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.

continue reading "Kingford Seafood Restaurant in Richmond"

There were really nothing to see in Chinatown really. On the main road, there were rows and rows of stalls and shops selling the same kind of stuff you normally get in Chinatowns all over the world … knock-off watches, clothings, perfumes and what nots.

I went around to look for Little Italy and true to what I had read, Little Italy is nothing more than a short street of some Italian restaurants. The Chinatown had encroached into Little Italy so much that if I did not already know I was there, I would never had known this is Little Italy.

It was beginning to rain heavily … so heavy that I did not take out my camera to take any pictures while there. Since it was quite late already and the only thing I had since morning is a bagel and a giant pretzel, I thought it’s time for some food.

It was in Bowery Street that I saw what really appealed to me in this cold rainy weather … congee. The restaurant I went into was just simply called the Congee Chinese Restaurant.

They have a really extensive menu. I find that the Chinese restaurants in the US (for example San Francisco, New York) have bigger menus than what we have in Vancouver. It had also a wider variety of menu items.

In this restaurant, their congee menu is quite extensive … and have quite a few unique types that you normally don’t find else where. I ordered the Abalone and Frog Porridge.

The porridge is serverd boiling hot in a hot pot. With a few dashes of pepper and soya sauce, this pot of congee was just what I needed. Besides warming me up, I had not had real chinese food for the past few days. Moreover, my feet is killing me. I stayed in the restaurant for over an hour and took my time reading and planning for my trip the next day.

Some of you know me very well as an organizer of events. It’s just me … it’s just who I am. I simply enjoy putting together ideas, make a plan and see to it the plans work. Nothing gives me greater joy than to see people enjoying themselves.

When I was in my early twenties, I remember vividly that one camp that I had been part of organizing. It was a national camp of over 800 participants and I had played a huge part of organizing a city tour … 20 buses in all. Logistically it was a nightmare but I had such a kick seeing everyone single boys and girls coming back to camp happy, tired and late … no one missing and everyone had a great 10 hours away. Ah … those were the days … I’ll talk about those some other time.

For the past few years, I had also enjoyed organizing gatherings among friends … the biggest of which was a picnic the past summer which was attended by a whopping 50 people in all. Just two weeks ago, I initiated another idea for a gathering of my “lah speaking” friends (mainly ex-Singaporeans and ex-Malaysians). Since it is colder and wetter these days, outdoor events are out of the question. So, I initiated a Chinese Dinner for the same group of friends. Well, I said I initiated it because I did not organize it this time … WB offered to do it and she did it so marvelously well. I think WB will make an excellent project manager! [No, seriously WB.]

After narrowing it down from three restaurants, WB finally settled down on the Richmond Mandarin Restaurant which is located in the same building as T&T on Cambie. WB, with the help from Polly, did a great job in haggling a 9-course menu for just $168 (for a table of 10). This is amazing considering that Richmond Mandarin has a “Menu A” which costs $928 and their cheapest “Menu D” which costs $298. Moreover, WB managed to get the use of their VIP Room … for free!

We had a total of 30 people who came to the Richmond Mandarin Restaurant that night, about 20 adults and 10 kids. WB decided to create a separate cheaper menu for the kids while the adults go for the whole-shebang. Anyway, she figured that the kids would not care much for Peking Duck … the kids will actually be happier with fried rice and noodles … and the parent happier too because we don’t have to pay the full $168 for them.

Let’s start with the kids’ menu … first off … Fried Rice Noodles with Beef.

Then the kids had Deep Fried Chicken Wings. The kids started eating first … we wanted to make sure that the kids are all eaten and finished before we start our feast. But I was sooo hungry looking at the chicken wings. You see, I hardly had anything to eat that day in anticipation of this meal.

And the kids’ favourites … Fried Rice!! They looked so good and smell so good. They were all gone in no time. After the kids were done, they were let to run riot in the VIP room. He he he … my Nanzaro were tasked with keeping order. He did a great job. Nanzaro had perhaps something like 25 Bionicles which he does not play anymore. He divided his all-jumbled up Bionicle parts and gave it to the kids. I think the kids love that.

