Restaurant suggestions on Robson St Vancouver

[Cruisingirl2012]

Hi,  I seen many restaurants on this street and near are Hotel however just wondering what's our biggest bang for our buck!.

 

 

[martincath]

Caveat - the best bang for MY buck may not be the same as yours... 😉

 

Robson is pretty long, with several popular hotels right on it and even more within a couple of blocks either side. Down at the stadium end there are a ton of cheap & cheerful choices; right up at the park end similar. In-between things get a little fancier in places.

 

If I had to pick a single right-on-Robson resto I'd always opt for Forage - an excellent 'locavore' resto that's super-convenient for Blue Horizon, Listel, Tropicana, Greenbrier hotels - but given that there are literally hundreds of restos of all stripes and vastly-varying pricepoints on Robson, let alone within a few blocks of any given hotel that's on it, you'd have to give more info about which hotel, how far you want to walk, what you're willing to spend and any loved/hated types of food before I could target a recommendation well for your buck!

[KeepCalmBearOn]

4 hours ago, Cruisingirl2012 said:

Hi,  I seen many restaurants on this street and near are Hotel however just wondering what's our biggest bang for our buck!.

 

Uh....  which hotel are you in and what is your budget in CAD?

 

Forage is very good and I'm also a fan of Santouka and Stepho's Greek Taverna.

 

[martincath]

5 hours ago, scottca075 said:

Uh....  which hotel are you in and what is your budget in CAD?

 

Forage is very good and I'm also a fan of Santouka and Stepho's Greek Taverna.

Next time you're in town I would advise a bit more of a walk to Takis on Davie (almost nextdoor to the original Stepho's) for much better old school Greek food (and generally nicer service) Scott! Stepho's is the very definition of a Vancouver restaurant that is way too popular for the quality of the experience - portion size is always generous but that alone seems to be enough to keep them ridiculously-popular with the 'dudebro' crowd. I have heard that the Robson location is more pleasant than the original as there aren't as many bars in the area, so the customers are less likely to be drunk bridge & tunnelers, but you should find yourself having a much nicer experience overall at Takis.

 

Having said that, since The Greek opened in Yaletown though I haven't even been back to Takis either! The vibe is 'generic modern Yaletown resto' but the food is authentic (younger generation of the family who own Anatoli over in North Van basically wanted to open a less-stuffy resto without the typical 'blue & white everything' style that so many Greek restos seem to feel obliged to have). Best rabbit dishes on any regular menu in the city, solid octopus and lamb - it's become our hands-down go-to Greek resto in Vancouver (but NB: their new Gastown branch is smaller with a more limited menu - no bunny!)

[Cruisingirl2012]

12 hours ago, scottca075 said:

 

Uh....  which hotel are you in and what is your budget in CAD?

 

Forage is very good and I'm also a fan of Santouka and Stepho's Greek Taverna.

 

We are staying at Barclay Hotel next to Cora's I believe and $50CAN for two max for a budget.  We enjoy Thai or Asian cuisine and also Pubs.  

[KeepCalmBearOn]

6 hours ago, Cruisingirl2012 said:

We are staying at Barclay Hotel next to Cora's I believe and $50CAN for two max for a budget.  We enjoy Thai or Asian cuisine and also Pubs.  

 

Santouka would be a lot less than $50CAD. It is very casual, but about as good as ramen gets. The broth is just sublime.

 

MartinCath, thanks for the heads up. Good Greek is very hard to find in So Cal.

[martincath]

7 hours ago, Cruisingirl2012 said:

We are staying at Barclay Hotel next to Cora's I believe and $50CAN for two max for a budget.  We enjoy Thai or Asian cuisine and also Pubs.  

Ramen joints are definitely good 'bang for buck' on the budget end - not familiar with Santouka myself so can't compare and contrast that, but Kintaro is only 10mins walk and it's probably the single most popular one in the city (personally I prefer Ramen Jinya's premium pork broth, but I'd say that about half of my foodie friends think Kintaro is best while nowhere else gets more than ~20% of the vote).

