Update 17-April-2011: Per comments below, this restaurant is now closed. Shanghai Village may or may not reopen in another location

If you ask me where to go for Shanghai food, I will tell you straight up that you need to look no further than Richmond. This is because there are so many highly rated Shanghainese restaurants. Just to name a few at the top of my head:

• Shanghai River
• Shanghai Wonderful
• Top Shanghai
• Chen’s Shanghai
• Number One Shanghai Restaurant
• Shanghai JJ

While there are some good Shanghai restaurants elsewhere in Metro Vancouver, Richmond can lay claim to the most-est and the best-est. Well, move over Richmond … there is one in Vancouver that is gathering rave reviews everywhere.

When the chowhound community was creating a buzz on Shanghai Village, frankly I was rather unconvinced. Part of me was really thinking that it is just hype. After all, if you have dined in Richmond’s Shanghai River or Shanghai Wonderful for instance, you would have thought you’ve seen it all.

Shanghai Village is located on Cambie and West 16th in Vancouver. Shanghai Village is a new restaurant. I think it had been opened for only six months.

The 8GTCC team met in Shanghai Village. We were there to check out Shanghai Village as a potential restaurant for our second dinner in the series of eight dinners.

I was really impressed the moment I walked into the restaurant. The floors are beautifully carpeted and the chairs are plush. Even the table cloth are embroidered ones. I even saw that the lazy susan on the bigger tables are gold plated too … that is something I had never seen before.

Keev and Dylan was already there and had ordered some food. Oh wow, I was completely mesmerized by the Preserved Egg with Salted Egg Yolk ($6).

Apparently this is an assembly of the century eggs and salted egg yolk. It is certainly not something I had ever seen in my life and I though it is fantastic.

Keev figured that they cracked the top of the egg removed the egg white and then refill it with pieces of century eggs.

The name Shanghai Village does not do justice to this restaurant. I have come to learn that the English names of Chinese restaurants are nowhere as poetic as the names in Chinese.

The Chinese name of Shanghai Village is something like “Reminiscing the south of Jiang river”. That word “Jiang” is key to the next series in the 8GTCC adventures.

I did not get pictures of their extensive menu. It was simply too many pages. If I had taken shot of every page, it would freak the restaurant out … not to mention the 8GTCC team for fear of being thrown out of the restaurant (is that right, guys? LOL!).

The above is their House Specialties section. See the first item on top?

That is the Nanjing Specialty Marinated Duck ($12). The ducks of Nanjing is world famous and Shanghai Village does it perfectly.

Lightly salted, it is served cold and the meat was surprisingly highly delectable. This is something that I could eat many pieces of and not stop.

Their other specialty is what they call Crock Soup. This is the times I wish I could read Chinese. Look at the picture on the left above. That page of the menu describes the Crock Soup and you see that the Chinese description is lengthier than the English translations.

Anyway, if you look at the menu at the right (click on it to see larger image), they have 35 types of soups! The soup ranges from $12 to $24 and some of them require 1-day advance pre-order.

They must be very proud of their soup. At the entrance of the restaurant, they have a crock pot (should we call this an urn or a clay oven?). This is how the soup pots are placed in it. The waitress was explaining to me how it worked but I thought I heard her say they uses coal or something. Anyone?

So we got the Silkie Chicken in Herbal Claypot Soup. This is $17 and … (more…)

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  and even bubble tea. They also have $7 lunch specials. They even have roti canai! I won’t be surprised if 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…)

I am a procrastinator … it’s in the genes.  I know that.  But the thing is that I remember what I said I would do.  It might take me a long while but I will eventually get down to it.  Like saying “let’s do it in a couple weeks” … and carrying it through in seven months.  That is me.  That is Ben.

I had been talking to Christina and ET of Doesn’t TasZte Like Chicken about organizing a gathering since last fall.  This time I carried through.  So, I organized one with the bloggers that I had met at one point or another before.  Being the organizer, I went with the choice of a restaurant that I know will work … that I had been there before, knows the menu, not too expensive and will meet the demands from bloggers.

So we met at Long’s Noodle House.  See my previous review here.  Suanne made the reservation a few days before.  With Long’s you want to make sure you make a reservation because they are always packed for dinner.  Moreover, their restaurant is small.  When Suanne made the reservation, she tried to order some of their dishes that need to be ordered at least a day ahead but they were too busy to entertain her at that time.  It was no big deal because all their other dishes are pretty good.

Wine Chicken … $6.  This is my favourite dish in Long’s.  I’ll not expand on this as I had already blogged about this dish before.

The dish above is the one which won the “Most Innovative Dish” award last year.  It is Crispy Rice with Salted Egg Yolk.  It is an unique dish but is somewhat simple dish too to me.  I am quite surprised that a dish of such simplicity could have won the most innovative dish award.

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This is another great find.

After all, this simple looking nondescript restaurant with an equally unimaginative name actually won the 2009 Most Innovative Dish title awarded by The Chinese Restaurant Awards in Metro Vancouver. We just got to try it.

So, we decided to get hold of Whitney and Ken to join us since this is the kind of place where the more people you have the better.

They should change the name Long’s Noodle House. I think they have grown up … no longer a noodle house but a full fledged restaurant. Really, if you just drive past this restaurant you will definitely give this place a miss. The signboard is totally devoid of any design. Even the bars on the windows tends to tell you that this location is not too good part of the neighborhood.

