I know I am soooo behind in my blogs but I just realized how behind I was. Well, we went Mak’s in January and it is until now I got down to blogging about it. Frankly, I find so little time to do the things I enjoy these days. But anyway, I only have this entry and tomorrow’s to go before I get started on the Seattle Spring Break series.

For today, it’s about Mak’s Noodle Restaurant. We only got to know about Mak’s when Erick commented that they have one of the best wonton noodles in Richmond. Erick is from Seattle and he comes over to Richmond every now and then just for food! So, I guess being a true-blue foodie, he knows where the great food is.

We would not have found Mak’s on our own. It is sort of tucked deep in a strip mall along Alexandra Rd, the “eat street” of Richmond. The address if you are interested is 1200-8580 Alexandra Road. It is a Cantonese restaurant and their specialty is wonton noodles.

Table condiments are the all important chili oil (or oil chili?) for wonton noodles. As important as the wonton and noodle, the chili oil is just as indispensable.

There are vinegar too but I had never understood the use of vinegar here. I mean, what do you use that with?

Nanzaro insisted in making his own order. As long as he does not order Fried Rice again, we just let him decide on his own and stay out of commenting on his poor choice. He ordered the Lo-Mein with Shredded Pork in Spicy Brown Sauce. Six bucks … hmmm … and it does not really looked tasty. After some cajoling, he let us taste a bit … it was too oily and salty.

Arkensen ordered the Supreme Wonton Noodle Soup. I am kind of glad he ordered this because, well, it is what Mak is known for. It is just $4.25. It was not bad but do think that the wonton is a bit too salty for our liking. Otherwise, it is great.

When Suanne finds her pants a bit too tight, she orders something like the ones above. LOL! She even ordered the Mixed Seafood Congee and not the one with pork meat. It was pretty good for $5.

I would have ordered ones with pork liver and intestines with lots of sliced ginger, soya sauce and white pepper powder.

The Chinese Donut were extras to go with the congee. $1.50 … in Asia you could get this for 30 cents but you can’t compare right? But this one is great — freshly made and very crunchy.

Me, I had the Braised Beef Brisket/Tendon and Dumpling Noodle Soup. I like everything about it … the broth, the stringy noodles and lots of meat. Just $6.00.

In all it was an excellent recommendation from Erick. The service here is fast but understandably the servings are small … for some reason, I had never seen really good wonton noodles served in humungous bowls like the Vietnamese Pho.

The total tab came up to $26 including tax and tips. Be warned that they accept cash only, no Interac or credit cards accepted (for American readers, Canadians does NOT accept cheques).

Anyway, we felt rather thirsty after meal … they must used a lot of MSG here. Is that a good thing or a bad thing?

Have any of you ever been to this Shanghainese restaurant right across No 3 Road from the Richmond Centre Mall? For some reason, they had been changing hands several times over the years. I am not sure why because they seem to do very well as evidenced by how packed it is all the time.

It is now called Da Hong Yun but I remember they used to be called Shanghai Wind and at another time it was called Chen’s. We went there because we were enticed by the Live Crab banner that they put up outside.

The restaurant is smallish with something like 10 tables at the max. It’s so cramped that it was hard to move around once all the tables were filled. Decor wise, there is nothing much to it (why they even have Chinese New Year decorations still hanging in the store even today).

This is a very traditional Chinese restaurant which means that they cater to mainly Chinese customers. It’s because there is only one waitress who could barely managed to communicate in English. So ordering here was quite difficult for us.

Despite the language difficulty, we managed quite well ordering the Duck with Fried Gluten. The duck was extremely tender and meaty, much to our surprise. For $12.95, it was a half duck dish. What we liked best was the tasty sauce and bamboo shoots.

For the vege, we ordered the Tou Meow Seong Tong (sprouts in soup) which was quite crunchy and the steamy soup was great for a cold night. However, it was quite expensive. I am not sure why such a dish would have costs $12.95.

