mindless ramblings

NOTE: Click here to view the pictures I took on that night.

As part of the birthday festivities, we got everyone together for a little dinner thingy at Milestone’s on Friday night. Although we were kind of expecting everyone to be late, most of the people arrived on time to their credit! Parking was surprisingly easy for many of the guys, with a couple of cars parked right outside Milestone’s. I ended a block away on Alberni, which is not too bad for a Friday night.

Thanks to several people who decided to not turn up (and not tell us), we were down to a party of about 16. We were spread amongst 3 adjacent booths which I think is a better setup then the long rectagular layout that many restaurants provide for large parties. The regular menu was fairly uninspiring (typical of most CFDs) but they had a extra menu with some interesting choices, one of which was a kobe beef dish. I’m not sure why kobe beef is appearing everywhere I look now, but it can’t be a bad thing! Esther and I both got the seafood pan roast (I think) which promised to be good. It had salmon, scallops, mussels and prawns in a tomato broth and served on a bed of rice. I got a Granville Island Honey Lager which was excellent as always, and Esther had a bellini which was equally delicious. Milestone’s claims to be “the home of the bellini”, but this article seems to suggest otherwise… who is right?

The food wasn’t that great overall. The seafood pan roast had some pretty tough and fishy-smelling salmon, and steaks which were supposed to be medium rare turned out to more like medium-well and rare. Then again, what do you expect from a CFD outlet anyway? I think there is only one thing that CFDs do well, and that is cater to parties and large crowds well. A smaller restaurant with (hopefully) better food has more potential to be overwhelmed by a large crowd. Food aside, the service was good and Esther got a torte with a sparkler on top on the house! Some gift opening brought the end to the dinner!

After dinner, a couple of us ended up going to Yuk Yuk’s for some stand up comedy. The parking meter machine was broken at the parkade, so I had to call Impark’s wireless parking service to pay for parking. You can either sign up beforehand at the website, or call in and sign up on the spot. Since I had never used the system, I had to sign up over the phone and it was a exercise in frustration. Having to listen to robotic voices give you tedious instructions is quite inefficient. The comedy routines weren’t as funny as the first time I went during my birthday last year IMHO, but it was still pretty good. The headliner for the night Irwin Barker is a interesting change from most of the stand up comedians I know. His act is totally clean, no swearing or anything of the sort. It’s a nice change from the foul-mouthness that is so common nowadays. It turns out he is the head writer for This Hour Has 22 Minutes so that was pretty cool too.

That pretty much sums up the night, my birthday is 7 months away, gotta start planning!