Update: Zin Restaurant has closed.
Look familiar?
We planned to have dinner in Downtown after our trip to the Aquarium since we were going to be in the neighbourhood anyways. We chose Zin Restaurant Lounge because I’ve heard of their $2 appys from 4-7pm. They’re also a participant of the letsgofordinner.com “promotion”.
It’s located on the corner of Jervis and Robson, so quite to the quieter side of Robson. As you can see, they have a sidewalk chalkboard promoting their appy special.
Upon entering we were told that as it wasn’t going to be a busy night, we had a choice of either…
the dining area,
….or the lounge. We chose the latter as the couches looked comfy. However, even though the appy specials were only promoted for the lounge area, I believe you can get them too in the dining area (they’re right beside each other without an obvious divider).
We started out with drinks. They had two summer drinks aptly named the “Summer Playground”. On the left is the Temptation which has pear vodka, apple juice, lemon juice, and ginger beer. This was playing dirty.
On the right was the Honey Kiss (playing nice) with cachaca, fresh strawberries, lime, and honey syrup.
I really enjoyed the Temptation. It was very fragrant of pear and so was very refreshing. Boyfriend enjoyed his Honey Kiss too. We thought that it should come with a spoon so we can eat the strawberries too but I guess that wouldn’t be very lounge-y. Leave it to us Asians to not want to waste anything we paid for huh??
We ordered quite a 3 of the $2 appies and 1 of the $5 ones. As usual we ordered more than we can finish (4 appies and 2 entrees!!!).
Above is the Chili Lime Glazed Chicken Wings ($2) and the Melissa’s Mini Meatball Slider ($5). We really enjoyed the wings, but the sliders were a bit of a miss. The sourdough bun wasn’t quite sourdoughy, and since the meat was in meatball form I found there was more bread than meat.
The White Truffle Popcorn was another $2 appy. There were no explanation but I assumed that it’s drizzled with white truffle oil or something. As I’ve never had truffles before I was hoping to get a hint of what it’s like.
Sadly there were none. This was like plain salted popcorn. If I had paid full price ($7) I would’ve been steaming mad.
The Short Rib Poutin ($2) was a good choice though. However, we found that the fries were weird. They were chewy, not fluffy like fries should be. We’re not sure why that was. The insides seemed uncooked. However we didn’t ask about it because to me it still went very well with the gravy. Man the gravy was SO GOOD. The short rib pieces were tender and flavorful. I really enjoyed this. The fries though were really weird.
So after all that we still had dinner to go through. I picked the Sea Scallops and Pork Belly ($26). It was interesting. The pork belly looked fatty but it was actually quite meaty. The top was more hard and chewy than crispy, but I’m just comparing it to the ultimate Asian way of preparation. It was something different and I did enjoy it.
The sea scallops were a miss. The dish was a bit cold and the sea scallops were a bit cold. There was just a mildly offending seafood taste to it, probably since they’re frozen scallops.
I loved loved loved the concoction on the left. It’s the jalapeno corn flan and it was very very good. At first I had to take time to figure out what it was, since it tasted so familiar. When I finally remembered that it’s corn I enjoyed it even more. I’ve never had it prepared this way and I was saying next time I come back I want to see if I could just order that on the side.
Boyfriend ordered the Grilled Canadian Angus Rib Eye ($28). He said it was grilled to a perfect medium-rare and it was tender and juicy. He really liked it. The potato cake (in a log shape in the back) tasted like a very good hash brown.
All-in-all a great dinner to close a great day.
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Hi Wendy:
Nice choice to use your card. He he he … if I had just gone to the aquarium, I would have been thinking of seafood. This looks like a great place to check out next with our card.
Ben