I am just kidding. I just wanted to catch your attention and read on.

It had been a while since we had dim sum as a family. The beauty of having a blog is that you can easily figure exactly when the last time it was. Everything is so well documented. For us, the last time was in October last year. We are not much of a dim sum people.

Last weekend, we decided to just go to a restaurant closest to home. Suanne reminded me that there is a place that serves dim sum with an odd name … the Royal Dinner and Dance. This is located on the strip mall on Garden City and Blundell in Richmond.

The moment we walked through the door, we had a good feeling that this is going to be good. All these years, we did not even realize this place would be like this.

The restaurant is located upstairs. You walk up a very wide staircase which has pictures of dancers. I think this place doubles as a dance club too because there is a stage and half of the restaurant is on the dance floor.

The restaurant is bigger than we imagine from the outside. What caught us by surprised is how many customers they have despite its size. The place was filled with customers. This is the kind of place where entire/extended families come for dim sum.  A lot of the tables taken were parties of four and above.

The table already were prepared with the order form and a pencil. It took us a while, as usual, to make our selection. The prices are cheap too.

Service is hurried as one can expect from a place this this. They came by twice asking if we are ready with the order. They were cool when we said we needed more time. For people who are not used to this type of places, you would take it personally when they abruptly turn away and go to the next table. We don’t consider this rude but understand that some people not used to this will feel slighted.

We were glad to see the varieties they have on the menu. So, we try to pick one or two items from each section … and in the process over-rule some of Arkensen and Nanzaro’s choices. If we leave the choices to them, they will pick TWO orders each of siu mai, har gow and sticky rice. So unexciting. LOL!

I was surprised when both Arkensen and Nanzaro said that they wanted the Rice Rolls with Chinese Donut ($3.75). We never thought they will want such traditional and to us, bland dish.

The Chinese donut here was not crispy but a tad soft. A sign that it is not made fresh. The flavour comes mainly from the soya sauce. They also gave us hoisin sauce and sesame sauce too which we thought it was kind of weird. I actually asked our waitress if it is meant to go with the rice roll and she said “yes”. *shrug*

It was quite nice too dipping the rice roll on the two sauces.

The Pan fried stuffed eggplant with shrimp is kind of skinny. Other than that it is cooked just nice. It is not overcooked that it is all mushy and loses the whiteness inside and yet also not undercooked that it’s raw and fibrous. The flesh inside was still white. We thought they did this perfectly and like the sauciness of the dish too. The sauce was great with the rice roll. Only $2.50.

Well, Arkensen also ask for this … the Steamed Crystal Prawn Dumpling (also $2.50). The size is respectable and the texture was firmly springy.Very good.

We were looking for that tell tale sign of freezer burn and all to see if they are just simply steamed direct from big batches of pre-made ones. They looked good enough for us.

They also have several congee options. We got the Lai Wan Boat Congee ($3.95) because we do not know what it is. We still do not know why this is called Lai Wan or what the words Lai Wan means.

The congee bowl is quite big for a $4 portion and has in it squid, prawn, pork rind, peanut, and Chinese donut. The congee itself does not carry a lot of flavour but a dash of soy sauce and ground pepper does the trick.

Next up is called the Fried Sticky Rice with Preserved Meat ($3.95). It came in a glass bowl and is supposed take a form of the bowl when they cup it upside down on the plate. Well … it fell apart and the waitress had to scrap the rice into the plate, losing the form.

You see it was not sticky enough for that. And I was thinking that this is FRIED sticky rice and so it is not supposed to be that sticky.

Anyway, the sticky rice has lots of …
More after the jump. Click to read the rest of Royal Dinner and Dance on Garden City and Blundell, Richmond (381 words)

© ben for Chow Times, 2010. | Permalink | 22 comments
Post tags: Chinese, Dim Sum, Restaurant Review, Richmond

Suanne and I had just booked for dinner on Friday, February 26th. We were wondering if an chowtimes readers would like to join us in checking out Sam Lau’s re-incarnation of his famed “Greatest Chinese Restaurant in the World”.