Here is the 9-course dinner we had … we started off with Peking Duck. This came in two course … starting first with the Peking Duck Skin. Yiup … that’s right … Duck Skin.

You don’t eat the Duck Skin just like that. We had Chinese Pancakes … warm and freshly made …

… together with Hoisin (Seafood?) Sauce with Green Onion “Flower” …

… assemble it together and wrap it up. This is certainly the favourite with everyone. For those who had tried this before … it’s the potpourri of simple flavours that makes this great. It’s the crispiness of the duck skin, the crunch of the green onion, the intensity of the Hoisin sauce and the supple softness of the warm pancake. We each had at least two … and everyone being so polite tried their darnest best pretending they don’t want more! Come on guys … next time don’t pretend! Go for it and finish it off!

The meat of the duck is then used for the second follow-on dish … the Duck Meat Stir-fry Lettuce Wrap. If WB did not tell me it’s duck meat, I would not have guessed. It had no semblance of meat at all. They are all chopped up finely.

We eat this as a wrap too … this time wrapped in lettuce leaf. There were so much duck meat that we asked for more lettuce leaf. I simply love the fresh, cold lettuce leaf. When we asked for more lettuce leaf, I actually cringed a bit because after WB had squeezed the restaurant out of so much, I was kind of fearful that service will suffer. But no … they were more than happy to give us more.

The next dish is the Crab Meat with Fish Maw Soup. Well, we would have loved Sharks Fin but at this price, obviously it was out of the question. The Crab Meat with Fish Maw was excellent. Know what fish maw is … it’s the gas bladder of a fish. Some say it is the stomach.

Anyway, I only know that the soup was great and can’t tell the maw from the rest of the stuff in the soup. There were more than enough for ten bowls … that’s good … because I know everyone want second helpings.

Next came the Hong Kong style crab. There are two large crabs for each table. The best way to eat this is to put down the chopstick and just use the hands. I noticed everyone turned quiet when we had this dish … he he he … everyone was too busy picking out the flesh from the shell. It was quite a bit of work. Yummy though.

Next came the Braised Rock Cod. It came with a lot of bean curd stick. I was too busy finishing off my crab that by the time I got down to this, all the fish flesh was gone! Oh yeah … you guys did not leave me any … but there were a lot of bean curd stick left though. Thanks a lot!

Since I did not get to taste the fish, I don’t really know how it was. But then judging by the bean curd sticks that everyone left for me, it must have been good.

Next came the something I have not come across in Chinese cuisine — it’s something made out of pumpkins. It’s called the Spare ribs with Japanese Pumpkin. Seems like it’s some stir fry ribs with mushrooms and served on top of some steamed (I think) pumpkin.

It’s just me … I just don’t like pumpkins. The pumpkin tasted like sweet potatoes if you ask me. The spare ribs? Well, they went so fast that I only got two crummy pieces. :-) The spare ribs were great but the pumpkin, that I don’t like.

The Beef Tenderloin was not particularly exciting … so … ho-hum. I like the sauce but since this is a 9-course dinner, steamed rice is not served.

The Whole Deep Fried Crispy Chicken came next with a heap of prawn crackers. The moment this dish hit the table, all the kids swarmed the table and before we knew it, they prawn crackers were gone. Good thing, they knew that Uncle Ben wanted to take a picture first.

I like these type of chicken dish. To me it’s like two separate dish in one … the crispy chicken skin and the thick white chicken meat. I always eat this in that order … first, all the skin … and then the meat. And the wing tips are the best too.

The rice (or noodles) dish normally come towards the tail end of a multi-course dinner. We had the Fook Chow Braised Rice. It was flavorful but by now, I had enough for the night.

Just then the battery in my camera died and I left my spare battery at home. Fortunately there were lots of cameras for that night. We ended with cookies …

… Green Beans Dessert Soup.

