Losing another notch on the pants - Day 2 (Rangoli, Persian chowdown)

[bdachow]

Day 2 was a hectic day running errands but managed to squeeze in a couple of eats during the day. Breakfast was fruit, some of the cheese and flatbread picked up from GI. See Day 1 for comments.

Lunch was a walk up to Rangoli. We ordered the vegetable pakoras with daal and cilantro dipping sauce, beef curry with rice and salad and the black chickpea curry with vegetable rice and a chai. All the dishes were really flavourful and tasty. The pakoras were well fried and not greasy with a good crispiness to it. The daal that came with it was really good. They hadn't completely pureed the lentils as I've seen done before to give it thickness. This one was a little runnier but I thoroughly enjoyed it as I found it a lighter consistency and dish overall. Both the DP and I loved the black chickpea dish, we didn't miss the meat at all even though the "meatballs" were chickpea flour balls. They were light and airy and perfectly done in a tomato based curry. The vegetable basmati had peas and red peppers mixed in which I thought was the biggest miss. The peas were the overcooked pea colour and the red peppers were limp and "mushy" which didn't help the consistency for the rice. Mixing the curry in definitely helped. The beef was tender and flavourful but I found it to be a bit dry if eaten without a spoonful of rice and the curry sauce. Oh and there was a slaw that came with it which I found to be way better than the slaw from Go Fish. The addition of grated coconut really gave the red and green cabbage a flavour boost that I found to be infinitely tastier than the day before.

Which leads over to dinner and the Persian Immersion chowdown with a couple of local hounds and another visiting hound. I leave the write ups with pictures (I apologize, I'm not a prolific picture taker and poster) to them as they are definitely more balanced than I am. It was a great meal due mainly to the excellent company. The food was good and definitely interesting but I would liken it to good hearty comfort food than destination food. For me though, it was a very interesting introduction to Persian food which I've never had before. Hits for me were the eggplant dip and the black cherry rice which I found really neat in flavour when combined with a grilled meat dish. Thanks to chowhound grayelf for organizing!!!

The evening ended with a cocktail at The Diamond in gastown. Really interesting drinks and was very tempted by the food menu but really couldn't fit anything more into the tummy. Great laid back retro vibe which I really enjoyed.

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Shalizar Restaurant
1863 Marine Dr, West Vancouver, BC V7V1J7, CA

Vij's Rangoli
1488 11th Ave W, Vancouver, BC V6H1L1, CA

[LotusRapper]

Whoa hold on a minute here, you mean you've recovered from your food court crawl yesterday already ?!? [wink]

[grayelf]

That is day 3 for bdachow, LR :-).

I agree with your assessment of the Persian dinner, bda, and was perhaps even less enamoured. I felt that the kebabs were way overpriced and also overcooked, and I wasn't impressed with the meat quality. The beef especially disappointed -- if that was tenderloin, I'll eat my hat. Funnily enough, the lamb chops were my favourite, though again way overcooked. I also thought the minced beef ones had a strange taste to them, a bit off. I did like the eggplant and yogurt appetizers, the beef and herb stew and the cherry rice, however. Here's pix of the three of them.

[bdachow]

The kebabs for me were ok, they weren't great as I prefer my meat a little on the medium rarer side, the lamb was probably the best of all the kebabs (cornish hens, tenderloin, lamb and ground beef). The ground beef one was interesting, I found the texture very unique with something adding a nice crunch (like water chestnuts) but agreed, if that was tenderloin, they must have cut it improperly to get that slightly chewier than normal texture.

[cwangdom]

Where did you go for persian food?

[grayelf]

It was Shalizar (see link on OP above)