Original Joe's | 2525 Cambie Street | Vancouver

UPDATE, January 2011: There is now an Original Joe's in Langford. Since Langford fills me with the same kind of malaise as watching soap opera re-runs at my grandmother's house I have never bothered to go.

By the time they reach adulthood most people have given up on things like magic. The notion of conjuring something from nothing is relegated to the worlds of fantasy and conservative economic policy. Yet I, in the midst of all this doubt, am a living example of magic’s possibilities. I can, through my mere presence, bring rain to any region of the world simply by appearing there without a coat or umbrella. My most recent trip to Vancouver came at the end of weeks of sunshine, and so I foolishly felt safe in bringing only the essentials: socks, underwear, undershirts, shoe shine kit. The collection of umbrellas I have accumulated by making this mistake time and time again hung, unused, in my office at home. True to form, the skies opened, and my plan to walk downtown for dinner disappeared into the rain like Rutger Hauer’s tears. Instead, I decided to keep close to my room at the Plaza and Original Joe’s pub, a place I had been to a few times, fit the bill perfectly.

The Pink Bicycle Gourmet Burger Joint | 1008 Blanshard St. | Victoria

Update:  Since this review was published I have returned to the Pink Bicycle and tried the Black Bean Burger, which was very good.  That said, I stand by my statement that the quality of their meals is uneven.

"Nobody's perfect" is one of those maxims that is not only true, but comforting as well.  We all make mistakes, some of them little, like forgetting to turn off the coffee pot before you leave for work.  Others seemed little at the time - that chocolate-powered five-year-old blowing through your living room on Christmas Day like a tornado made of underoos and wrapping paper, for example.  Knowing that we're not the only ones makes it easier.  Hell, in professional baseball you're considered a roaring success if you perform your job correctly one-third of the time.  The legendary Ty Cobb has the distinction of holding a career batting average of .364, the highest in major league history which is a big deal for those of you who don't follow this kind of thing. This means that the most consistent hitter in major league history only did his job right 36.4% of the time and has been immortalized for it.  If the restaurant business had the same kind of standards there would be Great Cannon Pizza outlets all over the city but mercifully that's not the case.  In this business if you screw up 70% of the time you will very shortly end up in receivership and be forced to face your public and have rotten vegetables thrown at you.  That is, of course, unless your establishments happens to have the location, short skirts & shiny brass geegaws to mask your total lack of quality or personality.  Up until today the Pink Bicycle has had quality in spades.  If we're going to continue flogging sports metaphors you could say that up until today they'd batted 1000.