We ordered crab and decided order what they call Kam Sar Gook which is literally translated as Golden-Sand Steamed. It is actually cooked with salted egg yolk and was very crispy … so crispy that we do not need to use a cracker to break the shell.

However, there were not much meat at all in the crab. If I recall correctly, they charged $10.99 for a crab regardless how you want it cooked.

Despite ordering only three dishes, it was too much food for the four of us in the family. The total damage was $47 including tax and tips. I felt it was too expensive for a smallish place like this. Good food but quite pricey.

What we did not like was that they charge for rice separately. At least, they gave us a small bowl of lime water, free … it taste quite nice really. ;-)

I can almost swear that this place is new. Well, not new-new but new as in about 4 months new. We had been eating around Alexandra Rd every other weekend but it never quite notice it until recently. You know, with a name like Michigan, we can almost guess this is another HK Style Cafe. Suanne and I still have not figured out why so many HK Style Cafes are named after American Cities.

The Michigan Noodle Shop is located at the eastern end of Alexandra Road. It is actually on the same strip mall as Zen Chinese Cuisine and across the road from Coco Chili. You won’t miss, not with that bright yellow signboard in an otherwise drab looking strip mall. Parking might looked to be very limited but just so that you know, you could actually drive up the ramp and park upstairs.

We really thought that this place is one of the more expensive restaurant especially with their decor and expensive cars parked outside. It turned out that it’s a very traditional Chinese restaurant and nothing like any of the HK Style Cafes.

We like this place and the ambiance. It does seem upscale with the customers mostly very well dressed. The waitresses too were garbed in traditional Chinese costume. The tables and seats were quite plush.

Service was great — confident and cheerful. When Suanne and I placed our orders, the waitress explained to us that we are ordering the same type of noodle dishes and recommended something different.

Like most Cantonese tables, there are the ubiquitous chili oil.

Their House Special Rice Noodle is just like Malaysian Style Rice Noodle — not exactly like Penang Fried Kuey Teow but that’s the closest I would describe it. It had lots of nice big juicy prawns. I am quite impressed with this because in most places, there are lots of bean sprouts and very little ingredients. Now for $7.80, I think this is quite cheap.

The other dish we ordered was the Seafood Braised E-fu Noodle in Pot. This one has scallops, prawns, dish and squids and costs $11.80. Hmmm … this is quite bland and tasteless. Also, the E-Fu noodles absorbed the soup very quickly and made the dish quite soggy.

The total bill came up to $23 including tips and tax for the two of us.

We met up with Angie’s family for lunch on a Saturday. We actually got to know each other through chowtimes. We are still amazed even today how we had gotten to know so many people through the blog.

We decided to go to Vogue for lunch. Vogue is a popular Taiwanese restaurant located in the Continental Mall in Richmond. That mall, located on Cambie and Sexsmith, has quite a lot of eateries.

We were early that day. Vogue opens at 11:30AM but we were already there about 15 minutes early. They were nice and asked that we come in and allow them some time to setup. Needless to say, the place were empty at that time. By lunch time, the place were absolutely packed.

They have one of the more trendy and modern decor among Richmond restaurants. Not too fancy but really neat.

For me, I like places where they pay attention to the details. The bowls, plates, cups and chopsticks were logo’d. This is the kind of place where you are better off ordering dishes for sharing.

You know what I hated most eating out with people who knows I am the Ben behind chowtimes? They think I know so much about food that everyone leaves the ordering to me! Frankly, I did not really know what I was ordering and went by just the name. It turned out that all the dishes I ordered came out to be almost the same stuff. :-)

The Ma Po Tofu above was $8.25. I ordered that because I know what it is and was feeling like tofu that day.

I also ordered their Spicy Organ Stew. They are supposed to come with pork blood but we don’t eat blood and had that substituted with tofu. There were tripes and intestines but cooked in about the same type of sauce with the Ma Po Tofu. $9.50. The intestines were good.

