The past week was awfully foggy here in Vancouver. We got only a few breaks of the sun. It was kind of drabby, makes one so lethargic. In weather like this we did not want to really go far.
So we went to this place called McKim Wonton Mein Saga because it was just a few minutes drive from home and we get to avoid driving down the dreaded No 3 Road.
McKim Wonton Mein Saga is quite a name, huh? It is named McKim because it is located on McKim Way and Garden City Road.
Although the name does suggest that this is principally a noodle house and their menu tout themselves as “The best Wonton Noodle House in Town”, we were told that we should try their Set Lunch/Dinners.
Service wasn’t particularly great. There were hardly anyone there at 5:00PM (we eat early most days) but it took an awfully long time for them to set us up and take our orders. What irks me really is how they took our order … at times acknowledging our order with grunts. *mmm* *argg* *mmm*. Speak up!
Their Set Lunch/Dinner allows you selection from about 120 different dishes ranging from seafood, vegetable, beef, pork, duck, chicken, etc. Since there are just the three of us, we ordered the Set Dinner for 3 which costs $40.
Besides a selection of 3 dishes, the set dinner also includes soup, rice and dessert. We were surprised the soup came in a pot. Normally, one would just get a bowl each.
The soup was pretty good too and does have really big pieces of meaty pork. That was a good start. Unfortunately, I have to say that it goes downhill after this.
Maybe it was our wrong selection. All the dish were basically stir fry onions. 50% of the dishes were full of onions. I like onions, don’t get me wrong but there were no imagination to the dishes (or maybe there were no imagination to our choices!).
The first one is called the Roasted Pork Intestines with Preserved Vegetables which should be called Onions with Roasted Pork Intestines and Preserved Vegetables. Suanne and I did not quite like this but to our surprise Nanzaro loved this.
The Szechuan Style Shrimp was a lot better. This time it had lesser onion. Having got used to expect Szechuan dish from a Szechuan restaurant, this one does not look like the ones we had come to love. The prawns were fresh but this dish had more vegetables than prawns.
The third selection was the Chicken with Ginger and Green Onion Hotpot. Awful … sorry to say that. It is basically just a potful of onions with some pretty tasteless chicken.
Nanzaro enjoyed this meal a lot. He ate and ate and ate while we stopped eating after a while. I think I know why … Nanzaro does not touch the vegetables and onions, he picked all the prawns and chickens … leaving nothing but onions to us. That’s why the only impression I got out of the meal here is ONIONS, ONIONS and ONIONS.
The dessert was OK. No big deal. It was rather thick (I prefer it runny) and the color was a bit off … having expected it to be either more red or green, not brown.
The meal came up to $45. We were not too excited about this place really … despite the recommendation we had. Like I said, maybe our selection that day was wrong.
We ended up packing it away. We decided to come back again, some day. This time to check out if they really is the Best Wonton Noodles House in Town.
We found out that they actually have another outlet on Kingsway. BTW they take cash only.
I noticed that one item you order more often than most people do are pork intestines! I, myself, love them too but usually the people I eat with disapprove of me ordering dishes with those in it.
BTW… I love how you scan copies of the menus when available. It helps a lot being able to see the types of food (and prices) before trying something new! THanks!
I love pork or pig intestines and indeed the stomach needing a thorough clean-up of course and simply boiled with black peppercorns and dipped in soy-sauce, not sure though about protein content and the cholesterol value may be high!
What’s more, they are cheap to buy.
I wonder how good their wonton and noodles really are ? Anyone know ?
BTW: the “saga” in their name does not elude to some mysterious wonton noodles “trilogy” of galactic proportions 😀 but rather, a poor phoenetic translation of the words “world” and “family” in their Chinese name.
The picture of the beef bones, meat and daikon looks good. I find that daikon gives soup great depth in flavour. My grandma would put it in the soups she made for Chinese New Year and when we would pray to our ancestors. No need for fish sauce when you have daikon.
It’s too bad they went overboard with onions. I hate when restaurants rip you off like that. All you have to do is look at the hot pot to see the mountains of onions. Just sad.
Suanne, have you come across a dish that I’d eaten in Malaysia where mung beans were boiled encased in pig’s innards – for hours – a peasant food it may be but I found it quite delicious.
Christine – I also find some restaurants “rip” you off with lots of bean sprouts in their dishes and stirfrys. The stuff costs pennies a pound !
Re Restaurant Meals, re Ready Meals
Many restaurants in UK maximise their profits by use of cheap ingredients – plenty of it – like onions and bean sprouts, in a ready meal sold at a supermarket, I found just 2 tiny prawns in a packet described as Red Thai Prawn Curry, very expensive, what’s more, other/ingredients used in ready meals are often of markedly inferior quality that anyone knowledgeable in good eating could readily discern, I wouldn’t buy ready meals even if reduced to one-third of original price that supermarkets here quite often do for turnover reasons.
Best cook yourself from scratch, so very, very much cheaper and far, far tastier.
Concluding part that should have appeared in earlier submission of Re Restaurants, re Ready Meals
“BTW I once ordered Singapore Char Kuay Teow – at a Cantonese restaurant in London Chinatown, got a plate of greasy stuff, full of onions and bean-sprouts and little evidence of prawns or other protein stuff. Not sure if curry powder should properly be added but it was added nonetheless.”