All Entries in the "Dim Sum" Category
Kalok Seafood Restaurant in Union Square, Richmond
Polly and I met up for dim sum. Polly also invited her friend, Di to join us. Di is kind of on vacation here for a month to experience the winter in Vancouver.
We went to Kalok Seafood Restaurant at Capstan Way, Richmond. I had blogged about this restaurant in the summer of 2010. The English name was Gala at that time. Then this restaurant had a change of hand and became Jubilee Chinese Restaurant which tried to make it a 24 hour restaurant. I guessed it did not last. The lady who served us seemed to be the owner of the original Gala restaurant and told us she had to give up Gala due to her serious illness. She is back now and Kalok is back in business for about 4 months. The English name is the direct Cantonese translation of the Chinese name.
The restaurant is busy at noon even on a Monday. Parking is a bit of challenge here. Di and I went in to get a table first while Polly drove around to look for parking.
Prices range from $3.80 to $7.45. There is a 25% discount from 9:00am to 11:00am and 20% discount from 11:00am to 3:00pm. You can click on the menu above to have a larger view. The one on the right is their kitchen special.
One good thing is tea is free here. Most dim sum restaurants charge $1 per person.
We ordered 7 items to share. Some of our initial orders are not available yet as the server told us that those are new items and not ready yet.
We started off with an order of Durian Pastry for $5.25. Polly and I love durian and we always order anything with durian. The pastry is kind of… More on following page. Click here to continue reading
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Dragon View Chinese Cuisine in Continental Plaza, Richmond
Lorna invited me and Emily S for dim sum. Emily brought her hubby along as he has just arrived from China for a vacation with Emily to Bermuda.
I suggested to go to Dragon View Chinese Cuisine in Continental Plaza since I have not blog about it before.
Like most dim sum place, this is nicely decorated with a large center piece chandelier. We were there at 10:30 AM and it’s not too busy.
Dragon View Chinese Cuisine was called Wah Wing before the change of name. Even the napkin still bears the Wah Wing Restaurant Group name. Anyone has any idea for the name change?
You may click on the menu to have a larger view. The dim sum here ranges from $3.25 for S to $8.80 for D. Other more expensive sharing dishes like noodles, congee and rice ranges from $7.80 to $16.80. Oh!, they charge $3 for XO sauce which we did not order.
For week day, if you settle the bill before 12PM, there is a 20% discount for the dim sum items.
We ordered 7 items to share among the four of us. Emily and hubby let Lorna and me to do the ordering. They just want to relax and enjoy the meal. I want that too!
The first item was Deep Fried Lotus Roots Cakes. The above medium size dim sum is $4.19. They were quite meaty and has a crunch to it.
The above Deep Fried Fish Paste wrapped with Rice Rolls was Emily’s hubby’s favourite. It was categorized under P which priced at $4.99. It was a big serving. It is like ‘Jar Leong’ … More on following page. Click here to continue reading
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Neptune Seafood Restaurant on No. 3 Road, Richmond
Emily S organized a meet up for dim sum at Neptune Seafood Restaurant on No. 3 Road. There were five of us. The group include Lorna, Jean, Peggy L and me. We were supposed to meet at 10:30AM in the restaurant. Emily S made the reservation. We were all there on time except Emily. Emily turned up only after 11:00 AM as she overslept. We were all wondering if we or she had mistaken the place.
Neptune Seafood Restaurant was closed a while ago. I heard that the owner sold the place but the transaction did not fall through. It was reopened with the word “shakrfin” removed from the English name but the Chinese name remains the same. You can see the old frontage from the post here.
The restaurant is very busy. At 10:30AM, it was already 70% full and this is a weekday. We placed the order before Emily arrived because there is a 20% discount on dim sum before 11:00AM.
Prices here are on the high side. For dim sum, small is $3.68, medium is $4.38, large is $4.98. For specials, SK is $6.98, SLK is $7.98 and SKK is $8.98. I have no idea what the SK, SLK and SKK stands for. Anyone has any idea?
