Weekend Report -> Mandarin Buffet

Food this weekend ->
Went to the new Mandarin Buffet in Orleans on Saturday.
I wasn't impressed with the initial service.  We had made a reservation, but we still had to wait for our table to be prepared.  I've never had to wait when I've made a reservation the night before.  Table should have already be readied. 
When the table was readied, the waitress took her time leading us and explaining the buffet.  It was a feature Ben liked, but I know what a buffet is so I just wanted to be seated and get food.  Good thing everything went up hill from here.
First good thing is after being seated, we were given hot towels to wash up.  Very Japanesey :)
The sushi was good, but the ribs were magnificent.  The ribs were meaty, juicy, and savoury.  Just like ribfest.  The New York steak was alittle over cooked for my taste.

Mandarin Plate #1.

Tempura shrimps were crispy.  Seaweed salad was well made and delicious.  The mussels were big and clean.  Ben really liked the butternut squash soup.  Everything was good and nothing was bad.  They only lacked congee (I wanted to make my congee bowl).

Plate #2.

The selection of desserts was amazing.  After 4 plates of food, I actually made room for 4 plates of desserts.  I tried the black forest cake, coconut cream pie, lemon cake, creme brule, rice pudding, butter tart, fresh cookies, watermelon, pineapple, frozen yogurt, and other mini-cakes.

Dessert Plate #1.

When we were finished and got the bill, we were given another hot towel to clean up.  The second hot towel service was the best touch.  I need to go again and try dinner!

Useless Gaming News:
Played 4-player gaming on Friday night.  We started the night with a long advance game of A Touch of Evil.  We only played with only 2 maps.  The villain was The Unspeakable Horror.  We started off ok, but the board was winning and killing Ben's and Brian's characters almost every round.  Then we triggered the final battle early.  We weren't prepared and we weren't allowed to bring any town elders to help in the battle.  We lost pretty badly.
Then we played Drop Dead.  This a pretty fun and quick 5 minute game.  A simple deduction game. where you try and collect information and guess the hidden card's number.  I'll probably pick this up.

Drop Dead.

Useless Halloween News:
Saw this cool zombie at Home Depot.

Zombie.

It's only $40 and has 3 different groans.  I videoed one of them.

Good Day Japanese Version

Lunch today -> Chorizo burger.
Went to Royal Oak for Iain's farewell lunch.  He's leaving for GDC.  Maybe he'll work with Ben.
I ordered the Build a Burger.  I built a simple Chorizo burger topped with sauteed mushrooms and cheddar cheese.  It was very good.

Chorizo Burger with Fries.

Useless Idol News:
Got some CDs in.  I got IU's "Good Day" single.  I didn't realize when they said it was the Japanese version, it meant she re-sang her Korean song in Japanese.  Cool, but I wanted the original Korean version.  I also got NMB48's "Must Be Now" single.  Included Milky bonus photo. 

New CDs for the Car.

Crazy Game

Dinner today -> Salmon Sashimi.
Got a salmon filet from the Superstore.  I sliced it up to make sushi, but I was hungry now and didn't want to wait for the rice to cool.  So I ate the salmon as sashimi.  I should have stirred in a raw egg in the hot rice too.

Sashimi Dinner.

Useless Baseball News:
Watch some of the Jays - Rangers game after work.  Game 5 was crazy with the errors and especially the incident with the ball being hit off of Choo's bat on the return throw to pitcher (I only know Shin-Soo Choo through Running Man).  But the Blue Jays pulled if off and won the ALDS.

Jays Win!

Useless Gaming News:
Played the new Coup: Rebellion G54 today with 6-players.  The new roles make the game different everytime, but we found some poor combos by chance.  Still a very good game.
I got the Kickstarted Red Dragon Inn 5 in the mail today.  I totally didn't expect it yet.  It's the big box that can fit all the sets and parts in it.  I also got 2 sets of the 5-player metal coin sets.  Each set comes with a draw string bag 30 gold metal coils, 6 platinum metal coins, 5 metal fortitude tokens, and 5 metal alcohol tokens.  These metal tokes are really good quality!

Red Dragon Inn 5.

Happy Birthday Zack!!!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY ZACK!!!

G54

Lunch today -> Sushi.
Was in the mood for sushi, all because I read this article in the morning.  I got sushi from the Sushi House in the Hazeldean Mall.

