Alright. This is the follow-up on the previous post where I talked a bit about the Richmond Public Market.

We visited the Richmond Public Market (RPM) over a period of several weeks. So, don’t be surprised over all the food we described here. We are not pigs, OK? Alright, sometimes we are but not this time. 🙂

The RPM Food Court has a total of about 16 stalls. In this post we are going to cover just five of them.

All of the sixteen stalls have something unique to offer. All of them has lots to offer. All of them are really cheap too. And the menu of each stall is not trivial. I would say that if we just consider conservatively an average of 40 dishes per stall, we are looking at over 640 dishes to select from.

However, those of us who had been to the RPM knows that is not the cleanest of food courts around. It is showing its age. At least as far as I know they had passed all health inspections.

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XI AN CUISINE

Xi An Cuisine is named after the capital of the Shaanxi province. The city of Xian is one of the cities of the Four Great Ancient Capitals of China and the home of the Terracota Army. That is one city I would love to visit one day.

Nanzaro and I often want to get the Spicy Wonton. Suanne and Arkensen are indifferent to this dish. It wasn’t the greatest of spicy wontons but then this is just … $5.00.

We normally buy this as a side dish. We like that it is spicy enough but the wonton is a bit more on the skin than the fillings.

We don’t normally get the buns here but when we wanted something light (as opposed to a full bowl of noodles or rice), we would get these.

They call this the Chinese Pork Burger and it is $5 for two.

I thought it was much better when I had it before. Naw. This one is not too good. The bun was too dense, too chewy and too dry. The fillings too have no sauce in it and relies just on meat juice for moisture.

The ones in the Crystal Mall Food Court is way better. See pix here, here and here.

But what we like a lot from Xi An Cuisine is the Cutting Noodle with Lamb in Soup. This is $6.25 and they even take the trouble to serve it in proper porcelain bowl.

The lamb meat are made of miniscule pieces, just enough to “jat ngah loong” (stuff into the cavity in your tooth).

That doesn’t bother me. What I enjoy a lot is the chewiness of the hand cut noodles which is excellent. The broth is something I like too. The broth has that right level of lightness and not too salty. We can also smell the aroma from the lamb and so it is very much a lamb noodle (quite unlike some noodles that you wonder if the flavour is pork or chicken).

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CHEF LIU KITCHEN

This stall is new. If I remember correctly the previous stall operator is also a Taiwanese stall and they operated a stall in the Richmond Night Market last year. So, I am kind of surprised that they folded so fast.

When we were there, it seems like they were quite popular because there is a line there. Maybe it is new and it is “sang see hung” (new toilet bowl).

I can’t read much Chinese but I can spot the word “Cow”. So I guess they are famous for their beef noodles, Taiwanese style.

So we got their specialty: the Beef Noodle. The small one is $6.00 while the large one is $8.00.

The soup is on the sweetish and light side. It wasn’t fantastic. Certainly this is nothing compared to the best Taiwanese Beef Noodles in Vancouver.

The noodles were just so-so too.

Other than the TBN, they have other Taiwanese specialities like crispy chicken, chicken chop and nuggets.

The Spicy Chicken Nugget from Chef Liu’s Kitchen is $5.00. They normally serve this in a combo but this time we just wanted the chicken nugget (trying to eat lighter these days!).

The spiciness came entirely from the sprinkled chili powder. You don’t want it spicy? They just don’t add the chili powder.

The chicken nugget does not have that crunchiness that we expect from a well made one. Instead this is soft and not very crispy.

Anyway, above is Chef Liu Kitchen take out menu in case you want to check what they have.

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Fu Yuan Fast Food

If there is one stall that is my favourite, it has to be the Fu Yuan Fast Food. I like the way the pictures of their dishes are laid out. The pictures are clear and not too small. Some other stall’s pictures are all faded.

I would sometimes stand here in front of the stall just gawking at the pictures and having a hard time deciding what to get.

If there is ONE thing you want to try here, you should consider trying their meatball. They are fantastic. A small bowl is $2.75 which came served in soup.

This is their specialty and are well known for their meat balls. The one above is my absolute favourite. The fish ball has meat fillings in it. The outer fish shell is amazingly fresh and very QQ (springy). The inside has a contrasting flavour.

They also sell this in frozen packages so that you can bring it home and make it at home. I recommend you give this a try. I think you might just like it.

This time we thought we give this dish with an interesting name a try. On the board, this is called Fish Noodle in Soup which is $5.50.

We asked to confirm if the noodle is made with fish because if it is it would be awesome. The lady told us yes.

Instead of calling this Fish Noodle in Soup, I thought it would have been better calling this Noodle in Fish Soup.

It is normal noodles and they had fish in the soup. It wasn’t bad but it wasn’t what I imagined it to be. Anyway it was wishful thinking getting fish noodles for $5.50.

The flavour in this noodle is not strong. As a matter of fact, it was quite bland and we had to ask for soya sauce to flavour it up.

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GUANGDONG FLAVOR FAST FOOD

We don’t normally order from this stall but something caught our eye.

We saw a number of people eating the rice with meat from a small porcelain bowl. It was a small bowl and because we were not in the mood for eating much, this would just be perfect.

So we got the Mini Chicken with Salted Egg on Rice. They actually have three sizes: Mini for $3.75, Small for $4.75 and Large for $6.00. Actually it is only the Mini version that is served in a porcelain pot while the other sizes are served in normal claypots.

There is a 10 minutes wait for this dish and that is just perfect for us. This tells us that they steam the rice in the bowl individually and not just scoop it from the rice cooker and top it with the meat. Steaming it individually will make sure that the juices from the meat gets flavour up the rice. Yeah, they cook it upon order only.

They even have half a salted egg and vegetable on the side. So for just $3.75, we thought this was a very good deal.

We are still experimenting with various types of sweet soya sauce at home. There are so many versions out there but we have yet to hit that sweet spot.

Anyway, I think you can see how nicely cooked the chicken was. It was so soft and succulent and moist.

Yeah, my type of food – “Jhup and Rice”. What I like best is the size and the price. Actually this is all I want for lunch but such sizes (and price!) are so hard to find near where I work.

We found out that they also had Braised Egg with Milk. This is just $2.00.

For this one we were told that the wait time is 2 minutes if we wanted it warm. It is probably pre-made and they just needed the time to re-steam it.

For $2.00, we can’t complain. It was very smooth.

The above is the menu from Guang Dong Flavor Fast Food.

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WONDER WOK

We used to get the fried crab from Wonder Wok quite often. It was quite cheap but we just stopped getting it some time already. We suddenly realized that for the cheap prices and the seemingly large container it came in, there were hardly any meat in it and neither was it fresh.

But this is one stall that Nanzaro likes to come back to. Half the time he will be so tempted to get their salted fish and chicken fried rice.

And this is what he got again. This is perhaps one of the most value for money Salted Fish Chicken Fried Rice around town. This whole big container is just $5.50 and it is so packed that you have to push the cover down to close it.

Nanzaro said that the rice was “exceptionally good”.

Good for carbo load for a growing boy.