You can click on the menu to view them larger.
The cutlery is simple and nice. Even the teapot cover is labeled with the tea of your selection.
Lorna ordered the above Abalone with Compoy Rice Wrap. This rice wrap is normally eaten during Dragon Boat festival. This item is categorized under SLK which is $7.98.
The rice used for this rice wrap is glutinous rice. This is filled with abalone, dried scallop, pork, green beans and salted egg yolk. Look at the pork fat at the photo on the right. The rice wrap is boiled for few hours until the pork fat melts in your mouth.
The above Dice Chicken, Squid & Mushroom Rice Casserole is from … More on following page. Click here to continue reading
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Dim Sum at Good Eat Seafood Restaurant on Leslie Road, Richmond
Polly and I planned to go to Kim Ga Nae to try their $7.99 for 5 items lunch special. Unfortunately, when we arrived at 11:00 AM, Kim Ga Nae is not opened yet. So, I went down to go to the door to check their opening hours. What I found is a hand written note on the door that says “Temporary Closed”. Later,I found out that they are closed for renovation.
With plan A dashed, we had to quickly came up with a plan B. Since we were in the area, I suggested we go to Good Eat Seafood Restaurant for dim sum since I have not been to this restaurant before.
Good Eat Seafood Restaurant is tucked in a small mall area on Leslie Road. It is not a very visible location. Parking is quite limited for this restaurant. There is parking in front, on the side and at the back of the restaurant.
When we arrived at around 11:00AM, the restaurant is not busy. It’s about 1/3 full. But by 12:00PM, this place started to fill up. We noticed most of the customers are Chinese seniors.
We saw a sign on the wall that says this restaurant allows customers to bring their own liquor with a corkage charge of $5.
We like that this restaurant uses real table cloth instead of the plastic ones for quick clean up. The cutleries here showed their age. There is a dollar per person tea charge for the dim sum.
The regular dim sum here ranges from $2.50 to $2.95 while the chef’s specials range from $4.95 to $6.95. Some chef specials items come in 2 sizes where the larger size ranges from $9.95 to $10.95.
We selected 5 items to share. The first item is … More on following page. Click here to continue reading
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Harbour Spirit Restaurant on No 3 Road, Richmond
The opening of the Harbour Spirit Restaurant was perhaps one of the most anticipated on over the last few months. One of the reasons is that they were taking an old location vacated by Sammy J Peppers which is a large space and highly visible along the No 3 Road.
They are so big that we were told by the restaurant that they will “specialize” on Cantonese AND Sichuan AND Northern AND Hot Pot when we went there (did not eat) on their opening day (see here). I can’t find that comment now but I distinctly remember someone saying that with trying be everything to everyone, they will either succeed big time or they will fail big time.
The initial reports from this place were mostly unfavourable. I was not surprised because with such a big operations there are a lot more kinks to sort out. As much as Suanne and I would like to go check them out, we decided that against it. We sort of knew what the experience would be like — no different from all the early reports.
We finally went after they were opened for 1.5 months. That should be enough time to have things to settle down and well past the dry run periods.
It does seems like the Harbour Spirit have deep pockets. They want to open up with a bang to awe people. On the surface they did quite a good job. The chandeliers and the heavy set chairs were highly visible. But on a second glance, they are still very rough around the edges. It is in the details that they fell short.
OK things like this bother me especially when they try to be classy but ignore the details. The white table cloth above, I find them distractingly nonuniform. That was not just it. The materials are cheap and too light that it shifts when you move the plates or teapot around. And they are wrinkled.
They must have spend some … More on following page. Click here to continue reading
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Shun Feng Village Seafood Restaurant on No 3 Road, Richmond
As I was sitting here writing this post, I was just thinking that whatever happened to Grayelf, TS and JS. I always see these ladies everywhere there is a mention of food. It had been one whole week already since I saw their comments. I wonder what is up with them.
