Entries categorized as ‘Asian’
There are few things I love to eat more than dumplings so when Sherman put the word out for a Shanghainese dinner at The City Temple of Shanghai Restaurant, it didn’t take long for me to respond and a few days later Elaine, Kim, Sherman and I (with some other non-blogging guests) sat down to a feast. I’ve been to City Temple a couple of times before on the recommendation of fellow Foodist Nancy Wu and I was looking forward to the pillowy soft dumpling goodness that comes out of this Main Street hole the wall. When he made the reservation, Sherman also ordered us a Peking duck, so we had that to look forward to as well.
We ordered 2 types of dumplings, the duck (which comes in two dishes – the skin and the meat) and several other delicious sounding things from the multicolored strips of menu tacked to the wall.
The duck (skin) was the first to arrive and I’m sad to say that it wasn’t amazing. Traditionally, it’s served with a crepe, green onion, cucumber and hoisin sauce and here was no different. The skin was crispy and salty and I enjoyed it on its own but the crepes were cold and a little chewy, not to mention unmatched to the portion sizes of duck skin, meaning that there were a few mouthfuls of dry crepe for every bite of duck deliciousness. The duck meat was served stir-fried with lettuce wraps and this one I found to be very tasty.
But enough about the duck! We were here for the dumplings and they came in spades. We got two orders each of both pan-fried and xiao long bao, my favorite. Good, flavourful broth served nice and hot – they’re not as good as Lin’s but I’d been too long without an XLB fix so I can’t complain at all. The potstickers, however, were better and here you have some photos of both sides of them.
After that there were some tan tan noodles, fried noodles, and fried pork with rice cake that paled in comparison to the first part of the meal. Tan tan are some of my favorite flavours but they could have been stronger here and the fried pork I could have done without entirely.
I’ve been wanting to compile a xiao long bao database for a while now and I think I need to get on that, so I can correctly position City Temple in the mix. I’m sure I’ll be back, maybe just not before I get back to Lin’s and Peaceful.
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City Temple of Shanghai
3755 Main Street, Vancouver
Cash only.
Categories: Asian · Chinese
Tagged: Chinese, Vancouver, xiao long bao, ethniceats.ca, degan beley, xlb, Shanghainese, peking duck
Dim Sum at Jade Dynasty found us ordering the usual assortment of items; sui mai, har gaw, taro cake, etc. until someone noticed the sign on the wall advertising snake soup. I don’t think there was any doubt in anyone’s mind that we were going to order it, but I for one was wishing it wasn’t 11 in the morning.
It came dressed in ginger and garlic and onion, beautifully decorated with chrysanthemum petals but with all the spices in the soup, it could have been anything. In this case, snake tastes like chicken if the chicken is stewed in ginger and garlic.
The rest of the dim sum was passable, but the xiaolongbao were a bit limp which is what I judge everything by so I likely won’t be back in a hurry.
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Jade Dynasty
137 Pender Street, Vancouver
Categories: Asian · Chinese · adventures in dining
Tagged: adventure, Chinatown, degan beley, dim sum, ethniceats.ca, snake, soup, Vancouver
I’ve been on a bit of a dumpling kick lately. Anyone who knows me knows how much I love xiaolongbao, or “soup dumplings” but since I’ve got a car it’s made roaming the golden city (Richmond) a whole lot easier.
Xiaolongbao are a magic kind of Shanghainese style dumpling made by cooling meaty gelatin and wrapping it around the pork filling inside the dumpling, becoming “soup” when the dumpling is cooked. They can be a bit tricky to eat without burning your tongue, but the risk is well worth it.
Dinesty has a great many dumplings on the coffee-book quality menu – a whole page, in fact. The xiaolongbao were ordered immediately, along with some pan-fried ones, and as man cannot live on dumplings alone, we also ordered the highly recommended ancient boil fish, pan-fried squid, and hand-cut noodles with seafood and pork.
And then we ordered dumplings for dessert. I told you I was on a kick.