I had such an enjoyable evening — perfect in every sense. I know it was a lot of work in planning and communicating on the part of WB. I also know sometimes people think it’s an oft thankless job but wanted to let WB know that we’re appreciative of all the work. He he he … I know it is stressful at time, trying to meet everyone’s expectations. Good job!

And … yesterday, I asked if anyone would be interested to make it to a dinner at Shanghai Wonderful. I have so far three responses and if I get at least 1 or 2 more responses, we’ll be able to make 1 table. So, any more takers?

Hey … right off the bat … I am saying this … this is one Chinese restaurant that simply MUST check out. We had been passing by the Shanghai Wonder Restaurant many times before. Each time, we see that the waiting lines spill out of the restaurant. It was not until Craig blogged about this that we see what the fuss was. He liked it so much that he actually blogged about it TWICE!

Knowing how busy this restaurant is, we decided to go extra early ahead of the dinner crowd — it was at about 5:30PM, I think. It was great because we had practically the whole place to ourselves, well, at least for 30 minutes. We got seated at the booth tables along the wall … which was great because those tables were on a raised platform. It give a better view of the entire restaurant … i.e. being able to have a clearer peek at the neighboring table’s dishes.

From the decor, this is definitely a more upscale restaurant. We like the cleanliness and brightness. And the service is great and the host patient which we appreciate. You see, Chinese restaurants need to be very patient with the Chinese-illiterate chowtimes! :-)

The first dish we ordered is the Cheery Pork with Brown Sauce on a bed of spinach. We find the name kind of odd. Cheery? Oh, I simply love this even though it is full of fats. The gravy/sauce too is simply marvelous. I think this is one of their signature dish. It came in a slab of pork neatly cut into cubes. This one costs $14.95

This is the cross section of the meat … it’s almost 1.5 inches thick with 1/3 of it fat. You will want the fat … that is what makes this great. You should try it.

The Green Bean with Chili Sauce is less exciting. We just wanted to have a vegetable dish and had no idea what else to order. The green beans is fresh and that means that it’s crunchy. This costs $8.88 … lucky number.

Oh, this one is unique … it’s called Crabmeat Tofu in Paper Pot. It’s served in the same type of portable stove that we had in S&W Pepper but with a twist … they serve the tofu on top of a paper lined top. Anyone know what’s the function of using paper? I guess perhaps it’s so that the tofu don’t get burnt … what do you think?

It was some of the best tofu we ever had. The only thing is that there are hardly any crabmeat in this … we can’t see or taste any. So, we thought that the waitress had perhaps given us the wrong order. So, we asked them and were told that there are very little crabmeat in this. *shrugs*

This Crabmeat Tofu in Paper Pot costs $14.95

Rice is ordered separate at $1 per bowl. So, the bill came up to about $50 including tax and tips. We will definitely come back again.

In his My Dinner Table blog, Craig blogged about their $188 set menu — that is for a table of ten. You know what I would like to do? I actually fancy organizing a dinner for readers of this blog to this restaurant to try their $188 set menu. Any takers? I am serious … I am thinking of a Saturday 5:30PM kind of arrangement. Send me an email at chowtimes@gmail.com if you are interested. It’ll be fun to meet new friends.

It was one of those weekends that we had absolutely nothing to do.  Normally, we had something planned for the weekend but for that one week we did not have anything planned at all.  Since we had all the time in the world, we decided to drive a bit further from Richmond.  So, we drove all the way to Vancouver … to Kingsway and Rupert.

The Chili Pepper House is an Indian-Chinese restaurant.  I think the owner’s background is that they are Chinese who once lived in Indian.  Since this is an Indian restaurant, we knew that their food would be spicy.

We immediately liked this place because the owners were so friendly and spent a lot of time chatting with us, even offering to tell us more about their restaurant.  I believe it is because they saw my camera!  Some restaurants (some, not many) had a disdain for cameras but not this one.

