Ebisu Japanese Restaurant on No 3 Rd and Ackroyd Rd, Richmond

Polly and I went to the Ebisu Japanese Restaurant for lunch during the Olympic weeks as we do not want to go to Vancouver with all the restricted parking. It’s kind of hard to find new dessert places too. Recommendations are most welcome. The only requirement is that it must open for breakfast or lunch at least.

The Ebisu Japanese Restaurant in Richmond is located in the Ackroyd Mall. There are two other Ebisu in Vancouver, Ebisu on Robson and another at West Broadway.

What brought me to Ebisu in Richmond is the above advertisement. I wanted to try their Izakaya items. But, unfortunately, the above are only available at dinner time. What a bummer.

Luckily, they have the lunch special going during our visits. It’s $2.88 per item, minimum order of 3 per person. Polly and I opted for the lunch special since they are light tapas.

Ebisu has clean lines and spacious setting. We were there at 11:30 am when they just open for lunch and I managed to take a photo without the crowd. It was quite full during lunch time. Most of them look like office workers. Service is prompt but not rush.

We ordered the miso soup for 50cents extra. The miso soup has generous amount of tofu and green onions. Just right for the rainy winter day when we were there.

We started off with Sesame Seaweed for appetizer. Love the crunchiness of the seaweed and the mild sesame flavour.

Next, we had the Chikuwa Cheese which is fish cake filled with cheese and deep fried. The melting cheese adds richness to the lightly crunchy fish cake. You have to eat this immediately when served.

The Prawn and Vegetable Tempura came with … More on following page. Click here to continue reading.

Pho Lan on No 3 Road and Granville, Richmond

Pho Lan is one of those rare places that we had been to many times before but had never written about it before. Weird as it may seem, I had always thought that I had written about Pho Lan and did not quite believe Suanne when she said I had not. So last week I checked Pho Lan on this site … and guess what, she’s right.

Pho Lan is located just across the street from the Richmond City Hall on No 3 Road. This is the restaurant known to have hosted the weekly Dot Com Pho sometime ago. I don’t know what happened but for sometime already, they have not had the weekly event in Pho Lan anymore.

It must have been good publicity for Pho Lan when the Dot Com Pho were held there. All bloggers would have known John Chow of johnchow.com (totally no relation to chowtimes.com obviously). If I am correct, his site must have the website with the biggest readership running out of Vancouver … and he makes tons of money blogging. He claims he makes $40-$50K a month but am not sure if it’s a big exaggeration but nevertheless I am sure he make serious money.

Sigh … if only I could make 10% of what he said he does.

Pho Lan is always busy at anytime of the day. Service is very fast and friendly. We had never had problems getting what we needed. They are almost always in a rush and hands with something whether they are going to the kitchen or coming out of it. I had this thing about observing how the waitresses work that tells me how efficiently run they are.

The insides of Pho Lan is really nothing fancy. As a matter of fact, I don’t think they even care about decor at all. At least it is tidy and organized.

The man who took our orders obviously knows how to handle food bloggers. It must have been from the days of the Dot Com Pho. As he was taking our orders, he observed that Suanne was writing our order onto the notebook. He excused himself mid-way and reappeared with a take-out menu. He told Suanne that the takeout menu is the same and that she can use the menu. Smart chap. All restaurants should learn from this guy to be blogger-friendly and not be suspicious of bloggers taking notes or pictures of the menu!

The menu in Pho Lan is nothing fancy. It is just like all pho places with the Beef Noodle Soup taking center-stage.

While most Pho places offer pho in two size, Pho Lan is one of the rare places which has pho in three sizes. The options are $5.50, $6.50 and $7.50.

The good thing about Pho Lan is that you can also order a good day as a side. And it’s cheap too $1.50 plus tax.

Arkensen is the one who will always order the “#1″ in Pho restaurants. We don’t even have to ask him and we already know. He is the least adventurous when it comes to food. So, we don’t count on him taking over chowtimes.com some day. LOL!

