Samurai Japanese Restaurant (more photos, 1108 Davie St. Vancouver, Phone 604-609-0078) is a cozy and very busy restaurant located in Vancouver’s downtown core. It serves yummy Japanese food at reasonable prices. My “Combination C” came with a variety of sushi and sashimi (pictured below) as well as Teriyaki, Tempura, miso soup, and rice. My meal came to $13.73 including tax.

Urban Thai (1119 Hamilton Street, Vancouver, Phone 604-408-7788) is a bustling, spacious, and cozily decorated Thai restaurant in the heart of Vancouver’s Yaletown shopping and restaurant district. Yaletown is known for its upscale restaurants, where it is not uncommon to walk into a restaurant and find the average entree price is $30. Urban Thai bucks the norm and aims to please with a very reasonably priced lunch special that includes a salad, spring roll, and entree served with rice. My total bill including tax and tip came to $9.00. There is quite a number of lunch selections to choose from; I enjoyed the chicken with bamboo shoots which was fairly spicy!!

Located at 590 Robson St. in Vancouver (map, phone 604-609-4567), close to downtown hotels and the famed Robson shopping district, is a Korean grocery store that is stock full of delicious Korean items – many without any English on the packages.

I cooked up some Kimchi Dumplings (a 380 gram bag cost $5.99), and served them with a bit of rice and brocolli. The result was delicious!