The Chili Pepper House is actually more Chinese than it is Indian.  They call it "Fine  Indian (Desi) Style Chinese Cuisine".  Their top dishes are all spicy.  One thing though, they do not serve pork at all.  I am curious why they don’t serve pork.  I had always thought that you don’t get beef in Indian restaurants and no pork in Muslim or Jewish restaurants.

Anyway, we did notice that they have more East Indian customers.

Scouring their menu, we came across a dish that sounded really nice … Five Treasure with Chicken, Beef, Prawns, Scallops and Squid.  What came was not exactly what we had in mind.  It’s like sauce stir fried with the ingredients.  It’s not that it’s not good … it was but the dish was underwhelming.  It costs $14.95.

The Beef with Black Sauce does seem exactly the same as the Five Treasure! It seems like it’s almost the same type of sauce and stir fried with beef instead.  I must say that the sauce is simply marvelous and goes very well with steamed rice.  This one costs $8.50.

He he he … the Fried Tofu with Mushroom is quite similar with the earlier dishes.  It seems like the same type of sauce but with mushrooms over deep fried tofu.  The tofu is crispy and again, the sauce is great with steamed rice.  $8.75 … not bad.

The total check came up to $43 including tips and taxes.  Despite having four people, we could not finish it and had it packed to go.  One thing we noticed that we don’t see much in other restaurants … pick-up is 15% off the menu price.  That’s why we see quite a few people taking out.

If you like spicy food, you should check this out here:

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Suanne and I are beginning to brave the “chow-choy” type of Chinese restaurant. Some of you might already know that both of us are almost illiterate when it comes to the Chinese language. Well, I said “almost” because at least I know how to read and write 13 Chinese characters in all — the numbers 1 to 10 and my name!

The thing about these “chow choy” restaurants is that they are so Chinese that at times they don’t even have an English menu. And even if they have it, the translation is so bad that it’s of no use at all. Moreover, it is sometimes useless to ask for recommendations because they would speak so fast that we can hardly make out what they are saying.

For us, “chow choy” refers to the type of restaurants that serves dishes in a communal style … i.e. we order vegetable, meat or soup dishes for sharing.

So, a few weeks ago we went to this new restaurant called the S&W Pepper House. That name was familiar to us as there is a small outlet with the same name in Crystal Mall in Burnaby. We had blogged about it more than 1.5 years ago (see here).

Unlike the S&W Pepper House in Burnaby, this is a full service typical family Chinese restaurant. I would say that this is more China Chinese and the customers are typically mandarin speakers.

In such a restaurant, they have more exotic dishes. For the Chinese, the most common meat is pork and chicken. Some don’t even serve beef for religious purposes. Lamb is certainly not a common meat used in Chinese cooking.

This is because most Chinese finds the meat very “sow”. I don’t know the English word that best describes “sow” but I think it has to do with the strong smell and taste which is something like it’s two days from being rotten — know what I mean?

Anyway, we got Lamb for the first dish. It’s simply called the Lamb with Green Onion. The lamb meat is sliced ever so thinly and the meat was tender. I like it … Suanne still thinks it’s “sow”. This dish costs $12.95.

For the next dish, well, we ordered what our neighboring table ordered. It looked interesting because it is served with a portable burner.

It is called Hot Pot with Sliced Fish, Pickled Vegetables and Vermicelli. It certainly looked very delicious from where we sat. There were a lot of meat in quite a large mini-wok. The problem with such a portable burner is that you got to always keep an eye on them … you don’t want it to over boil the soup, neither do you want the flame to go out. Too much work for me!

The good thing about this dish is that the fish is very tender, and that’s about it. We find that the sauce is way too salty. It was also spicy — and so spicy that Arkensen did not touch it. $14.95 is what this costs.

We also ordered the House Special Tofu with Pork and Bean Sauce. We like tofu. This one is crusty on the outside but do think that it’s too oily. They should have drained the oil after deep frying the tofu. This one costs only $8.95.