He got the large one ($7.50) which was really really large. It was so large that Arkensen said he felt like throwing up after the meal. He and Nanzaro are both like a gold fish when it comes to food they like. You know gold fish right? They will eat as much as you feed them until their belly turns over. They just don’t know when enough is enough. Like goldfish, my boys will eat and eat and eat until they get sick.

The pho is great and has a nice cloudy soup. Don’t you find that pinkish rare beef slices awesome? All pho places should learn to serve it this way.

Oh. Mine is good. Between Suanne and I, I am better at picking food. Ask her if you don’t believe me. She had long conceded that I pick great dishes and she often picks dishes that she ended up regretting … and then eye’ing mine.

The $7.50 Fried Tender Beef on Rice Vermicelli is a dry noodle dish. This one is very very … More on following page. Click here to continue reading.

Goto King Near the Joyce Skytrain station, Vancouver

Full Disclosure
This blog post is written based upon a free meal provided by a chowtimes reader who has a connection to the owner of the restaurant. More details below.

Last Saturday we had eight chowtimes readers joining us for a lunch and learn. While Suanne and I were the one organizing this, it was Rey who picked up the tab for this.

Rey is an advocate for Filipino community and in the course of his community work, he has amassed some goodwill barter from the businesses of the Filipino community. One of this is with the Goto King restaurant on Joyce. Since he has a lot more credit accumulated than he could ever eat, he offered to donate some to eight chowtimes reader — which we accepted. After all, we could not resist this as long as it benefits our readers.

Frankly, we mulled over this unusual arrangements for some time because well, it was unusual. Having known Rey for sometime, I know his intentions and how he goes around helping people without asking anything in return. By sharing this with chowtimes readers, he is also able to further promote Filipino culture and food.

Then I thought about how our readers will perceive this because I know some of you would be suspicious about free stuff for chowtimes. This is not about a free lunch just for Suanne and I but it is more for our readers who are willing to come together to meet like minded foodies and learn too. I was also thinking that this would be a great opportunity to have multiple reviews done not just by me but also reviews directly from foodies, not food writers or bloggers. Just see how my thoughts compares with the rest.

Oh … I wish I did not have to go into this long lengthy preamble and having to explain this to everyone. But this is necessary since it involves free stuff — and it’s also an unusual arrangement. LOL!

Goto King is located very near the Joyce Skytrain station. Goto King is actually opened by the Cucina Manila restaurant next door. Cucina Manila is a Filipino-Filipino restaurant while Goto King serves Chinese-Filipino fare. Rey briefly introduced Liberty, the owner of Cucina Manila, to us and later told us that Cucina Manila is on an expansion spree. There are plans to open a Filipino restaurant in Richmond and a lechon (similar to Chinese roast pork) restaurant a few doors away.

Goto King is actually the name of a popular food outlet (over 70 outlets) in the Philippines. However, the Goto King in Vancouver has no affiliation to the Philippines. He he he … that reminds me of the Ba Le Vietnamese sandwich name which you find all over North America. Anyway, Goto is not pronounced as “go to” but goh-toh. Go To in Tagalog means congee.

The Goto King restaurant is not very big. With 11 of us in total, we practically took up 1/3 of the restaurant. It was a busy day at the restaurant too as expected it being on a Saturday noon time. There wasn’t a line at the restaurant because they turn the table pretty fast.

Goto King is not a gourmet restaurant. They serve day-to-day Filipino food. I would call this no-frills comfort food with reasonable prices.

It was a good thing we had Rey who explained every single item on the menu (and also gave us a primer on the Filipino community and culture). Without him doing this, we would not have known most of the items on the menu.

When I said no-frills, I mean no-frills. It is almost like Hawkers Delight — just cleaner, and slightly pricier. By that I mean that you get your own drinks from the cooler and they don’t come around clearing each plate as you finish it until you ask.

In Goto King you don’t get that “how is it going guys? The weather is beautiful today isn’t it?” kind of service, if you know what I mean. Here, they will stand by the table with pen on the order chit waiting for you to say what you want. Just an observation because we like exchanging pleasantries … LOL!