Long’s Noodle House is located on Main and 33rd. It is actually just next door to Au Petit, one of the most popular Vietnamese restaurant on Metro Vancouver. I think Long’s is a Shanghainese restaurant.

The place is awfully small. You know, I think it’s good that they stay that way. I hope they never expand and keep doing what they do best.

They are opened at 5:30PM for dinner. We were there about 10 minutes early and the waitress (Sandy was her name, I think) was very gracious to open up to let us in. I read that she is a super waitress who does everything in the front … take orders, deliver dishes, give you your bill, the whole shebang … all alone. And she does it so cheerfully too … we like her immediately.

Well, except for one thing. She was so hell bent on making sure she maximize her table turns. When we told her we are a party of seven and that we did NOT have a reservation, she hesitated a while. You see, apparently ALL the tables were already reserved for 5:30PM except for this one table that fits seven just nicely … but Whitney and Ken was no where in sight yet. She wanted to only give us the table only if our entire party is present.

So, I lied and told her they are just a couple of blocks away and pretend to call Whitney and Ken to confirm. Once she set our tables, we’re safe. Except that she came around every 5 minutes asking where they are!

Sharp at 5:30PM, all the tables were filled up! Wow, I had never seen a place ran like this!

It was a relief when Ken and Whitney turned up … at least I don’t feel so embarrassed for telling a lie. Mind you, Sandy is very gracious about it but I understand seeing how disciplined the other tables were. LOL! I knew we were in a right place that afternoon.

I knew what I MUST have … the Most Innovative Dish in Metro Vancouver. The printed menu they gave us was not very extensive but quite respectable in terms of number of items. There were quite a few delicious sounding name. I know the best dishes are what is written on the board. Too bad they are all in Chinese and so we had to settle for what is on the menu.

We rattled off our orders to Sandy — nine items in all. She did not even write it down and I was afraid if she will mess up our order seeing how busy she is. I asked her to write it down but she said it’s OK she got it. I was amazed here because she got everything correct when she brought a printout of the order to show us.

For starters, we had Steamed Mini Pork Buns (Xiao Long Bao). We like the brothiness in the bun but I would say it was quite OK, not great like the ones we had in Popular. No complain price wise though … it was just $4.95 for six.

Whitney loves pig ears. She can talk and talk about where to find the best pig ears in Vancouver. So, I decided that we order this for her. This is $5.50 and we all liked it. The texture was what we expect of a good pig ear … crunchy.

We eagerly waited for Whitney’s verdict. She gave the thumbs up.

I wanted to be adventurous and went ahead to order the Salted Soya Bean Milk from their Dim Sum section of the menu. To me, the words salted and soya bean milk does not jive — just like sushi and curries, for instance. Sandy explained that they have two types of soya bean milk — salted (which is served hot) and sweet (served cold).

The Salted Soya Bean Milk ($2.50) was served in a bowl and had thin slices of youtiao (Chinese donut) in it. Despite the name, it was actually not salty at all. I would describe it as savory. You should try it and see if you like it.

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This restaurant has been closed according to Urbanspoon – updated 16th April 2010.

All I can say is … “Oh wow”. You really should check this place out.

Suanne and I get quite a number of recommendations from our readers. We like these recommendations as they are often little known restaurants with a lot of character to them.

Eric, who we do not know personally, sent us a note raving about the Northern Chinese restaurant find that he had been going to for the past while. Specifically he pointed out that their specialty is Soup Dumplings (Xiao Long Bao) … MSG-free Xiao Long Bao.

Suanne and I decided to take that drive to Popular Chinese Cuisine Restaurant. Popular is located on the north side of Kingsway between Joyce and Tyne.

From the outside, we thought that this is probably the last eatery we will try in the row of restaurants which included the Congee Noodle King. The blinds were drawn which does make people who walk past not really care what to check.

Eric described this place as a hole-in-the-wall family owned restaurant. While it is definitely family owned, it does not conjure images of small dark restaurants. As a matter of fact, the restaurant is bright, clean and spacious. However, it is a very quite restaurant with ours the only other table taken that evening.

Popular is run by a husband and wife team. They were friendly and helpful but the thing is that they speak only Mandarin. We managed despite the language problem. Instead of choosing our own dish, we asked them for the favourite dish of their customers.

Of course we had to order the Xiao Long Bao. They came in a steamer with individual dumplings placed in mini saucers. I thought it was a neat idea having never seen this before.

One thing that struck me was how thin the dough skin was and yet being able to hold in the gelatin soup. I guess the reason why they serve this in mini saucers was because of the thinness of the almost translucent skin.

Suanne told me she saw on TV how the delicate Xiao Long Bao is to eaten. You need a soup spoon to hold it. You first bite off a corner at the thinner side and then carefully sip the scalding soup before you eat the rest of it.

Their Xiao Long Bao was great. They reminded us that they are MSG free. Six dumplings for $4. Not bad I thought.

Before the meal came, they even gave us some free pickles and stuff. The one in the background is some pickled vegetable … carrot with daikon I think. The peanuts were particularly good and was wondering where they got that from.

The Sliced Fish with Wine Sauce was great too. We were surprised how big a plate this came in. This one dish was definitely more than enough for two people. Served steaming hot, it has a very nice rice wine fragrance to it.

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