Laurelle's & à la mode: Puff Pastry & Cheesecake

Other than Steveston another personal favourite place to go on sunny days is Granville Island. Yesterday (Sunday) early afternoon was relatively busy with the Jazz Festival and other street performers.

By the water it was still a little on the chillier side but at least the sun is finally out! Maybe Vancouver summer will actually begin...

One of the street performances was Zapcircus, the girl is standing on the guy's head and juggling three balls.

Zapcircus

After some strolling around, we stopped at the Public Market Place to grab a bite. Earlier in the morning when I was on Google maps to find directions to Granville Island, the map told me that the market was permanently closed. Not sure why they made that mistake.

Busy lunch hour at the market

We wanted to have soup with the puff pastry on top so we headed over to à la mode . There is always an assortment of soups, pies, and other pastries on display here making it hard to choose which one to try!

I ended up ordering a Chicken Pot Pie with salad and a slice of blueberry cheesecake.

The puff pastry was warm, buttery and crispy, I loved it. On the other hand the "salad" was lacking because it was essentially a large piece of lettuce with a few slices of cucumber and tomato on top and some vinaigrette. A very minimal effort side plus the cucumbers were probably cut many hours ago because it was dry.

Chicken pot pie with salad

The soup was like a cream of mushroom with cubes of chicken breast. The chicken breast was a bit dry but other than that the soup was toasty hot and comforting.

This cheesecake is exactly how I like them as I described in a previous post, basically thick cream cheese and not the mousse-y texture like a lot of cheesecakes are sold. The blueberry pieces on top were sweet and the crust was flavourful with a hint of cinnamon, nutmeg and other spices.

Blueberry cheescake

We also bought a square of lasagna from Laurelle's Fine Foods. I tried a mushroom quiche last time I was here and it was delicious.

This time we got spinach lasagna. I liked that there was a lot of filling compared to the amount of lasagna noodles. The spinach was very tender and there was a generous amount of cheese baked on top.

Overall, although the food at the market can be quite pricey I have not been disappointed by any of the vendors that I've tried before. It is not like the night market where food can be hit or miss.

This time I noticed the stickers on the market place doors exiting to the docks. It said to be careful of seagulls if you have food in your hands. I thought that was funny :P and it is very true because I've seen crows and seagulls swoop down to steal food from people!