Meatman, Beef, & the National Sport of South Korea

Last spring was a difficult time to find work. My first year living in Victoria I'd earned my daily bread working for the provincial government but an ailing economy meant government work opportunities had shrank faster than a fifteen year old in ice water. Eventually my wife got sick of me staring out the window and making armpit noises so she suggested I take up volunteering again. We had both been volunteers while living here in 2007 and I had also volunteered while abroad in 2008, so I suppose it was the next logical step to take if no work was forthcoming. A few e-mails later I was accepted as door security for the “Island Open Championship”, which I incorrectly interpreted from the website as being a Mixed-Martial Arts competition. When I arrived, not entirely prepared to deal with pot-bellied failures hollering while steroid beasts tenderized one another, I was relieved to learn that the event was actually an all-ages Taekwon-Do competition. That meant the testosterone factor would be a fraction of what I’d expected and I would probably not be vomited upon.

Cabin 12 | 3111 Cedar Hill Rd | Victoria

Update 3/14/2012:  Hey there, loyal readers.  Cabin 12 has relocated to 3111 Cedar Hill Road near the Hillside Mall.  It's a bit of a hike but worth it for the friendliest restaurant in town.  This review refers to their former location at 607 Pandora Street but I stand by my words.


To get to the new Cabin 12 by transit take the #24 bus from downtown.  It'll let you off a stone's throw from their door.  Otherwise there are a number of buses that take you within walking distance, including the #4, 22, 25, 27 & 28.


Sometimes you just know that you're not going to like something.  In early 2005 I was going through a prolonged breakup when two close friends got tired of me drifting from room to room in my house like the ghost of Miss Haversham and dragged me to out to the movies.  Living in Revelstoke we had only one film on offer, the romantic comedy Hitch and I fought like mad against going in there; after I Robot there were a dozen things I'd rather do than watch Big Willy "Hell, yeah!" his way through more nonsense, but my friends prevailed.  

Funky, but in a good way

Two hours later I emerged from the cinema feeling better than I had in months - over the course of the film I had come to realize that I had great friends who really cared about my well-being.  That's a rare thing.  But take away that affirmation and you're left with a film that was, as predicted, absolute rubbish.  When I came across it on cable recently I felt an almost irrepressible urge to channel The King and fire my .44 into the television.  All the positive memories clustered around seeing the film couldn't change the fact that I knew I would hate it going in and felt no different coming out.  


I knew I wasn't going to like Cabin 12 because I'd heard it was "trendy", "funky", and "hip", three words that make the hair on my neck stand up, but I thought I'd give it a try - it only seemed fair.  Sometimes you just know that you're not going to like something.  And sometimes you're wrong.  I enjoyed my lunch at Cabin 12 more than any in recent memory and if this is the way that owners Corey & Dan always run their ship then I've found my new favorite restaurant.

It's Love, By George!

There are certain discussions that every couple eventually has:  Will we have babies?  What inappropriate, trendy name will we give them?  How many people have you been with?  How many?  I feel like I barely know you, I'm going to my mothers!  These are often pivotal moments in a couple's history, determining in one languid moment of pillow talk whether he will produce a ring from a bedside drawer, or whether she will casually mention that if this month doesn't have thirty-two days she's missed a pill.  In a recent moment of intimacy Nicky & I cautiously approached one of these questions, slowly and with great delicacy because it is through such thin ice as this that the walrus of discontent bursts through to devour the penguin of happiness.  The question?  If you could spend the night with one celebrity - who would it be?

Credit Where It's Due

Recently I've started keeping an eye on the amount of traffic that comes through here and after a week I've learned that the Victoria Burger Blog is our second largest source of hits, so thanks to DK for the link!