 

Thai we really don't have any truly excellent examples of - Vancouver generally has much better Vietnamese food than Thai, but Phnom Penh offers a pretty broad Viet-Cambodian with a bit of Thai menu and has been an absolute fixture in Chinatown for over 30 years now, with queues pretty much every dinner time. Not close to your hotel, but it's ridiculous value for the quality of the food (service is curt at best, surly at worst, and seating is big shared tables with plastic tablecloths so you can tell every penny is going toward the food not the environs!) We also have some tremendous Vietnamese sammich shops, like Ba Le (in Chinatown on Main St, no website), DD Mau, and despite the somewhat cheesy name, Viet Sub is also good!

 

Banana Leaf is a small local chain of Malaysian restos, three of which are in the West End (Robson & Denman branch 10mins walk from Barclay). You could definitely get a couple of courses each within your budget here too, and Malay food tends to be a pretty rare thing most places so it might be a novelty for you.

 

Izakayas are another thing Vancouver has a lot of, but not many other places (outside Japan) have any at all - sort of a 'Japanese Tapas Pub' with broad menus of noodles/sushi/teriyaki typical fare plus also sausages & chicken wing type things that wouldn't be out of place in a 'normal' North American or even British pub. Guu and Hapa are small chains, Kingyo on Denman is the most popular independent one. You'll be able to order 5+ dishes to share on a $50 budget if you're careful when ordering - but plates are small, so perhaps bulking out some proteiny options here with something like a Poutine from elsewhere would help if you want a substantial meal.

 

We have one of the biggest food truck scenes on the continent - this site gives details of which trucks are where and when they'll be there, and while we don't really have anything like Portland's 'pod' system they do tend to cluster in small groups at several places around town. Ordering one thing from four different trucks and you can have a ludicrous variety of food styles with very good value in terms of how much food for the price.

 

Tacos we also have a ton of - in general our Mexican food scene goes from weaksauce to godawful, but there are a couple of actually-authentic taco places (la Taqueria chain especially) and even more totally inauthentic but tasty, with lots of local produce used. The only chef in the city to ever hold a Michelin Star works for the biggest local taco chain believe it or not! If in doubt, seafood tends to be the best type locally.

 

Traditional pubs - I've yet to find a good Irish/Scottish/English pub, the handful we've ever had have closed down but then I'm a beer-loving expat Brit with years behind the jump so my standards veer toward pedantry. If you're used to typical North American 'Irish bars' though you'll probably find the likes of Mahony & Sons perfectly pleasant. The local craft beer scene is excellent, so there are plenty of good bars that aren't pretending to be pubs from my perspective - Tap & Barrel have a string of excellent patios, better-than-it-has-to-be-for-the-price bar food, and a huge range of local beers & wines. The places with decent grub, good pricing, and a nice vibe we've found is a toss-up between Malone's (it's under a hostel, so the pricing is kept low to entice the folks staying above to come downstairs) and Moose's Down Under, an Aussie bar with a large number of expat staff (and of course kangaroo on the menu).

 

If all you want is a late night of cheap booze and good craic, then Brickhouse in Chinatown (no food except bags of nuts/crisps) is about the diviest of dive bars downtown - but it can be quite difficult to get into as the owner, Leo, is an awesome-but-quirky individual who runs the place solo during the week whenever he can be bothered opening (usually some time after 8pm, but sometimes never, and it gets used for filming a lot so sometimes it looks open but the place is full of camera gear and cables). Since the bar is at the back of the building he keeps the front door locked most nights even when open - you have to walk up an alley and bang on the fire door to get let in! Fri/Sat he usually hires a coatcheck girl to work the front door - and force you to hand over anything bigger than a small purse, as despite the insanely-cheap prices a lot of the clientele try to smuggle in bottles of liquor to reduce their spend even further! The cheapest and stickiest pool table in the city, utterly random furniture from the "Weird Uncle basement rumpus room collection" - it's hipster heaven but dates back to before hipsters, so they love it even more and tend to infest the place by 10pm most nights. Not long for this world too - condo supposed to be going in where this currently sits, but there's enough pushback from locals it's been constantly delayed (more about the fact that Jimi Hendrix used to live on the same block, and that building is one of the few remaining from the old African-Canadian neighbourhood of Hogan's Alley, than about Brickhouse - Leo would love to sell for a huge profit!!!)

