But the thing is that we had never had the urge to go in and check it out … until now. You know what I think? I think it is because they have dark windows throughout the frontage that firstly you cannot see what’s in it. For us, we were a bit hesitant too because we were not sure what this place is. With a name like Sensus, who knows it’s like a bar or something which we do not normally go.

Sensus Bistro is located in Union Square on Capstan Way in Richmond. This is the place where Liu’s Taiwanese, Han Ju Hot Pot, Pho Queen and Richmond Sushi is, to name a few.

When we walk past this time on the way to @Ease, we notice the poster above pasted on the entrance. It looks like it is a Hongkong Style Cafe in the likes of Bauhinia … an upscale, more expensive type of HK Style Cafe. We thought this would be a much better idea than @Ease and decided to lunch here instead.

Don’t be misled by the empty looking restaurant above. We were there early for lunch as we normally do (i.e. it was just after 11AM). So they had just opened and the lunch crowd had not started trickling in. By noon, the place was packed. Sensus is obviously a popular restaurant and we had not heard of anyone talking about them before.

The decor is modern … OK, relative to all other HK Style Cafes. It is clean and well maintained. We had a good feeling about this place. If we had not pushed opened the door and walked in, we will have never discovered this place. If you ask me, the dark windows should go.

They have a relatively large menu with the same kind of offerings you find in Bauhinia. It is in color and have selected dishes pictured on it too. I had taken a few pictures of their menu and put them way down this post. Check that out.

On the table was this thingy above showing their special. I already know what I wanted. I had always wanted to try this (at Bauhinia). It is expensive though … $18 but on Thursday it is a special of the day at $14.

It sure is a mouthwatering chunk of meat isn’t it?

I ordered this with spaghetti on the side. The spaghetti is very well made … not too soft and firm to the bite.

While it is really nicely deep fried and crispy on the outside and the meat is tender and juicy inside, the pinkishness of the meat really puts me off. As for the taste …
More after the jump. Click to read the rest of Sensus Bistro on Capstan Way, Richmond (449 words)

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Post tags: Chinese, Hong Kong, Restaurant Review, Richmond

Negative Space had been operating since April. This space used to be where Hai Jun is which was one of our favourite restaurants.

Negative Space is located in the Pacific Plaza on Odlin Cresent and McKim Way. It looks very contemporary in black and grey with pictures of their food on the windows. Walking past it, it does look inviting and will definitely make one take a second look at what they offer.

The interior looks smaller but cozier than what we remember from days of Hai Jun. Maybe it is because they partition the area into some sections that is semi-private. There is this one corner that seats six, maybe seven, people that I thought was a nice touch — it has throw pillows and is partitioned from the rest of the restaurant.

We immediate like it. The place is clean and looks brand new.

The menu was interesting with quite a wide variety of food types. We could not quite put them into any particular category of Chinese cuisine. So we asked and they told us that they serve Chinese fusion food taking the best of all the cuisines offer. Fancy description, so we thought.

One particular item that caught our eye is the Japanese Kobe Beef. It costs $35 per ounce and you need to order a minimum of 5 ounces. You do the math! I was curious if anyone actually will spend that kind of money in a restaurant like this.

I wish I had taken the picture of the menu to share with you but I can tell you it is very interesting. We found it hard to decide what to order and changed our minds several times before finalizing on what we wanted.

The food did not disappoint.

Suanne initially wanted to get the Spicy Pork Belly but ended up getting the Negative Space Hot Pot. This item is not on the menu but we saw one table having it. So we asked for it because the soup looked so rich.

We get a choice of either pork, beef or seafood to go with the hot pot. Suanne opted for the pork which came nicely curled in a separate dish. Presentation wise, it does look really nice.

The soup was rich and really delicious. It came also with some …
More after the jump. Click to read the rest of Negative Space Chinese Restaurant on Odlin Crescent, Richmond (518 words)

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Post tags: Chinese, Restaurant Review, Richmond

All this was sparked off by the long comment that Dyn made which I made it into a blog post called Why Do Whites Accept Japanese and Thai Cuisine Over Other Cuisine. I posted it because it was controversial and thought our readers would love to read of it. However, little did I expect that Dyn’s notes sparked off a series of very long, thought provoking comments from other readers.

That got me thinking over a few comments made regarding bad translations in Chinese Menu that puts off diners who are not familiar with the cuisine. So I did some more research on the internet and in one discussion forum, there was a discussion how a western menu differs from a Chinese one.

Menu from The Cannery, Vancouver

In western menu, the dishes often describes the ingredients and the way it is prepared.

Menu from Sunway Restaurant, Richmond

On the other hand, with Chinese dishes, you will not always be able to picture the dish if you are not familiar with it. Traditionally, many Chinese dishes have a 4-word (syllable) names and some of the names have no relevance to the dish. Sometimes they even sound poetic when spoken.

