Vancouver: Japadog, The Greedy Pig & The Alibi Room

Since we stayed near Gastown in Vancouver, we spent a good amount of time around that area since it was within walking distance, and there's a lot of great bars and restaurants.  One thing about Gastown is that if you like the hipster culture, then this is THE spot.  It's almost as if all the hipsters in Vancouver gathered in this little area.  For our last night, we decided to hit up a few spots around the area since hipster spots meant good food and drinks!

One of the must eats when visiting Vancouver is stopping by a Japadog location.  They are the originator of this Japanese fusion hot dog, and there's even a location in NYC now!  Before Alice, Calvin, and I headed off to Gastown to hit up our spots, we stopped by the brick & mortar location of Japadog on Robson for some appetizers :P

Japadog

530 Robson St

Downtown

Vancouver, BC V6B 2B7  

www.japadog.com

Been to a cart location, now to their brick & mortar location!

We decided to get four to share, with some unique to these Robson location.

Yakiniku Dog.  One of the hot dogs that's unique to this location.  Essentially, an Arabiki sausage sits on a bed of rice, then topped with yakiniku between bun.  It's like a MOS Burger gone cray cray!  Sauce was pretty damn good.

Tonkatsu.  Another unique to this location.  There's no hot dog in this, but a piece of pork katsu, drizzled with sweet mayo and katsu sauce and topped with cabbage between bun.  

Oroshi.  Still my favorite hot dog from Japadog.  Grated dikon on top of a juicy pork bratwurst with some green onions on top.  So simple, but so good.

The one that started it all, Terimayo.  Since Calvin & Alice never had Japadog, had to order the original.  Teriyaki sauce, sweet mayo and seaweed = winning combo.


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After Japadog, we made our way towards Gastown, and stopped by the first stop of the night, Greedy Pig.  It's a lounge/gastropub that focuses on whiskey cocktails.  Pigs seem to be a really popular thing nowadays haha.

Greedy Pig

307 W Cordova Street 

Downtown, Gastown

Vancouver, BC V6B 1E5

thegreedypig.ca

Greedy Pig's logo on the menu.

Calvin's Ward Eight.  Classic cocktail, except their version is with Kentucky bourbon instead of rye.

Alice's Roughrider.  Made with Canadian rye whiskey.  Not a huge fan of it cause it was super sweet.

Old Ripper.  Made with Tennessee sour mash, pureed white peach, creme de peaches, fresh lemon juice, bitters, and egg white.  Very hipster drink with the egg white, but it was the best one out of the three we tried!

Part of their menu.  We decided to get the Marrow & Toast to share.

Marrow & Toast.  Roasted marrow bones, garlic confit, sea salt, truffle oil, arugula, and bacon.

The marrow and the bacon.

Marinated garlic!

Toasts.

My own little bite.  The truffle oil was very light.  Sea salt was a nice touch since it helped cut through all the fat.


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We actually stopped by another gatropub but it was way too packed so we decided to go to our last stop, Alibi Room, a very hipster Canadian pub.  Why is it hipster?  Well, it's a pub that serves a ton of craft beers, including local brews, tons of interesting characters (saw a guy wearing a sailor's outfit there), and it's actually located a bit far away from Gastown, in an area that's a little shady.  

Alibi Room

157 Alexander Street 

Vancouver, BC V6A 1B8

alibi.ca

Front of Alibi Room.  A bit hard to find if you don't know the area.

Logo.  Lots of beers on tap.

I wanted something a bit unique and local so I went with the Red Truck "Prev-Ale" Maple Ale.  Definitely get that maple haha.

Calvin's "Le Nez Rouge" Tripel.  A local brew as well.  9% Belgian tripel.

Alice likes porter so she got the Phillips "Longboat" Double Chocolate Porter.  

Must have something to nibble on so we got the fries.

Came with two condiments: housemade ketchup and chili garlic vinegar.  I am a sucker for ketchup made in-house so I went for that most of the time.

Later on, we couldn't resist the piggy, so got the Pork Belly Sandwich, which was topped with beer braised onions, served with jalapeno coleslaw, and more fries.  Pork belly was not as good as Calvin and I liked, but the slaw was very interesting!  Gave us regular ketchup this time instead of the homemade.   

We called it a night after Alibi Room, but I was definitely surprised with the Canadian craft beer scene!  It just seems like all of Pacific Northwest is loaded with these breweries brewing these unique beers.  Should've saved some room for more beer instead of food haha.

Vancouver: Salt Tasting Room

We wanted to find a place to relax a bit since we didn't know what else to do.  Saw that Salt Tasting Room had a high review on Yelp, so decided to check it out.  Took us awhile to find the place though since it listed an alley as its address, and it really is located in an alley!

Salt Tasting Room

45 Blood Alley Square 

Downtown, Gastown

Vancouver, BC V6B 1A4

salttastingroom.com

Blood Alley.  It is literally located in an alley.

Not much of a sign either o we couldn't find it from the street when we looked it.

Glass of red that I got.  I think it was a sangiovese.

So it turns out this place is a meat & cheese spot only!  Good thing we all like that stuff.

We decided to get 1 meat plate with 3 condiments and 1 cheese plate with 3 condiments as well.  Since we didn't know what to get, we had our server decide for us.

Meat plate with Smoked Beef, Hot Capicola, and Argentinian.  I liked how they write on the side what they served us!

Smoked beef and mustard.  You can use the condiments with any of the meats.  They just placed it like that to make it look better.  The smoked beef sorta looked like tongue haha.

Hot Capicola and basque olives.  Really good capicola.

Argentinian and piparra peppers.  Probably my favorite meat and condiment from that plate.  The Argentinian is very similar to salami.

Our cheese plate!

Local BC chevre and cipollini onions.  Chevre is a spreadable goat cheese.  It was my first time trying cheese from Canada!  Onions were marinated with balsamic so that was very tasty.

La riopelle and quince paste.  Another spreadable cheese.  

Lincolnshire Poacher and cornichons.  Cheese is from UK!

Baguettes for the cheese.

For lunch, they actually have a few items, so we decided to try the grilled cheese combo.

Forgot what cheeses were in there since they change constantly.  Not as oily and I like how they use the panini press.

Salad with pine nuts.  Very light cream dressing.

Butternut squash soup.  I was hoping for tomato soup or something more acidic since it goes well with grilled cheese, but this was good too.  Very smooth.

We ended up sitting there for over an hour just relaxing and sorta planning what to do next.  Since it was pretty empty (afternoon), we had the whole place to ourselves, and it was pretty nice just to be warm, hang out, and eat some great meats and cheeses!