bread here is really dense but the whipped butter is really good. I wonder how much bread is thrown away on weekly basis seeing the volume they do?
Garden Salad with Creamy Italian Dressing. The choice of minestrone soup or salad is given with every meal and I think I should have gone with the soup, you can also upgrade your salad to a Cesar or a french onion soup for a couple bucks more. The salad was right out of the fridge cold and the iceberg lettuce was kinda lame, the dressing was nice and tart.
The Managers Favorite-choice of 2 sauces in one plate for $10.95. I went with the classic meat sauce and something I have never heard of-Mizithra Cheese from Greece, it was supposed to be a sauce of browned butter and the cheese but it was more like regular buttered noodles with yummy cheese which is all good in the end. The meat sauce on the other hand was just of-they rinse the pasta here which makes it impossible for the sauce to stick to so I was left with sauce on top of noodles that ended up being sopped up with that bread.
Spumoni Ice Cream. The classic Old Spaghetti Factory spumoni ice cream, this was a nice treat at the end of the meal and was pretty good.
Incendio has been a favorite of mine for good pizza and traditional Italian favorites before Gastown was blessed with having so many great choices for eating and then to see it destroyed by fire in the space above the restaurant in 2009 it wasn’t clear if the restaurant could rebuild in the great space they has before but I’m happy to say that there back with the same charm inside as before and the great food that made them famous.
it’s a cloudy beer that is on the light side taste wise, it’s got a floral taste to it similar to Lavender.
When we were seated we were served a piece each of house made Focaccia, as I ate mine I noticed 2 things,1-it was cold and 2-it was really tough at the end. As we ate our other appy we asked for some more bread and were informed that it would be $1 per slice and guests are only provided with one piece each for a meal-no big deal at the end of the day.
Baked Meatballs in Tomato Sauce $7 for 3. Served piping hot from their brick oven this appy was pretty good, the sauce they make is nice and not on the sweet side and the cheese was piled on, one thing that was odd was the sauce to meatball ratio-there could have been a couple more meatballs and the balls were kinda tough-Nook and the Judas Goat have meatballs that will melt in your mouth.
The Margherita $14.99. The Incendio version of the margherita isn’t what I’m used to. This was more of a cheese pizza with some basil, there was a good amount of cheese and the crust was chewy but on the thick side, this was out least favorite pie of the night.
The Carnivore $14.99. Pepperoni, ham, prosciutto and chorizo sausage make up this bad boy, I like to think of it as the Italian version of the meat lovers pizza. All the toppings were great and the chorizo added a nice bite to the pizza.
The Capricciossa $14.99. Ham, pepperoni, artichoke and olives. This pizza was the clear winner of the night, the addition of the olives added that great salty touch to the other big flavors on the pizza.