A lot of poeple swear that Vogue San-Pei-Jee is simply their best dish. San-Pei-Jee is mandarin translated to Three Cup Chicken. I learned from someone at work today that the reason why this is called 3-Cup Chicken is that it is cooked with a cup of soya sauce, a cup of cooking wine and a cup of sugar. $9.50 for a pot. Very nice and goes extremely well with steamed rice. This is one dish you MUST order when in Vogue.

Then I ordered the Sweet Chili Shrimps. LOL! This one looked exactly like the Ma Po Tofu and Spicy Organ Stew except that this one is with shrimps. Same sauce different ingredients. You see now how good I am in selecting dishes?

Oh … this sweet chili shrimps were really great — large and springy is the way I would describe it. You will like it but just don’t order that with Ma Po Tofu or Spicy Organ Stew. This is a bit more expensive … $15.00 but then all seafood are more expensive.

We also order the Chinese Green Onion Pancakes because Angie’s kids loves pancakes. But this one is really not as good. We expected this to be flaky but it’s a bit too dry and bland. $4.50. Don’t order this … order something else.

The total bill came up to $62.00 include tax and tips. Not bad for two familie, huh?

BTW, they accept cash only. Weird … for a place like this. If you want to bring guest or friends our for a meal, Vogue is a great place to do that.

Hey, errr … we’re back. Gosh, it must have been the longest we went without a single posting since January 2006. The spring break sure was great.

Today, I am blogging about the “Best Chinese Food Outside of China” … well, that was according to Jennifer 8 Lee. Jennifer is a reporter for New York Times who had just published a booked called “The Fortune Cookie Chronicles: Adventures in the World of Chinese Food”.

In writing the book, she visited restaurants in 42 states in the US and other 23 countries in search for Chinese food. When she landed in Vancouver, she went to three restaurants … Kirin, Sun Sui Wah and Zen. Out of the many restaurants, she chose to describe Zen as the greatest.

From the outside Zen does not really look like much of a restaurant. The location too is left too much to be desired as it is on the second floor of a smallish strip mall at the end of Alexandra Rd in Richmond.

According to the news, Zen had been struggling to bring in customers for a few years and is in the verge of closing down. When the news broke of the great review from Jennifer 8, all hell broke lose, so to speak.

From the days where there are only a few customers a week, the table seating were fully booked the week after the news broke. The only time available for us that week was 5:30 PM on a Friday.

Unlike other Chinese restaurants, Zen only have fixed tasting menus. You do not go there and pick your food from a menu. Instead, when you book a table, you will be given a menu of four choices to pick from. They even insist that the entire table have the same items (i.e. you do not order Menu A for some and Menu B for the others). It looks like Zen only takes reservation only and does not entertain walkins. All this is because Zen takes hours to prepare most of the food.

Suanne and I picked the cheapest tasting menu which costs about $36 per person.

Zen is just that … a restaurant at the verge of closing down and is now struggling to keep up. Decor wise, it is quite spartan and simple. If I may even describe it, the cutlery were mismatched. We did not mind at all but it does jump at us when we got seated. After all we were there for the food and understand the circumstances that Zen went through.

I would describe the service as “eager”. The waitresses were quite overwhelmed by the crowd and at times had difficulty communicating in English. A number of them were quite raw and inconfident, even to the extend of not really knowing what the food is called … but they made up for it by having two great person who were coming to each table to speak with the customers. We enjoyed that personal attention — this is certainly not like any Chinese restaurant, formal or informal, that we had ever been to before.

The gentleman (I did not get his name) who came by our table told us that Sam (da man behind Zen) had been working in an overdrive mode the past few days. So, their number one priority was to keep Sam healthy so much so that they do not bother to fill on empty tables when there are cancellations.

I ordered a beer, a simple Corona which is $5.50 per glass. The drinks menu really needed a fresher print. It was really old, worn and torn. I am sure that by now it would have already been replaced.

