Shanghai House Restaurant 上海人家

This year I was invited by Rae Kung from Chinese Restaurant Awards to be a judge on the Social Media Choice Awards panel and to join Jesse Tsao, Cathy Zhou and Sherman Chan. The five dishes we are seeking to find the best of in Vancouver consist of Sichuan Water Boiled Fish, Taiwanese Braised Pork Rice, Hong Kong Style Roast Duck, Shanghai Style Drunken Chicken and Mango Sago with Grapefruit/Pomelo. So for our first meet up, the choice of restaurant was Shanghai House. 

Shanghai House attempts to offer a nicer atmosphere compared to many Chinese restaurants where the staff wears black and white, the seating arrangements are not entirely too crowded and there are chair covers.

Xu's Wonton House 白玉蘭麵家 (2nd visit)

My favourite place for Shanghainese soup dumplings (xiao long bao) is located in Crystal Mall, at Xu's Wonton House. The food stall is also apparently known for a few other dishes, with one including their rice cake which I have never tried. Actually, the only item I have tried here is the XLB! As for the service, man… the staff ain't friendly. However, I decided to speak in Chinese this time and wow… what a big difference it makes! The owner's wife was super friendly and even asked how many plates I needed. FML even the cashier was friendly when I said "thank you" in Chinese as I returned the steamer.

R&H Chinese Food 正点

Being in Richmond around 4:00pm and hungry is the worst situation for me to be in. The reason is because my only dining destinations would be either the food courts, HK style cafes or Bubble Tea restaurants. And if I decide to have a snack at any of those places, it is hard for me to just have a "snack" because I want to eat everything in sight ASAP and therefore ruin my appetite for dinner.

So after sitting in the car with a friend for thirty minutes and pondering over if we should wait another hour for a restaurant to open, we decided to walk around Lansdowne. The both of us agreed that if we decided to go to the food court (which we knew was going to happen), we would limit ourselves to only smoothies and two dishes.

The only food stall that caught our attention was R&H Chinese Food. The food stall appears to be a family run business with the father handling the cash, mother making the goodies, and the sons running the kitchen. When we approached the counter, my friend wanted to leave and just go to Earl's for an early dinner. She is really big on service like myself, and the owner was very miserable and indifferent. I never understand when business owners are not friendly because it is their own business.

Suhang Restaurant 蘇杭人家 : Eight Treasure Duck 八寶鴨

For a whole week, I had huge cravings for Eight Treasure Duck (ba bao ya)! But my parents did not want to make it. Personally, I have never tried making an Eight Treasure Duck before, mainly because I do not want to do waste ingredients if I am not 100% ready since it is a tricky dish to properly execute. So, this brings me to Suhang in Richmond.

Suhang is located in Richmond and may be considered a "higher end" Shanghainese restaurant, due to their higher prices compared to majority of other the restaurants. Furthermore, there is a modern atmosphere and the restaurant is fairly clean. The seating arrangements are a bit cramped however. As for the service, the staff was only friendly towards larger parties of more than six. This was a bit weird because when we ordered the Eight Treasure Duck over the phone three hours prior to our visit, the gentleman was friendly but in person… not so much.

Another odd thing is... when we inquired about the price of lobster over the phone, we were quoted $48.80 for a 2 1/2lb which equals to a reasonable $19.20/lb. However, despite ordering the lobster at the restaurant, the waiter came back from the kitchen and mentioned the prices have changed and is now $60.00 for a 2lb lobster. $30.00/lb? In three hours? Wow, that is very expensive. For the same price, I can easily try Chef Tony's (which I have been wanting to!)! 

Long's Noodle House 小龍記麵家

Long's Noodle House is a small family operated restaurant along Main Street, specializing in Shanghainese cuisine. Reservations are recommended regardless of the day of week and because the restaurant is always busy, being turned down should be no surprise. 

We arrived on a Friday evening with no reservations and were fortunate enough to not have to wait. There are a couple of large tables in the restaurant and for those in small groups, may have to share tables. Fortunately in our case though, we were offered a seat at the back of the restaurant which seats four people! This was perfect for us because we tend to order a lot of food.

