Edmonton Journal from Edmonton, Alberta, Canada • 71

The Edmonton journal Saturday, October 11, 2008 1 F7 i 1 WIN TICKETS a. i SUPPLIED David Paetkau plays Sam Braddock in the CTV series Flashpoint. The Women's Show, coming up next weekend, always offers up a heartthrob for our enjoyment and this time it's actor David Paetkau, who plays Sam on the new CTV series Flashpoint. Paul Plakas, the fitness expert from TV's X-Weighted, will share his exercise program and eating plans at the show. Dr.

Michael R. Lyon, a physician and medical researcher with expertise in allopathic and natural medicine, will talk about nutritional deficiencies in children that may inhibit learning potential, with an emphasis on ADD and ADHD. He'll also discuss how to tame your appetite and tune your metabolism for lifelong weight control. Plus there will be belly dancing, samples and recipes at the kitchen stage, West Edmonton Mall fashion shows and more. We're giving away tickets to the show, which runs Saturday, 9 a.m.

to 5 p.m., and Sunday, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m., at Northlands Agricom hall C. For your chance to win a pair of tickets, please send an e-mail with "Women's Show" in the subject line to livingwellthejournal.canwest.com. Include your name and daytime phone number. The deadline for entries is noon Tuesday.

All prizes must be picked up from the downtown Journal offices. RICK M4(WIILIAU. JOURNAL Quan's Cafe is a family affair. Owner Quan Rittman, holding 10-month-old daughter Tia-Lou Rittman, has her father MangTran, left, and mother Lu Tran, right, to help in the kitchen. Her sister Kelly Tran, far right, waits tables.

Mang and Lu Tran ran Moon Garden restaurant for years, at 100th Avenue and 175th Street QfflMEMD Blight and mound of vermicelli, my dining partner cleaned up every last morsel of her vegetables with prawns and rice. She was taken by the savoury sauce coating the vegetables. "It's a lighter-tasting sauce with just a hint of garlic that made it very attractive," she offered. As I sipped an iced Vietnamese coffee ($3.95) at the conclusion of the meal, my companion pointed out that the noisy diners filling the dozen tables around us appeared to be fairly evenly split between choosing the stir-fry dishes and the vermicelli bowls. The menu offers nine noodle soups, including a specialty soup and satay beef, and nine stir-fry dishes as well as five rice dishes.

One of the rice dishes is a combination meal that includes pork, beef, pork balls and springrolls. Quan says the ginger beef ($10.25) is one of the most popular dishes, but one of the more unusual dishes, the black bean rib stewwith vermicelli also a favourite of many of the regulars. It's a dish from the Moon Garden that her mother used to make in Vietnam and has been concocting for more than three decades, she explained. And she wouldn't divulge the ingredients. Well have to check it out next visit Quan's Cafe is open from 11 a.m.

to 6 p.m. and is closed Sundays. dhentonthejournal.canwest.com For an archive of restaurant reviews and an opportunity to comment, go to edmontonjournal.comwhatson DARCY HENTON journal Restaurant Reviewer REVIEW Quan's Cafe Address: 11148 142nd St. Telephone: 780-757-8677 Cost: Lunch for two about $35 be here www.MacEwa.n.cabcom Quan's Cafe has become a sort of playpen for 10-month-old Tia-Lou. Her mother Quan Rittman opened the restaurant when she was five-months pregnant and came back to work 12 days after giving birth.

i The bright, modern lunch spot in a newer strip mall on 142nd Street, just across the road from the Telus World of Science, has been open just over a year now and it has been bustling almost since day one. Rittman, 29, assumed business would start slowly when she opened the restaurant along with her mother, giving her sufficient time to get through her pregnancy. But she didn't anticipate so many of the clients from her parents' former restaurant, Moon Garden, on 100th Avenue and 175th Street, would follow their stomachs to her new place. The menu at Quan's, which boasts 50 items, is less than half the size of the menu at the Moon Garden, but the food is prepared quickly and delivered prompdy. Quan's Mother Lu Tran and father, Mang, share kitchen duties; her sister Kelly waits tables with a longtime employee from the Moon Garden, and Quan's big Irish husband, Chris Rittman, helps out wherever he can.

The place, just a few doors down from Conservative MP Laurie Hawn's constituency office, fills up quickly for the lunch crowd. I knew that from a previous scouting mission so was pleased when my dining companion volunteered to get there early to grab a table. When big news breaks, be the first to know. Sign up for e-mailed news alerts at edmontonjournal.com Ray Turchansky Wednesdays and Saturdays in Business Vi During my first visit I had ordered two of my favourite Vietnamese dishes: lemongrass chicken ($7.95) and salad rolls Although the place was packed and my table was just barely inside the door, service was instant and a pot of tea arrived before I had even settled. The salad rolls prawns, pork, bean sprouts and vermicelli noodles wrapped in soft rice paper wrappers were prepared with fresh ingredients and the lemongrass chicken was spicy and delicious.

The three long, thick rolls, each cut in half, were obviously meant to be shared, but I summoned up enough appetite to put them away myself and still get to the bottom of the chicken dish. I thought I would be more adventurous on my second visit so ordered the curry chicken stew with vermicelli ($7.95) as well as a couple of different appetizers: spring rolls ($5.75) and onion cake My vegetarian companion ordered one of the most expensive items on the menu, the vegetable stir-fry with tiger prawns Once again, the food arrived promptly. The spring rolls, filled to near bursting with flavourful ground pork, were the best I have had in quite some time. I'm not a big fan of green onion cake, but my companion said it was "crispy and light" and she liked it enough to order it again. While I immersed myself in the flaming orange curry chicken stew, which was actually a mildly spicy soup with deep-fried chicken parts on top of a IHMIII JlUlltO si till," ii('r.