The ancient boil fish soup (what a name!) was spicy and flavourful, but in a way that washed out the meat of the fish. All you got a hit of oil and pepper and the flavouring was pretty interesting, but I would have liked it to be a bit more balanced and I wouldn’t order it again. The noodles were better, offering chunks of seafood between the ropes of noodles, and the pan-fried squid was better still. As for the dumplings, they held together well and were nicely flavoured and are the menu item I’d go back for. I preferred the xialongbao to the pan-fried and the red bean dessert dumplings, but then I always do.
Here you can see the dumpling makers at work, preparing for the next day:
dumpling making from Degan Beley on Vimeo.
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Dinesty
160-8111 Ackroyd Road, Richmond
Categories: Asian · Chinese
Tagged: Chinese, dim sum, dining, dumpling, review, richmond, squid, Vancouver, video, xiaolongbao, xlb, yam cha
I don’t have a whole lot to say about Pho Van other than it wins the award hands down for best decor. Most pho places have tables and chairs and that’s about it, but here is so much neon you might mistake it for a vegas casino or a nightclub. And in case you’re not impressed with disco lights, there is also a huge aquarium and TV with teary Asian chanteuses in sparkly prom dresses to keep you entertained. Don’t let the ho-hum expression on the guy in the photo fool you – this place is happening.
The pho is decent but not outstanding. I’ve had the both the “white people beef noodle” and the pho dac biet as well as spring rolls and they’re fine, I’d just rather go to Le Do if I’m driving across town.
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Pho Van
3370 Fraser Street, Vancouver
Categories: Asian · Vietnamese
Tagged: beef, brisket, east vancouver, neon, noodle, pho, soup, spring rolls, Vancouver
Chinatown got a little bit cooler last night. With the exception of the Alibi Room on one end and Campagnolo on the other, the dining and drinking establishments are not exactly what you’d call sexy. But former Chambar bartender Tanis Ling’s Chinatown brasserie, Bao Bei opened officially last night. A quirky, cute decor backed up by serious bartending talent and a large, creative menu, it’s a gem set to shine as bright as it’s brand new neon sign.
I tried the pineapple skewer with chili lime salt, spicy wontons in chili sauce, shao bing (sesame bun with braised pork), clamshell mantou short rib dumplings, pot stickers, duck congee, and even managed to sample some of the tea eggs, crispy daikon cake, avocado ice cream and mango pudding from our neighbours. We wanted badly to try the fried bananas but frankly it would have just been disgusting to still be eating at that point.
To wash it down we had an Asian-inspired margarita with tangerine peel salted rim, a Sichuan pepper infused bloody mary, an enormous pina colada, the popular “Health Tonic” with beet and pear juice and my favorite of the list, Madame Chiang with gin, Fernet Branca and grapefruit juice. There were also a couple of “Tanis” specialties including a nameless one I loved with orange blossom water, Lillet, gin and basil.
Sipping on a pina colada, complete with umbrella, amongst the mis-matched collection of Chinese art and ephemera felt a little out of place and I was surprised at the “traditional” cocktails on the menu. The Asian influence was obvious in several of them, but with a menu so solidly Chinese and a room that pulled off the concept of “Chinese brasserie” endearingly, I thought there would be bigger leaps. That may be coming soon, however, judging by the appearance of a candied kumquat and an unfamiliar dried bitter citrus fruit.
The place was packed last night, a trend that will likely continue with The Keefer opening soon and the Chinatown revitalization project forging ahead.
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Bao Bei
163 Keefer Street, Vancouver
Categories: Asian · Chinese
Tagged: bar, brasserie, Chinatown, degan beley, dine out, dining, ethniceats.ca, restaurant, Vancouver
Photo Credit: ecstaticist.
So I’ve dedicded to start a new project for dining in 2010. The tagline of this site is “Sampling the World’s Cuisine Without Leaving Vancouver” and so instead of of traipsing around Vancouver’s culinary delights in the random way I have been for the last (almost) 2 years, I am going to present my finds country by country.
I still have a bit of a backlog of reviews, so I may post those interspersed with the project and if I feel really keen, I may even post some recipes.
First stop on the grand tour: North America. Got any favorites you’d like to recommend?