Private Home Chinese Cuisine 一點心意 (2nd visit)

FIRST POST ON PRIVATE HOME CHINESE [HERE]

Do car sales associates make too much money these days? We had plans to purchase two company cars from Honda and visited a couple of dealerships on the same day (Richmond Honda and Kingsway Honda), but none of the sales associates even acknowledged us! After leaving fairly puzzled, we decided to check out OpenRoad Honda in Burnaby the following day.

The Burnaby location was very convenient for us too because I have been wanting to revisit Private Home for quite some time. And from what I can remember, I declared the xiao long bao and pan fried dumplings as a must order! I also remember the menu being fairly limited and mentioned I would only revisit for lunch rather than dinner.

On a weekday afternoon, the restaurant was empty and the service was non-existent. There are two sides of seating arrangements in the restaurant and all the waitstaff were on the opposite side of us. This made ordering and getting the bill very difficult, despite waving like a crazy person.

Northern Meixi 山東拉麵

An Instagram friend mentioned that Xu's Wonton House was "gone" and confirmed with "Yeah it's gone now!", but I did not believe her. How could Xu's be out of business? So after finishing an errand in Vancouver and still hungry because we did not eat much of the unappealing dim sum at Red Star, we rushed to Crystal Mall. When we arrived, turns out the food stall was only closed for the day! Geezus, was she trying to give me a heart attack?

Since we still needed a small snack to prevent spoiling our appetite for dinner, we decided to try a food stall that sells dim sum along with freshly made noodles. Well, actually BF wanted to try this place and I was more like… the food will not be good. I swear, some people really have a sixth sense regarding food. As he was ordering, he asked the owner if the xiao long bao tastes juicy and I thought that was a stupid question. Not because XLBs should always taste juicy and he was asking an obvious question, but more on the grounds that I find it rude to ask in case the buns are not juicy. However, the owner responded, "Yes! Of course! Juicy!" and he saw my eyes light up. I even accentually blurted out, "Wow! Good!" because I was shocked and believed him.

Lucky Star Chinese Restaurant 辣子紅南北私房菜

Lucky Star is located in North Burnaby and the restaurant serves Cantonese style Chinese cuisine as well as Szechuan. The interior of the restaurant looks better than the exterior and there are comfortable seating arrangements. In addition, there are a few chandeliers, a large television screen, and all the furnishings appear to be custom made and imported from China. The seats are fairly comfortable too because of the padding.

As for the food, the restaurant offers a variety of dishes and the menu is not limited at all. There are choices from dim sum, soup, congee, prawns, chicken, duck, beef, lamb, scallops, pork, sizzling hot pots, chow mein, handmade noodles and rice. But the thing is, there are more than only a few choices under each category! For example, the restaurant has five kinds of scallop dishes. Lucky Star also has a few frog dishes, but we passed because I am way too picky when it comes to that.

Legend House

Legend House is a fairly new Northern China cuisine restaurant in Coquitlam. The restaurant makes their own dumplings along with hand stretched noodles, and offers a variety of Szechuan dishes.

Walking in, there is an open window kitchen concept and the interior is very nice. The restaurant has a rustic modern interior; unfinished wooden floors along the walls, bricks, a high ceiling and nice chandeliers. In addition, the restaurant is fairly big!

There are comfortable booth seating arrangements and plenty of tables. Asides from being one of the larger Chinese restaurants in Coquitlam, Legend House is definitely one of the better looking ones. As for the staff, everyone was friendly. Our waitress double checked our order on her tablet and a few other waitresses came by to see if we needed more drinks.

Dinesty Dumpling House : Robson location

Whenever I have a negative experience at a chain or franchise business, I tend to avoid any of the other restaurants (ABC Country, Banana Leaf, Sushi Bella, Swiss Chalet…). This is somewhat unfair because every chain and franchise business is operated differently so one location may be horrible while another is great. In this case, the franchise is Dinesty Dumpling House. I have visited the location in Richmond before and the food was horrible along with the service. Not only was there no service, but the staff was also rude!

However, BF has been wanting to try Dinesty at the Downtown location for months. He is also the same person who had dinner with me at the Richmond location and vowed never to return! I guess in the end, I did not mind trying the Downtown location just because I was in a good mood. Plus, I was not really hungry since we went to Rodney's earlier. Picking up a pair of stilettos that finally arrived after a couple of weeks of waiting did not hurt either, hehe.

