Nanzaro and I went to Lansdowne Foodcourt for lunch after running some errands.
I went to the R&H Chinese Food stall while Nanzaro opted for the Bubble Waffle Cafe.
When I was there, a lady was making Siao Loong Bao at the counter.
I ordered the Pan Fried Bun. It came in four for $6.99 before tax. (more…)
LR organized a mini chowdown at 89 degrees Shanghai Fusion Cuisine. Attendees included retired food blogger Karl of The Friday Lunch and Dennis the Foodie and missus (Wendy).
89 degrees Shanghai Fusion Cuisine is a family run restaurant.
I like the signage stands outside the restaurant which are loaded with pictures.
We left the ordering to Karl as he seems to be quite a regular here.
Menu with photos is always a good thing.
A table full of food. Here are what Karl ordered. (more…)
I am taking a break from our Chicago travel series. Back to local dining for a week. Lorna and I went for lunch at the Akroyd strip mall after our…
Marian suggested to meet up on Thanksgiving Day. So, I made a couple of calls to Lorna and Emily to see if they can join in. At the end, only Lorna, me and Marian can make it for dinner.
Lorna suggested to meet at NU Shanghainese Bistro, a relatively new restaurant. We arrived at 6PM and we had to wait for 30 minutes for a table. According to Lorna, this restaurant does not take reservation for a party less than 5.
On this day, there were quite a number of big parties. Perhaps, it’s because it’s Thanksgiving Day.
The decor is simple and quite classy.
We love the menu which is loaded with photos; just like those we find in Beijing.
Tea was served with a warmer, nice. The teapot is quite heavy and it’s cutleries were embossed with the restaurant’s logo. According to Lorna, that Chinese character meant praise.
We ordered a few appetizers to start with. Marian picked black fungus which is also one of my favourite dish to order. The dish is slightly vinegarish and served cold as most Chinese appetizers are served. This is $7.95. (more…)
Updated 9th Oct 2014; This restaurant is closed.
The opening of the Harbour Spirit Restaurant was perhaps one of the most anticipated on over the last few months. One of the reasons is that they were taking an old location vacated by Sammy J Peppers which is a large space and highly visible along the No 3 Road.
They are so big that we were told by the restaurant that they will “specialize” on Cantonese AND Sichuan AND Northern AND Hot Pot when we went there (did not eat) on their opening day (see here). I can’t find that comment now but I distinctly remember someone saying that with trying be everything to everyone, they will either succeed big time or they will fail big time.
The initial reports from this place were mostly unfavourable. I was not surprised because with such a big operations there are a lot more kinks to sort out. As much as Suanne and I would like to go check them out, we decided that against it. We sort of knew what the experience would be like — no different from all the early reports.
We finally went after they were opened for 1.5 months. That should be enough time to have things to settle down and well past the dry run periods.
It does seems like the Harbour Spirit have deep pockets. They want to open up with a bang to awe people. On the surface they did quite a good job. The chandeliers and the heavy set chairs were highly visible. But on a second glance, they are still very rough around the edges. It is in the details that they fell short.
OK things like this bother me especially when they try to be classy but ignore the details. The white table cloth above, I find them distractingly nonuniform. That was not just it. The materials are cheap and too light that it shifts when you move the plates or teapot around. And they are wrinkled.
They must have spend some … (more…)
Minoo, Marian, Lorna and I volunteered in the Activate! Wellness Fair 55+ at the Minoru Place on March 16th, 2011. The Activate Fair is to promote programs for the 55+ to keep our seniors active in the community and stay healthy.
Our booth is to to showcase the seniors community kitchen.
Besides the seniors community kitchen, we also display information on the multicultural community kitchens. We were able to get some people to sign up for the programs during the fair.
Marian, Lorna and I volunteered until lunch time and we decided to go for lunch together. Marian wanted something spicy and we ended up at Moutai Plus Szechuan Cuisine on Park Road. When I told Lorna about this Szechuan place called Moutai Plus at Park Road, she was puzzled as she is not aware of a restaurant called Moutai Plus here. Apparently, she has always known this restaurant as “Dumpling Shop” as indicated in their Chinese name.
The interior is made up of … (more…)
I can’t count and almost made a mess of it!