Zen became famous overnight in 2008 when Jennifer8 Lee of the New York Times wrote a book called The Fortune Cookie Chronicles in which she traveled around the world checking out Chinese restaurants. In her book, she heralded Sam Lau’s Zen Fine Chinese Cuisine as “the world’s greatest Chinese restaurant outside China”.

Whether Zen is really the world’s greatest Chinese restaurant outside of China is open to debate, I know. There is a question too as to why Sam had to close Zen even after getting a second wind from Jennifer 8’s review in her book.

Anyway, we wrote about the publicity Zen had from Jennifer8 Lee’s review and our tasting at Zen shortly after. Recently, we wrote to Hakkasan about Zen and we had a very in-depth response from Hakkasan which we will share on a later blog post.

Suanne and I was thinking that perhaps if we could get like 2 to 4 couples to join us, it would be great. We have a reservation for 5:30PM. For hockey fan, please note that the 2nd Semi-final of the Men’s Hockey game is on at 6:30PM.

Please send me an email at ben@chowtimes.com if you are interested in joining Suanne and I.

The menu are as follows … we are looking at trying the Menu B.

Menu A – $33
Salad ~ Micro Mix, Mango Ravioli, Salted Plum Oil Crumble, Seasonal Fruit, Rice Vinegar Foam
Baked Whelk ~ Stuff Diced Seafood, Chicken, Vegetables With Coconut Curry
Double Boiled Soup
Tofu Duo ~ Crispy Egg Tofu, Steamed Silky Tofu with Mushroom
Pork Belly ~ Braised In Chinese Spice, Serve With Glutinous Risotto
Dessert Of The Day

Menu B – $55
Terrine ~ House Smoked Salmon Wrapped With Souffle
Baked Whelk ~ Stuff Diced Seafood, Chicken, Vegetables With Coconut Curry
Foamy Seafood Cappuccino ~ Layered With Egg Tofu
Lobster ~ Stir Fried With Black Bean Sauce/Steamed Garlic Sauce
Deep Fried Crispy Chicken ~ Serve With Five Spice Infused Salt
Lotus Leaf Rice ~ Stuff with Dried Scallop, Mushroom, bbq Duck,Diced Chicken, Crab Meat, Bamboo
Dessert Of The Day

Menu C – $120
Seafood Duo ~ Curry Stuffed Whelk, Sliced Geoduck Fondue
Chinese Seafood Soup ~ With Fresh Crab Meat and Fish Maw
Braised Abalone ~ Slow Braised In Oyster Sauce (3 Heads)
Steamed Lobster ~ Steamed With Mince Garlic
Rice ~ Lobster Claw Stir Egg White, Fried Rice
Dessert Of The Day

Here are some of the pictures of Sam Lau’s previous creations (credit to Zen’s website … http://zencuisine.ca)

There are more …

More after the jump. Click to read the rest of Zen Fine Chinese Cuisine Opened — Want To Join Suanne and I for Dinner? (0 words)

© ben for Chow Times, 2010. | Permalink | 30 comments
Post tags:

Last week, I had one of those heavy days at work. The first meeting started at 7AM and it is one after another with a large group of team members. And I had to run the meetings. It would have been easier if I am just an attendee. So by late morning, I was totally spent and decided to just drop everything and went outside to clear my head.

It was a good thing I had the camera with me that day. So I went to have lunch on my own at Hot Luck.

Outside the restaurant, there is a sandwich board that says that the Lunch Special is just $5.95. I thought it was awfully cheap. I can’t think of any restaurant like this that has lunch specials that cheap. Are you aware of any?

The interior is clean, bright and neat. Some of the bigger tables even has white linen too. I was impressed particularly because they serve such cheap lunch specials here.

Hot Luck is a Sichuan cuisine restaurant. They had been opened for 3 months already and words had spread that their food is super hot.

You know it is super hot when all the pictures on the menu are red in colour.

I was so enticed by their House Special and Combo Special items above. Unfortunately they are meant for a minimum of two people and up. I guess I got to come back another day to try them.

If you look at the rest of the menu above, you will find that it is not as cheap as the sandwich board outside makes it out to be. Most of the Lunch Specials are $8. The main dishes are above $10.

Their food are not expensive but just that it is not as cheap as you might be led to think.

