Modern City Chinese Restaurant 新上海酒家: water, please!

Near the corner of 41st and West Boulevard, this is a popular location. Though the restaurant has changed numerous times until finally it's a Shanghai restaurant now. Of course, the star of a Shanghai restaurant has got to be the xiao long bao (小笼包) - dumplings with soup inside. I'm always afraid of burning my tongue because the soup inside stays hot for quite a while!

xiao long bao 小笼包 ($5.50 for 6)

I really enjoyed the xiao long baos at this restaurant as the skin was thin and the soup was warm.

烧卖

Siu mai (烧卖) are one of my favourite Chinese dim sums. The presentation of this dish, in my opinion, was horrible. Why did they put it in such a big bamboo basket? The dumplings are already small, but that just makes them look smaller, unappetizing, and not worth my money.

Rice cakes with meat and vegetables in soy sauce 上海炒年糕 ($9.98)

Those who know me knows I love chewy rice cakes. I love Shanghai style fried rice cakes so I just had to order this dish. I loved how the vegetables were entangled with the rice cakes and the pork was perfect. However, one thing really wrong - way too salty. I really wonder if they've forgotten and put salt in it twice! Water, please! 

Braised gluten with mushrooms $5.95

When I first saw "braised gluten" on the menu, I did not know what exactly gluten looks like as I thought it was just some kind of protein found in wheat. Well, that's what gluten looks like. As a food itself, it is better known as wheat gluten and you can get it by washing dough with water until all the starch is gone. Apparently, this is often used as a meat substitute due to its texture. It was somewhat chewy and juicy as it has absorbed the sauce. This dish is a popular in Shanghai restaurants and is served as a cold appetizer. 

steamed dumplings

I haven't gotten around to updating this post so it was a while since I've taken these pictures. Unfortunately, I've forgotten the name and what exactly this last dish was. Some sort of steamed dumplings, and from the picture, I'm guessing one was shrimp and the other veggie. 

Modern City Chinese Restaurant is a pencil menu, in which you just check off your orders from a piece of paper. Overall, they did not fail in the star of a Shanghai restaurant - the xiao long bao (pork dumplings with soup) were great. Other than that, their other dishes that we ordered weren't exactly impressive.

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Corner 23 萬巒豬腳: Pig Feet and Pork Hocks

Corner 23 is located, as the name implies, right at the corner of 23rd Ave. and Cambie Street. It's a Taiwanese bubble tea place and can be super packed at night, as it is conveniently across from the King Edward Canada Line station. No worries if they're full, guess who's beside them? Hong Kong style cafe - Copa Cafe!

So what's the Chinese name for Corner 23? It actually has nothing to do with a corner or the number 23. The Chinese name directly translates to "Wan Luan pig feet" - Wan Luan is a rural place in Taiwan. Apparently, there are "Corner 23's" in Taiwan too, featuring their signature dish, Wan Luan pork hock. Though I've been to Corner 23 many times, but I've never gotten their signature dish as the thought of eating pork hock or pig feet did not seem very appealing to me. But after seeing people from other tables eating it, I decided to give it a try. You can order just pork hock, or with noodles/rice set. 

Wan Luan Pork Hock rice set

The sauce is the magic in this dish. So, I'd recommend getting the rice set so you can thoroughly enjoy the sauce (since you can really mix sauce in noodle soup).  I've never been a fan of eating skin - I don't eat fish skin, chicken skin, and definitely not a great fan of pig feet skin. However, the meat was tender, but tasteless without the sauce, so remember to dip it into the sauce.

On another visit, I got the seafood milk hot pot set. When I think of hot pot, I think about all the raw fatty beef that people gather around a pot to cook in a tasty soup base. However, this is not that at all. It's only for one person and everything in the pot is cooked, even though there is fire beneath keeping it warm. This was very tasty but the milk seemed water down and not the fresh smell of warm milk. Though still lots of yummy variety of seafood in the pot.

Seafood milk hotpot

My friend got the five-spice chicken set which came with a bowl of rice, and some veggies. The chicken definitely had a lot of flavour and was cooked nicely. However, I don't think everyone will like unique flavour that it creates with the 5 spices.

And of course, what is going to a bubble tea place without having some bubble tea? Their bubble tea is OK, neither the best nor the worst. Ok, their bubbles are good and have a consistent chewiness. However, it is their addition of powder flavour that I dislike. So, I'd suggest sticking with tea or milk tea and not to get any exotic fruit flavours - the mango one is an exception - very good.