Rice comes separate at $1 a bowl. The total bill was $47 inclusive of tax and tips. Well, judging from the large number of customers they have, I am sure the food is pretty good. But I guess it’s just not the type of food that we enjoy most.

It was a good meal and the portions were big. We had some leftovers and had them packed to go. If you want to go, this restaurant is located just across the street from the Richmond City Hall on No 3 Road.

Back in early July this year, we blogged about a place called Golden Award Cafe Restaurant.  Just a week after we blogged about the place, guess what … the place closed down!  We did a good review of that place and I guess it was good enough to have led a reader of chowtimes to check it out.  "Fresh_one" was the one who alerted us to this.

A couple of months or so ago, we passed by this place again and there’s a new restaurant in it’s place now.  It was Golden Award and now it became Silver Tower!

The interior is much cleaner than the last time we were here.  However, it is also much darker.  The lightings are dimmer and all the furnishings are in black.  The high partitions too gives everyone better privacy.  Not sure if I like that or not.

We decided to order from the "Chinese Dishes" menu.  As you can see, the dishes are generally $7.95 which to me is really good prices.  Each dish came with a choice of soup and steamed rice.

The soup is rather decent if you ask me.  At least there are some chunks of meat in it, not just bones.

We decided to order 3 dishes.  Up until early this year, we could order 2 types of dishes and that would have been enough for the four of us.  Of late, Nanzaro and especially Arkensen had developed much bigger appetite … they’re at that growing age.  I remember I ate like a pig when I was their age that my mum was worried for me. 

Well, we have always try to eat within our weekly dine out budget but just a few months ago, we have to bump up our budget by $10 a meal.  At this rate they are going, we’ll have to pay for four full meals each time we dine out.  Sigh … we used to get by with only $18 for the four of us!!

The first dish we chose was the Szechuan Spicy Green Beans.  This is awesome.  We love the crunchiness of the fresh green beans. 

We also order the Salted Fish and Chicken with Tofu Hotpot.  They did not put in much salted fish at all and so it was a bit too bland for my taste.

We also ordered the Hainanese Chicken with Ginger.  This one is quite expensive … about $13.  It was not bad but for some reason we were a bit disappointed that they had some sauce all over the chicken which sort of overpowered the taste of the chicken.

Each dish came with steamed rice and we had to order several more.  This is because the rice they gave were disproportionately smaller than the big dish portions they served.  I thought they charge for extra rice.

Checking the bill now, it appears that rice is free.  We liked this place and had been here three times since they opened.  I recommend that you check them out. 

This is where they are located:

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I organized a going away lunch for two people who worked on my project team.  It’s sad to see people leave but at the same time you know that projects being what they are, people don’t get to work permanently together for very long.

Since there were quite a bit of people going, I thought that we should try some Asian style lunch where we order dishes to share.  For these types of meals, the more people you have the more you could varieties you could order.

So we went to the Green Lettuce which is basically sort of a Chinese-Indian fusion restaurant … although I think the word "fusion" is not exactly what it really describes.  It more of a Chinese restaurant with East Indian cooking and ingredients.  It’s like 2/3 Chinese and 1/3 Indian.  Be prepared … this restaurant specializes in spicy food.

I did not even make a reservation even though we have 17 people in all.  I was pretty confident that if we were there early (11:45AM), they can accommodate us.  We were lucky actually because there was another big party who booked for lunch that day.  Close call!  They managed to accommodate us by seating us together since we were earlier than the other group who had their group scattered across several tables.

We left the ordering to the other side of the long table and so I had no idea what or how much were being ordered.  So, I am pretty much making guess work on what it is we had.  Well, the ones below is wonton soup.  It was really good ones … big and meaty.  The broth was great too.

There is also the sour and spicy soup.  I noticed that the Caucasians stayed away from this but simply love wontons.  The Asians like this.

Some noodles dishes.  Since we had so many people, we had the chance to order two of each … one spicy and the other non-spicy.

So, how do we know which version is spicy?  Well, they have a chili sticking out from the middle.  I find that kind of unique and creative of the restaurant.