As usual, I asked for their recommendation for a starter. The waitress said that their Spiced Beef with 5 Spices ($5) is one of their favourite and pointed to the table next to me. It seems like that table was not the only one that had this starter.

This is a cold dish. Even the dish it was served on was cold. The beef slices were not as hot as it looked.

I did not want to get the Lunch Special because lunch specials being what it is are not true representation of what the restaurant serves well. After asking me if I can take hot food, the waitress said I should try their …
More after the jump. Click to read the rest of Hot Luck on Kingsway Near Willingdon, Burnaby (304 words)

© ben for Chow Times, 2010. | Permalink | 30 comments
Post tags: Burnaby, Chinese, Restaurant Review, Szechuan

About a month ago, we went to the Ho Yuen restaurant for dinner. It was supposed to be one of the ho-hum posts because we did not find it particularly interesting. We did not even plan to dine there.

What surprised us was that the Ho Yuen post generated 34 comments! The reason was because of the new owner behind Ho Yuen … a self-bestowed “Dr” Jaime Chan. If you don’t know who “Dr” Jaime Chan is, read the comments and you will know why he attracts such ire from people who know who he is.

Some readers lamented that they missed the old Ho Yuen. We learned that when “Dr” Jaime Chan took over Ho Yuen, it was not the same anymore.

Despair not … it is because the Ho Yuen is back!

The original Ho Yuen had reincarnated as Kam Ho!

Huey wrote an email to us last week alerting us to this news (thanks Huey!) that Kam Ho is opening on last Saturday. So we changed our dinner plans and made our way to Kam Ho for dinner.

The new Kam Ho is located in Alexandra Road but it is not on the section of Alexandra road that you would automatically think of. Instead it is located on the No 3 Road section of Alexandra. You should get to Kam Ho via No 3 Road. Kam Ho is on the same strip mall as Celsius and Kelong.

It had been a while since we saw a new Cantonese style restaurant opening. Almost all new restaurants in Richmond these days are mainland Chinese or Taiwanese restaurants, not so much Cantonese. So we are glad to see a new one opening here.

It was opening night. The waitresses are all eager and helpful. I guess not many people know of Kam Ho’s opening because there were not many customers. Half of the customers that night seems to be someone they know.

No pretty young waitress here. All of them are middle aged ladies. In Chinese we call them “ah sows” or aunties. Not that it’s a problem. I am just saying. When I mentioned this observation, both Arkensen and Nanzaro reacted saying that what I said is not nice.

Kam Ho is about half the size of Ho Yuen and seats about 50 people. They have a wide open kitchen that you could see all the going ons in it.

Kam Ho is not a HK Style Cafe. It is more like a HK Style Diner. The have a big menu with sections of noodles, congee and such.

We decided to get a Dinner Combo. We opted for the $33.95 3-item combo from the menu above (click to read in bigger font). We thought it should be enough for the four of us as it usually is.

Besides the selection of dishes, the combo also includes soup, rice and sweet dessert.

The Daily soup is some of the best we had ever had. In it was pork, chicken feet, snow fungus and Chinese herbs. I like the Cantonese word for this type of soup. “Lo For Tong” is translated as “old fire” soup and means soup that had been boiled for a long period of time.

The soup itself was really flavourful. It was a good start.

At first we ordered a house hot pot but the lady insisted that we try their Hainanese Chicken. It did not take much convincing for us.

It looked very good. They don’t even pour any soya sauce on the chicken. It was just plain Hainanese chicken with parsley and fried peanuts.

The chicken is boney and the first thing we observed is that the chicken is cold. This apparently is a style of Hainanese chicken where it is dipped in ice after cooking. This produces a gelatinous layer underneath the skin. The skin is springy and on all accounts very good.

We upgraded the steamed rice to Hainanese Chicken Rice for 50 cents a bowl. The oily rice is mildly flavoured. We had tasted bolder tasting ones but this is just alright. However, their rice bowl is bigger than most other places. We like that.

With Hainanese Chicken Rice, you normally would get the dip. We like the ginger and green onion more than the chili. The chili is kind of strange that it is quite “chunky”. We prefer garlic’d chili instead.

The other item they recommended us is the Deep Fried Prawn with Pepper Salt. OMG, it was good.