Someone ordered the Shanghai Lumpia (deep fried spring rolls – 12 pcs) $5.95. They have several types on the menu (fresh lumpia too). The spring rolls are smaller than those you normally find else where and is served with garlic soy sauce and sweet chili sauce.

I so wanted to order something else but seeing that everyone already staked their claim on the more delicious dishes, I went with Goto (congee). Only Jane and I had the congee. Jane has the real thing … the real Goto … the real one with tripe ($6). This is what Jane had to say:

Jane: I think it was more flavorful than the usual congee. The tripe was tender and good too, but some of the pieces were so soft and tasted like belly/fat. Maybe those were fat indeed? I’m not sure.

I had the other version. It is called Arroz Caldo and has chicken primarily. Also $6, I find this congee filling and packed quite a bit of flavour as compared to the more bland Chinese version. I like that they have lots of ginger and chicken in it.

The condiments on the table are fried garlic chips, fish sauce and soy sauce. We all like the fried garlic chips which many of us added to the rice and congee. The fish sauce is rather salty quite unlike those we had in Vietnamese restaurants.

So I added lots of the fried garlic chips. Nice … real comfort food.

A lot of us got the Sisig Pork  $7. It came served in a sizzling hot plate. This was what I was eye’ing for but what can I do right? LOL!

It was topped with a raw egg. Not really knowing what to do, those of them who got this stared and waited for the egg to cook.

It didn’t cook.

The lady boss came around and asked everyone to stir the egg into the sisig — which everyone did immediately as the hot plate was cooling already.

This is how the Sisig Pork looked like post-stirring and pre-eating.

And this is how Rodney (who knows Filipino food very well) and Marcia (who is new to Filipino food) has to say about the Sisig Pork:

Rodney: The Sisig dish is presented exactly the same on a sizzling platter. The outer skin is usually crunchier as Filipinos are generally fond of it being crunchy and more burned as this can also be eaten as a snack / appetizer (called “pulutan”) which is munched alongside the local beer.

Marcia: I had the crispy pork dish.  Tasty but not quite crispy enough and had some gristle.

Gristle? What does the work gristle mean, Marcia?

Most of the rest including Suanne had the Chicken Inasal ($7).  It is marinated fried chicken served with garlic rice and pickled vegetable on the side.

The skin-on chicken is crisp and nicely fried. It was also a big meaty piece of it too.

Here is Rodney’s take on the Chicken Inasal. BTW, Rodney is apparently a big time food reviewer on Yelp.ca

Rodney: The Chicken Inasal is our first time to eat this dish, but then with the description that Rey provided being marinated overnight, I felt that it tasted bland. I could have just easily mistaken it as a Crispy Fried Chicken dish.

I noticed that they serve a lot of rice with the food. That tall mound of rice adds up to quite a meal. I thought it was quite flavorful and with a dash of soy sauce and a bit more fried garlic chips, I could even eat this alone.

With the 11 of us, we ended up ordering only four different types of main dishes. That is because most of us went for either the Sisig Pork or the Chicken Inasai.

The dessert part was a bit more varied. The Sapin-sapin above is $2.00. It is a colourful glutinous rice cake and very sticky … More on following page. Click here to continue reading.

Royal Dinner and Dance on Garden City and Blundell, Richmond

Shhh … don’t tell anyone about this place.

I am just kidding. I just wanted to catch your attention and read on.

It had been a while since we had dim sum as a family. The beauty of having a blog is that you can easily figure exactly when the last time it was. Everything is so well documented. For us, the last time was in October last year. We are not much of a dim sum people.

Last weekend, we decided to just go to a restaurant closest to home. Suanne reminded me that there is a place that serves dim sum with an odd name … the Royal Dinner and Dance. This is located on the strip mall on Garden City and Blundell in Richmond.

The moment we walked through the door, we had a good feeling that this is going to be good. All these years, we did not even realize this place would be like this.

The restaurant is located upstairs. You walk up a very wide staircase which has pictures of dancers. I think this place doubles as a dance club too because there is a stage and half of the restaurant is on the dance floor.

