I'm Only Here for the Food!

Griffins (at Fairmont Hotel Vancouver)
900 W Georgia St
Vancouver, BC V6C

[Note: This will be a quick entry as I did not take that many pictures... Sorry!]

In my opinion, when it comes to eating at hotels, there is one consistent thing: “cheap” it won’t be. Whether it is good eats or not, well, that’s tricky. A lot of times, we set our expectations way too high and end up completely disappointed. Now, don’t get me wrong, we might not be completely responsible for it. Sometimes, it might be the hotel’s hype; sometimes publications push our expectations higher than what it should be.

When my manager organized a team lunch, several options were given and, in the end, Griffins, a restaurant at the Fairmont Hotel Vancouver was chosen. Since I have not been there before, it was a good opportunity to try it – without footing the bill, I might say! ^_^

The picture above was a picture a co-worker was trying to take. Did not physically “touch” it to make sure if it is real or artificial. Interesting, nevertheless. As for the rest of the restaurant, I took the picture below, with the caveat that, again, I did not want to take pictures of other customers. On that note, that afternoon, Sam Sullivan, then Vancouver Major was there. No, no pictures nor attempt to take a picture…

During lunch, they had a buffet. It is $24 (an additional $4 if desserts are included). They had a salad section, meat section and the before mentioned dessert. I am not that much of a veggie person but you could see the basics, i.e., lettuce (to create your Caesar like salad), Greek salad, marinated mushroom, potato salad and so on. On the meat side, variety was quite interesting: pork, lamb, “prime rib” (though already sliced hence past already medium rare), chicken, fish and, in an interesting note, breaded (and fried) oysters. Ah, the dessert was well stocked with items like chocolate mousse, cheesecake, rice pudding and egg custard (among others). Of course, to document some shots of the actual food, I grabbed a picture of one of my colleague’s plate:

No, he did not shy…

Overall, I must say the lunch was quite good. You could try a lot of things (which, in its own way is also a liability) and almost all of them were good (some minor issues with some items being over-cooked but that’s almost a given in buffets). At $24/$28, it is not a cheap lunch but it was good nevertheless. I will consider coming back here again.