It is topped with …
More after the jump. Click to read the rest of Kam Ho Restaurant on Alexandra Road at No 3 Road, Richmond (389 words)

© ben for Chow Times, 2010. | Permalink | 10 comments
Post tags: Chinese, Restaurant Review, Richmond

Last month Deborah wrote an email to us saying:

Hi Ben, I noticed you tried a lot of places in Richmond.  If I may, I would suggest you try a place on Anderson Rd called Tai Yau Yick Restaurant.  Its a hole in the ground but the food is very delicious.  I would suggest you get the pork chop on rice, tofu, deep fried chicken wings, and beef pancake.  Do not order the xiao long bao’s here, you can get better ones at other shanghai restaurants.  The old lady that runs the place doesn’t speak english, but she is very sweet

We had actually been to Tai Yau Yick before. It was quite a long time ago. I distinctly remember that it was one of those rare moments that we forgot to bring along the camera. So we did not blog about it.

These days, we never forget to bring the camera. It is second nature to us now. I might forget to bring the wallet or the house keys when I go out, but I never forget the camera. Is this a sad thing? LOL!

Tai Yau Yick is located on Anderson Road and near the Richmond City Hall. It is also located just next door to Diary Queen.

Parking here is not a problem. It is a small strip mall and we always have parking spots available all the time.

Tai Yau Yick is a small place. There are about five tables only. They can barely fit in 20 people. The place does look much neater than we remembered some years ago. The tables looked newer and they have wallpapered and painted the walls.

There is very little you will not like about Tai Yau Yick. It is waited by an elderly lady who speaks perfect Cantonese despite that they call this a Shanghainese restaurant. I asked the lady if the chef is Shanghainese. She said that they are all Cantonese but they specialize in Shanghainese and Taiwanese Cuisine.

Their menu acts like an order form. This is like what you see in some hot pot and dim sum places where you check and specify the quantity you want. What do you think with this method? I think it’s good idea in making sure they don’t misunderstand your order. It is also more efficient for the restaurant too if you already are familiar with their menu.

They place the order form with a pencil on the table but the order form is in Chinese. You have to ask them for the English version.

We decided to try their soybean milk. You can opt for either sweet ($1.75) or salty ($2.50).

We tried the salty version. Because we did not know that the soybean milk comes with a few Chinese doughnuts in it, we ordered a side order of the Chinese doughnut ($2).

The warm soybean milk is more savory than it is salty. In the soybean milk are green onions, dried shrimp and preserved vegetable (jar choy).

It is actually a good thing we ordered a side of Chinese Doughnut. They are very good … as it is still crispy when we dunk into soybean milk, unlike those that sit in the soymilk that became soggy. The crunch explodes in your mouth.

But it is also oily though. Suanne said that this must be the Taiwanese style doughnut.

Suanne was surprised that I ordered this Soybean Bitter Melon ($2.90). She knows I have never liked bitter melon. Also our boys refused to touch it.

I wanted to try it because it is unique. Moreover, I know that if I don’t like it, Suanne will finish it.

It was bitter alright although the soybean sauce that it was steamed in took away a lot of the bitterness. It is an acquired taste kind of thing.

Suanne insisted I to eat half of my share but I just picked the smaller piece. I love Suanne.

The name Red Hot Dumpling ($4.80) sounded so good that we also ordered that. They do every dish very well. Not only is the dumpling well made, we like the sweet and spicy sauce it is served in. The spiciness is light at first but gradually intensify in the mouth. Nice.

For the boys, we got a sticky rice for them. They like sticky rice. So we had the Taiwanese Style Sticky Rice Roll ($5.50).

We thought it was going to be like one of those glutinous rice roll with filling inside (you know, the ones that you can buy freshly made in T&T?). Instead, the rice is …
More after the jump. Click to read the rest of Tai Yau Yick Shanghai Restaurant on Anderson Road, Richmond (510 words)

© ben for Chow Times, 2010. | Permalink | 12 comments
Post tags: Chinese, Restaurant Review, Richmond, Shanghai, Taiwanese

We love noodles as you can see. We had been blogging about noodles a lot of late. It is because we gravitate towards anything with hot soup during the colder seasons. We had our fair share of Japanese Ramen, Taiwanese Beef Noodles, Malaysian Laksa, Vietnamese Pho but we don’t go out of our way for a bowl of Wonton Noodles.

