So Hot So Pot on Alexandra and Garden City, Richmond
So-Hot-So-Pot. What a name!
I got two hot pot restaurants that is on our to-try list but when we came across this new place with this unique name, I thought we better go try even though it is summer now. Hot Pot are great as a winter food. Not so great for summer. We went anyway.
Just because of the name.
So-Hot-So-Pot. LOL!
That big $18.95 All You Can Eat sign caught our attention. It can’t be that cheap. It’s always that they charge a lot for the soup and make their money from extras. That is their business model.
If you see $18.95, count on spending at least $25 … or more likely $30, once you get the bill.
As usual we get there early. It was about 6 PM. There was only one table taken and yet they ask us “Do you have a reservation?”.
Puzzled, I said “No”.
“Oh, I am sorry we are full today”, the lady who looked like the owner said.
I was quite stunned and as we were about to turn around, she said “Hmmm … let me see if I can squeeze you in” … thinking hard, looking at the reservation page which has four lines on it and tapping the pen on the counter.
“Tell you what. You have to leave by 7:30PM … are you OK with that?” she said.
Hah! I heard of that before. These AYCE places make money not only by turning the tables but pressure you to eat fast, order the wrong stuff and such.
“Oh yeah, sure”, I said cheerfully. Let me tell you, ignore the time limit they tell you. Don’t get annoyed, just agree and then deal with it later. They will find it hard to eject you come the time. LOL!
The restaurant is modern and quite big. I like it. It is one of the better looking, if not the best looking, hot pot restaurants around. It is very clean too.
Of course it is clean. Apparently they had been opened just nine days.
Service was good, I must say. They have lots of staff. The weird thing is the staff is always walking round and round the restaurant even though there are only two tables. I am not sure if they are bored and just walk round and round the same route or their boss made them do that. Weird!
So we get our plates cleared out very fast. The soup was topped all the time.
The table setting is very nice too. They are brand new and shiny and all.
OK, it is kind of hard to read the above. Click on it to get a larger image.
That was out first order. We are not yet experts in hot pot but we are getting there.
This time we stayed our course … we are going for the high price items … meat, meatballs and seafood. Ignore the vegetable. Ignore the noodles.
The soup base is from $7 to to as high as $15. That is charged per pot, not per person. So, the more people sharing the pot, the cheaper it is. You know that already, right?
What I did not like is that they charge extra for sauces. Not cheap too … 50 cents for ginger, 50 cents for green onions … cut throat prices. These stuff is very important to me and we had to plonk down another $2.50 for it.
You know what is missing from the menu? Suanne said they should have desserts. Come to think of it, it is a pretty good idea.
The drinks are $1.50. I ordered a Wong Lo Kat which is a popular Cantonese herbal first invented by Wong Lo Kat (who else?) almost 200 years ago.
I thought they would brew this in house like the other hot pot restaurants. But it is in a can. Suanne had the coconut juice.
Here is the combo which we had to pay extra $2.50. Such a small bowl and has five items in it … ginger, green onions, parsley, garlic and sweet pepper sauce.
If I recall correctly, Garden City Hot Pot provides this free of charge.
Don’t go yet. I got lots more to tell. I’ll cut to the chase and tell you about the items we love the best here.
The beef items is what you should order … a lot. Stuff yourself full first with this. The beef (and pork and lamb) slices above looked all the same and we could not tell the difference really.
If you had followed our hot pot posts, you will know that I love to individually cook my beef. They get cooked very fast and so don’t throw it all in and let it boil too long in the soup.
I just put a slice or two on the scoop and let it boil for a few seconds until the pinkness just goes away.
This is the best way to eat it. :-)
Look at the marbling on the beef slices. Aren’t they a beaut? It is so good you don’t need dipping sauce with this.
That is why you should just order the beef … like … More on following page. Click here to continue reading.
Having Crossing Bridge Rice Noodle (过桥米线) the Right Way
OK, here is the right way to be served the Crossing Bridge Rice Noodle.
I think.
“I think” because I had obviously never been to Yunnan. I am going by the detailed description of this uniquely Yunnan dish from this post yesterday. Here is the description again. If you had read it yesterday, it’s the same.
Cross Bridge Rice Noodle is a special dish of Yunnan. It is originated during the Qianlong period, nearly 200 years ago. There is a popular legend regarding its origins.