Anyway. It was a Saturday a few weeks ago. I woke up at 8:00 AM and was just lazing around. We decided not to go anywhere for breakfast but instead chooses to stay in and catch up with reading. And then out of the blue I got an email from Grayelf saying that they are on the way to Shun Feng and asked if we want to join them in 45 minutes.
Of course we would! Especially when the restaurant is in Richmond … and no bridges too. So it was a mad scramble for Suanne and I to get ready. We are Asian. Asians need to take a bath and change our home clothes and put on street clothes and all that before we go out, you see.
He he he … I did not respond to Grayelf but instead chooses to just turn up and surprise them. I actually wanted to feign ignorance, pretend to bump into them and telling them what a coincidence to meet them there. I guess I need more acting lessons because as much as I tried they did not catch on to my act.
Suanne and I had never been to Shun Feng before. Yeah, this is one of the restaurants that intimidates us. They have a five foot tall shark fin at the entrance of the restaurant. A small bowl of sharkfin soup costs $68.00 each. So you can imagine that the big sharkfin (if it is real) would have cost a few grand.
I thought I took a picture of the inside of the restaurant but I cant find it. Oh well, you just have imagine how it looked like based on my description.
It was busy. Getting the attention of the waitress was a challenge. They are like one of those who are so busy that they had perfected the art of avoiding eye contact with you. Somehow they can sense you are going to ask something from them without even looking at you. You know what I mean? They have this uncanny ability to sense you are asking for the bill … in which case you ALWAYS get their attention the first time.
When we got there at 10:00AM, the place was already half-full. By the time we left the place was packed. It is amazing how dim sum restaurants are always full of customers on weekends. If ever there is dim sum restaurant which is half full, their food must be awful and to be avoided. Can you think of any that fails to draw full house every weekend? I can’t think of any but am sure there are.
The restaurant was big. From the entrance it looked really fancy but when I got inside it was pretty much a normal dim sum restaurant. The decor is simple. There is no chandelier. Classy restaurants must have chandelier. So I was kind of surprised they don’t have it.
Alright, no chandelier is OK because they have logo chopsticks. Now, that is … More on following page. Click here to continue reading
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Jubilee Chinese Restaurant: 24-Hour Chiu Chow Restaurant
Updated: 20th May 2011: This restaurant does not operate 24 hours anymore; check out their business hour at the end of this post.
Traditionally the Chinese celebrates the Chinese New Year over 15 days. I don’t think anyone does that anymore but in some Asian countries people still take a week off for the celebration. This is very much like what we have in Canada during the Christmas-New Year holidays.
On the first day of Chinese New Year, Suanne and I went to look for a new restaurant to eat. Too bad it is a school day and so Arkensen and Nanzaro did not join us.
It was just a few weeks ago I heard that the Gala Seafood Restaurant had closed. They are known for their cheap dim sum. And now a couple of weeks later, there is a restaurant with a new name re-opened at that place.
The new restaurant name is Jubilee Chinese Restaurant. It is located in the Union Square strip mall.
Actually I had never been to the old Gala restaurant before. It was Suanne who went there and blogged about it.
This restaurant looked quite fancy. It is decked in gold and they have the expensive looking gold seat covers. Not knowing anything about this restaurant we were fearing that this is going to be expensive. We were thinking that this will not be a place where we could get $2 dim sum like when it was still Gala.
The dining hall is huge. It is so big that it was difficult to count the number of tables, let alone how many seats there are. We estimated that they have 30, maybe 40 tables in all.
The waiter told us they had opened for a week already. When we asked the captain, she told us that this is a completely new management and staff including the chef.
We learned that this is a Chiu Chow restaurant and the surprising thing is that they are opened 24 hours. That was what the captain told us. She said that for now, they will open 24 hours and so you can come in at any hour and they will serve the appropriate food for the hour (i.e. dim sum in the morning and da-lang for late night suppers).
Click on the menu to show larger. You can see the dishes we ordered.