The name Nancy Wonton House had popped up in two separate occasions the past two weeks. That triggered that thought why we rarely go eat wonton. Although wontons are very much Chinese, perhaps it is because I subconsciously associate wontons with faux Chinese fare.

Since Suanne and I was around the neighborhood of Victoria Drive and 37th Ave, we decided to go check it out. Frankly, we were not hungry at all but we went nevertheless … before this place recess to the back of our distant memory again.

Nancy Wonton House is an old school Cantonese restaurant from umpteen years ago — God knows how long. You don’t find many of these type of restaurants opening anymore. Cantonese restaurants sprouted in Vancouver prior to the days of 1997 before Hongkong was returned to China. The wave of of Cantonese speaking HK immigrants brought along with them a lot of Cantonese restaurants.

As the fears of a Communist China administered HK dissipated over the years, a lot of HK immigrants returned. In the past few years, Chinese immigrants are dominated by those from Mainland China. This new wave of immigrants brought along another genre of Chinese cuisine, mainly influenced by the cuisine from Shanghai and Beijing.

So Nancy Wonton does show its age. The decor is so much like it was when it first opened a decade or two ago. Some things never changes.

The dining area is large. Accentuated by the mirrors on one side of the restaurant, it even looked larger than it actually is. The table sizes are larger with booths along the side that can seat six and round tables that can easily fit ten. It is very much a neighborhood restaurant where extended family with kids and grand parents comes over for dinner.

We did not even spend much time scanning their menu. The menu is huge. The dishes are numbered and at a glance we can see that they have almost 300 different items on it. We already know what we wanted — wonton noodles.

The food in Nancy Wonton is known for its cheap prices. The noodles above is less than …
More after the jump. Click to read the rest of Nancy Wonton House on Victoria Drive and 37th Ave, Vancouver (384 words)

© ben for Chow Times, 2010. | Permalink | 14 comments
Post tags: Chinese, Restaurant Review, Vancouver

Oh talking about the Olympic Ceremony, the response to the Olympic Opening Ceremony Dress Rehearsal give away had been overwhelming. So far we have over 230 responses after 2 days. Just a reminder that we will cut off all entries at 12:01AM this Thursday.

This time we went to Sha Lin Noodle House for a late lunch after the boys practices. Sha Lin is on Broadway near the intersection with Cambie. If you want to come here the next few weeks, you should know that Broadway is designated as an Olympic lane — and that means no more street parking. The best way is to take the SkyTrain and get off at the Broadway/City Hall station.

Sha Lin Noodle House had always been a very popular eatery. The main draw is the good authentic Chinese food and the prices. They had been operating here for a long time already — at least 10 years old.

Many customers will stand and gawk at the poster at the entrance of their popular dishes before going in. We did. All of them looked delicious. Makes us want to get all of them.

Don’t expect much from Sha Lin. The place is rather spartan and does shows its age. The place was full even when we were there after lunch hours at 2PM.

Service here is bad — really bad. Most of the waiters and waitresses have really bad attitude and walk/talk so listlessly. Youngsters! It is like they hate their job, their life or something. If not for the great service of that lone tall slim waiter who tried his best to placate us, we would have left.

This is the kind of place that had success gone to their heads. They have so many customers that they can’t handle, they seem to think that they don’t mind losing customers. This is sad because their food is pretty good. I hate to say this but we like the food for the most part.

For starters we ordered the Sliced Rolls (fried). This is just $2.95. I recommend you order this.

The fried rolls is served with condensed milk as a dip. So it is a very sweet dish. The deep fried bread dough was just perfect — crispy outside, soft inside.

We know that our boys will like it but they will always instinctively reject anything we order for them. Especially Nanzaro, who will put up an act when we asked him to try other food. He will put both his hands over his mouth and make it look like he is going to throw up. He is very convincing in doing this but not to us. He had been doing this ever since he is a toddler and is now a habit.

We normally let them be but this time we were extra assertive that they must try a piece. Guess what? They loved it.

Arkensen said it tasted like donuts. I never thought of it that way before but he is right. And Nanzaro? He flashed me a thumbs up and said “You rock, Dad”.