Sushi.

Snack today -> Doritos.
Tried the Habanero and Guacamole Doritos Collisions.  The red habanero chips were not as hot as I expected.  The Roulette Doritos are way hotter.  The green Guacamole chips were ok, but they seemed to have alot of ginger powder on them.

Doritos Collisions.

Useless Gaming News:
Got my copy of KickStarted Coup: Rebellion G54 today.  It's the same as playing Coup, but with 25 different types of characters.  Hoping to play this, this week at Gaming Lunch.

Coup: Rebellion G54.

Happy Birthday Emi!!!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY EMI!!!

Thanksgiving 2015 Long Weekend Report: Thanksgiving Lobster and Oreo Crepe Cake.

Lunch Friday -> Rideau Restaurant.
Went to Rideau Restaurant for lunch with some of the CMC boyz. Only 5 of us went, but we ordered 6 dishes: Schezwan beef, General Tao Chicken, Cantonese chow mein, sizzling black pepper steak, salt & pepper pork chop, and fried green beans with black bean and dried shrimp.

Rideau Food.

We destroyed all the plates :)

Destroyed Rideau Food.

Snack Friday -> Birthday Cake.
Gavin was in town this weekend.  We met up Friday night.  We celebrated Emi's birthday early by surprising her with a cake and gifts.

Surprise Emi.

Ben bought the cake from the French Bakery in Kanata, La Provence.  It was a Lemon Cheese Mousse cake.  Very good and lite.

Lemon Cheese Mousse.

We played games afterwards.  We started with Istanbul.  Unique work management game and fun.  It's hard to stop someone once they get ahead.  I think the game needs a way for players to steal of lose resources randomly.  Not a game for Brian.  He would give up after a few turns.

3-Player Istanbul.

Next we played Tiny Epic Galaxies.  Good game, but I think it would have been better with more than 3 players.  A worker placement and roll-your-luck dice game.

Tiny Epic Galaxies.

Finished the night with a bunch of game of Magic.  It's been awhile since I played Magic and nothing beats this game.

3-Player Magic.

Happy Birthday Uncle Chin!!!
Saturday we went to Montreal for my Uncle's birthday.  I ate soooo much food!
When we got there, we had a late lunch/appetizer.  There was BBQ pork, chicken, duck, different meat buns, tempura shrimp.  I was semi-stuffed with this meal.

Appetizers.

Then we went to Chinatown for dinner.
Started with a good fish maw soup.  For some reason they didn't give us any white pepper.

Fish Maw Soup.

Next was some really good seafood roll.  It was shrimp paste with chunks of shrimp and scallop made into a roll and then deep fried.  Very good topped with a bit of mayo and sriracha.

Seafood Roll.

Next was chicken.  It was very good too, but we all had just eaten good chicken for lunch.

Chicken.

Noodles was next.  A rich seafood, chicken, and veggie chow mein.  Lots of toppings on the huge bowl of crispy egg noodles.

Seafood Chow Mein.

A whole fish followed.  This was the weakest dish.  The fish was over cooked and lacked flavour.  Lots of tiny bones too.

Steamed Fish.

A shrimp-loaf was next.  A simple filler dish, but very good.

Shrimp-Loaf.

Next was a beef shank bowl with tofu.  Some tasty marrow filled bones in this bowl.

Beef Shank and Tofu.

Jumbo shrimp on spinach greens (I think).  I was getting full, so I didn't get much of this.

Jumbo Shrimp on Greens.

The highlight of the night: 2 lobsters stir fried with ginger and green onions.  This dish was so good. I ended up finishing most of the lobster as everyone at our table was full or didn't want to eat the hard to eat piece.  It got messy, but I didn't care.  As I was finishing. the other table brought over their lobster plate and polished off most of that plate too.

Lobsters

Fried rice came at the end, but it was just fried rice with pea, carrots, bbq pork, and shrimp.  No pic.
After the feast, we went back to my uncle's place for dessert.  There was 2 cakes and some squares from Totally Squared.  The cakes were fruity short cake and an awesome Oreo Crepe cake.

Cakes.

The Oreo Crepe Cake was extremely good, almost beats the Nutella Crepe Cake.  Almost.  The weak point is the creme between the layers is thicker and made the cake more heavy than the light nutella crepe cake.  The cakes were from Les Delices Lafrenaie.