Mango Milk Tea Bubble Tea - to go!

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Ken's Chinese Restaurant 南軒中西美食: Chinese-Style Afternoon Tea

Sometimes, I just want to go to a Hong Kong style cafe because they're fast, affordable, yummy, and satisfying. Well, not as fast as the ones in Hong Kong....except there might be a line up for seats in Hong Kong since there's always so many people, everywhere, all the time.

Here, afternoons are usually pretty quiet for restaurants. That's why Ken's Chinese Restaurant has a special offer of 10% off starting at 2:30pm to 5pm. I ordered from their Special Set menu which comes with soup of the day and a drink. I got one of my favourites of all time... 

Baked seafood rice

Yes, that's right - baked seafood rice! Just looked at how nicely it's baked. Now let's dissect it a bit.

baked seafood rice

What's in it? Big shrimps (or are those prawns? I can't tell),  slices of fish and squid, scallops, mushrooms - all covered in melted cheese and creamy sauce. Wow, I think I just made it sound better than it tasted. But you can never go wrong with the baked seafood rice, it's like the complete package for a seafood fan.  

As a lover of thick noodles, I also chose the Shanghai Stir fried noodles. Now this was mostly noodles - it could have definitely use more meat/cabbage. 

Shanghai stir-fried noodles 上海粗炒面

Getting a set meal makes me feel complete. For soup of the day, I got to choose vegetable or creamy soup and I chose the creamy soup. Now it does not look very good and it wasn't. It was kind of watered-down. Optimistically, at least it didn't fill me up before the main dishes came.

Soup of the day - creamy soup

As for drinks, you can choose from the typical list of drinks at a Hong Kong style cafe in cold/hot:  

- Hong Kong style milk tea 港式奶茶

- Hong Kong style coffee

- Hong Kong style half coffee half tea 鴛鴦

- Hong Kong style lemon tea

- Lemon and honey 

- Almond 杏仁霜

- Ovaltine 阿華田

- Horlicks 好立克

... and the list goes on....

Hong Kong style milk tea 

Almond drink 杏仁霜

 I believed the entire bill came to less than $20. I've also heard of their late night dinner with all you can eat congee. In Cantonese, that's probably called "siu yeh" Hahaha. They're opened until 1am - perfect for those night owls! I'd loved to come by here on a late night for "siu yeh" :)

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City 1 Cafe: Laksa Soup Noodles

City 1 Cafe is located in the King Edward Safeway Square and can be easily missed. This place have never really caught my eye so I'm so glad my friend suggested to eat here. Yes, I'm trying to be more observant now. Their menu is simple and their specialty seemed to be the Hainanese chicken as their menu features these: few pieces of chicken with a bowl of rice, half a chicken with 3 bowls of rice, or a whole chicken with 5 bowls of rice. I couldn't make up my mind whether to try the Hainanese chicken or the laksa noodle soup, but I ended up ordering the noodle soup and decided to try the Hainanese chicken next time with a larger group.

Laksa noodle soup

I was happy to see that the laksa noodle soup came with two pieces of Hainanese chicken as well as fried tofu, fish cake, and some parsley. It was very flavourful and of course, a little spicy. The boneless Hainanese chicken was extremely tender and I definitely wanted more.

I will definitely come back here for their Hainanese chicken!

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Landmark Hot Pot House 春秋火鍋: Fresh ingredients, nice cars, & birthday song

At a hot pot restaurant, aren't customers their own chefs? The chefs in the kitchen....don't they just wash the veggies and slice up some meat? Yup, I totally forgot about the seasoning and crafting up the soup base. Chef Raymond Cheung of Landmark Hot Pot House is one of the 8 who has achieved the title of the 2013 Chinese MasterChefs. The restaurant has also won numerous awards for being the "Best Hot Pot Restaurant" and for some of their signature dishes. 

We were at a table of 8 so we had two hot pot bowls. On my side, we decided to get two different soup bases: SiChuan Mala spicy (四州麻辣) and preserved eggs and parsley (皮蛋莞茜). This was convenient so that the spicy eaters and the non-spicy eaters were both happy. 

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Copa Cafe 高柏餐廳

The "other side" 

I met up with my two music friends (we're music nerds when we're together) for lunch at Copa cafe right at noon on a Saturday. They were packed and we were waiting for about 10 minutes until they finally decided to open the other side, which has 8 tables. (I didn't know they had another side and I don't know why they didn't open it earlier).