See? Dad knows best when it comes to food. Nanzaro knows that but he just doesn’t want to give his dad the credit he deserved.

We also ordered 2 sticks of Kabob to share. They were cumin flavoured and were very spicy — we asked for the hottest they can make it.

The meat was a bit dry and tough but it was OK. It took a bit of chewing to down them but it was the whole point because you really can taste the full flavour of the kabob.

Sha Lin is well know for their hand made noodles. They classify them as dragging, cutting, rolling and pushing noodles.

Arkensen ordered the most common type, the dragging noodles. The one he had came with beef and bean sprout in soup which is $7.

Served on the side is a plate of …
More after the jump. Click to read the rest of Sha Lin Noodle House on Broadway and Cambie, Vancouver (514 words)

© ben for Chow Times, 2010. | Permalink | 19 comments
Post tags: Chinese, Restaurant Review, Vancouver

There is a new one newly opened in Vancouver that I think will give Richmond’s hot pot restaurants a run for the money.

We heard of rave reviews about Fatty Cow. We also heard that they are expensive too. Hot Pot meals are not cheap anyway and one could easily expect to spend $20 upwards anywhere you go. So even if Fatty Cow was expensive, it was just a few dollars more. So that did not deter us since it was just two of us.

Fatty Cow is located on Victoria Drive at the intersection of 35th Ave. From the outside, Fatty Cow looks very impressive and modern.

We were there early again. When we walked in at 5PM, they were just finishing setting up for the dinner. They open only at 5:30PM and asked that we return later. You know, I wish that restaurants have the sense to allow customers to just take a seat and explain that they are not ready. A simple gesture like that does not take much on the part of the restaurant but customers not only will understand, they will be appreciative.

Well, there was no where to go and it was not exactly a warm day. So we waited in the car until 5:30PM.

Fatty Cow has got to be one of the prettiest looking hot pot restaurants we had ever been to. It was still new. They had just opened barely a month ago. Everything has a glint to it. Even the workers wears suit like they do in high end Chinese restaurants.

Service is excellent — from the captain to the staff who came by all the time to fill our tea and top up the soup. They even come by every now and then to help us check the temperature. Each time I reach for the controls at the side of the table, often someone will come by and help.

Don’t you like the new dishware and utensils? We do. It was so sparkling clean. They are even logo’d. Not many hot pot restaurants bother to create a logo/branding for their restaurants unless they are branches of successful hot pot restaurants in Asia. So I was just wondering if Fatty Cow is one of such branches.

One thing we did not like about Fatty Cow is that they charges extra for sauces. Each serving is 50 cents. The above three is free but if you want additional ones, you gotta pay for it.

The three they gave us was the soy sauce, sesame and sar char. They were excellent. We particularly like the soy sauce which is light and sweet. Good thing they gave us an entire bowl of it.

Since we like raw garlic we got the above as an extra … 50 cents. Next time we come to Fatty Cow, we will bring our own condiments in small plastic containers.

Click on the menu above for a larger image. As you can see, it is not cheap. It is $20 per person for Monday through Thursday and $21 for Friday to Sunday. And that is just the start. That price does not include the soup base. The soup base is another $7 and $8.50 if you want a double soup. Good thing is the soup base is charged per table and not per person.

There is a very good selection of meat, dumplings, vegetables, seafood, and noodles. They even have premium seafood items which again comes as extra. You can see how the prices could just add up easily.

No, we did not get the premium seafood items. Too expensive.

For the soup base, we opted for a double soup base. The left side is called the Fatty Cow Hot and Spicy. We wouldn’t have ordered this if not for the fact they branded this with their name.

The milky soup base on the left side was recommended by the captain as their most popular soup base. This is called spare ribs broth.

I like their burner. It is very responsive. It will boil up the soup in just 3 seconds the moment you crank it up and you could stop the boiling instantaneously too.

The Fatty Cow Hot and Spicy soup base is just that — SPICY. There are lots of peppercorns in it. See above? The above is just one scoop from the soup base. Frankly I felt it was way too much. So much that we ended up scooping it off to the plate and added it back to the broth if we want to spice it up.