I have no idea what this is but as you can see the sauce is simple great with rice.

Another dish, I had no idea what it is.  I don’t even care to ask what it is … everything looked so good.

Looking the the pictures now, it appears that everything looked almost the same … dark brown sauce on some meat with peppers.

Yummy …

This is my favourite … prawns and really spicy too.  It’s a bit moist which is great when you smear it on rice.

Everyone enjoyed the meal.  A true testament of a truly enjoyable meal is when people are sweating profusely from all the spicy food!  It was so good, I heard that some of the guys actually went back to this same place for lunch despite it being a 10 minute drive from the office.  I guess it is that good … you should go.

Just one last word … for Moe and Chix.  It’s been great working with you both and everyone is truly impressed with your work.  Well, you know you’ve done well when you see some of the panics people had when they hear of you both moving on.  I know you’ll do well wherever you go to next.  Like I always said … "As long as you have a good head on your shoulders and a good heart, you’ll be successful in wherever you end up".  It’s a small world … who knows there’s another project we would be working together again.

And for those of you who wants to known the direction to this place, their website is here.  They are on the intersection of Victoria and Kingsway in Vancouver … see Google Map below:

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I sort of gate crashed into a team dinner when I was in Atlanta. I had no qualms doing that since I had never been to PF Chang before … and more importantly, someone else is picking up the tabs for this dinner.

PF Chang’s China Bistro is another American chain restaurant. The one we went to was just walking distance from our office. It’s in the newly renovated Cumberland Mall. Despite it’s name it’s more aptly described as an American Chinese bistro … i.e. it tried to look Chinese but it’s really catered for the American tastes. He he he … you know what the initials P.F. stands for? It’s named after the founder of the chain … Paul Fleming! Enough said! :-)

Although this PF Chang is called a China Bistro, it’s more like a more upscale restaurant. The service was prompt and pretty good. I actually have a bit of a culture shock here … seeing how pretentious this place is trying to be chinese. Starting the many lanterns on the ceiling and the candles in the table. Why … if I am not mistaken, you never have a candle on the chinese table because you only light candles in a funeral for the dead! :-)

Started with a drink and chose something unique from the drinks menu. It’s called the Asian Persuasion which is basically vodka shaken with fresh brewed organic green tea. Yucks! It was an awful combination — at least to me anyway.

Well, I was seated at the far side of where the ordering action was and did not managed to get a say on what to order. I thought I better keep quiet since I am a gate crasher this time. But … those guys, all southerners (no Asians) were having problems ordering because I think they eat Chinese only perhaps once every decade or so.

They gave up and guess what they ordered … they asked the waitress to bring us $25 worth of chinese food each person and left the choice to her!! For me, it was very funny and tried my best not to notice and concentrated on my small chatter at the end of the table and sip my vodka … errr … green tea.

What happened next was kind of strange to me. They came by and gave everyone a crash course on mixing sauces. Being a chinese my whole life, I have never seen this before. They taught every how to mix the chilli oil, soya sauce and vinegar. Basically they said that it you want it hot, you add the chilli oil and if that is too hot, then you add the vinegar to tone it down. You do it to and fro until you get the perfect balance. Well, let just say that I learn something new today … whether if it of use to me is another matter.

Since I had no part in the ordering, I had no idea what was ordered. For that matter, no one ordered actually from our table. So, am gonna guess and you tell me if they are correct, alright?

The one below is Chicken and Brocolli. It was quite nice. The meat is too lean though but I can understand why. The gravy is nice but we did not order steamed rice. What a waste of good gravy.

I believe the dish below is salt and pepper calamari. It came with a dipping sauce and considered as a appetizer in this place — maybe because it looked like a finger food. Normally this is considered as a main Chinese dish.

The most interesting dish is perhaps this one. Not sure now what it is but it came with lettuce which you used to make a wrap.

This should be salt and pepper shrimp. This is really good.

The Mongolian Beef is cooked with scallions and garlic.