All Entries in the "Asian" Category
Guu in Aberdeen, Richmond
It’s getting tougher to look for a new cake place for cake meet with Polly. I got a couple of places to check out but only found out that they are open late in the afternoon which does not suit our timing. It was also a rainy day and we ended up in Aberdeen Center in Richmond. At least the car park is covered and there is plenty of parking spaces. That’s why we ended up our cake meet at Guu in Aberdeen.
Guu in Aberdeen opens for lunch at 11:30am. That is still ok with us. Since we were there at about 11:00 am, we had some time to do some groceries shopping before our lunch. Polly likes to do her groceries shopping on Friday as most groceries places are packed with people in the weekends. As for me, I like to do my groceries shopping at the beginning of the week as I seldom cook during weekends.
Guu is a Izakaya type of Japanese restaurant. All the servers will greet you the moment you enter and leave the restaurant. They are full of enthusiasm. I like their high spirit. The only other Asian restaurant that practice such greetings are Taiwanese restaurant. However, they are more subtle.
Polly likes Guu’s cup and condiment holders, especially the cup with the fish imprints. Chinese restaurants usually have toothpicks at the counter but in Guu, they actually have them on the table. What a nice touch.
We ordered two items to share. The first item was called the Guuu’d Box. It’s on the lunch special menu. This bento box costs More on following page. Click here to continue reading
Shabusen Yakiniku House on Granville and West 14th, Vancouver
The last time we had Japanese AYCE (all-you-can-eat) was 7 months ago. That was when we went to E-Bei.
As much as Nanzaro and Arkensen love Japanese sushi, the reason why we had not gone to one more often is because Suanne just doesn’t like raw fish, period.
But Shabusen Yakiniku House is different. It is both a Japanese AYCE and a Korean BBQ AYCE.
There are two Shabusens in Vancouver. There is one in downtown Vancouver. We went to the other one on Granville.
In case you don’t know, the word Yakiniku means grilled meat in Japanese.
For an AYCE, Shabusen looks a lot posh and better than all the other AYCEs we had been to. The whole place is bright with lots of ceiling high windows and skylights. It was actually a beautiful day eating here despite the it being rainy the whole morning. The Fall colors looked so good at this time of the year.
Every table had a gas grill in the center. That is for the Korean BBQ. See the bottle above? That is the BBQ sauce but really, we hardly need to use that because the meat were already very well marinated.
Service was kind of slow here. The waiters and waitresses seems to walk around with their eyes peeled to the ground all the time. It is as if they are afraid that if they get eye contact with the customer, they will have to do more work or something. It was so hard to get their attention when we wanted something from them.
The AYCE is $13 for weekdays and $13.50 for weekends. Dinner is is $22.
The selection at a glance looks a lot smaller than places like Kingsway Sushi and E-Bei. The above was our first round order where we max out our order of Sashimis.
We left these 32 pieces to the boys. These alone kept them very happy.
For Suanne and I, we were quite contended with the Korean BBQ. There are three choices … chicken, beef and pork.
In our greed, we ordered a total of EIGHT plates of BBQ meat. That was way too much and we had a difficult time finishing all of them. We did not feel good about wasting food.
For once, I was the one who did all the cooking. Oh yeah, believe it or not [giving myself a pat on the back].
BBQ is a guy thing for some reason. Suanne was happy to let me do all the work while she enjoys my cooking.
Well, I must say that I did quite well. The meat was super … More on following page. Click here to continue reading
Sunway Restaurant on No 3 Road, Richmond
No sooner had I lamented that Richmond does not have a worthy Taiwanese Beef Noodle restaurant, we found one right at the Empire Square. Winnie was the one who alerted us to the place. [Thanks Winnie!]
Just take a look at the above. In my usual style of getting overly excited over new discoveries, I am going to cut to the chase and say this — this is one Taiwanese restaurant that cannot be ignored. If you like Taiwanese food, you should check it out for yourself. We like it and we were impressed.