Suanne ordered their Aloe Vera with Honey. This costs $3.50. She ordered this simply because she had never heard of such a drink before. It came served boiling hot and tastes a bit sourish. It was quite good and unique for sure.

Before we got settled down with the meal, they gave us an appetizer, complimentary from Sam. They came in two saucers containing Jelly Fish and Sharks Fin. It was a good mix of texture (crunchy) and taste (sour and mildly spicy). LOL … I wish they gave us more.

Suanne insisted that I finish off the entire saucer — especially the three strands of sharks fin I had left on the saucer. According to her, the most expensive part of this is the sharks fin. Anyone know how expensive sharks fin are?

Next came the Apple Cider. It was served in small chilled glass, about 2-3 inches tall only. There are froth on it but otherwise tastes absolutely like any other apple cider to me. He he he … they told us that it is specially prepared for us being the first customer of the day.

This is simply called “Seafood Curry” according to the Chinese name. We can’t really make out what exactly the seafood is because they are all finely chopped and stuffed into a mollusk shell. It was interesting and quite tasty with a nice touch of spiciness.

Next came the Double Boiled Soup. It really looked like any double boiled soup to me except that it is much more “cheng” (clear). It contained pork, dried vegetables, pig stomach and dry scallop. It was served scalding hot.

Double boiling allows heat sensitive ingredients to heat slowly and evenly. It also eliminates the possibility of scorching or overcooking in direct heat cooking.

The star dish of the evening had got to be the Garlic Crab. Like all other other dishes,it is served really hot. The crab was meaty but what we love was the finely minced garlic. I can’t quite make out what it is but that garlic is not garlicky but quite mild and bland.

Next came the simple “Mustard Green Hearts”. It was tender, crisp and lightly salted. Such simplicity. I think Sam, just dunked in the selected part of the mustard green into hot water and then served.

BTW, Sam came out and visited the table next to us. That table looked like they are some rich hot shots from Hongkong. I like Sam and his mannerism. He is polite and humble. I can see how hard he must have been working the past few days.

I created a new dish … I put the minced garlic on the mustard green hearts. Tastes a lot better that way. What do you think … I do make a good chef, no?

The next one is what is called the Roasted Pork Cheek. It is like a Rolls Royce of Char Siew … more tender, much smoother and less fibrousy. It looked like lean meat but the texture is like pork fat. Absolutely marvelous.

Now, the next one I could not quite understand. It’s a simple fried rice with dried scallop. OK, blame me for not having such fine taste buds (in Chinese, it’s saying that my mouth is not “chim” enough!). I can’t taste any dried scalloped at all … not that I really can recognize dried scallops. The fried rice was great but it’s … well … just fried rice to me.

OK, the last dish was what they call the “Special Salty Chicken”. It’s cold … it’s like Hainanese Chicken … and we can’t see what is special about this. We have simple taste buds, I guess.

To close, we were served the Green Tea Pudding. It was such a small serving but were absolutely smooth with the right touch of sweetness.

All in all, it was a good quality meal. As to whether this is the best outside of China, I am not that sure. To me it sure was one of the better Chinese meals I had. I am rooting for Sam and really wishes that he carefully capitalize on his new found fame. I recommend that you check out Sam’s creation yourself … I don’t think you’ll be disappointed.

Fridays had always been a good time to go out for lunch for some reason. Two Fridays ago, I went out for lunch with my friends from my old workplace. I am glad that even after having left the company for more than 2 years now, I am still remembered.

Since, I am eating out, Suanne just packed grapes and a handful of prawn cracker for me. I still need my snacks.

The Boss Restaurant is located inside the Metrotown mall. It is located near Zellers in case you want to know where exactly it is in the large mall. The Boss is basically a HK-Style restaurant and is almost always busy.

Wait times could be very lengthy during lunch time and more so since it is a Friday afternoon. We had a total of 12 people and since I was the nearest to the restaurant, I went there earlier to book a table. The wait was 30 minutes which was not too bad.