Anyway, Suanne and I thought that over the weekend we just go and check out two funny sounding menu items that we know of. These are from our past restaurant visits that our readers had pointed out which we did not realize. The plan was just to go into these restaurants and order just this ONE item and do a review of them.

Suanne was kind of “mm hoe yee see” going in and ordering one item for the two of us. Taking pictures in a restaurant already catches attention but going in and ordering ONE specific dish, taking pictures and then leave quickly sure got the attention of the restaurant. But that is what we did.

Here is what we tried:

Dead Man Coffin from Sunway Restaurant

Anyone has any idea why this is called the Dead Man’s Coffin? I can only guess it is because it is …
More after the jump. Click to read the rest of Funny Chinese Dishes: Dead Man’s Coffin, Wild Speculation Beef Salamander and More (788 words)

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Post tags: Chinese, Restaurant Review, Richmond, Taiwanese

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 after the jump. Click to read the rest of Pearl Castle in Richmond Centre (316 words)

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Post tags: Restaurant Review, Richmond, Taiwanese

In Vancouver, I heard that there are only two Vietnamese restaurants to serves this high end Vietnamese meal. The one that we had been to was Song Huong. For some reason I thought that this other one was Nha Trang on Broadway and Fraser. So we took a long drive from Richmond with high expectations for a good meal.

When we got there, we asked if they had 7-courses of beef and they confirmed yes. Just as we were about to get seated, they asked again what we are looking for and was duly told that they don’t have it! They just said “yes” without understanding what we were asking. Maybe they heard the word beef and thought we were asking for beef noodles.

Thinking that I might have mistaken Nha Trang with another Vietnamese restaurants nearby, we left and drove around. We drove and drove and drove … and could not see any Vietnamese restaurant that looks it.

So we ended up going to this randomly selected restaurant on Kingsway (near Joyce). It is called Hu’s Chinese Restaurant and is located just next door to Popular Chinese Cuisine.

The restaurant is quiet and empty. The tables and chairs are uncoordinated with traditional Chinese round tables mixed with wrap around cafeteria style tables. Frankly, we felt like turning back but everyone is already hungry.

It did not get any better. When we got seated, the waitress who is dressed in loose sweat pants and sweat shirt delivered the tea pot to our tables while chatting on the cordless phone. Moreover the tea pot had stains on the outside like it had been cleaned properly. We asked for it to be replaced.

Checking their menu, they have pretty interesting items. However, we did notice that they are priced higher than one would expect from such restaurants. Most of their main dishes are $15  and up with most at the $20 range. With the four of us dining, we decided to order three dishes … one soup and two main dishes as we usually do.

For the soup we ordered the Boiled Fish in Soup. It is $19. They have the whole “swimming” fish fresh from the tank in the soup with some soft tofu. We found the soup …
More after the jump. Click to read the rest of Hu’s Chinese Restaurant on Kingsway, Burnaby (263 words)

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Post tags: Chinese, Restaurant Review, Vancouver

This time it was Martin who is a Project Manager from our office in Toronto. He is here to explore the feasibility of joining our project team which is short of PMs. Although our project teams are scattered around in Atlanta, London, Singapore, New Delhi and Vancouver, we had never had a PM sitting remote from all team members. Frankly, I don’t know how one could manage a project that way despite all the communications technology and all. I had always maintained that no video or web conference facilities in the world will replace face to face meetings.

Anyway, it was two solid days of meetings and planning that the three PMs had. At least we managed to arrive at agreements in many key issues. I must say that the meetings were somewhat contentious because there are a lot of interests that each of us PMs need to protect. At the end of the grueling meetings, we decided to put work behind and go out for dinner. I was determined NOT to talk anymore about work.

I wanted to bring Martin and Gage to an Asian restaurant. Both of them are as white and despite being Canadians do not have a lot of experience eating Asian. While I played safe by bringing my boss to a French restaurant, with these colleagues I could be more adventurous and get away with it. LOL!

View Larger Map

I brought the PMs to the Top Gun Hot Pot which is located at the top floor of Crystal Mall. It was perfect because just a short walk from the office.

One thing that I had not quite figured out is why non-Asians generally do not enjoy Asian food. I know I am generalizing here but just humor me for a moment. I do find that non-Asians are suspicious about Chinese and Korean food. However, I find that they are more receptive to Thai and Japanese food. Why is it so?

With Gage and Martin, they are the type of people who will not normally walk into a Chinese restaurant, let alone going to a Hot Pot place. So I asked them about it but did not quite get the answer I understand. They did say that it is the texture of some Asian food that puts them off.

