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Sensus Bistro on Capstan Way, Richmond

Ben — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 17:07:47 +0000

We had passed by Sensus Bistro many times before.

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 …
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Miku Restaurant on West Hastings, Vancouver

Ben — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 17:40:06 +0000

Suanne and I are getting into the groove of going out for a nice dinner to start off the weekend. Just the two of us.

So when it was Remembrance Day on Wednesday last week, we made the excuse to also dine out the day before. After all, it felt like a weekend, albeit a short one.

We went to Miku because we heard so much about their unique version of sushi. Having never been here before and guided by the reviews we read, we went there with a perception of exclusiveness and authentic Japanese culinary experience. After all, they are located at a part of downtown that we thought is an expensive area to operate a restaurant.

Miku is located on West Hastings just west of Burrard. It is just a street away from the new Vancouver Convention Center.

As usual, we were at Miku early at 5PM. They were at the midst of setting up for the evening. We were greeted by the restaurant manager, Erica, who turned out to be our perfect host for the evening. We were given a choice of seated at the bar or the tables. We opted for the tables simply because we felt kind of odd eating in front of the chef, especially when we want to take pictures. On hindsight, it would have been much better seated at the bar because that was where the action is.

Miku is modern and certainly upscale. The service was impeccable.

While their menu is not overly large (it was a 3-pager only), the menu was rather overwhelming to us as a lot of them are in Japanese names. I am sure you know the feeling when you have menus you simply have no idea what they are. I must say that our waiter was really good and patient with our questions and help us navigate the menu.

I got something Japanese for the drink. This is called the Nakano Brewery Ume Shu ($8 for a glass). I like this … it is a well-balanced complex Japanese plum wine. Even Suanne likes it too. It does not reek of alcohol and is light. The only thing is that the ice dilutes it pretty fast so it is best taken early on.

We started the night with two orders of sushis. The above is their signature Miku Roll ($15). This roll has salmon, uni (sea urchin), snow crab and cucumber and rolled with tobiko.

While this does not look particularly pretty, it is amazing. What makes this different from others is the way it is prepared …

… Aburi-style. Erica explained to us that the Aburi technique of searing is copyrighted. When I saw that they were making this, I asked if it is OK if I take a picture of them making this at the bar. I scampered over and took the picture above.

We had seared sushis before. This is is different in that they had a bigger torch and seared with a charcoal which gives out crackles as it is seared. The charcoal is supposed to give it a smokey flavour while the searing serves to liquify the oil in the ingredients. It looked fancier but am not sure if the charcoal really makes a difference.

Two things we love about the Miku Roll … you see the fatty looking thingy topping the roll above? I thought it was some fatty meat or something until we asked our waiter who said it was their very own Miku Sauce. It was great and was curious what exactly it is made of. When we got the chance, we asked Erica who said that it’s a secret recipe that she is not privy to that info. Maybe she did not know? LOL!

The other thing that is amazing here is the tobiko (flying fish roe) which was seared making it really crunchy. We had a great time popping all the tobiko which scattered inside our mouth. Nice!

Our second sushi is called the Premium Aburi Sushi and described as the Chef’s Selection of Assorted Aburi Sushi. With a name like that you cannot go wrong right?

There are a total of 7 pieces of sushis in this $18 offering. Each of the sushis were paired with …
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Negative Space Chinese Restaurant on Odlin Crescent, Richmond

Ben — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 03:40:28 +0000

I posted about funny Chinese dish names yesterday. Today it is about a Chinese restaurant with an uncommon name – Negative Space.

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 …
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Funny Chinese Dishes: Dead Man’s Coffin, Wild Speculation Beef Salamander and More

Ben — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 02:00:48 +0000

I did a lot of thinking over the last week.

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 …
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Guu in Aberdeen, Richmond

Suanne — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 13:30:46 +0000

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
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Shabusen Yakiniku House on Granville and West 14th, Vancouver

Ben — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 14:00:24 +0000

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 …
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© ben for Chow Times, 2009. | Permalink | 3 comments
Post tags: All You Can Eat, Japanese, Korean, Restaurant Review, Vancouver

Sunway Restaurant on No 3 Road, Richmond

Ben — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 18:05:26 +0000

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 …
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New Asia Deli on Cambie and Sexsmith in Richmond

Ben — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 09:41:27 +0000

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 …
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Beefy Beef Noodle on Main and King Edward, Vancouver

Ben — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 17:52:41 +0000

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 …
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Samurai Sushi House on Cambie Near 41st, Vancouver

Ben — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 14:00:15 +0000

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.

The above are pages from Samurai Sushi’s take out menu.

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 …
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