We had to split up to two separate tables since it is quite next to impossible to get so many people seated together seeing how busy it was that day. We talked about table setting and that Asians tables normally have a spoon and a fork while for other Canadian restaurants, it is common to have only fork and knife.

Even after so many years in Canada, I still prefer just spoon and fork as it is more practical when it come to rice. I can use a fork for rice but it feels odd to me. Asians normally eat with the spoon and uses the fork to help scoop food onto the spoon.

On our table we had six people and decided to just order four different dishes to share. The chow mein was served on a hot pan. For those of you who had never tried this before, this is like having two fried noodles in one. The noodles are by itself crunchy and after a while when the sauce get soaked through the noddles, they get soften … giving an entirely different texture.

The Grilled Pork Chop with Onion is a delight to those who had never tried it before. This is always served in a very very hot pan. You have a choice of sauces which you pour over the food into the pan giving a real sizzle which if you are not careful, you could get sauce splatter on your clothes. It came with a sides of either rice or spaghetti.

I would not say that this is great but it sure is fun, especially for those who had never had this before. $9.50 is quite a good deal.

The Seafood Congee costs $5.75. Congee is considered a poor man’s food. In many parts of Asian long time ago when rice are scarce, people do make congee by adding more water to make a bigger meal.

The Love Bird Fried Rice is sort of an uncommon-common food you see in some Cantonese restaurants. Underneath it is the normal fried rice but over it, there are two types of sauces … poured over in the shape of ying-yang. I had absolutely no idea what the sauces are. They are quite good.

Overall, it was a pretty fun lunch out. I get kicks out of introducing food to people who had not had this before. I think everyone liked it. We split the bill and it came out to $8.50 each for the five of us at the table.

This is about the first meal we had in 2008. It is a dim sum breakfast we had with the families of Polly & Vincent and Wai Bing and KC. This dim sum breakfast is actually the continuation of our New year Eve celebration together. The previous day we went to Wai Bing’s house to usher in the new year. We had a simple and great home cooked meal, chatted till past midnight, went home to sleep and then met up again for dim sum the next morning.

Between New Year Eve and New Year Day, gosh, we must have chatted for 14 hours in all (Wai Bing, Polly, you do the math … is that right?). I did not realize we had so much to talk about. Over bottles of Guiness Stouts, We talked about normal stuff … you know, like … what you would do if you win the Super-7 (Wai Bing would buy an entire townhouse complex and give each one of us an unit, hurray!), educating the ladies on benefits of investing on a HDTV for the house, plans for next year … and other normal stuff.

Sorry … I digressed.

The Golden Dynasty Seafood Restaurant is where we went to. Although Suanne and I know of this place, we had never been in these before. It is located on a strip mall on 8360 Granville Ave in Richmond. It is where Rogers is, if you know the neighborhood.

One thing you will undoubtedly find … parking is very limited. I guess this is what happens when a certain business (this restaurant) dominates the business on this small area. Almost all the parking lots are all marked for specific businesses. If you can’t find parking right up front, drive over to the back of the strip mall. There are plenty there.

Golden Dynasty is a one of the larger and busiest dim sum restaurants in Richmond. They are big and can cater to wedding dinners too. The place was absolutely packed when we were there but we had no problem getting a table since Wai Bing had already made the reservation before hand.

I think the popularity of this place is due to its price. Their dim sums are categorized as small, medium or big but they all costs the same, $2.30. The quality is not bad too. There are specials which costs a bit more (see menu above).

I like dim sum restaurants where they cart around the dim sum to your table for selection. It’s good to be able to see what you’re ordering, especially for us who do not read Chinese. We had two or three servings of each dim sum … below.

The Steamed Prawn Rice Rolls was very smooth. Best eaten when steamy hot.

This is some kind of Deep Fried Wonton.

Suanne called this the Char Siu So. It’s a pastry with Char Siu fillings.

This is another dim sum with char siu fillings. It’s called Charn Pau (Baked Char Siu Bun) in Cantonese.