The Sunway restaurant is located at the Empire Square. This is the same strip mall where Hon’s and Shiang Garden is on No 3 Road.
They are situated at the same place where Richmond’s Legendary Noodles used to be. I personally felt this particular location is bad because it is on a blind spot to most people driving around this mall.
The Sunway restaurant is small but bright. The waitress was friendly and cheerful. She does look a lot like Bjork, no kidding except that she speaks Mandarin.
Since she was so helpful, we took the opportunity to ask her about the restaurant. She told us that they had been opened for over 3 months already. The chef was from Taiwan in a city outside of Taipei. She also told us that they take their cooking serious and uses the best of ingredients and that they do not use MSG, baking soda or tenderizer in their kitchen at all. We were quite impressed how excited she was with her sales pitch. Seriously, all this was said BEFORE we fished out our camera and notebook. So we know she did not put this up because we were going to write about them.
Our favourite is what they call Deep Fried Pop Chicken. This is like the good Salty Peppery Chicken that we tried just a few days before at Beefy Beef Noodles. The serving is larger than we expected because it was listed as $4.25. We thought it was just an appy size. When it was brought to our table, we could clearly smell the aroma. They don’t serve this with a dipping sauce.
From my memory, the Deep Fried Pop Chicken is crispier than … More on following page. Click here to continue reading
New Asia Deli on Cambie and Sexsmith in Richmond
I heard a lot about New Asia Deli but we had never eaten there before. Word has it that they used to operate a small but popular place near Richmond Center before moving to this new bigger location.
The New Asia Deli is located at the Continental Mall. This is the same mall where there are a number of our favourite restaurants such as G-Men Ramen, Pearl Castle, Taiwanese Cuisine, and Lam Chu Kee to name a few. They describe themselves as serving Vietnamese and Asia Pacific cuisine. Their claim to fame is their Banh Mi which some people swear are one of the best in Richmond.
New Asia Deli is a no frills restaurant with poorly coordinated decor and simple furnitures. For all intents and purposes, I would classify this as a hole in the wall.
Other than that, the service is friendly and warm. They speak fluent Cantonese which makes me think not only that they are not Vietnamese, they are actually one of the many ethnic restaurant operated by enterprising Chinese owners. Not that this matters much to us as long as the food is good.
Despite seeing that we each ordered our own dishes, our waitress even asked if we wanted bowls for sharing. That was thoughtful of our waitress to suggest it.
Suanne ordered their Special Baguette which is just $3.75. The baguette was what one would expect from a good Banh Mi with the necessary crunchiness. The fillings are ham with some fish cake like stuff. It also had cucumber, carrot and pickled daikon. While the baquette was good, we wished that they had more stuffings in this.
You know, I must say that for a person his age, Nanzaro is quite adept in picking his dishes. He is the one who really reads the menu from cover to cover and is always the one who takes his sweet time deciding what he wanted.
This time, his selection was called the Combination on Rice B which is $9. His choice turned out to be a really mouth watering dish.
It has lemon grass chicken, shredded pork skin, Vietnamese ham and a very nice piece of fried egg. The chicken was juicy, moist and has a pleasant … More on following page. Click here to continue reading
Beefy Beef Noodle on Main and King Edward, Vancouver
For the past few days, I kept thinking about Taiwanese Beef Noodles. It was because Suanne went with Polly to the Taiwan Beef Noodle King without me. She was raving to me about that place for so long and then she quietly went without me. I was jealous. LOL!
I like Taiwanese Beef Noodles. My favourite places are Lao Shan Dong and the No 1 Beef Noodles House but they are both in Burnaby. I can’t think of one decent Taiwanese Beef Noodle place in Richmond. Can you?
Suanne and I decided to go for a late night supper a couple of weeks ago.
Actually it was I, not Suanne, that wanted supper. Actually I wanted Beef Noodles. Actually I wanted Beef Noodles because Suanne had Beef Noodles earlier and was raving about how good it was at the Taiwan Beef Noodle King.