Categories: African · Asian · Australian · Belgian · Cambodian · Caribbean · Chinese · Cuban · Dutch · Eastern European · El Salvadoran · Ethiopian · Filipino · French · German · Greek · Himalayan · Indian · Indonesian · Irish · Italian · Jamaican · Japanese · Korean · Latin · Lebanese · Malaysian · Mexican · Nepalese · News · Persian · Romanian · Scandinavian · Singaporean · Spanish · Srilankan · Taiwanese · Thai · Tunisian · Vancouver52 · Vietnamese
Tagged: restaurant, cuisine, Vancouver, culture, travel, ethniceats.ca, degan beley, world, dining, dine out, project, Vancouver52, 52 in Vancouver
September 9, 2009 · 1 Comment
Every country has some form of dumpling and meat on a stick shows up all over the world too, from Indonesian satay to American county fair corndogs. Why? Because somewhere along the line we discovered that putting a piece of meat on a stick was a handy way of cooking and eating our protein. And also because it tastes good.
Yesterday saw us sampling Vietnamese brochettes and sugar cane, today we go to the Richmond Night Market and have siu mai and lamb skewers.
Meat on a stick is made for festivals and fairs and night markets. What better way to wander around and eat than to have your meal handily presented on a bit of wood? You have a handle. You have a utensil. You’re golden.
Unsurprisingly, there are several kinds of meats-on-sticks to be had at the Richmond Night Market - the street meat epicentre - as well as a new item that showed up this year, the trendy “potato-spiral on a stick“. I don’t think it will last, but you never know. It sure looked popular.
In terms of meat, there is sausage on a stick, siu mai and whole grills full of lamb, beef and pork skewers. While there is nothing wrong with smokey, charcoal-grilled meat, especially cooked outdoors so you can smell the meat cooking a block away, I usually pass it up in favour of the many more interesting things on offer. The siu mai are flavourful and fatty dumplings, 4 to a stick that are a perennial favorite and the BBQ squid, rubbery and tentacly and saucy, is an absolute must.
Richmond Night Market is on Friday, Saturday and Sunday nights until the end of September and then you’ll have to wait until next year.
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Richmond Night Market
Richmond, behind IKEA.
Categories: Asian · Chinese
Tagged: degan, degan beley, dim sum, ethniceats.ca, market, meat on a stick, richmond, richmond night market, siu mai, skewers, summer
I like going on adventures, even if they are small adventures; the kind where maybe nothing overly exciting happens, but you go somewhere new and eat something new and have fun doing it. So a friend and I ended up in Richmond at Shanghai Wonderful a couple of weeks ago. He’d already been to Shanghai River and so we decided to do a little compare and contrast on the xiao long bao, soup dumplings. Anyone who knows me knows how much I love Shanghai soup dumplings and I even made a little video of how to eat them properly.
First you pick them up delicately from the steamer, so as not to rip the packet en route to your mouth. Then you tear a little hole in it and slurp out some of the juice before putting the whole dumpling in your mouth. Just tucking in without caution can result in you getting “soup” all over the place or burning your mouth. Consider yourself warned.
The XLB at Shanghai Wonderful were soupy and hot but could have done with some more attention in the flavour department as they were not very fragrant or flavourful.
I was informed that they weren’t as good as Shanghai River and in fact I don’t even think they’re as good as Lin’s, so it was a good thing that we also ordered an entire fish (yellow fish in red sauce which reminded me a little too much of Dr. Seuss) and half a duck. There were also noodles. Needless to say, there were a lot of leftovers.
I quite like unassuming Shanghai-style cafes that can pump out anything from 10 pages of menu and make it taste delicious and Shanghai Wonderful is one of the better ones. Next time I’ll bring even more people so we can order even more food. Groan.
