WOW it’s been a while, hopefully you haven’t forgotten about 604Foodtography!

A week before the Olympics began, I had some of my cousins from Los Angeles come up here for a few days. While the city was bustling and full of excitement, I became a tourist in my own city … not necessarily a bad thing since that meant eating out more!

They had several different requests on places and cuisines to eat. Aside from the Asian choices such as wonton noodles and dim sum, Slow had suggested on going to Araxi in Whistler. She’s a big fan of Hell’s Kitchen and Araxi just so happened to be the featured restaurant in the show’s most recent season.

After walking in, guess who was the first person we saw in the restaurant? Dave Levey! The winner of last’s seasons Hell’s Kitchen. What a coincidence eh?! I felt a little bit sorry for him though as he was at the appetizer station placed footsteps away from the door, constantly getting interrupted by guests while working. He didn’t look too happy there but he smiled for every person who approached him for a picture request. I was surprised that we was stuck at appies though.

Aside from their claim to fame, one interesting fact about the restaurant is that all ingredients are local, taken less than 100km away from the restaurant.

Since fine dining usually has smaller portions, I was looking forward to the bread (or the beavertails stand close by) to help fill me up. Here they combine common butter and olive oil together in the same dish. This was good although the bread was a little stale and would have been better had it been served warm.

Some of us had a glass of wine or beer, but The Penguin and Rye Bread had this: Fentiman’s Traditional Ginger Beer ($5.50). It contains less than .05% alcohol and if anyone is familiar with the dessert, it tastes like the syrup from Chinese boiled ginger milk. read more »