When seated, they served us the typical tea you find at HK style cafes.

We ordered from the mini lunch menu (which isn't really that mini) and comes with a complimentary drink. Ever since I first ate baked seafood rice a few years ago, I have grown to like cheesy baked rice. This time, I got the baked chicken steak on rice in Portuguese style and chose Horlicks for my drink.

Baked chicken steak on rice in Portuguese style 芝士葡汁焗焼鸡饭  $6.95

Baked chicken steak on rice in Portuguese style 芝士葡汁焗焼鸡饭

My friend seemed to have enjoyed her order of bacon, lettuce, and tomato with toasted white bread. The ingredients were fresh and the salad was creamy and had fruits.

BLT sandwich with salad $5.95

The scrambled egg and shrimp with fried rice noodle took the longest time to arrive. I wonder if the menu actually meant flat instead of fried, because that looks like non-fried rice noodles to me. The flat rice noodles would have been better if they were separated a bit instead of being stuck together in chunks. Hence, it made it difficult to get the creamy sauce in every bite and as a result, was plain. I don't believe this met my friend's expectations as there's some discrepancy between the actual dish and the menu. Due the the wait to be seated and for the dish to come, my poor assumption that we could be done with 1.5 hours was wrong. I apologize for that as she had to pack most of it.

Scrambled egg and shrimp with fried rice noodle 滑蛋蝦仁炒河 $8.95

Horlicks 好立克

Almond 杏仁双

Hot chocolate with whipped cream

As with HK style cafes, you can choose the your drink from a list including Horlicks, Ovaltine, almond, HK style lemon tea, HK style milk tea, etc. Like Ovaltine, Horlicks is a name of a company and typically used to refer to the powder malt drink. I have a thing for malt so I got that.

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Book Kyung Ban Jeom (북경반점): Jajangmyeon and Black Day

Tteokbokki is my favourite Korean dish, hands down. However, I do really like Korean-Chinese fusion food too.

Book Kyung Ban Jeom is one of the Korean-Chinese restaurants in Vancouver. Though this is one of the more Korean than Chinese (food-wise and staff-wise) restaurants. After ordering, we were served with sides - yellow pickled radish and kimchi white radish

Sides

Our first dish was the sweet and sour chicken, kinda like the Chinese sweet and sour pork. The chicken was crispy and flavourful.

tangsuyuk - crispy sweet and sour chicken

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Orange Corner: BBT, crepes, Taiwanese snacks and light meals

Orange Corner has definitely changed since my last visit, which was quite a while ago. This place is a cozy, two-level Taiwanese bubble tea and crepe restaurant with two locations now! Kerrisdale was first, then another one opened in Metrotown. I've only been to the one at Kerrisdale and I remember when they first started, they had comfy couches and cute cushions for people to hang around. I believe they got rid of that stuff now (correct me if I'm wrong), but I'm not 100% sure because I sat on the second floor this time.

I got one of the taiwanese meals - eggplant. I love eggplant with rice. Just thinking about it makes my mouth water. Eggplants from restaurants always taste different then the ones cooked at home (because I think they fry it?). Like usual, the Taiwanese meals came with some sides dishes. This restaurant had broccoli and corn with pan-fried eggs. 

Eggplant with rice meal set

I've definitely had better eggplant than this one. Unfortunately, I do not think I'd order this again here because it wasn't what I had expected. There were too little eggplant and way too much sauce.

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Asa Sushi & BBT Cafe: Kerrisdale

When I found out that my friend was back in Vancouver, we spontaneously set up a meet up for Japanese food. We settled with Asa Sushi, located in the Kerrisdale community. 

Asa Sushi (I shouldn't walk and take pictures)

Dinner Box A 

My friend got Dinner Box A (assorted nigiri sushi, tempura, chicken teriyaki with rice) which came with miso soup, salad, and ebi sunomono.

Roll Combo C ($11.95)

I'm not much of a fan of miso soup nor ebi sunomono, so I settled with Combo C (Alaska roll, dynamite roll, and California roll). As I was eating this, I realized that it was quite "boring" because technically, I had 2 sets of California roll, as the Alaska roll is basically California roll with a piece of salmon on the top. I would suggest they mix up their menu a bit so there's more variety in their combos.

Asa Sushi Bar

Asa Sushi

Asa Sushi is a fairly small place, but since we went on a weekday, the service wasn't slow at all. I think this place is one of the better places for good sushi but nothing too outstanding.