Actually when I plan for a chowdown, it is actually Suanne who does the heavy lifting behind the scenes. She is meticulous. Me? I get utterly confused when numbers are thrown at me. You see, for once I thought it would be easy for me to just plan the dinner myself since Suanne has already a lot on her plate.
Let me take you back to the genesis of this chowdown. It was two months ago I blogged about the good lunch I had in Shanghai House. It was so good, authentic and cheap that I mentioned that I would love to go back again for dinner and this time order more food. Of course with a few more people to make it more “dai” (worthwhile). Somewhere within the comment thread, someone suggested that I organize a chowdown. And I said sure, I’ll do it.
It was a quickie plan. I called for a show of hands of people who are interested. The post was put up on a Wednesday and I suggested a chowdown on Friday. Actually, I was thinking that we will have only two, maybe three couples who will attend given the short 2 day notice.
It then quickly got out of hands for me. Amidst my work and handling the emails and all, I guess I lost track of who is coming with who and all. I wanted to have a dinner on ONE table only. Spreading attendees over two tables defeats the purpose of having a good time chatting with everyone. So, I counted 14 people and I confirmed with Shanghai House that they have a table for 14 and 15 with a tight squeeze.
16 turned up.
I was in trouble! Good thing a few good sport did not mind sitting on a stool to make room for everyone. Sorry guys, it was my mistake. Next time, I’ll let Master Suanne handle this.
The restaurant was full that Friday evening. Nope, the picture above was not from the Friday but from the first early lunch we had. I just want to show you how pleasant the dining hall was. One could be easily fooled thinking this is a restaurant with above average prices. It is not. The prices will … (more…)
It had been a while.
After 5 years of blogging we find that the local Asian restaurant scene had changed a lot. Suanne and I don’t normally go back to restaurants we had blogged about before. Instead we wanted to try new places and seek new dishes.
However, we realized that a lot of our earlier blog posts are already dated. Some of which are no longer relevant. So we thought it might be a good idea to make visits back to some of them that we remember as very good ones.
So what better place to go to but The Place. In Chinese, this restaurant is called 老地方 which mean the old place — a place you go back to for old time sake.
We were here and blogged about The Place in this post three years ago. The Place is located on Granville Street in the south end of Vancouver.
Yeah, the above was what we had three years ago. We particularly like the Family Hot Pot (center) which had a nice name in Chinese. It is called Chien Gar Fook which means …
This is another blog post done entirely with the iPhone, including the pictures and video.
It came as a shock to many people to learn that Wang’s had closed. I found out only last week. The new place is called Xu’s. Apparently new owner. The new lady in charge look very familiar but I just can’t remember where I had seen her before.
So here I am trying Xu’s XLB. They call this the Baiyulan XLB which is $4 for a basket of … (more…)
Updated 4Sep2013: this restaurant is closed according to Urbanspoon.com.
How is this for taking one for the team?
This restaurant post has to be a record for a new restaurant ever on chowtimes. The previous record was new Kumare Filipino restaurant where we happened to visit them on their first day of business. That was quite by accident but it did turn out to be one heck of a restaurant.
Kumare was by chance. This one is planned.
We went to the Shanghai Fusion Restaurant 45 minutes after they opened. LOL! Yeah, we learned that they were going to open on Saturday, March 5th at 11:00 AM and so we decided to come here for our brunch.
It is not that we ever thought that this restaurant is good. It is in the name. A Chinese restaurant with the word “fusion” in the name can’t be any good. Yeah, I am one of those people who thinks that Chinese cuisine must be pure. Those Sichuan-Canto or Beijing-Xinjiang sort of things just doesn’t work in my mind.
The Shanghai Fusion Restaurant is located in the recently closed Pho Viet in the Empire Centre. This is the strip mall where King Buffet, Bushair, Shiang Garden and Sunway is located.
They have a 12% grand opening discount now. So if you want to save on the HST, this is the time to go.
It was quite a big dining area. They had removed the center partitions during the time when it was West Lake and Pho Viet. Both the previous restaurants here are now operating elsewhere in Richmond and the reason they move was because this restaurant is simply too big. So yes, this is a really big space.
I can’t quite make out what this place is. Perhaps from my observation, I would call this a … (more…)