 

Lastly - Happy Hour! Many local places have jumped onto the bandwagon since it was legalized, so you can find some bargains in pretty swanky spots for HH that might be totally unaffordable the rest of the time. The downside - you have to order a drink, but on the upside there's also discounted booze! Some very high end places, like Hy's Steakhouse and Joe Fortes, have serious discounts on HH food - oysters for a buck a shuck are probably the big 'loss leader' to entice people in. If you are careful, compare & contrast the regular menu with HH pricing to figure out which items are discounted most, you could easily partake in what the wife and I call 'dribbling' your way through a neighbourhood - short for 'drinking and nibbling' rather than indicating we drink so much we are left a drooling mess on the floor... 😉 Deals change all the time, so I'd suggest hitting Yelp with a Search along the lines of 'best happy hour deals in Vancouver BC' and see what pops up.

[martincath]

2 hours ago, scottca075 said:

MartinCath, thanks for the heads up. Good Greek is very hard to find in So Cal.

No worries Scott - we're huge fans (used to vacation there annually, my sister lived there for years, one of our oldest friends is Greek, and we lived in Toronto for close to a decade - the third-largest Greek city in the world after Melbourne and Athens) so it's safe to say that we know Greek food passing well... there's much less of it on the Left Coast and what there is tends to be like touristy bars on Greek beaches, cheesy decor and dips/pita/skewers and grilled meats/calamari focused menus. Makes sense, as it's pretty hard to screw up a fried or grilled dish if you pay any attention whatsoever so the baseline standard for this type of Greek food is almost always decent.

 

I can cope with cheesy decor - checking off the stereotypical expectations really helps with casual visitors and Vancouver's resto scene is brutal, so anything that helps put customer's bums on seats and keep them in business is all good; even waitrons bringing out flaming cheese and shouting 'Opa!' if it's not too often(!) - but it's unusual to find the more interesting slow-cooked stuff done well, or indeed at all most of the time beyond the obligatory moussaka. For me, any resto that offers octopus, rabbit or offal is worth trying - and specific to Greek places, order the Pastitsio as this is a much better indicator of authenticity than Moussaka. If you can really taste the cinnamon odds are good that they are cooking the real stuff.

[DogLover]

So flaming cheese with the waitstaff chorusing "Opa" is not authentic? (sarcasm font on.)

[martincath]

1 hour ago, DogLover said:

So flaming cheese with the waitstaff chorusing "Opa" is not authentic? (sarcasm font on.)

It's actually very authentic... if you're trying to recreate Chicago's Greek dining scene 😉

 

Incidentally, that supposedly-set-in-Chicago movie, My Big Fat Greek Wedding, was filmed in Toronto (well, the church used for the big wedding was in a neighbouring town, but the businesses and street scenes were mostly on and around the Danforth).

[tutuwahineLV]

On 6/7/2019 at 5:02 AM, Cruisingirl2012 said:

We are staying at Barclay Hotel next to Cora's I believe and $50CAN for two max for a budget.  We enjoy Thai or Asian cuisine and also Pubs.  

You do know that $50can right now is about $37.25..... if that's your max, try The White Spot, or McDonalds. There's also a Red Robin on Robson st....that might keep you within your budget.   

Personally, I take it as an opportunity to splurge just a little to celebrate the beginning of the adventure,  

[Cruisingirl2012]

On 6/14/2019 at 4:32 PM, tutuwahineLV said:

You do know that $50can right now is about $37.25.....

I am Canadian so $50can is $50can.  I appreciate all the suggestions for restaurants.  Counting down the days

[KeepCalmBearOn]

On 6/14/2019 at 12:32 PM, tutuwahineLV said:

You do know that $50can right now is about $37.25..... if that's your max, try The White Spot, or McDonalds. There's also a Red Robin on Robson st....that might keep you within your budget.  

 

Hokkaido Ramen Santouka, Jinya Ramen and Ramen Danbo would all be under $50 CAD and yummy.