The Sin Juk Guen (Fresh Bean Curd Rolls) — love this a lot.

Everyone should try this very chewy Braised Cow Stomach.

Then we had the steamed Squid with few small To Fu Puff thrown in it. It does not look great … looked like it was yesterday’s dim sum.

We also had Wu Gok (Deep Fried Yam Dumpling) — not my favourite but Vincent loves this. He ordered 3 plates of this.

This is a Deep Fried Dumpling … oh … with red bean fillings? *shrugs*

We came across the Pineapple Bun again. Arkensen & Nanzaro loved this. Their Pineapple Bun are the mini version of those we had in Lido.

Everyone’s favourite … Siu Mai (Pork Dumpling with Fish Roe). If you have dim sum, you must have this … and don’t ask what is in it … just eat it and I am sure you will like it.

The Har Gau (Steamed Prawn Dumpling) is another very common dim sum item. I never did like Har Gau’s a lot.

The Fung Jau is translated as the Phoenix Claws. A fancy name for chicken feet or formally known as Braised Chicken Feet in Garlic and Black Bean Sauce. I get a kick watching my non-Chinese friends eat this — most would not even touch it. But seriously, this is great!

You can’t see it from the picture above. What is submerged under the congee is century eggs (or thousand year old eggs). In Cantonese, this is called the Pei Dan Sau Yok Juk or in Suanne’s translation, the Thousand Year Old Egg and Lean Pork Porridge.

The Steamed Chicken Bun is the favourites of the kids. Pretty ho-hum. Char Siu buns are better but we did come across it when they wheeled their carts over.

And finally, the Glutinous (or Sticky) Rice Wrap.

The total bill came to $80 for 3 families of 12 people (including kids). Not bad, huh?

I’ll blog about dim sum and Ben’s version of etiquette of eating in a Cantonese (dim sum) restaurant tomorrow. How does that sound?

When Suanne and I started blogging on chowtimes, we just did it because, well, it was an in-thing to have a blog. One thing led to another, today we have over 700 entries. We are still amazed at how the site had grown and that people actually find the blog interesting enough to return to the site. We still have not quite figured it out why chowtimes readers comes back.

What really kept us going is that we found that there are actually quite a few loyal followings of the site. I think it was sometime in October or so, I volunteered to organize a Chinese banquet for readers of chowtimes. Frankly, Suanne and I were pleasantly surprised to find that there are actually people who were interested — and that too, from readers who we don’t know.

In all, 9 people attended. Of everyone, LotusRapper, who came with his lovely wife, is the only person I had ever met. I had not met Ed from ededition.com but had been following his blog for sometime already. Then there was this gregarious Tiffanie who owns a chain of ice cream parlours — yummy, Suanne and I is going to check it out someday. Joseph, a true foodie, was also there. And the charming couple, Cissy & Henry … people Suanne and I would want to be like when we “grow up”. Two (Jennifer and Gigi) of my favourite bloggers could not make it.

The choice of going to Tong Kung Chiu Chow Restaurant boils down to one thing … snakes. More about that later.

One thing about Chinese banquets, you really need a lot of people. For the uninitiated, many formal Chinese restaurants offers 8-10 course dinners. These are mainly for weddings or celebrations. The menus are a fixed price for a table of 10. Most of the good menus will start from $180. I had seen one menu that costs $998!!

Selection for the restaurant was quick and easy. For us, the criteria was simple, we wanted to not spend not more than $200 and it had to be a Chinese Banquet. We gathered the menus from a few restaurants and selection was made within a week. For some of us, it was the “Snake and Shark’s Fin Soup” that led us to choosing Tong Kung.

Tong Kung have three standard menus that costs $168, $198 and $238. We chose the $198 menu which has 10 courses on it.

Tong Kung is a Chiu Chow (Teochew) cuisine restaurant. It is located on Park Road in Richmond, just a ear shot away from the Richmond City Hall. We decided to meet early, at 5:30PM. We were the only people there then but it soon filled up very fast. We told ourselves that since there are so many people, we can’t be wrong chosing this restaurant.

