Chow Times » Richmond

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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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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Churros from Empanada Hut in Lansdowne Mall, Richmond

Ben — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 14:32:52 +0000

We are still searching for the perfect Churros in Metro Vancouver ever since we tried that great Spanish snack during our vacation in Spain this past summer.

So when Jonnek twitter’d me saying that he found Churros in Richmond, Suanne and I was pretty excited. BTW, did you know that we are on Twitter too? If you are interested to also follow us on Twitter, it is on http://twitter.com/chowtimes.

Our boys wanted to get the newly released Modern Warfare 2 from Best Buy (MW2 is an amazing game). So, we all took a drive to the Lansdowne Mall to pick up the game from Best Buy and then pop over to the food court to check out the Churros.

Jonnek informed us that the Churros can be found at the Empanada Hut.

Empanada Hut is famous for their empanadas. Having just had lunch, we decided not to try them although they looked very mouth-watering. Foodosophy did a write-up once on these empanadas, so you might want to check it out here.

Our mission here was the Churros. Here 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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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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Pearl Castle in Richmond Centre

Ben — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 17:32:27 +0000

It was the weekend when we wanted to just go out and get a drink — bubble tea specifically. No food, we told ourselves, since we already had dinner that night. We were not hungry anyway.

We knew of just the place to go …

… the new Pearl Castle in the Richmond Centre. This restaurant is just across from the McDonalds in the western side of Richmond Center. Lots of parking, so no fear of that.

This is a branch of the successful Pearl Castle on Sexsmith (also in Richmond). It seems like Pearl Castle is on an expansion drive. They even have a small outlet at the food court in Parker Place. That food court outlet is kind of odd to me because I would have thought that location would somewhat affect their branding. It would have been much better if they open any food court outlet in the Aberdeen Centre.

They have a unique wall light thingy which changes colors (see the YouTube video above). With lightings like these, the crowd is young and is very much an Asian youngster hangout. So it was rather noisy and definitely very busy. We had to wait for a table but since this restaurant is also big, the wait was just 10 minutes.

Anyway, this outlet seems like it will be successful. The location is great and there are no real competition within walking distance.

Like the original Pearl Castle on Sexsmith, they have a separate menu just for drinks. The problem is they ran out of most of them. We ordered Iced Shaves and Grass Jelly Frappes but they came back a few minutes later saying that they are out of Frappes and Ice Shaves. Not good. Maybe it was because it was quite late in the night already.

The only things they had left was milk teas. So we ended up with …
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Cafe de Waraku in Richmond

Suanne — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 21:00:36 +0000

It was one of the nights that Ben was craving for dessert and there being not many choices, we went to Excellence Tofu and Snacks at Hazelbridge. I wish there are more dessert places in Richmond which serves hot dessert soups. After dessert, we peeped into this new cafe beside the Excellence Tofu to look at the menu displayed outside the glass panels. I did not pay much attention as my first glance is that this place serves Japanese style pasta. But it was Nanzaro who pointed out to me that Cafe de Waraku also serves cheesecakes.

So, I brought Polly to Cafe de Waraku for our cake meet. We were there just past 12:00 noon and the place is still pretty quiet.

We were told that the cafe has opened for about 5 months only. It has simple decorations with a few colourful art pieces on the wall. It is clean and neat.

We like their menu which has colourful pictures. It makes selection much easier. The menu highlights that their items has no msg added and low in sodium. Good for those health conscious people.

Since it’s already noon, we ordered one of their lunch special pasta to try. The pasta comes in three type of flavorings, i.e. Japanese stir fried in original flavour, in cream sauce and in tomato sauce. We picked one in original flavour with eel and egg. This costs $7.99. The noodle is simple and tasty. We totally enjoyed this pasta.

The lunch special comes with a free drink. So, I opted for a coffee, thinking that it will be just dripped coffee. To my surprise, the coffee is pretty good and it even has some crema on it.
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Shanghai JJ Restaurant on No 3 Road, Richmond

Ben — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 14:00:33 +0000

Do you reckon that location is the most important aspect when opening a new restaurant?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Shanghai Style Soup with Assorted Food costs $13. It has …
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