__________________________________

We had a satisfied tummy, but having not seen each other for quite a while, we wanted to continue with our chats and updates. There are a lot of bubble tea places in Kerrisdale and we chose to get a drink from BBT Cafe.

Almond milk tea

They have a range of drinks - slush, fresh juice, milk tea, brewed tea, and even coffee. I went with a hot almond milk tea even though I rarely get hot drinks from a bubble tea place, except that day was especially cold. I was still in food coma from the sushi so I decided to skip the pearls. My friend got a hot milk tea with pearls so it came with a spoon for the pearls. Like most bubble tea places being cash only, this one was no exception. 

Chats over hot drinks :)

BBT Cafe

We reminisced over our last visit at BBT Cafe a long time ago with a whole group of friends and yummy food that they offer. So, we decided that the next time we meet up, we'd have to get the group to BBT Cafe for dinner for some Taiwanese food.

     

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Kirin Seafood Restaurant 麒麟海鮮酒家: my favourite dessert

When a baby turns one month old, it is a pretty big deal in my culture. They can finally be brought out to be formally introduced to extended family and relatives at a banquet celebration In one of my previous posts, I mentioned about my cousin's new baby and the celebration we already had, but today was a much larger one. 

I feel like Kirin Seafood Restaurant has been constantly winning awards these past few years. I've been here for both dim sum and dinner and they don't fail to impress me with their high-end customer service, seafood, and of course, prices. I've only come here with my family and when I eat out with my family, I struggle to take good pictures. I wonder if other food bloggers have faced troubles like this.  It's difficult to stop everyone from indulging into a dish when it is placed down just so I can take a picture and I hate to be a pain. Plus, my family is especially fast at getting the food and even serving it to each other. 

Kirin Seafood Restaurant

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Deer Garden Signatures 鹿園魚湯米線

Deer Garden is a HK style cafe, currently with 2 locations in Richmond and 1 in Vancouver. My friends and I visited the one in Vancouver on Fraser Street at around 3pm and they were packed! I believe they're known for their fish soup noodles; there was a whole menu for customizing your own soup noodles in which you got to choose your soup base, type of noodles, toppings, etc. I wasn't feeling like noodles in soup so I turned to the other menus that they offered. 

Apparently they have special "mini" menus between 3pm to 6pm and from 9pm onwards so no wonder they were packed! I got the teriyaki unagi with egg on rice from their mini set meals. 

Teriyaki unagi with egg on rice $6.75

Teriyaki ungai with egg on rice

Even though it is in the "mini set" menu, I felt the portion was just right for me and the price is very reasonable. As you can see in the picture, the egg is just the way I like it. When the egg

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Po Kong Vegetarian Restaurant 普光素食

My cousin gave birth to a baby boy last month and it hasn't been a full month yet, but we had a small dinner celebration. We will have a much bigger one (with more family members) in 3 weeks at Kirin Seafood Restaurant. According to the Lunar calendar, today is the first day of December and on the first day of each month, Taoists do not eat meat. I'm not Taoist, but my aunt follows some of their traditions so we went for a vegetarian restaurant today. 

When it comes to eating vegetarian in Vancouver, there aren't that many choices unless you count going to any restaurant and ordering a salad. Personally, eating a vegetarian meal to me means eating no meat, hence only veggies, fruits, beans, etc. I'm aware that some vegetarians may crave meat so some vegetarians have dishes that look and taste like meat, but are made from non-meat products such as tofu and beans. I mean, can you tell that the skewer dish below is actually "fake meat" or that the honey chicken isn't honey chicken?

no-meat skewers

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Kam Do Restaurant & Bakery 金都餐廳餅店

I love bakeries and freshly baked goods. Among the abundant Chinese bakeries here in Vancouver and Richmond, Kam Do is my favourite for winter melon cakes (alternatively called sweetheart cake). In Chinese, they're called 老婆饼, which directly translates to "wife's cookie". Why such a name for a pastry? There are a few legends that describes the origin of this pastry. One legend says that winter melon cakes were invented by a man and dedicated them to his wife. His wife had sold herself in return for money that was needed for medicine for her father-in-law.

I've tried many winter melon cakes from many different Chinese bakeries here, and I have to say that I fell in love with Kam Do's after the first bite. Be gentle with them as the outside is flaky and delicate, but the inside is filled with a paste that makes it chewy. I think Kam Do does an excellent job of making the outside flaky as well as the taste of the paste and the degree of chewiness. And as you may know, I love chewy food! 

老婆饼 Winter melon cake

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