I know very little about Chiu Chow cuisine. Here are MY perceptions … Chiu Chow cuisine is really big on seafood, maybe because the region is along the coast of south east China. It is generally bland and devoid of spiciness, unlike other Chinese cuisines that have stronger flavours and spices. I would say that it is very close to Cantonese cuisine.

The Cold Crab was the first dish and an excellent choice for starters. The way the Chiu Chow prepare the cold crab is that they steam it first and then served it chilled. I have no idea why they do that and what it does to the flavour … anyone knows?

Seems like crabs are big in Chiu Chow cuisine. We loved it. For me, I put aside the eating utensils and just used my hands. Using hands is OK because this does not have sticky gravy, sauce and stuff all over it. Don’t know about you all, but eating with my hands is the ONLY way to handle crabs.

The roe is purportedly the best part of the Cold Crab. It is OK taste-wise, I guess … but it sure does not look good.

Next came the Assorted Meat and Duck Platter in Chiu Chow Special Soy Sauce. I sure don’t know what “special sauce” is but the Chinese word for it is “low sui” which is roughly translated as “old water”. I am guessing that this is stocks that had been thickened over and over again.

Being a meat person, this was awesome. The duck wings though, I could not understand because there are so little meat to it. The pile of meat was heaped high … great stuff.

Next came the Crab and Prawn Balls. They are basically minced meat and shaped before being deep fried. Another meaty dish. I love the springy texture.

Well, the Snake and Shark’s Fin Soup was supposed to be the star of this dinner but when they came, we cannot see any evidence of snake meat let alone taste it. Anyway, I don’t even know what snake meat look and taste like … like chicken? Moreover, we could not really see shark fin too.

Lotus Rapper mentioned there is a strong orange peel taste. Suanne swore that there is that taste but to me I would not have known until told.

The next dish was simple. It is called Three Kinds of Seafood Stir Fry with XO Sauce. To me it does not look like there is XO Sauce in this but it tastes great. I like it better if seafood is cooked without strong sauces like XO Sauce anyway. It is a good dish to clear the palate from the previous dishes.

By this time, everyone should have felt full already … I sure was myself but we had just bareful passed the middle course. The Spiced Ginger Chicken, we think is the air dried. We did not eat a lot of the chicken although it looked tasty (it was).

Following is the Braised Mushroom with Goose Feet in Oyster Sauce. The mushroom and bak choy was good. In particular, I love the huge mushrooms. We had quite a few goose feet left — I think it is not everyone’s favourite. For me, I prefer chicken feet over this … this one has more bones and very little meat and skin.

The Steamed Fish was great. What fish is that … I have no idea. I can’t tell one fish from another. So, is this a pomfret? or a tilapia? or is pomfrets the same as tilapia? I have absolutely no idea. One thing I do know, the soya sauce poured over the white fish meat is always good.

There were two steamed fishes. Fantastic dish.

The second to last dish was the Chiu Chow Fried rice. None of us could eat anymore and we ended up asking for a doggy bag for this and other left overs. The tenth dish was the Red Bean Soup.

Overall, all the servings were huge. Certainly value for money. My only beef about this dinner was that whilst the service was great at the beginning, by the 4th dish, they had been taking out one dish after another way before we had started on the previous one. It is best enjoyed if they had only timed it better. I do think that the kitchen was not able to cope with all the people coming in and thus just messed up with the timings.

The damage came out to $27 per person including taxes and tips.

Suanne and I really enjoyed ourselves, although admittedly I was dead tired that day. For us it was great meeting the people who cared enough for chowtimes that they took time off to come to the banquet (some even drove all the way from North Vancouver to Richmond!). We would love to organize another event sometime in the future for sure.

