The Lion’s Den Cafe

The Lion’s Den Cafe
651 East 15th Ave
Vancouver, BC

Not sure where the idea came originally. It might be thanks to a comment from jlomein in my Delicias de Alicia post or probably because he wanted to go there from the very beginning but Karl organized a mini-gathering of sorts in The Lion’s Den Cafe. Originally, it was supposed to be Sherman, Karl and myself; however, since Jessica joined us last time in Royal City Thai, we thought we should check on her as well. And, guess what? Elaine asked if we were up for lunch on the same day and we told her of our plans. Result? An additional person in this mini-gathering!

Of course, it begs the question: what is so particular about Lion’s Den? Well, it has Caribbean food! Wait, that is not all… How about Japanese food as well? Yup, Lion’s Den has both Caribbean AND Japanese in the same menu! (Or, as they call it “Japaribbean”). With such odd combination, one of them quite popular in Vancouver, the question is how well would both combine…

Update: below are the links for everybody’s posts!

Elaine
Jessica
Karl
Sherman

Originally, we were supposed to be there by 12:30 p.m.; however, due to a snafu on my part and due to people not knowing how to park (a couple of SUVs took the equivalent of four parking spots), I was late. Of course, with a group of food bloggers, hunger could cause riots! Anyway, with such a “large” group, we were set up outside, rather than inside the restaurant. See that table in the picture above? Yup, we were seated there under the sun and the falling cherry blossom petals… Too bad none of them fell on the food or any of the glasses of water – I am sure it would have been a really good photo opportunity. And talking about drinks…

Both Karl and Sherman (whom, BTW, wasn’t 100% healthy that day) ordered ginger beer, while the rest of us went for eau de Vancouver. Unfortunately, since I didn’t try it, I can’t really comment much on it. Sorry!

As for the food, we were having a long debate of what to order. Since we were sharing, the “problem” was to order different enough dishes. Some of them are easy to share while others not necessarily so. For example, how do you share a roti??? Eventually, we “agreed” on the dishes and made the orders. Now, if there is a big flaw of the restaurant, it was experienced as soon after we ordered our dishes. It took *forever* for the food to arrive. In fact, the owner even had to go out to fetch some ingredients! Of course, it could also be the Caribbean lax attitude but, as mentioned above, when you have a group of hungry food bloggers… ^_^;;;

Eventually, they started serving us food, starting with some green salad. The one thing I am not sure is that we were given one portion of each one of us; this is because one of the dishes does not technically come with salad. I guess that, as a courtesy, they added one more serving so we all had one. As for the salad itself, it is your generic green salad and, in my case, it was overdressed. Not much to comment about….

The first dish to arrive was the jerk chicken – spicy Jamaican style chicken roasted with 18 different herbs and spices”. Somebody (M?) mentioned the chicken was served in pieces, rather than chunks, as a result, we ordered two plates instead. The chicken was full of flavour and it was agreed that this was the best dish of the whole meal. The Caribbean rice and beans was on the lines of what I would expect from such dish – difficult to explain but made up its task as a filler.

The next dish is another “classical” Jamaican dish, curry goat. Unfortunately, it did not live up to expectations. It was a bit too boney and the curry did not have too much “punch” in it. In fact, had I wasn’t told this was a curry goat, I would have said it was a regular stew. Ouch…

At the beginning of the post, I mentioned share a roti. OK, here are the roti shells, which was filled with a yellow split pea. On its own, it might be an acquired taste, as it really needed some sauce (like the curry above). It was OK but, if I compare the roti shell from the roti I had in Rehanah’s Roti, this was a bit drier and not as stretchy/doughy.

Followed by the roti was the oxtail stew, yet another Jamaican “classic” dish. Similar to the curry goat, the chunks here were boney; however, in this case, it was sort of expected. It had a gelatinous texture in it, which I found quite pleasant to eat. However, once again, similar to the curry goat, we thought it needed some additional seasoning.

Given they have Japanese dishes, needless to say, we had to order a Japanese dish. Originally, we ordered ginger beef; however, they didn’t have it. The other dish we ordered was this, okonomiyaki (in this case, the pork version), sometimes referred to as Japanese pizza. One thing that became quite evident when it was cut was the pieces of pork. Make no mistake – these are actual pieces of pork, not ground pork. And, as a result, it provided that pork goodness taste to it. Alas, too bad the batter didn’t really lived up to the pork, as it was quite doughy and couldn’t taste much of the vegetables in it. The sauce also didn’t add much, which was a bit disappointing.

After the meal, when we were about to pay, we were asked to go inside for Ken, the owner, to tell us the story of the restaurant, including its name and a mounted lion in the restaurant itself. I won’t spoil the story: if you haven’t been there before, go just to find out about the story.

As for the food itself, there were some hits and some misses. Regardless of this, I am surprised at how the food was produced, mainly because of the chaotic kitchen. Because it has a charm of its own, I think it is worth coming back. However, the question is: how hungry should I come back? Given the time it took for the food to come, if I am too hungry, due to their pace, I might consider crossing the street for some banh mi instead. If I am not that hungry, I might miss some of the dishes. I guess if I can find partners in crime like this time…

Tagged under: Caribbean • Curry • Jamaican • Latin America • Vancouver