Cafe Brio | 744 Fort Street | Victoria

For the longest time fine restaurants held no appeal for me. Growing up in Revelstoke, most of what I learned of upscale restaurants I learned from the "Fresh Prince of Bel-Air". I came to associate fine-dining with soft music, portions scarcely bigger than my thumb and DJ Jazzy Jeff being thrown through French doors. The details of eating in bistros or brasseries, like "salad forks", seemed weird & impenetrable, like French, and having to wear a jacket and tie just to eat dinner seemed diabolical. A jacket inside? And a necktie? Hell. Neckties are the miserable invention of some secret pervert with an interest in auto-erotic asphyxiation. You can't use them to sop up gravy, blow your nose or wipe your....er...nose, so I ask you - what does that leave?

Once I started paying for my own meals I headed straight for the type of place that didn't have dress codes. The best amongst them actively discouraged the wearing of anything hinting at affluence. Were you to enter the Central Station Pub in Kamloops wearing a suit, or even a pressed pair of trousers, the night would end with you upended in an alleyway trash-bin. Now and again, though, there are times when I want a quiet meal somewhere I won't be rolled for my pocket change. This weekend our friend Joline stopped in while on vacation from the U.K. and we decided to take her to one such place, our favorite "nice" restaurant, Cafe Brio.

Helser's on Alberta | 1538 Northeast Alberta Street | Portland, OR

Flying is idiotic.  Not all flying of course, I'm well aware that without the power of flight bumblebees, herons and the like would have a hard time getting around.  Human beings however were not born with the benefit of wings and are not particularly aerodynamic so we've spent the better part of our history tottering about on two legs, trying not to fall from high places and doing just fine.  A pack of maniacs who women tend to avoid decided that their free time would be best spent trying to defy nature and eventually, after much tribulation, we had the aeroplane.  The start of the airline industry meant that ordinary folks like you and me got to experience the immediacy of mortality courtesy of a flimsy metal tube hurtling across the sky at 500 miles an hour.  Because government bodies thrive on misery the Airline Deregulation Act of 1978 was passed, which gave airlines & passengers carte blanche to stop caring about anything. 

From then on ordinary folks like you and me still got to experience the glory of the Skycoffin but now with two hundred other people dressed in sweat-pants, all with whooping plague, enjoying the same level of comfort offered in a cattleyard.  Add in turbulence and the looming possibility that some resentful virgin who spends too much time on the internet has hidden explosives in his underpants and air travel for fun makes as much sense as trying to kick a bear in the testicles.  The only time I will consent to air travel is when time is short, such as this weekend past when Nicky & I visited our friends Rose & Scott in Portland. 

Flying in the Dash 8 aircraft used by Air Canada for short hops like Victoria-Vancouver & Vancouver-Portland is to feel like you've been packed into a Port-a-John and launched by catapult.  I'm not normally a religious man but but if the almighty has an answering machine then by the time I got to PDX I'd filled the tape.   It was all worth it though, to see good friends, have good times and eat good food.  Portland eateries have almost never disappointed me and Helser's comes in at the top of what was already an esteemed list.

Lully's Sandwich Bar | 732 Broughton Street | Victoria, BC

Update, March 28, 2012:  Lully's is no more, replaced by the Cleopatra Hookah Bar.  As of this writing the hookah bar is not yet open to the public but, according to a source, hopes to be soon.

Like any good origin story the beginning of the sandwich is the subject of some conjecture:  are they a super-intelligent race of aliens rendered mute by their entry into our atmosphere?  Ancient texts that have the misfortune of tasting like Montreal smoked meat?  Both tantalizing theories, both unlikely ever to be properly investigated.  

The origin of the sandwich is lost to time and that may be for the best.  Scholars everywhere would never have recovered from learning that all their lives they've been using their lunch hours to masticate what's left of the Alexandrian Library. What is known about the sandwich is that name itself comes from John Montagu, the 4th Earl of Sandwich .  An inveterate gambler & gourmand he demanded of his servant something that wouldn't require his Highness to shift His bulk away from his beloved card game.  A full-turkey is a bit unwiedly to eat whilst gambling away the manor house so a piece of salt beef, wait for it, sandwiched between two toasted bits of bread fit the bill nicely instead and soon Montagu's fellow gambling addicts would order "the same as Sandwich!".  That makes our most commonly eaten modern foodstuff named after an obese gambling addict.