The restaurant is bigger than we imagine from the outside. What caught us by surprised is how many customers they have despite its size. The place was filled with customers. This is the kind of place where entire/extended families come for dim sum.  A lot of the tables taken were parties of four and above.

The table already were prepared with the order form and a pencil. It took us a while, as usual, to make our selection. The prices are cheap too.

Service is hurried as one can expect from a place this this. They came by twice asking if we are ready with the order. They were cool when we said we needed more time. For people who are not used to this type of places, you would take it personally when they abruptly turn away and go to the next table. We don’t consider this rude but understand that some people not used to this will feel slighted.

We were glad to see the varieties they have on the menu. So, we try to pick one or two items from each section … and in the process over-rule some of Arkensen and Nanzaro’s choices. If we leave the choices to them, they will pick TWO orders each of siu mai, har gow and sticky rice. So unexciting. LOL!

I was surprised when both Arkensen and Nanzaro said that they wanted the Rice Rolls with Chinese Donut ($3.75). We never thought they will want such traditional and to us, bland dish.

The Chinese donut here was not crispy but a tad soft. A sign that it is not made fresh. The flavour comes mainly from the soya sauce. They also gave us hoisin sauce and sesame sauce too which we thought it was kind of weird. I actually asked our waitress if it is meant to go with the rice roll and she said “yes”. *shrug*

It was quite nice too dipping the rice roll on the two sauces.

The Pan fried stuffed eggplant with shrimp is kind of skinny. Other than that it is cooked just nice. It is not overcooked that it is all mushy and loses the whiteness inside and yet also not undercooked that it’s raw and fibrous. The flesh inside was still white. We thought they did this perfectly and like the sauciness of the dish too. The sauce was great with the rice roll. Only $2.50.

Well, Arkensen also ask for this … the Steamed Crystal Prawn Dumpling (also $2.50). The size is respectable and the texture was firmly springy.Very good.

We were looking for that tell tale sign of freezer burn and all to see if they are just simply steamed direct from big batches of pre-made ones. They looked good enough for us.

They also have several congee options. We got the Lai Wan Boat Congee ($3.95) because we do not know what it is. We still do not know why this is called Lai Wan or what the words Lai Wan means.

The congee bowl is quite big for a $4 portion and has in it squid, prawn, pork rind, peanut, and Chinese donut. The congee itself does not carry a lot of flavour but a dash of soy sauce and ground pepper does the trick.

Next up is called the Fried Sticky Rice with Preserved Meat ($3.95). It came in a glass bowl and is supposed take a form of the bowl when they cup it upside down on the plate. Well … it fell apart and the waitress had to scrap the rice into the plate, losing the form.

You see it was not sticky enough for that. And I was thinking that this is FRIED sticky rice and so it is not supposed to be that sticky.

Anyway, the sticky rice has lots of … More on following page. Click here to continue reading.

New Lao Shan Dong Restaurant — The One Restaurant on Kingsway Near Intersection with Imperial, Burnaby

This should get you all excited.

This post is not about just any restaurant.

This restaurant is the newly opened restaurant by the same people behind Lao Shan Dong.

A few weeks ago, I saw on Natalie’s Facebook of pictures of the food she had at a restaurant called The One. The pictures of the food was unique but I did not think more about it and thinking its just another nice Taiwanese restaurant. No plans at all in visiting.

Last week on the way home, I was walking past Lao Shan Dong when I saw a notice pasted at the door (above). Apparently, The One Restaurant is owned by Lao Shan Dong. I would not have visited if not for that sign. We knew that if The One has food half as good as Lao Shan Dong, this is going to be one successful restaurant in no time.

So Suanne and I immediately changed our Friday date plans to check out The One.

The One is located on Kingsway near the intersection with Imperial. It is just across the street of Pho Hong which we blogged about recently. There are ample parking spaces in the small strip mall it was on. But I do think that given the size of The One restaurant, it will be a challenge if they do have full house.