The Podium Sports Grill | 531 Yates St. | Victoria

Athletics are not my bag. I don't know why exactly, maybe because I enjoy the same level of fitness as a stack of pancakes or that I refuse to tolerate any level of physical discomfort and to enter the world of athletics is know nothing but. Once, because I'd been told it built character, I went for a run around the neighborhood and after thirty minutes, with every joint howling in protest and my knees threatening suicide, I suddenly recalled an article in Omni about recently discovered links between character, humorlessness and responsibility and went home to spend more quality time with the sofa. I find the watching of sports to be an equally joyless enterprise - hockey, football and basketball all seem to involve minor variations on a theme; chemically-enhanced cavemen, all of them rich as Croesus, running back and forth perpetrating acts of violence against one another while a stadium full of drunken thugs howl encouragement. No wonder then, that I almost never bother going into sports bars, and a small wonder that I bothered with this one. I'm glad I did.

Al-Sultan Restaurant | 1813 Douglas Street | Victoria

In the bottom drawer of my desk, tucked behind the Emergency Whiskey and a stack of unopened fan mail, there sits a book. Large and lovingly bound in exquisite leather, it is a comprehensive list of the things in this world which annoy me. Some of the entries are more detailed than others, the most thought-out being calmly expanded upon in iambic pentameter using my finest calligraphy set:

"Pompous weird-beards who mope their way around
parties until someone says, 'Is that your
guitar?' and they look shocked, almost as if
to say, 'Oh this, this vast wooden thing slung
across my back that hits Bren in the arm
each time I walk past him? I had almost
forgotten that I had it with me, bro',
then play the first four bars to 'Stairway' while
all the other moonheads gaze on rapt and
the rest of us remember that we have
work in the morning and must be leaving."

Others are hastily scrawled in a pygmy rage using half-chewed golf pencils and considerably more four-letter words. These typically involve things that bother me about work, whatever slang is currently en vogue and things I see on television. Television is a scourge, particularly the advertisements, and several pages of my manifesto are devoted entirely to things like:

"Slap Chop Man: I wish that hooker had bitten off your tongue"

"Viagra: There is nothing at all wrong with your penis. It has retired from active service because it understands you to be too ugly to attract a partner the old-fashioned way and your income stream insufficient to acquire one via the same means as Slap Chop Man."

"Billy Mays: That God took you and not Anthony Sullivan or Slap Chop Man proves that He takes some kind of demented joy in our suffering."

Earls | 1199 Government Street | Victoria

There are a lot of reasons why it might seem pointless to review a chain restaurant:  the recipes are mostly the same at every location from San Francisco to Jacksonville, and, as a friend pointed out, if a formula is successful enough to generate franchises who am I to argue?  Well, over the years I've eaten at Boston Pizza, Red Robin & Ricky's All-Day Grill, and the only thing they do well is back up what H.L. Mencken said about getting rich by underestimating the taste of the American public.  The quality of a restaurant depends more on the competence of those preparing the food than it does on recipes alone so if the folks behind the scenes have as much enthusiasm for food as I do honest work then your dining experience will be as much fun as mopping the floors in an adult theatre. 

Almost any franchise that opened up in my hometown of Revelstoke over the years has either folded or maintained a consistently execrable standard, the only obvious reason being the available pool of listless halfwits willing to work for the wages on offer.  Paying peanuts will most assuredly get you monkeys.  Dan has always been a devoted fan of the Earls chain, for which I've hassled him endlessly but his ability to ignore me is almost unparalleled.  Only my wife does it better.  So when Dan informed me that Earls would be the chosen venue for his 26th birthday I figured there was no point poking fun and that inferior factory-prepared food would vindicate my snobbery.  And you know what?  The bastards made us a great meal and I barely had enough room left to eat my words.

I Want to Take His Face - Off!

A quick word before I post this week's review - I'd like to thank my good friend Dan Eastabrook for putting together our new logo.  The original shot was taken by another good friend, Scott Horton, while we were on vacation in southern California and Dan kindly took the time to doctor the image according to my needs.  That included removing an awful reflection of myself, which is sitting in an attic somewhere growing older.  Thanks again to both of you!