LaurenMote.com

Spending the holidays entertaining day after day can be tiring, and quite costly. Recipes that are easy to execute, while being affordable and innovative can be challenging, but punch is the savior. With its long and antiquated history, the punch still stands alone as the “holiday water-cooler”; an instigator of conversation, an ice-breaker, something to [...]

by Lauren Mote (all photos by the gifted Melissa Gidney of Melissa Gidney Photography) Although completely inspired by Lewis Carrol’s book, the adventures shared on June 06 were hardly of a predictable fashion. In fact, take the concept of Alice in Wonderland, put an adult spin (well a brunch appropriate adult spin) and you’ve got [...]

Mark Prince – more commonly known as the “Coffee Geek” – invited me over to the CoffeeLab to check out this new little contraption he was loaned for demos and reviews. The little guy is called the “MyPressi”. Its slogan on the side of the box says it all, “this hand-held espresso maker will change [...]

by Lauren Mote I will be the first one to admit that breakfast and brunch are my favourite parts of dining out, and naturally this is for a couple of reasons. Firstly, I am a brilliant morning/early afternoon cook (I like to see how others pull it off); perhaps my previous guests can attest to [...]

by Lauren Mote For those that are unfamiliar, The Wallflower took the place of Main St’s Aurora Bistro, and now serving morning fare in Mt. Pleasant neighbourhood. There was always something about the interior at Aurora Bistro that made me feel uncomfortable – whether it was just a simplistic, cold room; or that the it [...]

by Lauren Mote & Jessica Grajczyk An interesting thought crossed Poivre Media’s breakfast writer Jessica and I the other day. I had mentioned that in the interest of doing yet another riveting review of a brunch spot, and a Christmas brainstorming session for two writers, we decided doing a conversational review would be an interesting [...]

by Lauren Mote The original name for this review was going to be “Three blocks over and one block down – see ya later Yaletown”, but then I ran out of room, and I didn’t really want to slag Yaletown for having virtually no restaurant I could possibly ever have a fulfilling lunch at. Besides, [...]

by Lauren Mote Sunday morning. The beginning of autumn. Main street in Vancouver. Sunshine. Brunch. Sometimes, when you wake up, you have the time, you have the company, and you have the transportation, Provence waits until next weekend. Today was about Aurora Bistro. It’s been a long time, almost 8 months since I have had [...]

by Lauren Mote As an avid diner, and passionate restaurant worker, it has always been my rule of thumb to go with Johnny, the perfect dining companion, and spend an evening marveling, or questioning the methods and dishes of potential employers before my first shift – as you will read in previous reviews, if I [...]

by Amy Parker For most of us, nothing ends a perfect meal like a cup of coffee or a smooth cappuccino. The problem is, not many restaurants invest the same amount of thought into this final step as they do into the meal itself. And what a colossal mistake that is. After all, it’s the [...]