It is their first time going to a Hot Pot restaurant so they were really intrigued with things that I had always taken for granted. For instance, they were quite amazed with the heating surface for the hot pot which could bring the hot pot to boil in seconds.

The ordering was all left to me. To be kind to them, I ordered all the “safe” food (see selection above). I stayed away from ordering things like large intestines, kidneys, liver, tendon, pig’s blood and tripe.

Oh yeah, they did ask me what I ordered but I told them to …
More after the jump. Click to read the rest of Top Gun Hot Pot in Crystal Mall, Burnaby (243 words)

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Post tags: Burnaby, Chinese, Hotpot, Restaurant Review

There is something about this particular restaurant location on the strip mall across the No 3 Road from the Richmond Center. Located in the middle of this strip mall is always a Shanghainese restaurant. Over the ten years since we moved to Richmond, the restaurant operations changed hands a number of times.

Ten years ago, this shop lot was the original location of the Chen’s Shanghai Restaurant. They were quite a small family operation back then. Today they are one of the better Shanghainese restaurants in Richmond having won a number of awards recently.

At one point, there was another restaurant called Shanghai Wind. From what I heard, that restaurant too became successful and had to move out to a bigger and better location. Shanghai Wind became Shanghai Wonderful, which is another successful Shanghainese Restaurant in Richmond.

Up until the early part of this year, it was Da Hong Yun Shanghai Restaurant that operated here. Their food was good but we found it pricey, However, they had closed. Does anyone know what happened to them?

In this place today is yet another Shanghainese Restaurant. This one is called the Shanghai JJ Restaurant. They told us that they had already been opened for business for 8 months now. So I guess they are doing OK.

The place looked the same except for a fresh coat of paint. It does look cleaner.

As soon as we got seated they handed us their menu. We did not even look at it. We set it aside and instead …

… we walked to the wall where they had posted delicious looking pictures of their dishes. This is definitely the best way to order food, don’t you think?  As odd as it may feel to some of you, I made our order standing in front of the wall and pointing out what we wanted.

What I like is that many of their dishes are unique that you don’t normally find in other Chinese restaurants.

I can’t help but to compare them with the time when this place was Shanghai Wind (Shanghai Wonderful). Back then this small restaurant was absolutely packed and one had to wait a long time for a table. Shanghai JJ is quite full but they did not have people waiting for a table like when it was Shanghai Wind.

Their Xiao Long Bau is noticeably smaller than what we are used to. It is $4 for 6 pieces. The XLB is quite decent but it was disappointing that one of them was served broken. He he he … to us all pieces of the XLB must be served intact with the soup otherwise it is not good. That is like the litmus test for XLB.

BTW, I want to know what is the right Chinese word to describe ordering dishes. You know like ordering a few dishes communal style with a side of steamed rice? Suanne and I call it “chau choy” in Cantonese but I think there is a better word for it. What is it?

When we have four in the family out for dinner like this, we normally would order three different dishes to share. It would be made up of one soup, one meat and one veggie dish.

The Shanghai Style Soup with Assorted Food costs $13. It has …
More after the jump. Click to read the rest of Shanghai JJ Restaurant on No 3 Road, Richmond (375 words)

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Post tags: Chinese, Restaurant Review, Richmond, Shanghai

I don’t mean the restaurant only.

I used to start off our restaurant review with a image of the restaurant front like the one above. From now onwards, I don’t need to do that anymore. I can do better.

I could easily use Google Map’s Street View now.  Like this one below:

View Larger Map

Go ahead. Click all over the Street View. You can pan 360°. You can zoom in and out. The images are sharp. Cool, huh?

Alright … back to the restaurant. Shanghai River is one of the more popular Shanghainese restaurants in Richmond and they are successful for several good reasons too.

This restaurant is located on Westminster Highway, just west of No 3 Road. Parking is at a premium in the covered parkade just right of the restaurant. You have to be careful where you park because the stalls are marked.

Reservation is highly recommended at Shanghai River. We were there early at 11:15AM without a reservation and had to wait 30 minutes for a table. The restaurant is large and they turn the tables quite fast. Even then there is a long line. At about 11:30AM, they were already turning away walk-ins and even the calls for reservation for lunch that day. We were just by the waiting area and overheard the incoming phone calls. That tells us we are in the right place.

Bright lightings, tables with double layered table cloth and comfy chair … polite waitresses … efficient and courteous service. They even have a bar. see From these alone I would have thought that this will be a pricey place. I was quite wrong.

The dining area is bustling and very noticeably noisy. Do you think Chinese talks too loudly when dining? LOL! I think we do.

I love their menu. All menus should be like these … well laid out with pictures and English translations. I was thinking that Gweilos would be very comfortable with eating here. Just point to the pictures you fancy and you’re set.

