Grayson and I went to mosaic bar and grille for his birthday. We’ve never been here before so we when we walked in we were excited to see the nice view the restaurant had of downtown Vancouver.
Scones
To start us off, the waitress brought us these cute little scones. The server didn’t tell us what they were made of but they tasted smokey bacony and had a dash of sea salt on top. Grayson loved these little guys because they were extremely light and fluffy. We were asked if we wanted another serving of them, and we eagerly told her “yes.” I’m glad we did too because our appetizers took almost an hour to arrive at our table.
Smoked salmon and avocado terrine
For our appetizer we both picked the smoked salmon and avocado terrine. I was most excited about this one out of everything we ordered but I was left disappointed. I wasn’t a fan of the bourbon vinegar sauce because it made it way too acidic tasting. The avocado also had an odd oily texture to it that wasn’t all that appealing to me either. With that being said, Grayson and I both loved the fish and how fresh it tasted. You can’t see it here, but the dish came with a dome that encased the a la minute smoke of the salmon.
Grilled cod with baby bok choy
I picked the grilled cod with baby bok choy, and shiitake mushroom for my main. When the dish came to the table, the dashi broth was added by the server. I actually really liked this one, the cod was perfectly flaky and the dashi made everything nice and aromatic.
8 hour braised short ribs
Grayson chose the 8 hour braised short ribs with roasted root vegetables and gosh, you could really tell this meat was cooked for hours on end. As Grayson would say, there’s nothing better than tender melt in your mouth short rib. We were unsure as to what the puree was but I have a feeling it was parsnip.
Banana split
Dessert time! Do you see what I see on this plate? Because besides the banana split with caramelized bananas and pistachio brittle, I was amused to see the happy face that was looking back at me. Grayson and I thought that this dessert, as expected from the caramelized sugar, was a little too sweet for us. I really would of liked it if there were more blueberries too. None of that really matter though because we both enjoyed devouring the loads of ice cream it had in it!
Mosaic chocolate cake
At last, the “infamous” Mosaic chocolate cake! The picture I took really does the cake no justice in showing how big of a slice it actually was when it showed up at our table. To my surprise, it actually wasn’t too sweet and coming from me, someone with no sweet tooth, that says a lot. We ended up sharing a third of this cake and I took the rest home for lil’ bun to have her go at it.
Even though the food was lovely, the service we received was less than desirable. We ended up staying at the restaurant for three hours because our food showed up really slowly. It would have been more understandable if the restaurant was packed, but it wasn’t.
The waitress did come by a few times to tell us that our food would arrive shortly and that they only had one chef for the evening, but we weren’t too happy about the wait time between each of our courses. Overall, the food at Mosaic bar and grille was amazing but we wished the food came faster.