Actually the prices were … More on following page. Click here to continue reading
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[CRA 2011] Baked Durian Pastry from Rainflower Restaurant
Unlike last year when we pretty much went around tasting the CRA award winning dishes on our own, this year we decided that we want to go try these dishes with others. One of the reason is because many of the winning dishes these year is expensive. There is very little point bringing our boys to these dinners because all they care about is salted fish fried rice. Yeah, to them crabs are hassle to eat and they prefer fried rice over them.
So we met up with JoyLuckClub and BR. We wanted to meet up to discuss something too and so we suggested to meet in Rainflower Restaurant. Some of you may know that JoyLuckClub is a blogger and she blogs on A Wok in the Tuscan Kitchen.
With a blog name like that, I had initially thought that they were from Italy. It was not. It’s just that the Tuscan reference is of their garden. They must be very proud of their garden. I gotta see what the fuss is some day.
Just a bit of a background (you probably can deduce it from JoyLuckClub’s blog anyway) … JoyLuckClub is Asian and BR is white. And I was hinted to go easy with BR. LOL! I was thinking … shoot! I guess I can’t order chicken feet, pig stomach, chicken knee joint, pork knuckles and stuff like that.
I was also thinking … “does that mean I should stay away from ordering the award winning Baked DURIAN Pastry?” No way I am not going to order that. LOL!
Suanne and I had never been to the Rainflower Restaurant before. This place intimidates us. We has seen how posh looking it is before and we thought it would be very expensive eating here. So we had never tried it before.
The Rainflower Restaurant is located on No 3 Road and sandwiched between Canadian Tire and Yaohan Center. It is impossible to miss this stand alone building with that bright yellow awning and purplish wall. The restaurant perhaps has the biggest signage of all Chinese restaurants in Richmond.
Parking here is horrendous. You have to be careful here. If you are eating in Rainflower, you need to park in the car park in front of Rainflower. Don’t think that you can just park in Yaohan Center or Canadian Tire and walk over. There are people who will pounce on your car the moment they observe you parking in the wrong place.
I managed to snag a spot at the back of the restaurant. There are some spots at the back which not many people know about. JoyLuckClub is a veteran in this place. They parked in Yaohan Center, walked into the shopping mall and then walk out again. I did not ask if they walk in and out via different entrance. If you want to pull that trick, you must walk in from one side and out the other. The tow truck people have dollar $ign$ in their eyes.
The dining hall is very big, very cavernous. This place used to be Mark Work Wearhouse and later on XS Cargo before they made this into a restaurant. So you can imagine the high ceiling and wide column free dining area.
I like it. It is quite fancy but it is also somewhat dim for a dim sum restaurant. I noticed this because this is one place I had difficulty taking pictures for dim sum.
Despite the site the restaurant is very busy and they managed to fill almost the entire restaurant.
Hehehe … JoyLuckClub remarked that Suanne and I took a long time going over each and every item. This time we are a bit more careful because of you know who. LOL!
I like their dim sum menu. The page on the left is the steamed dim sum items – mostly the normal things like dumplings, buns and such. This page is not particularly exciting. The items here are priced from $3.25 to $5.80 and is available from 9:00 AM through 3:00 PM. So it was not as expensive I thought. As a matter of fact, for a setting like this, I thought the prices were very reasonable.
Flipping over the menu (the right image above), this is more exciting. This is where the (more expensive) Chef’s Specials are. The Chef’s Specials are only available from 10:00 AM. The items here are $6.00 to $9.00.
The Rainflower Restaurant won two CRA awards this year. The first award was the Baked Durian Pastry which we located on the menu. The other award winning dish was nowhere to be found. It is the Roasted Lamb Rack with Chinese Wine.
I-must-have-that-dish-too!!!
I asked one of the captains about it and he brought us the menu above. It is obviously not part if their dim sum menu but he told us that we can order this if we want. So we ordered it.
The Baked Durian Pastry (on their menu it is called Durian Roll) looked every bit what I would expect from an award winning dish. The pastry was … More on following page. Click here to continue reading
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