True to the theme outside, the interior is also adorned with tables and chairs in the clashing colors of black and red. The seats are plush but I do find some of them a bit small even for someone my size.

The interior is modern and spacious. It is also bright because of the ceiling to wall glass frontage on two sides of the restaurant. This is a refreshing difference from Lao Shan Dong which is always packed and cramped with nary a decor inside.

Nicole said that The One is upscale and indeed for a Taiwanese restaurant the likes of No 1, Beefy Beef, Corner 23 and others, this is definitely more upscale than them.

The One is opened for lunch and opened till late (to 2AM during weekends and 1AM on other nights).

The One is a Taiwanese Cuisine restaurant. So you get the same type of food you normally find in Taiwanese restaurants.

The menu is more extensive than the 3 pager above. I did not take more pictures because … well … I was afraid. I was afraid that they think we are spies from the competitors. So I only managed to take pictures of 3 pages. What I can tell you is that the menu is broken into sections of the following:

• Appetizer: marinated ear, tofu and stuff
• Noodles: what else … the same TBN from Lao Shan Dong!!!
• Dumplings
• Soup: what else too … the same TBN soup, sans noodles, from Lao Shan Dong!!!
• Meal Combo
• Hot Pot
• Fried Rice

On every page of the menu are the words “No MSG” … and that is good.

We did not get the TBN (short for Taiwanese Beef Noodles for the uninitiated) because we wanted to try their other stuff. But we did notice that they offer both the Beef Noodle Soup for $7.50 and also just the beef soup (no noodles) for the same price. I asked our waitress if the beef soup is more if don’t want the noodles. She sheepishly said you don’t get much more beef. She was honest.

Like all TBN places, they also have lot of drinks options … milk tea, bubble tea, coffee, fresh juice, herbal tea and slush. There is also a section for dessert and of course things like thick toast.

This was what I was coming for … and what I saw on Nicole’s Facebook.

Not knowing what to choose, I randomly chose the one called The One Seafood Hot Pot with Rice. This is $13 — quite pricey but it also came with a drink and a small dessert.

I thought the hot pot was unique and definitely bigger than most.

This is more like it … a boiling pot. Most other places have that token light at the bottom that does a little more than keeping the soup hot.

It was disappointing to learn that the soup base is milk. It did not occur to us to ask when we placed our order. Both Suanne and I personally hate milk as soup. As a matter of fact, Chinese rarely uses milk in cooking … did you know that? So you find that diary products are not big in traditional Chinese cuisine.

Normally Suanne would be the one who will finish off the soup but she declined saying that the one in Pearl Castle is better. Although it was not my fav kind of soup, I thought it was quite good.

The Hot Pot has a lot of ingredients. That included prawns, mussels, fish cake, tofu, very bouncy fish balls (which bounced across the restaurant when I dropped it on the floor), other meat balls and octopus.

The fish ball has stuff in it. I remember having this in one of the stalls in the Richmond Public Market. We like this a lot. It was kind of small … smaller than the ones we had in the Richmond Public Market for sure.

Here is the drink that came with the Hot Pot. It is an … More on following page. Click here to continue reading.

1-on-1 Interview With The Most Powerful Chef in The World

The day before the Olympic started, the senior management team of McDonalds flew into Vancouver to host a global press event at the Games Main Press Center. McDonalds, as it is well known, has been a worldwide Olympic partner for over 40 years.

I was totally excited when McDonalds wrote to me a week before the Vancouver 2010 games asking if chowtimes would like to attend the global press event. I immediately said yes. I would not give up that golden chance to get into the highly secured Main Press Center and get close to the heartbeat of the games.

A few emails to and fro with several people within McDonalds follows after. They were asking about chowtimes and stuff like our traffic profile. After a while they asked … would you like to speak to Chef Dan Coudreaut? Chef Dan, you see, is the Director of Culinary Innovations. The man behind the food … and in many respect, considered as the most powerful chef on this planet.

Whoa! Play-acting as a journalist among hoards of journalists is one thing but being offered a 1-on-1 interview with The Man is yet another. As much as I did not know what to do, I knew I could not pass off this once in a lifetime chance. I replied “yes” first and then try to figure out something along the way.

Truth be told … when I mentioned on Twitter and chowtimes of the 1-on-1 interview, there was one particular reader who wrote an email (albeit politely) that she will no longer support chowtimes because of my acceptance for the interview. She symbolically asked me to remove her name from our email distribution. That sort of set me thinking how much emotions that some people shows at the sheer mention of McDonalds name.

What is it that evokes such responses? Is it that McDonalds pushes unhealthy food? Is it that McDonalds epitomizes the successful corporate world? Why does it seems more acceptable to eat dim sum (as a random example) than to have a Big Mac?

I am not going to push for an answer. You know and I know that everyone can argue until the cows come home and we will never be in any agreement. I went to the McDonalds event with an open mind and no prejudice with the intention to hear the low down from the #1 chef of the #1 restaurant in the world.

I have a feeling this post might invite reactions and I welcome all views.

It was a mad scramble getting the press credential. The media event was to be at 9AM and by 8PM the previous day, I had not received any instructions on what to do and where to go. I shot off an urgent email to McDonalds at night and that set a few wheels in motion. I think someone dropped the ball on chowtimes. I only got the go ahead at about 5AM — 4 hours before the event!

I was armed already with the questions I wanted to ask Chef Dan. Many of the questions were from chowtimes readers.

It was a wet day when I took the Skytrain to the Convention Center. I was given a couple of run arounds before I got to the right section to collect the press credential from. The volunteers were new on the job and had a hard time locating all the passes that were prepared upfront. It took 20 minutes to locate my pass — got me worried that they might not have my records and miss out on the event.

Almost everyone in the broadcasting world you can think of is there. They were wearing shirts with logo of Reuters, NBC, etc! The photographers who were seated near me were all carrying big cameras … not one camera but two. And they seem to know each other. There I was a small time blogger — sigh, no one really bothered to talk to me other than saying “how is it going?”.

I don’t dress like they do and certainly don’t carry the right type of equipment. Next time, I am going to print a T-shirt with the chowtimes.com logo so that I can feel more like part of the gang.

LOL!

While waiting for the event to start, we were served some food. It was early and serving full sized sandwiches was not quite right, one thing that I like was the Mini Mac. The bite sized Mini Mac tastes exactly like the Big Mac. It is amazing that they managed to make it so small — it was just like the size of a 25 cents coin.

I see that no one really touched the fries. It is because it it’s still too early for fries. But I took it because I wanted to sample their new sauces.

The new sauces were not to my taste. Maybe it is the name that they gave it — zesty mango, sichuan and thai. I was particularly interested in the Sichuan one. It was more peanuty than anything. It wasn’t spicy in anyway that can be associated with the word Sichuan. But I know … these sauces were not created for Asians but for the US market.

The press event was somewhat short. There were speeches from McDonalds management, the IOC and VANOC. The speeches were quickly followed by some fun and games.

The McDonalds Champion Kids program flew in children selected from Canada and all over the world with a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to experience the Vancouver 2010 games first-hand. These 6-14 year old also have a chance to serve as youth correspondence to share their experience with their hometown news outlets.

After the event, I was introduced to Chef Dan. He comes across to me as a down to earth kind of person. Very approachable.

As we settled down, I was shifty and nervous. I was nervous because of what I was about to say to kick off the 1-on-1. I just said three words … “Junk food. Why?” More on following page. Click here to continue reading.

Spinach Beef Soup

Besides the Creamy Seafood Udon, Lorna also made a Spinach Beef Soup in the Gilmore Park Church Community Kitchen. This is a simple and quick soup that can be served in 30 minutes.

Ingredients

• 1 bunch spinach, washed and drain
• 1 can chicken stock
• 1 can whole kernel corn
• 4 cups water
• 1 pound lean ground beef, marinate with salt, pepper, corn starch and 1 egg for 30 minutes

Source: Lorna

Prep time: 10 minutes;  Cook time: 20 minutes;   Serve 4

More on following page. Click here to continue reading.