I've been wanting to have a meal here ever since it opened. EXP is a totally cool video game themed restaurant and bar on the edge of downtown Vancouver. They also petitioned to change the law that prevents them from allowing customers from drinking while playing video games on their in house consoles. The last I heard, the law is still in effect. But that doesn't prevent them from having a cool looking place!


The decor is all about gaming. Most of it is from the highly recognizable Super Mario games.

The bar is even decorated with tiles in true gamer style.


SWEET! They have a Gears of War Retro Lancer on displayed on top of the booze.




It was Halo 4 launch night when I went and the TVs around the walls of the restaurant had the new Halo game on.  Even at 6pm it was pretty busy but thankfully we didn't have to wait very long for a table to free up.








The whole menu is full of video game terms and the items are cleverly named with ties to popular video games. It's a delight just to look through the menu and see what you recognize!

Same with the booze.

Master Chief Burger $13 - EXP Beef Burger, Baby Greens, House Onion Relish, Roasted Garlic Aioli, Topped with Crunchy "Halo" Onion Rings

It's not Halo Launch night without featuring the Master Chief Burger with a dollar off the regular price. All burgers and sandwiches come with choice of fries or seasonal salad and the choice to "level up" (sub for garlic fries or yam fries or onion rings or poutine).  We decided to ordered the Master Chief Burger and another burger.  It has a delicious "Halo" onion ring adorning the top of the burger as well as one inside. The onion ring was so good! I wasn't so fond of the onion relish but it is a good meaty burger that tasted great! We wanted to get a seasonal salad for one of our orders but it got lost on its way to the kitchen...to be fair it was very busy, and we didn't mind all that much so didn't bring up the error with our server. The fries are thin-cut. Crispy and yummy.

Epic Shrimp & Crab Battle for Righteousness $13 - In this Seafood Sandwich, Tempura Prawn Battle Crab Salad to Win the Love of Avocado

Our other entree was the shrimp and crab sandwich. It is named really cool and it was a super combination of flavours. Shrimp and Crab doesn't need to battle for Avocado because they all deserve to be together! I liked this sandwich better than the Master Chief burger; it was SO DELICIOUS!

Overall, I loved the concept of the restaurant and the food was great. Will be back!