Will not be a Habit

Habit Lounge

Contemporary Cuisine
2610 Main Street,

Vancouver, BC

V5T 3E6 Canada

ph: (604) 877-8582

Being tagged as "the best" is the downfall of a lot of restaurants. Customers just expect great food, great service, great everything and if the restaurant failed to deliver, disappointment becomes more that it actually is. It's always best to take top critical acclaim with a grain of salt because sometimes the restaurant should have gotten a little less praise than they deserve. Enter Habit Lounge.

Habit is located in the southern part of the artsy Main Street which serves contemporary cuisine with a touch of global flair. Their space is picture perfect, very well-interiored with a nice modern wall on one side and on the other, a wall decorated with hand painted wooden planks for a hippie touch. The citrus coloured straw lamps and the warm orange benches completed its unique look, I was impressed. The service was also good, friendly and fast, however the food was not up to par.

There are many interesting dishes on the menu and it was a toss up between the halibut lettuce wrap and the tuna salad but we thought that the halibut was more intriguing and went with that instead. The Moroccan spiced chicken wings and the crispy tofu was easier for us to pick. Starving, we were excited as the halibut came in no time. We carefully created the lettuce wrap starting with the fish flakes then the crunchy noodle, pickled carrots (looked like carrots to me), peanuts and we topped it with the ginger sauce for the first perfect bite. Ummm... the fish was bland. It definitely needs to be more seasoned and maybe a slice of lemon, it will help A LOT. Even if you put a generous amount of ginger sauce it was still missing something. It was nothing great. The chicken wings arrived shortly after. It was drenched in sauce, a little different from the usual chicken wings and as we tasted it, we were happy. The flavours were very unique. The sweet exotic pomegranate sauce definitely made it. I liked this dish a lot but with many restaurants offering a different twist to this pub grub favourite, I was still expecting for more and was hoping that our last dish will redeem it. The cripsy tofu came nicely presented, topped with shitake mushrooms, eggplants and and bean sprouts, it definitely looked promising, but unfortunately, it just wasn't exciting. It tasted like a less flavourful version of agedashi tofu. The sauce needed something more than just soy sauce and sugar, well, at least that's how it tasted to me. Once again, it was lacking.

Despite our disappointments, we finished every dish down to the last bit and when our server came and asked us if we wanted dessert we said we were good but remarked on how we did a good job polishing our plates. We smiled and she said, "I can't blame you, it's very good food". Yes, it was OK but not very good. My taste buds were not jumping up and down for joy and my growling stomach was more to blame for the squeaky clean plates. Extra points though for the great interior. This restaurant was definitely visually stimulating but not really deliciously satisying.

* picture stolen from habitlounge.ca