It is said that a scholar in Mengzi, who was preparing for the Imperial examination, went to an island in the Na Lake everyday to study. His wife went across the bride to the island to bring his meal to him. Owing to the long distance, he had to eat the meal cold everyday.
Accidentally, his wife discovered that a greasy chicken soup is not easy to get cold. What’s more, fresh ingredients, such as seasonal vegetable, fresh meat and so on, can become edible by putting them into this kind of boiled soup.
From then on, the scholar could have a delicious and hot meal everyday. Because his wife went across the bridge everyday, the rice noodle made this way was named as Cross Bridge Rice Noodle.
By now, the Cross Bridge Rice Noodle has a distinct development. The most important factor in this noodle is the soup. It was made with natural hen, pig bone and ham. It needs to be boiled for over 6 hours until the soup become savory and the oil from these are distilled.
The next thing worth mentioning is the ingredients. There are two kinds of rice noodles. The proper kind is the slim one, which is good at keeping the flavour of the valuable soup. The ingredients can be divided into two categories: vegetable and meat. The vegetable used are dependent on what is in season. The meat is focus on slice. The thinner the better, so the slice meat is one of the characteristics of the Cross Bridge Noodle.
Last but not least, the process of eating is special. The right orders are as follows: firstly, put the meat slice in the soup, then the vegetable, the last one rice noodle. Minutes later, a hot colorful and delicious Cross-Bridge Rice Noodle is ready.
So yeah, I was quite disappointed with the new stall in the Crystal Mall food court who profess to serve Crossing Bridge Rice Noodles and yet do not serve it the way it is supposed to be. They are supposed to make you feel like a scholar served by the wife … just like the legend says.
But I know of a place that serves it the correct way … the way that the legends says it should be. LOL! So, I made my way to this restaurant yesterday and took some pictures so that I can show you how this restaurant does it.
I actually had it earlier in 2006 and blog about it. It was one of the “charter posts” of chowtimes. This is offered as a lunch special. See how they do this right? The first thing they did was to bring two plates of ingredients. Just the two plates … separately served.
I shall call the first plate above “The Fiber”.
The second plate is more important. I shall call this “The Protein”.
Right in the middle is the quail egg … served raw, as it should be. In the Crystal Mall food court, they cheated. They gave me a hard boiled one. No, no. *finger wag*
Then there are … More on following page. Click here to continue reading.
Guess Who Is Opening Across the Street from the Richmond Brighouse Station!
We were out for dinner tonight.
As I was driving along No 3 Road and nearing the Richmond-Brighouse Skytrain station, Suanne suddenly told me that “They are finally opening. The sign is up today”.
“Huh? Who? What? Where?” I asked, knowing how random she sometimes gets.
She then went on to tell me about the time she heard the waitress of our favourite restaurant talking about opening a new restaurant in the prime location across the terminus station.
“Take out the camera. Quick.”, I told Suanne.
She whipped the camera out with double quick time … you know, like cowboys whipping out their pistols from the holsters in a gun duel.
I wound down the window for her … and slowed to a crawl … with the car behind me honking me …
… and she had to take the picture above. Sigh.
“Take another one” I said … and … More on following page. Click here to continue reading.
Yunnan Cross Bridge Rice Noodle from Xiang Yuan Qiao in Crystal Mall Food Court, Burnaby
Let’s take a closer look at one of the lesser provinces in China.
I am talking about the province of Yunnan.
Here. See the map. Yunnan is the southern most province and it borders the South East Asian countries of Burma, Vietnam and Laos. If you are familiar with geography in the area, it is green and forested … more forested than anywhere else in China.
And yet it is a poverty stricken province. One third of the population are made up of several ethnic minorities which has a lot of cultural similarities to the South East Asian countries. As a matter of fact, Yunnan has more ethnic groups in the whole of China. Because of its natural beauty, this province thrives on tourism. Most of the tourism are internal. The world is still too focused on the Shanghai, Beijing and Xian.
If there is one dish that is unique to the province of Yunnan, it is the “Crossing Bridge” Rice Noodle (过桥米线). You can get it throughout the province.
I went to a stall just last week and came across the board above. Did you notice the headgear of the figures above. That is not Han Chinese but is of one of the ethnic minority groups.
I like the way they narrated the origin of the dish. It’s kind of hard to read the small print, so, I had reproduced it below:
Cross Bridge Rice Noodle is a special dish of Yunnan. It is originated during the Qianlong period, nearly 200 years ago. There is a popular legend regarding its origins.