As for the Spare Rib Broth, it was very good. There are a lot of beansprout and even pieces of pork in it. We took the beansprout out because we like the broth not so “busy”.

This thing above is wonderful. It is in the snack section of the menu …

… Fried Fish Skin. It is light and tasted wonderful. They said they make it themselves. It was oily but was just so crispy. This is one snack you should get to start off the meal.

To make your money worthwhile, you should just focus first on …
More after the jump. Click to read the rest of Fatty Cow Seafood Hot Pot on Victoria Dr and 35th Ave, Vancouver (664 words)

© ben for Chow Times, 2010. | Permalink | 13 comments
Post tags: All You Can Eat, Hotpot, Restaurant Review, Vancouver

There are Chinese restaurants where you will only see Chinese customers. The sight of a Caucasian customer is rare. The real menu of these restaurants are in Chinese. They will have a token English menu which is a small subset of their real menu. Their waitresses can hardly speak English but they can really speak Mandarin in very heavy accent. They serve traditional and authentic Chinese food.

Then there are the other Chinese Restaurant which are more user-friendly to the western customers. You see quite a number of Caucasian customers. They have items like sweet and sour pork and chow mein on their menu. They give out fortune cookies with the check. The Chinese foodie crowd does not pay attention to these type of restaurants. They say these restaurants is not real Chinese restaurants.

You know what I am saying?

But there is one restaurant that has managed to serve authentic Chinese food and yet draw customers who are non-Chinese.

We went to the Peaceful Restaurant before we drop the boys off for one of their many top secret rehearsals. So we went to a restaurant nearby. Peaceful Restaurant is located on Broadway.

The Peaceful Restaurant is a small restaurant. It is long and narrow with a row of tables lining one side of the wall and a glass enclosed open kitchen on the other side. There is a couple of larger round tables for larger parties.

Round tables … hmmm. I am thinking hard here as I type. In all good Chinese restaurants, the dining tables are round and will seat 10 people a table. This is because Chinese food are meant to be shared and are served communal style. Also, round tables allows everyone to be able to talk to each other better.

I can’t think of any other cultures that predominantly uses round tables. Can you help me think of one that does?

Anyway, the Peaceful Restaurant is a Northern Chinese restaurant. The speaks Mandarin with a heavy northern Chinese accent.

We ordered the Sichuan Dan Dan Noodles (hmmm … Sichuan is western, not northern China!) because we heard that they pull the noodles in house.

It came in a bowl nicely arranged with the ingredients and before I could lift my camera to take a picture of it, the waitress dug in a pair of scissors and went ahead to cut it up. She then mixes it up front of us.

Aw too bad. I wanted to see how long these noodles are. Seeing how these noodles are made I am not surprise if this entire bowl is made up a single strand of noodles, all hand made.

So, with my usual itchy mouth, I asked the waitress how long it is. She brushed me aside and said “very long” like she was quite annoyed with my question. Ah … very authentic Chinese restaurant service. LOL!

The main thing about Dan Dan Noodle is only the noodles and the sauce. Very simple dish but yet complex to make it perfect.

The peanut based creamy sauce is spicy and tangy and had a little minced meat and spinach. I tasted a bowl of that. It was good and had a lot of flavour. The noodles tasted great too. Personally I find that the sauce is too thick for my liking.

This is $7. Dan Dan Noodles are cheap to make and so $7 is a little bit on the high side.

Suanne was on a mission for one of our readers. Michelle was asking where she could find Shaobing. Suanne remembered reading about there is Shaobing in this restaurant and it was the primary reason why we chose to eat here. So Michelle, here you go.

The word “bing” on Shaobing refers to biscuits or cookie in Chinese. I am sort of making this up but I think it is rather accurate. I need readers to help me confirm if I am correct or wrong. You see … this is the closest to a cookie in Chinese. The Chinese do not use ovens for their cooking and as such you end up with biscuits pan fried like this. There is no oven baked cookies like the ones you know of in Chinese cuisine. Correct? Yes? No? Yes?

There are actually several variations of Shaobing but the main distinctly is there is a version that is sweet and another that is savory. The sweet ones are usually made round while the savory ones are made in oblong shape like the picture above.

The Peaceful Restaurant calls this the Sesame Flat Bread on their menu. This is $6.