I used the word Gweilo in an affectionate way OK? Maybe I should use the word Sai Yan to refer to Whites or Causasians but the term Gweilo sounds more personal.

Anyway, the surprising thing was that a lot of their Shanghai Style Dim Sum items are under $10 and even main dishes are at the range of $12.

Unlike many Chinese restaurants, Shanghai River’s service is exceptional. The staff were very polite and cheerful to us. I can’t help but notice how well-groomed, young and well-trained the staff are. Their uniform is well fitted. Really, it tells me that they are like the Cactus Club with an Asian twist.  I just like them, especially because they were so busy and yet able to appear composed at the tables.

On the menu, they call themselves the Master of Dim Sum. Like any respectable Shanghainese restaurants, they have an open glass enclosed kitchen where they make Xiao Long Bau in plain view of the diners. They have stacks of bamboo baskets so I guess they are very popular here. BTW, for those of you who don’t know … Xiao Long Bao literally means mini dumplings in bamboo baskets in Mandarin.

We decided to get something special. Instead of the normal Xiao Long Bao, we had the Shanghai Dumpling with Crab Meat.

It is beauty. They make it very well. The skin is of the right thickness and is very …
More after the jump. Click to read the rest of Shanghai River on Westminster Highway, Richmond (531 words)

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Post tags: Chinese, Restaurant Review, Richmond, Shanghai

I actually am not that crazy over dessert but I know Suanne will definitely say yes.

We had always wanted to try the Tofu Pudding from Excellent Tofu and Snack. They are located on the strip mall by Hazelbridge and Browngate. It is just a couple of doors away from Lido.

Service was terrible here. The lady manning the long low counter sure looked grumpy and has a face as long as my arms.  No smiles but that’s OK with us. She was kind of not too pleased when we try to asked questions about her menu.

And then she sweetened up when she noticed that we pull out a camera and notebook. She was MUCH more sweeter to us after that and her tone changed.  LOL!

Excellent Tofu is basically a soy pudding place. Their menu is simple. It is either soy pudding with toppings or flavoured ones. They have some tofu based snacks too.

I ordered the one with black glutinous rice. I had an option for either
More after the jump. Click to read the rest of Excellent Tofu and Snacks on Hazelbridge Way and Browngate, Richmond (184 words)

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Post tags: Dessert, Restaurant Review, Richmond, Snack

Update 15-Nov-2009: Aroma Garden is now closed. In its place is a hotpot restaurant. However, Aroma Garden has now moved to a new location 5 minutes walk away and is now known as Bushuair Restaurant. The menu in Bushuair Restaurant is identical to Aroma Garden.

I … errr … get very excited easily.

So you gotta learn how to look beyond my excitement while reading my blog.  This is one more restaurant that really excites me. Bear with me OK?

I was driving past the new Aberdeen Skytrain station on No 3 Road when I spotted this sign above — Mao-Ze-Dong’s Most Favoured Dishes. I am not sure about you … but for me, I am a true sucker for taglines like these. So, last weekend we went to check it out.

We got confused. The sign outside by No 3 Road says that the restaurant name is Aroma Garden. However, in this strip mall, there is only ONE restaurant with a sign that says “Gordon Park” and “Xiangcai Museum”. We had to walk out to the sign and match the Chinese characters. The Chinese characters matches but the English translation is downright different.

What is this thing about “Xiangcai Museum” anyway?  Anyone knows?

Anyway, I am going to call this restaurant Aroma Garden based on the receipt we had. Aroma Garden is located just at the Aberdeen Skytrain station and tucked right at the back of the strip mall. You can’t see the restaurant from No 3 Road. You gotta drive in. Parking is at a premium here during dinner time.

Aroma Garden is a very Chinesey restaurant. You will likely find mostly Mainland Chinese customers speaking Mandarin here.

I like the decor here which looks authentic Chinese with lanterns and wooden window frames.

This is a Hunan cuisine restaurant which explains the Mao Zee Dong reference.  Mao, you see, is Hunanese. I am almost a Hunan race. Bet you don’t know that. I belong to the Hu-man race.

LOL!  Alright lame joke.

The restaurant is filled with the distinctive aroma of Sichuan peppers. Their menu is a colorful catalogue with pictures which helps us decide our choices. This helps especially when their English translations are horrendous.

The first thing we try to look for in the menu is any reference to Mao’s favourite dishes. We only found one that says “Mao Pork Braised in Brown Sauce”. This is $10.

So we asked our waitress for other Mao’s dishes. She laughed! She said …
More after the jump. Click to read the rest of Aroma Garden (Hunan) Restaurant on No 3 Road, Richmond (640 words)

© ben for Chow Times, 2009. | Permalink | 9 comments
Post tags: Chinese, Hunan, Restaurant Review, Richmond