It is said that a scholar in Mengzi, who was preparing for the Imperial examination, went to an island in the Na Lake everyday to study. His wife went across the bride to the island to bring his meal to him. Owing to the long distance, he had to eat the meal cold everyday.
Accidentally, his wife discovered that a greasy chicken soup is not easy to get cold. What’s more, fresh ingredients, such as seasonal vegetable, fresh meat and so on, can become edible by putting them into this kind of boiled soup.
From then on, the scholar could have a delicious and hot meal everyday. Because his wife went across the bridge everyday, the rice noodle made this way was named as Cross Bridge Rice Noodle.
By now, the Cross Bridge Rice Noodle has a distinct development. The most important factor in this noodle is the soup. It was made with natural hen, pig bone and ham. It needs to be boiled for over 6 hours until the soup become savory and the oil from these are distilled.
The next thing worth mentioning is the ingredients. There are two kinds of rice noodles. The proper kind is the slim one, which is good at keeping the flavour of the valuable soup. The ingredients can be divided into two categories: vegetable and meat. The vegetable used are dependent on what is in season. The meat is focus on slice. The thinner the better, so the slice meat is one of the characteristics of the Cross Bridge Noodle.
Last but not least, the process of eating is special. The right orders are as follows: firstly, put the meat slice in the soup, then the vegetable, the last one rice noodle. Minutes later, a hot colorful and delicious Cross-Bridge Rice Noodle is ready.
It is not a fancy place where I got the Crossing Bridge Rice Noodle. I came across this in the food court in Crystal Mall in Burnaby.
This stall is new. I think this stall used to serve Korean food. Anyway, you won’t miss it because it is located right on top of the escalator. I was more drawn to this place because of the story behind the dish.
While their specialty is the Crossing Bridge Rice Noodle, they have other dishes too. I thought that the Cucumber with Spicy Sauce was particularly cheap at $1.75 and so I got one to try. I like this and often order this in Sichuan restaurants.
The cucumber is fresh … crunchy and cold. It doesn’t look spicy isn’t it? There are no tell tale chili flakes. The sauce wasn’t even red. But it is spicy alright. Real nice spicy.
I was kind of disappointed when they served the Crossing Bridge Rice Noodle. They dump everything into the hot pot. No fun!
They should have served it in the traditional method … More on following page. Click here to continue reading.
Tri-Pot Taiwanese Street Snack on Alderbridge Way, Richmond
I knew it!
When I found out that a new place called Tri-Pot recently opened and that they serves Taiwanese street snacks, I was quite keen to check that out. I knew that this could be something that will get a few people excited. To see if my hunch is right, I tweeted about this place. Lo and behold, there were a number of responses:
That’s right. Every time someone mentions the word street food, people sit up.
Street food has to be the hottest conversation on food these days … especially with the street food pilot program that the city of Vancouver launched a few weeks ago. It did not get off to a great start as everyone know. Anyway, many people seems to have their own opinions about what street food is and what their expectations are.
To some, street food is just about anything that is sold on the street. I hope I did not read it wrong but I think I read somewhere that there is one food cart selling ice cream on croissants. That bizarre idea aside, the prices charged for street food is so expensive that it costs the same as if you are eating in a restaurant.
My expectation … is that the whole premise of street food is that it has to be cheap. That is the model of street food in Asia. In our city, it is anything but cheap.
I don’t know what you call this. Tri-Pot call this the Low-Carb Snack On The Go. So I am making a wild guess here — is this called Tianbula – (甜不辣)?
The words sounded like Tempura and so I could be wrong. :-)
The way you order this is simple. There are over 50 types of ingredients. Each of them costs $2 (items 1 through 43) and the remaining ones are $3.
Looking at the prices, I reckon people will normally order 3-4 items which will work out to be $6-$10. Not particularly cheap. I am sure it is way cheaper getting this from the streets in Taiwan.
The receipt on the left is mine. Actually mine also included Egg Noodle but it landed on Suanne’s receipt.
It took them a while to prepare this. It wasn’t very long but considering that they had to cut every piece up into small pieces and then cook it, it is perhaps a 5 minute wait. Remember now that this is meant to be a take-away meal.
What happened next … More on following page. Click here to continue reading.