Shaobing is a partially leavened bread and covered with sesame seed which is toasted (pan fried?) to a crunch. The sesame seed gave it the fragrance that you could “taste” even before you bite into it.

Since this is a Northern Chinese restaurant, we ordered the Xiao Long Bao. This is $6.50. We were surprised it came with 8 pieces, normally it is 6-7.

Don’t get this. No good.

See how wet the bottom is? And how flat the edges of the buns lies? Well, …
More after the jump. Click to read the rest of Peaceful Restaurant on West Broadway at Cambie, Vancouver (315 words)

© ben for Chow Times, 2010. | Permalink | 34 comments
Post tags: Chinese, Restaurant Review, Vancouver

Like everyone else, we get excited over food that is good. The excitement doubles when it is cheap too. Actually, the excitement triples when it is also unexpectedly and ridiculously cheap.

LotusRapper emailed us alerting us to this place called the East Fusion Food with a link to Cheap Appetite where Tana had a bowl of wonton noodles for just $2.99. That was about 6 months ago. When we saw that, we immediately dropped our weekend lunch plans and head to this place.

East Fusion Food is located on the ground floor of the International Village or better known as Tinseltown for the cinemas it has. The shopping mall at the edge of Chinatown is rather dead and has low occupancy. It took us a while to locate East Fusion Food because we thought it would be on the second floor where the restaurants and food courts are.

Let not the East Fusion Food name fool you because I cannot see where the fusion is on their offerings. It is as Chinese as it gets.

The place is very busy but the turn around is quick. We were there last Saturday at 12:30PM which is right about the peak lunch time and we had to wait for about 5 minutes for a table.

The place is not very big. They are setup for small parties of 2-4 people normally. So you don’t expect big tables for an extended family dine out. With just about seatings for 40, 50 people max, this is very much a place for a quick meal.

It is very busy. The service is rushed — not rude but they have little patience. Not easy for many people I know, but look past that you are OK. The moment we sat down we already had the drinks and menu landing right in front of our face.

It is not a big menu.

In our usual slow pace, we read every single item on the menu. Within a minute, the waitress was already at our table asking if we are ready to order. We said we are still looking at the menu and before I even finished my sentence she was already turning away headed to the next table. To some this is rude but it was not a problem with us. I wanted to let you know so that you don’t go to this place on the account of this posting and felt slighted by this sort of things. LOL!

Our waitress was like a super women or something. She did not even write down what we wanted and remembered everything we said. We ordered six items in total and some of them were in noodle type/soup type/meat type combination. We were so afraid she will mess up our order but she repeated it back to us 100% correct. Amazing.

The one thing we wanted to check out was the $2.99 wonton noodles.

Well, the wonton noodles is no longer $2.99. The price had since risen to $3.88. I thought it is still cheap even the price had risen 30% since Tana had it 6 months ago.

It came in a big bowl with five pieces of shrimp wontons. The shrimp wonton are quite big. While I had much better shrimp wontons, this is really good considering the price.

I initially thought that there are very little noodles in it. I could not see to the bottom because of the cloudy broth …

… but it has more noodles than we expected. We thought the thin wire’ly egg noodles were done very well.

I am quite certain a number of people will like the wonton noodles at East Fusion Food and then will get excited and tell the world that it is just $3.88 — like us.

We actually thought that the servings in East Fusion Food will be small considering their prices. So, I went ahead to order two additional side dishes which they call “Starters and Appetizers”. All their Appetizers costs $6. Check the menu above … there are 24 types. All $6. I like that simplicity.

The boiled Gai Lan (Chinese Brocolli) was excellent. The thick stem and the leafy part were cut and arranged in a nice manner. I simply like the way it is cut to short, uniform and manageable sizes that you could easily pick up with chopsticks. I was asking Suanne why we could not get the ones we prepare at home to this level of texture — she doesn’t know.

The Deep Fried Oyster is also $6. There are four large pieces. The size took us by surprise …
More after the jump. Click to read the rest of East Fusion Food in International Village, Chinatown Vancouver (454 words)

© ben for Chow Times, 2010. | Permalink | 13 comments
Post tags: Chinese, Restaurant Review, Vancouver