Since there were no worthy Beef Noodle place in Richmond, we drove all the way across the bridge to Vancouver. We know of one place we had on our list of restaurants to try … Beefy Beef Noodles.
The newly opened Beefy Beef Noodle is actually the sister restaurant to the No 1 Beef Noodle. They share the same simple block logo.
They are located on Main and King Edward. They occupy the same spot where the Rekado’s Filipino fusion restaurant used to be.
I wish they would one day decide to open an outlet too in Richmond. I won’t be surprised if it turns out to be wildly popular given their already good reputation of serving some of the best beef noodles in Metro Vancouver.
Moreover they open till late — midnight on weekdays and until 2AM on weekends. So yeah … Richmond needs a place like this for sure.
The Beefy Beef Noodles interior is bright and spacious. The restaurant took up two shop lots and that gives it the wide spacious feeling to it. The glass wall on one end of the place adds to that big restaurant feel.
On the other side of the restaurant they have a chalk board of their specials.
Although I intended to come here for beef noodles, I ended up not ordering it. It was because they had this item called Shang Xi Style Dry Noodle written prominently on the chalkboard. I was curious about it and so I ordered that instead.
What is Shang Xi anyway? Is that the name of a region in China?
It is noodles with some minced meat sauce. The meat should be pork. The sauce tasted a lot like … More on following page. Click here to continue reading
Samurai Sushi House on Cambie Near 41st, Vancouver
This is one place we expect our boys would love. They like sushi — the more the better.
When I suggested we go to Samurai Sushi for lunch, they were happy. They knew that Samurai is the sister restaurant to the Banzai Sushi House in Richmond. Their claim to notoriety is their ridiculously large rolls.
No serious.
If you have never seen their rolls, I am sure you will laugh when you see it for the first time. Their biggest is what they call the House Roll. It is so big that you can’t even pick it up with your hands without it breaking apart.
We did not expect the place to be so small. There is some seats along the bar and about 2-3 tables. That’s all. Banzai in Richmond is a lot bigger. Here, they have a lot of take out business.
Their picture menu is pasted along the wall.
We got seated on the sushi bar and get to see three chefs at working making the sushi … and the ridiculously large House Roll (click here and here to see how massive they are).
I so wanted to take a picture of the chefs at work but they have such a serious look on their face their I thought I better not. I wanted to show you the rolls that they had already made. You will be surprised how many they already made ready to go. There must be over a hundred rolls neatly stacked all over the place.
My choice was the $9.75 Mixed Combo. It consists of 2 tuna, 2 salmon and 2 ebi sushi.
The salmon … More on following page. Click here to continue reading
Pearl Castle in Richmond Centre
It was the weekend when we wanted to just go out and get a drink — bubble tea specifically. No food, we told ourselves, since we already had dinner that night. We were not hungry anyway.
We knew of just the place to go …
… the new Pearl Castle in the Richmond Centre. This restaurant is just across from the McDonalds in the western side of Richmond Center. Lots of parking, so no fear of that.
This is a branch of the successful Pearl Castle on Sexsmith (also in Richmond). It seems like Pearl Castle is on an expansion drive. They even have a small outlet at the food court in Parker Place. That food court outlet is kind of odd to me because I would have thought that location would somewhat affect their branding. It would have been much better if they open any food court outlet in the Aberdeen Centre.
They have a unique wall light thingy which changes colors (see the YouTube video above). With lightings like these, the crowd is young and is very much an Asian youngster hangout. So it was rather noisy and definitely very busy. We had to wait for a table but since this restaurant is also big, the wait was just 10 minutes.
Anyway, this outlet seems like it will be successful. The location is great and there are no real competition within walking distance.
Like the original Pearl Castle on Sexsmith, they have a separate menu just for drinks. The problem is they ran out of most of them. We ordered Iced Shaves and Grass Jelly Frappes but they came back a few minutes later saying that they are out of Frappes and Ice Shaves. Not good. Maybe it was because it was quite late in the night already.
The only things they had left was milk teas. So we ended up with … More on following page. Click here to continue reading
