FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Hotel GODIN Has New Ownership
OPUS to Become National Chain of Boutique Hotels

(Montreal, July 10, 2007) – Trilogy Properties Corp, developer, manager and owner of the award-winning OPUS Hotel in Vancouver, announced today that it is becoming the sole owner of the Hotel GODIN, one of Montreal’s premiere boutique hotels. It purchased the property from Cadim, a division of the Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec, and Hotels Incognita. The hotel will now be known as OPUS Montreal.

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METRO RESTAURANT

Stay tuned for the review – in the interim, check out my photos on flickr, HERE.

METRO – A new restaurant by Brian Fowke and Tim Keller is now open

FACT SHEET
Casual Fine Dining
Metropolitan Canadian Cuisine

Metro is located on Vancouver’s downtown waterfront in the heart of the hotel and convention district, close to Gastown, the entertainment district and financial centre, and features a stunning room designed by David Nicolay and Rob Edmonds of Evoke International Design. Chef Brian Fowke’s menu features Metropolitan Canadian Cuisine — modern cooking built from classic techniques, the influences of Canada’s multicultural society and the bounty of our region’s farms, fields, forests and oceans.

Metro is serving a limited number until its official opening and will remain in soft opening until all small details of the room are finished to their exact specifications – we anticipate 4-10 days for completion. A press release and details of the opening celebrations will be sent out at that time. The kitchen and chefs are however ready to present the full range of their dishes (For the complete menu see attached or go to www.mentrodining.ca).

Metro will be discounting the menu 10% until they are officially open and serving to full capacity.

QUICK FACTS:

Metro Restaurant
Capacity: 209
Private Dining Room: 24 people
Radiant Heated Patio (opening July 1): seats 62
Bar: 20
Lounge: 45
Stand-up reception: 250
Serving lunch and dinner from 11am – midnight 7 nights a week

200 Burrard Street (MAP)
Enter off Burrard Street or West Cordova
Vancouver BC V6C 3L6
Phone 604-662-DINE (3463)
Fax 604-662-7562
www.metrodining.ca

Brian Fowke and Tim Keller also own and operate Rare Restaurant at 1355 Hornby Street, Downtown-False Creek

Cate Simpson
Simpson Public Relations
Culinary & Hospitality Public Relations
Marketing, Promotions & Special Events
Book Tours and Press Trips
Vancouver, British Columbia
604-730-9626/ 604-681-8333

Member, Les Dames d’Escoffier
www.ldei.org www.lesdames.ca

David Aisenstat, famous for Hy’s, The Keg and Gotham, recently opened up the Shore Club around the corner from Vancouver’s Gotham. Think Gotham but for Seafood and it was excellent!

One of my favourite parts of the meal had to be the Vanilla Bean Battered Prawns. Oh.. and the Bone-in Rib Steak? Almost stacked up with that legendary steak at Ruth’s Chris I keep raving about.

I can definitely fancy myself going back for more soon!

What: Shore Club
Where: 688 Dunsmuir Street, Vancouver (MAP)

UPDATE (7/23/2007): You can view all of the images I’ve taken at the Shore Club on Flickr, HERE.

Zin Restaurant on Robson Street (1200 block between Bute and Jervis) has  a cool idea for one of their menus. They’re using seed paper which is environmentally friendly,  biodegradable and produces flowers!

“Seed paper. Cover in soil and wathc the wildflowers grow.”

Now, the only thing I’m concerned about is the possibility that people will be swiping their menus to grow wildflowers!

A new business has popped up in Vancouver. If you don’t have a computer, you can volunteer time for at FREE GEEK — Community Technology Centre on West 2nd off Main, help build computers and work towards getting your own computer.

Great idea – you actually get to build a computer – you gain knowledge and you get to go home with a shiny new PC (assembled from donated parts).

Their pitch: “Can’t afford a computer? Or want to donate old computer equipment? Make your community a better place by helping out!”

For details call: 604-698-7372
or visit http://freegeekvancouver.org

Finally, a place that I can dump all my old components and put them to good use!

A new candy store has opened up on Robson Street.. finally, a place to get my sugar fix!

What: Candy Aisle, Robson
Where: 635 Robson Street, Vancouver (MAP)
Phone: 604-669-7898

I’m still trying to figure out whether the endless supply of gourmet Jelly Belly jellybeans is the highlight or if Duff Beer from the Simpsons is… hmmm.

Apparently the slogan for Rennie’s Jameson House project has been conveniently converted from ‘Pure Design’ to ‘Pure Design — Worship Me or Die’

I’d love to get under the hood of the graffiti artist to find out just what the heck he was thinking. Lots of food for thought, tho!

Toratatsu is the newest Japanese Izakaya or Japanese Tapas Bistro, as they like to call it, on Denman Street. They soft-launched on Monday, June 11th, from the location of the former Clove Restaurant on Denman.

Stay tuned for the review sometime in the next few days. In the interim, more details on the place:

TORATATSU JAPANESE TAPAS BISTRO

Hours of operation: Monday to Sunday 6PM to 2AM (Sunday, closed)

Address: 735 Denman Street, Vancouver BC V6G 2L6 (MAP)
Phone Number: 604-685-9399

*sigh* what a pain.. the Moto Q and Windows Mobile devices for that matter can’t install CA certificates without some form of assistance from an administrator.

Thankfully the Moto Q in question was on Telus and they haven’t taken the time out to cripple the phones like Verizon and Sprint have. I seriously pity the owners of phones from those carriers.

Without going into a rant, here’s the quick and dirty which is probably more applicable than Microsoft’s KB article 841060 titled “How to add root certificates to Windows Mobile 2003 Smartphone and to Windows Mobile 2002 Smartphone.”

So you’ll need ActiveSync installed on a computer as well as a cable to connect the phone (or Moto Q) to that particular computer. After that, cancel any ActiveSync settings… you won’t need them,

1. Explore the phone, see if there is a folder called ‘STORAGE’ at the root of the phone. If not, create it.
2. Grab the CA Cert (I’ve included Starfield’ CA Certificate (in a zip file) since that’s the CA we use to issue certs), HERE.
3. Drop the (unzipped) file in the ‘STORAGE’ directory
4. Download SmartPhoneAddCert.exe from Microsoft HERE or from HERE.
5. Unzip or extract the SPAddCert.exe program from the archive (or self-extracting archive if you got it from Microsoft) and drop it into the ‘STORAGE’ directory you may have created earlier
6. Open up file manager on the handheld and launch SPAddCert
7. Choose the CA Cert that you initially intended to install and reboot the device after installation

Voila! You can now resume doing whatever you needed to do in the first place.

PS – no need to install intermediate certificates – just root certificates for the Moto Q.

On my last trip to Calgary, I finally had a chance to check out FlamesCentral and was duly impressed. The Concord Group has seriously done some good work on the former location of Stephen Avenue’s Palace Nightclub.

Here’s some photos from the experience:

Dinner included Panko Crusted Prawns, a decent Ribeye and for my guest, a Lamb Shank.

The 108 seat Wildfire Grill within the FlamesCentral complex is immaculate. The service provided to us by our service was pretty good despite it being Calgary where people can move jobs in a whim.

Click on the thumbnails below to see the rest of the place including the main area, a bar made of hockey pucks and the founders’ lounge.

Overall, I’m looking forward to going back – especially during hockey season. Can’t wait!

Click HERE to see updated photos in my flickr stream relating to Flames Central.

Now, I wonder what Vancouver and other cities’ players will be doing to top this?