Summer in the City

It’s been a while since I’ve writ­ten any­thing, mainly because I always feel the need to take a lit­tle time off in the sum­mer, par­tic­u­larly since this sum­mer weather has been so spec­tac­u­larly good. True, it has been a lit­tle warm, and even on some days, down­right hot. Still, that hasn’t kept us from get­ting out and enjoy­ing the city, vis­it­ing with friends, tak­ing long walks along False Creek, and even a few out­ings with the car.

An Inti­mate Evening with Hummingbird604 and Some Exotic Potent Potables

It was one of those hot nights in Down­town Van­cou­ver when we went out one of the evenings a cou­ple of weeks ago. Rather than try and escape the heat (as any sane per­son would do), we embraced it. We climbed the stair­case to the third floor of The Net­work Hub, one of the shared office space and social incu­ba­tors in town on West Hast­ings and Richards, a cou­ple of blocks away from Water­front Sta­tion. Hummingbird604 (AKA Raul to those who know him), hosted a small group of friends and blog­gers to try out some inter­est­ing new bev­er­ages from China. When we arrived, we were greeted by Christy Nguyen and Minna Van of Urban­bella Mar­ket­ing Group. To go with the liq­uids, they had already begun to put out some Chi­nese food (which was help­ful to see how the liq­uids might go with dif­fer­ent dishes).

The 15 or so of us dug in and chat­ted as we were try­ing to keep cool. I was happy to see plenty of friends, includ­ing Gus (and Russ), Tanya (with her new fiancé, Barry), Degan, Erica and John.

So what were we try­ing? There were three dif­fer­ent items. First, there was a red wine, a saki (or rice wine) and a whiskey, which we could try straight up as well as a mixer in a sort of lemon­ade (which was per­fect for a hot night). I opted imme­di­ately for the most unusual (at least for me) thing to try first: the whiskey, straight up from a shot glass. This is not because I wanted to get drunk fast, but because I tend to be a bit of a purist when it comes to liquor, and love Single-malt Scotch. I was also intrigued, because this whiskey , called Chu Yeh Ching Chiew, was, as an accom­pa­ny­ing infor­ma­tion card put it:

…a spe­cial ancient liquor made from tra­di­tional Chi­nese herbal recipe. It has (a) trans­par­ent golden and slightly green colour, and intense flo­ral herbal aro­mas of dried apri­cot. It’s off dry with a hint of anise and packs a lengthy finish.

What this infor­ma­tion does not include (and which the name and pic­tures on the bot­tle do), is that this is alco­hol fer­mented from bam­boo shoots. I tried it and was impressed. To me, it had the strength of an Irish Whiskey, but the fin­ish was exotic; with a bit of gin­seng, and per­haps another spice. Here’s what the bot­tle looked like:

Here’s my own photo of the bottle:

The com­pany who pro­vided it is Hi-Bridge Con­sult­ing, although as I men­tioned, Urban Bella was the Pub­lic Rela­tions firm who arranged for the tast­ing. I have to say that this prod­uct, with some repack­ag­ing, and per­haps a new, Eng­lish name, could do extremely well. They also offered it in a lemon­ade mixer, which wasn’t as inter­est­ing (but did prove that it could be a fine mixer), but I have to say that straight up, it is a very impres­sive drink. I pro­pose that they call it, Bam­boo Mist, and put it in a dis­tinc­tive, frosted bot­tle with bam­boo brush style let­ter­ing on the label (and keep the bam­boo leaf art as well). Mar­ket it to upscale liquor stores and put it in the sec­tion that has other drinks strongly asso­ci­ated with a coun­try (like Jame­son Whiskey, Aqua­vit, Midori or per­haps Sabra). I real­ize that some of those are liqueurs, but hope­fully you can see where I’m going with this. In addi­tion, there’s the whole sus­tain­abil­ity angle, since bam­boo is one of the world’s most sus­tain­able nat­ural resources (it grows in a vari­ety of places like a weed). Many peo­ple in North Amer­ica have floors and fur­ni­ture made of bam­boo. It makes excel­lent cut­ting boards. If you don’t use a lot of nasty chem­i­cals, it also can pro­duce won­der­ful, earth-friendly and silky fab­ric. One of my all-time-favourite T-shirts is a long-sleeved green­ish cocoa one that feels an awful lot like silk. It is also wash­able and wicks per­spi­ra­tion well. To have a whisky from the same mate­r­ial seems a nat­ural for a mar­ket­ing cam­paign that not only plays off the exotic sound of liquor from ancient Chi­nese bam­boo groves, but also of a whisky that ecology-minded folks can love as well. Are you lis­ten­ing, Hi-Bridge?

There was also a less impres­sive Sake (Sake from China? Well, OK) which did have a strange, thick, almost choco­late taste and con­sis­tency, and an extremely undis­tin­guished Caber­net Sauvi­gnon (sorry), but the Chu Yeh Ching Chiew (although the name doesn’t exactly trip off the tongue for those who don’t speak Chi­nese) made the evening, which in addi­tion to friends, imbib­ing and talk, also included some appro­pri­ate Chi­nese food to nib­ble on.

Another Evening

As I men­tioned, Pam and I have been tak­ing lots of walks after din­ner (mainly to walk off the meal — we have been eat­ing so well lately!) One time we actu­ally drove some­where, how­ever, was a trip down to Rich­mond for the famous Night Mar­ket. It’s an open air mar­ket in an indus­trial park, far from every­where, but you feel as if you’ve gone fur­ther. Besides the booths of every­thing from socks from Korea and iPod/iPhone acces­sories from China, there are the food booths. Oh. My. I really do love street food, and this was no excep­tion. In addi­tion to some fan­tas­tic squid, cooked up on the flames right in front of us:

I also got a ridicu­lously fun (and silly) spi­ral of a fried potato, driz­zled with a hot and sweet chili sauce. Truly a won­der­ful blend of ‘carny’ food and Thai-style spices. As you can see, I was grin­ning like a kid. I think I’m really get­ting psy­ched for our trip to South­east Asia that we’re just start­ing to plan for next year: