All Entries Tagged With: "Chinese"
Nancy Wonton House on Victoria Drive and 37th Ave, Vancouver
Come to think of it, we had never quite cared about Wonton Noodles.
We love noodles as you can see. We had been blogging about noodles a lot of late. It is because we gravitate towards anything with hot soup during the colder seasons. We had our fair share of Japanese Ramen, Taiwanese Beef Noodles, Malaysian Laksa, Vietnamese Pho but we don’t go out of our way for a bowl of Wonton Noodles.
The name Nancy Wonton House had popped up in two separate occasions the past two weeks. That triggered that thought why we rarely go eat wonton. Although wontons are very much Chinese, perhaps it is because I subconsciously associate wontons with faux Chinese fare.
Since Suanne and I was around the neighborhood of Victoria Drive and 37th Ave, we decided to go check it out. Frankly, we were not hungry at all but we went nevertheless … before this place recess to the back of our distant memory again.
Nancy Wonton House is an old school Cantonese restaurant from umpteen years ago — God knows how long. You don’t find many of these type of restaurants opening anymore. Cantonese restaurants sprouted in Vancouver prior to the days of 1997 before Hongkong was returned to China. The wave of of Cantonese speaking HK immigrants brought along with them a lot of Cantonese restaurants.
As the fears of a Communist China administered HK dissipated over the years, a lot of HK immigrants returned. In the past few years, Chinese immigrants are dominated by those from Mainland China. This new wave of immigrants brought along another genre of Chinese cuisine, mainly influenced by the cuisine from Shanghai and Beijing.
So Nancy Wonton does show its age. The decor is so much like it was when it first opened a decade or two ago. Some things never changes.
The dining area is large. Accentuated by the mirrors on one side of the restaurant, it even looked larger than it actually is. The table sizes are larger with booths along the side that can seat six and round tables that can easily fit ten. It is very much a neighborhood restaurant where extended family with kids and grand parents comes over for dinner.
We did not even spend much time scanning their menu. The menu is huge. The dishes are numbered and at a glance we can see that they have almost 300 different items on it. We already know what we wanted — wonton noodles.
The food in Nancy Wonton is known for its cheap prices. The noodles above is less than … More on following page. Click here to continue reading
Sha Lin Noodle House on Broadway and Cambie, Vancouver
It was another one of those days when we had to send the boys to their Olympic Ceremony practices. We had given up trying to get any info from them. Our fear is that we will NOT be able to watch it on TV on the day of because we could end up having to wait to pick them up after the Olympic closes. We’ll see.
Oh talking about the Olympic Ceremony, the response to the Olympic Opening Ceremony Dress Rehearsal give away had been overwhelming. So far we have over 230 responses after 2 days. Just a reminder that we will cut off all entries at 12:01AM this Thursday.
This time we went to Sha Lin Noodle House for a late lunch after the boys practices. Sha Lin is on Broadway near the intersection with Cambie. If you want to come here the next few weeks, you should know that Broadway is designated as an Olympic lane — and that means no more street parking. The best way is to take the SkyTrain and get off at the Broadway/City Hall station.
Sha Lin Noodle House had always been a very popular eatery. The main draw is the good authentic Chinese food and the prices. They had been operating here for a long time already — at least 10 years old.
Many customers will stand and gawk at the poster at the entrance of their popular dishes before going in. We did. All of them looked delicious. Makes us want to get all of them.
Don’t expect much from Sha Lin. The place is rather spartan and does shows its age. The place was full even when we were there after lunch hours at 2PM.
Service here is bad — really bad. Most of the waiters and waitresses have really bad attitude and walk/talk so listlessly. Youngsters! It is like they hate their job, their life or something. If not for the great service of that lone tall slim waiter who tried his best to placate us, we would have left.
This is the kind of place that had success gone to their heads. They have so many customers that they can’t handle, they seem to think that they don’t mind losing customers. This is sad because their food is pretty good. I hate to say this but we like the food for the most part.
For starters we ordered the Sliced Rolls (fried). This is just $2.95. I recommend you order this.
The fried rolls is served with condensed milk as a dip. So it is a very sweet dish. The deep fried bread dough was just perfect — crispy outside, soft inside.
We know that our boys will like it but they will always instinctively reject anything we order for them. Especially Nanzaro, who will put up an act when we asked him to try other food. He will put both his hands over his mouth and make it look like he is going to throw up. He is very convincing in doing this but not to us. He had been doing this ever since he is a toddler and is now a habit.
We normally let them be but this time we were extra assertive that they must try a piece. Guess what? They loved it.
Arkensen said it tasted like donuts. I never thought of it that way before but he is right. And Nanzaro? He flashed me a thumbs up and said “You rock, Dad”.
See? Dad knows best when it comes to food. Nanzaro knows that but he just doesn’t want to give his dad the credit he deserved.
We also ordered 2 sticks of Kabob to share. They were cumin flavoured and were very spicy — we asked for the hottest they can make it.
The meat was a bit dry and tough but it was OK. It took a bit of chewing to down them but it was the whole point because you really can taste the full flavour of the kabob.
Sha Lin is well know for their hand made noodles. They classify them as dragging, cutting, rolling and pushing noodles.
Arkensen ordered the most common type, the dragging noodles. The one he had came with beef and bean sprout in soup which is $7.
Served on the side is a plate of … More on following page. Click here to continue reading
Peaceful Restaurant on West Broadway at Cambie, Vancouver
In Vancouver, there are Chinese restaurants and there are Chinese restaurants.
There are Chinese restaurants where you will only see Chinese customers. The sight of aย Caucasianย customer is rare. The real menu of these restaurants are in Chinese. They will have a token English menu which is a small subset of their real menu. Their waitresses can hardly speak English but they can really speak Mandarin in very heavy accent. They serve traditional and authentic Chinese food.
Then there are the other Chinese Restaurant which are more user-friendly to the western customers. You see quite a number of Caucasian customers. They have items like sweet and sour pork and chow mein on their menu. They give out fortune cookies with the check. The Chinese foodie crowd does not pay attention to these type of restaurants. They say these restaurants is not real Chinese restaurants.
You know what I am saying?
But there is one restaurant that has managed to serve authentic Chinese food and yet draw customers who are non-Chinese.
We went to the Peaceful Restaurant before we drop the boys off for one of their many top secret rehearsals. So we went to a restaurant nearby.ย Peaceful Restaurant is located on Broadway.
The Peaceful Restaurant is a small restaurant. It is long and narrow with a row of tables lining one side of the wall and a glass enclosed open kitchen on the other side. There is a couple of larger round tables for larger parties.
Round tables … hmmm. I am thinking hard here as I type. In all good Chinese restaurants, the dining tables are round and will seat 10 people a table. This is because Chinese food are meant to be shared and are served communal style. Also, round tables allows everyone to be able to talk to each other better.
I can’t think of any other cultures that predominantly uses round tables. Can you help me think of one that does?
Anyway, the Peaceful Restaurant is a Northern Chinese restaurant. The speaks Mandarin with a heavy northern Chinese accent.
We ordered the Sichuan Dan Dan Noodles (hmmm … Sichuan is western, not northern China!) because we heard that they pull the noodles in house.
It came in a bowl nicely arranged with the ingredients and before I could lift my camera to take a picture of it, the waitress dug in a pair of scissors and went ahead to cut it up. She then mixes it up front of us.
Aw too bad. I wanted to see how long these noodles are. Seeing how these noodles are made I am not surprise if this entire bowl is made up a single strand of noodles, all hand made.
So, with my usual itchy mouth, I asked the waitress how long it is. She brushed me aside and said “very long” like she was quite annoyed with my question. Ah … very authentic Chinese restaurant service. LOL!
The main thing about Dan Dan Noodle is only the noodles and the sauce. Very simple dish but yet complex to make it perfect.
The peanut based creamy sauce is spicy and tangy and had a little minced meat and spinach. I tasted a bowl of that. It was good and had a lot of flavour. The noodles tasted great too. Personally I find that the sauce is too thick for my liking.
This is $7. Dan Dan Noodles are cheap to make and so $7 is a little bit on the high side.
Suanne was on a mission for one of our readers. Michelle was asking where she could find Shaobing. Suanne remembered reading about there is Shaobing in this restaurant and it was the primary reason why we chose to eat here. So Michelle, here you go.
The word “bing” on Shaobing refers to biscuits or cookie in Chinese. I am sort of making this up but I think it is rather accurate. I need readers to help me confirm if I am correct or wrong. You see … this is the closest to a cookie in Chinese. The Chinese do not use ovens for their cooking and as such you end up with biscuits pan fried like this. There is no oven baked cookies like the ones you know of in Chinese cuisine. Correct? Yes? No? Yes?
There are actually several variations of Shaobing but the main distinctly is there is a version that is sweet and another that is savory. The sweet ones are usually made round while the savory ones are made in oblong shape like the picture above.
The Peaceful Restaurant calls this the Sesame Flat Bread on their menu. This is $6.
Shaobing is a partially leavened bread and covered with sesame seed which is toasted (pan fried?) to a crunch. The sesame seed gave it the fragrance that you could “taste” even before you bite into it.
Since this is a Northern Chinese restaurant, we ordered the Xiao Long Bao. This is $6.50. We were surprised it came with 8 pieces, normally it is 6-7.
Don’t get this. No good.
See how wet the bottom is? And how flat the edges of the buns lies? Well, … More on following page. Click here to continue reading
East Fusion Food in International Village, Chinatown Vancouver
It is very hard not to get excited about this place.
Like everyone else, we get excited over food that is good. The excitement doubles when it is cheap too. Actually, the excitement triples when it is also unexpectedly and ridiculously cheap.
LotusRapper emailed us alerting us to this place called the East Fusion Food with a link toย Cheap Appetite where Tana had a bowl of wonton noodles for just $2.99. That was about 6 months ago. When we saw that, we immediately dropped our weekend lunch plans and head to this place.
East Fusion Food is located on the ground floor of the International Village or better known as Tinseltown for the cinemas it has. The shopping mall at the edge of Chinatown is rather dead and has low occupancy. It took us a while to locate East Fusion Food because we thought it would be on the second floor where the restaurants and food courts are.
Let not the East Fusion Foodย name fool you because I cannot see where the fusion is on their offerings. It is as Chinese as it gets.
The place is very busy but the turn around is quick. We were there last Saturday at 12:30PM which is right about the peak lunch time and we had to wait for about 5 minutes for a table.
The place is not very big. They are setup for small parties of 2-4 people normally. So you don’t expect big tables for an extended family dine out. With just about seatings for 40, 50 people max, this is very much a place for a quick meal.
It is very busy. The service is rushed — not rude but they have little patience. Not easy for many people I know, but look past that you are OK. The moment we sat down we already had the drinks and menu landing right in front of our face.
It is not a big menu.
In our usual slow pace, we read every single item on the menu. Within a minute, the waitress was already at our table asking if we are ready to order. We said we are still looking at the menu and before I even finished my sentence she was already turning away headed to the next table. To some this is rude but it was not a problem with us. I wanted to let you know so that you don’t go to this place on the account of this posting and felt slighted by this sort of things. LOL!
Our waitress was like a super women or something. She did not even write down what we wanted and remembered everything we said. We ordered six items in total and some of them were in noodle type/soup type/meat type combination. We were so afraid she will mess up our order but she repeated it back to us 100% correct. Amazing.
The one thing we wanted to check out was the $2.99 wonton noodles.
Well, the wonton noodles is no longer $2.99. The price had since risen to $3.88. I thought it is still cheap even the price had risen 30% since Tana had it 6 months ago.
It came in a big bowl with five pieces of shrimp wontons. The shrimp wonton are quite big. While I had much better shrimp wontons, this is really good considering the price.
I initially thought that there are very little noodles in it. I could not see to the bottom because of the cloudy broth …
… but it has more noodles than we expected. We thought the thin wire’ly egg noodles were done very well.
I am quite certain a number of people will like the wonton noodles at East Fusion Food and then will get excited and tell the world that it is just $3.88 — like us.
We actually thought that the servings in East Fusion Food will be small considering their prices. So, I went ahead to order two additional side dishes which they call “Starters and Appetizers”. All their Appetizers costs $6. Check the menu above … there are 24 types. All $6. I like that simplicity.
The boiled Gai Lan (Chinese Brocolli) was excellent. The thick stem and the leafy part were cut and arranged in a nice manner. I simply like the way it is cut to short, uniform and manageable sizes that you could easily pick up with chopsticks. I was asking Suanne why we could not get the ones we prepare at home to this level of texture — she doesn’t know.
The Deep Fried Oyster is also $6. There are four large pieces. The size took us by surprise … More on following page. Click here to continue reading
Ho Yuen Restaurant on Hazelbridge Way and Capstan Way, Richmond
Let me share with you an invaluable a tip.
This is particularly for those of you who are not conversant in Cantonese.
I remember a discussion on chowtimes on why non-Chinese customers felt that they do not get equal treatment in Chinese restaurants, particularly HK Style Cafes. I think it is more because of the waitresses inability to communicate effectively in English as the root cause more than anything else.
Here is the tip. You just need to learn two simple phrases. The two phrases are “Lang Jai” and “Lang Looi”. If you need anything, just say “Lang Jai” and pause for a second before you ask. This is only valid if the waiter is a he. To a waitress, just say “Lang Looi”.
It works all the time. Trust me. It even works in any settings — you can even use it on your Cantoneseย colleaguesย and they will do anything you ask of them.
Try it the next time you go to a HK Style Cafe and I am very sure you will be very pleased with the response. Just remember you learn this on chowtimes.com.
Let me repeat … “Lang Jai” for the he-server and “Lang Looi” for the she-server.
Last weekend Suanne suggested we go check out that restaurant in the Union Square on Capstan Way. She can’t remember the name of the restaurant but just that one that has the big portraits of the owners on the window.
I don’t know if there is a story behind the portraits or if they are famous or something. We can’t help but feel that doing this will just open themselves to ridicule. But then on the flip side, this makes the restaurant easy to remember. When Suanne said the restaurant with the husband and wife portrait, I immediately know which one she is saying.
The restaurant is called Ho Yuen. I think they had just changed ownership or something. The name remained the same.
The restaurant is large and takes up two shop lots. There is a sign that this place can take a maximum of 96 customers.
The interior is very typical HK Style Cafe with no frills decor. To lend to that Hongkong’ish feel, they have black and white photos of the famous urban areas in HK.
It appears Ho Yuen is popular. It was already half full of customers even though we were there before peak dinner time.
Service was very fast. They set us up with drinks and menu instantly. We did not have to use the “Lang Jai” / “Lang Looi” technique.
Like in all HK Style Cafes, they have a large selection which came in several menus — with a variety of combinations. Everyone in our family like this because there is always something that each of us will like.
Like in all HK Style Cafe, there is the Iced Milk Tea which normally comes along free with the combo. Ho Yuen uses exactly the same type of mug that Kingspark uses (we hate Kingspark because they not only have bad service, it is also rude!).
You know, I find that more and more HKSC is charging these beverages. It used to be free but they now charge $1 if you want it with ice. That part I don’t understand because it is not like you get more tea/coffee if you just add ice cubes in it.
I ordered from their Make Your Own Favourite Combo. With this you could pick two main items for $8.75 or three items for a dollar more. The three items is the better deal and so I got that.
My three choices were the steak, short ribs and deep fried chicken wings. I went with spaghetti over the other choices of rice or fries.
The meat were really greasy but I must say that they are not bad. That is sort of saying it is not great but certainly more than edible.
The short rib tasted good but I find it a bit too tough. I am not complaining because after all this is … More on following page. Click here to continue reading
Lin Chinese Restaurant on Broadway and Granville, Vancouver
No more TBNs (Taiwanese Beef Noodles) and Hongkong Style Cafe (HKSC) for the next little while. I am tired of the topic. Let’s switch subjects … Shanghainese Cuisine this time. Heck, lets make an acronym for them. Let’s call them SHC, shall we? LOL!
Question … between Vancouver and Richmond, which city has the best Shanghainese restaurant?
It is not because I live in Richmond, but I seriously think that Richmond has the greater concentration of top notch SHC restaurants in Metro Vancouver.
I had learned that the best yardstick to determine a good SHC restaurant is how well they make the Xiao Long Bao (XLB).
While Richmond has the greater concentration of SHC restaurants, Vancouver lay claim to having the best XLB. To those who are not familiar with XLB, it is known as Soup Dumplings in English. That’s right. There are scalding hot soup in that innocent looking dumpling.
There is a way to eat it too. Never EVER pop one into your mouth and bite into it. The best way is to first bite off a hole on the side and slowly slurp the delicious soup. Suanne insists that it is the wrong way. She argued that one must bit off the top first. I think she had been watching too much Chinese cuisine TV shows.
This plaque says it all. Lin Chinese Cuisine won last year’s award from the more coveted Critic’s Choice award.
Lin Chinese Cuisine is located on Broadway with Granville. Lin is not like the SHC restaurants you find in Richmond. Not only it serves really good Shanghainese food, they seem to offer items like spring rolls, hot and sour soup, lemon chicken ย and even bubble tea. They also have $7 lunch specials. They even have roti canai! I won’t be surprised ifย Chinese food connoisseurs do not pay much attention to Lin.
Lin is located right in front of a busy bus stand. I reckon that is why they have varied menus to cater to all customers. Lin’s location used to be Galing-Galing, a popular Filipino restaurant. That was 2 years ago.
The insides is nice and bright. We like the orangey theme. However, the layout is more like a cafe than it is a high end SHC restaurant.
Service is really good. Our waitress was especially chatty and was the one who insisted we get their XLB. She even proudly point out their XLB plaque to me and egged me to walk over to have a closer look when I feigned skepticism.
Their customer base is definitely not like those you find in Richmond’s SHC restaurants where you have almost exclusively Asian customers in big parties. In Lin, they have customers coming in from all walks of life and ethnic background. And their customer parties are smaller … usually 2-3 people.
I had always heard that the chef/owner of Lins is the same people behind The Place on south Granville. That does not seem to be the case. Our waitress was puzzled when I asked for her confirmation. Instead she said that the chef/owners are from Burnaby and Richmond. She rattled off some names in Chinese which I was not familiar with.
While the XLB is really good, I would not say it is the best. To me, the best XLB also has to have the thinness of skin that is almost translucent. I had seen some XLBs that are so thin that they sit almost flat in the basket.
It is a little smaller than I am used to but very juicy and tasty. The bamboo basket they are served in is noticeably seasoned like it had been used for years.
But I won’t take anything else from them. Their award winning XLB is excellent and is worth the try. The best thing is it is just $5.
The other appetizer we got was their Radish Cake which also costs $5. Oh man, Lin made this … More on following page. Click here to continue reading
Suhang Restaurant on Ackroyd Road, Richmond
There are a lot Shanghainese restaurants in Richmond. For the great majority of them, each of the restaurants are very good. A few really good ones comes to mind:
Here is one more that is worthy to be considered as one of the best Shanghainese restaurant in Richmond.
Suhang Restaurant had flown under our radar all these while. We were not even aware of its existence … never heard of it because it was not discussed on the internet.
Moreover, their location is less than ideal. It is on Ackroyd Road in the little strip mall where Nandos is. For most people who drives along Ackroyd, the view of Suhang from the road is not apparent. It is partly covered by the jutting building next door and partly by Nandos.
We would not have known about it until Steven told us about it. Remember Steven? He was the foodie reader who wrote us a 4-page recommendation of Vietnamese Cuisine. He was the one who led us to discover Thien Kim, the pho place where we had “4 types of Vietnamese Noodle Soup, none of which is Pho“.
Apparently Suhang had been opened for two years already.
The moment we walked into Suhang, we were already impressed. The restaurant was packed that night. Apparently it is popular. It is an upscale restaurant, not upscale-upscale but pretty fancy. It is bright and clean. The service is really good, staffed by experienced captains.
Based on Steven’s enthusiastic and detailed description of Suhang and what we see the moment we walked on, the first thing that popped into my mind is “hidden gem”. This looked so promising.
Suanne and I made arrangements to meet up with Steven and Jaime. Steven told us that Suhang is named after two cities outside of Shanghai. I can’t remember the exact name but for those of you who can read Chinese, you will probably know which two cities.
On to the food.
Steven and Jaime had to pre-order this item. We are a bit confused with this name but you know how it is with some translations. On one hand Steven refers this to as the 8-Treasure Duck but when we look at the menu it seems to read … More on following page. Click here to continue reading