Walking in, the manager immediately stormed past us and closed the front door while yelling in chinese, "who didn't close the door?!". She then made eye contact with us after slamming the door so I asked for a table for two. Although there must have been a miscommunication on her end because she waved us away like we were pan handlers and rolled her eyes… umm? After standing there for a while, a waitress approached us but did not say a word so we asked if the restaurant was still open. With a response of yes, we asked her for a table for two.

At this point, it seemed like deja vu with the Richmond location (rushed atmosphere and unfriendly staff) and I sort of wanted to leave but we already seated. The waitress was neutral though and there were no dirty looks or a negative attitude. Also because we arrived fifteen minutes before the last call, we only ordered a few items to sample and decided to revisit if the food tasted good.

Ningbo Seafood Restaurant 寧波海鮮酒家

Ningbo Seafood is located in Richmond at Parker Place and serves Shanghainese as well as Cantonese Chinese cuisine. I had high expectations for the restaurant because a friend of mine was telling me how his friend in Shanghai has tried the restaurant in Ningbo. Apparently, the owners have a similar restaurant in Ningbo which is a city near Shanghai. In addition, I read Doofnik's blog post on the restaurant and the peking duck looked great; crispy skin with no fat or meat. But nothing was good about our dinner, neither the food nor the service.

We walked in on a Friday at 6:00pm and the restaurant had only one seated table. Similar to Le Crocodile where I had lunch earlier, we were asked if we had reservations and a few of the staff talked amongst each other "no reservations". The two of us were seated beside the counter (table touching) where the staff walks up to frequently and when we requested for a different seat, they were all reserved! Really now? At first I thought wow, perhaps the food is really good and I got excited about what was about to come.

Modern City Chinese Restaurant 新上海酒家

A friend of mine is not a picky eater and loves to follow the hype regarding restaurants. She enjoys the atmosphere more than the food, is always one of the first to follow the newest food trend in Vancouver, and declares a dish as great because it is from a certain restaurant. Furthermore, her expectations are not very high and if something sucks, the food must be bad. Having said all of that, I was a bit hesitant when BF suggested to try Modern City because my friend did not like it one bit. Honestly, she only dislikes a restaurant once in a blue moon. Well,  around every half year is more realistic.

After finally finding an optical retail store that carries Victoria Beckham and the style/color I actually want, I was happy enough to not care where dinner would be and the choice was Modern City. Modern City is located in Kerrisdale and is the only Shanghainese restaurant in the area. However, there are a few Chinese restaurants in the area and our choice was actually between Chongqing or here.

Modern City is a clean restaurant and the interior is a well lit. There are booth seating arrangements along one side of the restaurant, and a good amount of tables which are not cramped. As for the food, there is a mix of Cantonese style cuisine, Szechuan as well as Shanghai, and live seafood is available.

Lucky Noodle Chinese Restaurant 湘味濃

Lucky Noodle has been around for a couple of years and having drove by at least a hundred times, I have never noticed the restaurant. However, since a few new restaurants have been popping up along Kingsway Street, I assumed Lucky Noodle was one of them. Was it a craving for noodles that lured me in? Nope, it was the alluring photos of Hunan cuisine posted outside the restaurant! In addition, the restaurant also offers Cantonese as well as Taiwanese food, and a dry style hot pot like Shun Xin's (which we unfortunately did not get to try since crab was not available at the time).

The restaurant is a small family run operation and the staff is extremely friendly (ten times friendlier than another Hunan cuisine restaurant, Alvin Garden!). As for the interior, I like it. There are paper lanterns hanging from the ceiling, and vines running across the top that wraps around faux tree pillars. Furthermore at the back of the counter, there are hanging pinata-like food such as ginger, potato, red chilli, eggplant and cucumber. 

Huang's Beef Noodles

Huang's Beef Noodles is a small neighbourhood restaurant on Victoria Drive and has less than eight tables available. Walking in, the restaurant was full with two large families and a few single diners. One of the diners was friendly and quickly slurped up his noodles to give us a table!

Yu Xiang Yuan Restaurant 豫湘園 (2nd visit)

FIRST POST ON YU XIANG YUAN RESTAURANT 豫湘園 [HERE]

Yu Xiang Yuan is one of the few restaurants that I rave about after only one visit. On my first visit, every dish was above average and really good. Also, the owners and staff were friendly as well! My must orders from memory are the mouth watering chicken, xiao long bao and fried pork with green pepper.