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Shanghai Wonderful
8380 Lansdowne Road #110, Richmond
Categories: Asian · Chinese
Tagged: degan, duck, dumpling, ethnic eats, ethniceats.ca, fish, noodles, restaurant, rice, richmond, smoked duck, soup dumplings, tea, xiaolongbao
Someone asked me the other day where I would take foodie guests to eat in Vancouver and even though I did have guests in the summer, I still gave it a good think before deciding to post my top 5 here. To some extent it would depend on the guest (tastes, sense of culinary adventure, favoured cuisines, etc.), your relationship to them (romantic, family, big group, etc) and time of year (patio, view), but here’s a short list:
1. Hapa Izakaya
1479 Robson St, Vancouver
Hapa is first because I take everyone to Hapa. Sexy, modern, exotic and delicious with an inexpensive and varied menu, it does a fantastic job of showcasing Vancouver’s Asian cuisine and satisfying a wide swath of people.
Fresh fish, decadent ebi mayo, cold sake in bamboo carafes. Very reasonably priced. No resos between 6 and 8.
2. Boneta
1 West Cordova, Vancouver
Boneta’s tag line is “Boneta loves you” but I just want to squeeze them and tell them I love them right back. How can you not love Boneta? Fresh, flirty and fabulous, it manages to be somehow luxurious and casual at the same time. By which I mean that you can eat the best carpaccio (bison! with quail egg!) in the neighbourhood and not have to dress up for it, and you can likewise sip a glass of bubbly at the table next to Jennifer Beals and feel absolutely at home. The staff work hard to maintain this balance and I think that the emphasis on creating a welcoming environment is very Vancouver. That and it’s filled with local art, locally harvested products and minor local celebrities.
3. The Refinery
1115 Granville Street, Vancouver
Having recently celebrated their official grand opening, I suspect that the once quiet room at The Refinery is now going to be packed, but with good reason. Amazing cocktails like Lauren Mote‘s prize-winning Charred Bourbon Sour (in house “house” bitters, bourbon, lemon, egg white, charred american oak and caramelized coconut syrup), lots of B.C. wines and locally sourced product wherever possible.
The staff is incredble, the room is gorgeous and icing on this delicious cake is that the place is head-to-toe sustainable. Ocean-wise fish and on-site filtered water, organic and (where possible) homemade juices in the cocktails, recycled wood tables and wood fixtures and even a bike storage locker. The only thing that would make it more quintessentially Vancouver would be yoga on the roof.
4. Raincity Grill
1193 Denman Street, Vancouver
I haven’t actually been to Raincity Grill yet, but it’s a local favorite of many friends and foodists and I think has to be included on this list because of its dedication to West Coast cuisine and locally sourced food.
I used to frequent Aurora for that reason, RIP.
5. Dim Sum…somewhere
Doesn’t really matter where, but you need to go for dim sum if you’re visiting Vancouver. Har gow…siu mai, these are common words in the food-loving Vancouverite’s vocabulary and with so many quality asian restaurants, in my mind it’s a requisite stop. Happy Valley is a good choice, or Dai Tung or any of the fine establishments in Richmond. The Richmond Night Market is also a perfectly acceptable substitute and has the added benefit of being able to buy miles and miles of crap merchandise for your guests to take home with them.
What do you think? Where would you take an out of town guest?
Categories: Asian · Chinese · Japanese
Tagged: carpaccio, cocktails, culture, dai tung, dim sum, downtown, ebi mayo, english bay, fish, gastown, har gow, local, restaurants, richmond night market, sake, sustainable, Vancouver, west end
When you start hanging out in a new neighbourhood, you inevitably start to frequent the local eateries. I recently moved to Oak Street, so it didn’t take very long before I ended up at Hiroshi’s Sushi Creations, a couple of blocks away.
I have to admit that I was a bit apprehensive about the “sushi creations” part of the name and while I didn’t order any, there are several of these on the menu. Tuna with pumpkin or mustard and cilantro, for example. I had my standard chopped scallop cone as well as salmon nigiri, unagi and negitoro with lots of green tea to wash it down and I was satisfied. The salmon was limp and lifeless, but the negitoro and scallops had good texture and taste. The unagi in particular was full of flavour.
This is a tiny spot that was bustling at lunch and I’m sure does a roaring take-out business as well. I’m sure I’ll be back as long as I’m in the neighbourhood.
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Hiroshi’s Sushi Creations
3720 Oak Street, Vancouver
Categories: Asian · Japanese
Tagged: frozen, negitoro, nigiri, salmon, sashimi, sushi, unagi
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