Once in a while, we chance on a nondescript restaurant … you know, ones that looked so unassuming from the outside that chances you will never give it a second glance? The other day, our boys wanted to go to e-Canteen for a HK-Style lunch. We got to the entrance to e-Canteen before we changed our mind. We decided that we don’t want another HK-Style meal (yeah, we’re really fickle-minded when it comes to food!).

We looked across the parking lot seeking for another place for lunch. This was in the strip mall right across the road from the Richmond Public Market.

For the outside, the Paterson Restaurant does look very much like a small and quaint place for a casual meal. We decided to check out the many hand written poster-menu on the window and peered inside. It was alright, the prices looked really cheap and they have a bit of a unique dishes that is not run-of-the-mill stuff we had come to expect from places that looked like this.

We were there early and were the only customer in the restaurant. This looked very much like a family run business as we see children seated at one corner of the restaurant having a meal and doing homework.

There are nothing much to the decor really — with low-maintenance and efficient glass top tables and wooden chairs. I have not seen such chairs for a long time — such designs were really common in coffee shops in South East Asia.

Despite this, what really surprised us was the food they serve. They have on their menu specials such as Congee with a choice of Chinese Donut or steamed rice roll or chowmein with soya sauce for only $3.99. I can’t think of anywhere we can find such a meal for under $4 nowadays.

They also have on their menu (which we gather is their specialty) 2.5 lb crab dishes for only $14.99. Since it was really early in the morning, we took a raincheck and told ourselves we will come back to Paterson to try their crab someday … soon.

See this one … it is called the Oyster Rice in Soup. Oh man, this is such a simple dish which I remember having so much when I was really young. It’s just broth with oysters and rice but I enjoyed it a lot. For a $5.95 dish, there were surprisingly a lot of oysters and mushrooms. This is truly a homestyle fare which you do not find in other restaurant.

Nanzaro and Arkensen, as usual, went for their Salted Fish Chicken Fried Rice. Do you all have any advice for us? Suanne and I need to ween the boys off from fried rice. I mean, how on earth will they take chowtimes.com over from us if they continue to only eat fried rice? He he he … maybe they will just rename this blog to chowfantimes.com. :-) [Note: fried rice in Cantonese is called chow-fan]

The fried rice was OK. With salted fish, fried rice is always OK no matter how it is done. I remembered that it was really fragrant. $7.95 gives a plate big enough to whet the appetite of two growing boys.

The Mui Choy Khau Yoke Rice (Pork Belly and Preserved Vegetable on Rice) is another homestyle comfort food we don’t normally find else where. It is just $5.95. The sauce was excellent and goes so scrumptiously well with the rice. The pork belly slices were thick and tender. You MUST try this — even though it is not exactly really healthy food.

The Paterson Restaurant is opened from 10:30AM to 10:00PM everyday. Note that they take only cash which is understandable because of their cheap prices. The total bill came up to only $23 including taxes and tips.

Kingford Seafood Restaurant is located on 5890 No.3 Road, Richmond. You cant miss this restaurant as it’s huge glass windows allow one to see through to the chandeliers decorated interiors.

The South Arm Community Kitchen celebrated the end of 2007 session with a Dim Sum lunch at Kingford Seafood Restaurant. We were there around 11:30 am and there was not many customers at that time. I like the ambiance of the restaurant, warmly lighted. This restaurant can accommodate 30 tables.

The dim sum dishes in Kingford Seafood Restaurant are categorized by size, $2.98 for small, $3.98 for medium and $4.68 for large. Special is priced at $5.38. Quite pricey in my opinion.

We ordered quite a lot of dim sum (some in double portions) as we expected more company but some people did not turn up. We ended up with some left over to take away. Here are the dim sums we ordered:

Steamed Prawn Dumplings (medium), springy and delicate …

… Red Bean Paste Pancake (small), a sweet dessert …

… Mixed Mushrooms E-Fu Noodle with Teriyaki Sauce for $10.88 as filler, …

and more desserts to cleanse the palate at the end. The desserts are some red bean custard and some kind of jelly with young shredded coconut in it.

Click on the link to see more Dim Sum.

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