Shanghai Shanghai 上海上海南翔小籠

Continuing with my interest in trying a few food stalls at Aberdeen Centre, Shanghai Shanghai was my next choice after Yougo Chicken. I pretty much went for the usual and obvious, pan fried buns as well as the xiao long bao. When visiting a food stall, I try to sample only a few dishes just in case, well… none tastes good.

Private Home Chinese Cuisine 一點心意

Is it sad having to check Instagram to remember the restaurants that I visited during the week? When I started my post, I forgot the reason for visiting Private Home Chinese. I remember wanting to try something different and was in the mood for Chinese; however, don't I usually eat Chinese? So why am I craving for it? 

After checking IG, I noticed that it has actually been days since I have had Chinese food! Asides from hot pot a few nights ago. So, either my memory needs some improvement or I need to start visiting more memorable restaurants! Private Home Chinese is a family owned restaurant that opened their second location on Kingsway Street, in Burnaby. The restaurant serves Northern China and Szechuan cuisine. Also, seafood is available but requires preordering which is somewhat a disappointment for impulse diners. 

The restaurant is newly renovated and has two sides for different seating arrangements. One side has a few tables for larger parties of more than six, and the other has plenty of booth seating arrangements and tables in the centre. The interior has a black and red scheme and there are red plastic booth seats which are easy to clean, as well as black coloured tables and chairs. Furthermore, the restaurant has a relaxing atmosphere and a couple of TVs tuned to the mandarin channel, which gives the impression that customers will never be rushed. 

On a Saturday evening, the restaurant was fairly empty and we were greeted by a friendly waitress. 

Taiwan Beef Noodle King

So… it seems like I have been craving for noodles in the last couple of months. I am pretty much a poser when it comes to eating noodles and only eat around five to ten strands, literally. However, lately I have been wanting to eat noodles and can finish a whole bowl, probably because it is nice for a change and something different for me. Taiwan Beef Noodle King is a small family owned restaurant with the husband working at the back of the house and the wife overseeing the front. Despite the somewhat small restaurant, the interior is well ventilated and has a high ceiling as well as spacious comfortable seating arrangements.

NOODLE SOUP WITH STEWED BEEF AND BEEF TENDON, BEEF IN CHINESE PANCAKE, PAN FRIED PORK DUMPLINGS, MARINATED EGG, MARINATED DRIED TOFU AND MARINATED BEEF TRIPE, STEAMED JUICY DUMPLING, XIAO LONG BAO, AND STEWED BEEF NOODLE IN SOUP.

Yu Xiang Yuan Restaurant 豫湘園

REVISIT POST ON YU XIANG YUAN 豫湘園 [HERE]

A restaurant I wanted to visit for a while is Yu Xiang Yuan on Fraser Street. On the nights of Taste Good Wonton Seafood and Golden House Seafood, BF did not want to stop here because of the "meh" looking exterior. Although if talking about a restaurants' exterior, Golden House Seafood's is equivalent to here as well as most Chinese late night restaurants, so bad argument on his end. Yu Xiang Yuan is known for serving fresh housemade noodles which is also what I have been craving for! The restaurant has a homey vibe and is somewhat small, with only ten tables and two larger tables for eight to ten people. Luckily on a Saturday evening the restaurant was not very busy, however, I would expect long line ups in the future.

XIAO LONG BAO, FRIED PORK WITH GREEN PEPPER, DRAGGING NOODLES WITH BEEF AND VEGETABLES IN SOUP, CHICKEN WITH SPECIAL HOT SAUCE, BEEF PANCAKE AND STEAMED PORK AND CHINESE BOK CHOY DUMPLINGS.

Kalvin's Szechuen Restaurant 松林居

Kalvin's Szechuen is a small family owned Taiwanese cuisine restaurant. By small, I mean there are only nine tables in the restaurant.

Luckily, on a Sunday evening we were fortunate to grab a seat without waiting. Kalvin's Szechuen also sells housemade frozen goods (dumplings, xiao long baos and buns) and unfortunately we were seated by the freezer which was quite cold. In addition, the restaurant gets quite chilly, especially when customers walked in and out.