If you haven’t ever been to a hot pot establishment, I highly recommend it. The way it works is like this – you decide on your broth (or broths if you’re fancy – they come in a yin-yang shaped separated bowl) and then your uncooked ingredients and mark your choices on a paper form. You can do all you can eat or order specific items. It’s not cheap but it is good value and you’ll often see tables of students and families crammed in behind trays of meat. Fatty Cow has a retail seafood sister operation so there are good deals on fish and seafood.

We ordered the “hot and spicy” broth (you can tell by the chilies floating in it) and the short rib soup and got to it, dunking pieces of rib eye and bok choy and knotted noodles and countless other things first into the broth and then into one of the sauces – chili oil, chili paste, peanut or the house special sauce with cilantro – and chilies.

They seemed pretty happy to explain the process for newbies but I did get a kick out of the fact that there are no warnings about having a bowl of hot soup on a burner in the middle of your table – common sense will have to prevail on this one – although we were warned about the spicy broth.

Near the end of the meal a couple of last plates appeared with some favorites we wanted to have one last bite of – the wontons were particularly good, as well as the mushrooms and the rib eye – but also a few unidentifiable items. I was pretty sure that there was bitter melon (which we hadn’t ordered) and we were pretty sure that this was some kind of “meat”:

which we also hadn’t ordered. Turned out to be pork blood cake which Matt promptly nicknamed, “the reviewer’s special”. Sounded like a dare to me, so in it went into the spicy broth, then the chili oil and then the house special sauce and finally into my mouth. It was interesting. I’ve had plenty of varieties of blood sausage but never sliced like this and the texture didn’t sit well with me – kind of like a firm, meaty tofu – but it tasted alright. Next time I go back though, I’m having a mess of spot prawns and oysters.

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Fatty Cow Seafood Hotpot
5108 Victoria Drive, Vancouver

The first stop was Well Tea bubble tea and Taiwanese restaurant, popular with students and young people. The choices were unlike anything I had had before; grenadine yeast juice, and caramel milk tea with tapioca noodles instead of pearls! I later found out that by “yeast” they meant yogurt which brings things a little closer to home but I had already ordered an Earl Grey milk tea with kanten, a type of agar that is lower in calories than the traditional tapioca.

Next we stopped in at Kam Do Bakery where we sampled a winter melon pastry (their signature treat) and an egg custard tart. Not having much of a sweet tooth, I would eat the winter melon pastry (also inexplicably called “old wife” pastry) again and again. It is a subtly sweet and gelled custard wrapped in a flakey pastry with the result being just rich and pleasing without being too rich or too sweet or too oily. Yum.

Alexandra Road is a jumble of all kinds of Asian restaurants sharing space. There are Malaysian, Taiwanese, Thai, both Japanese izakayas (gastropubs, really)  and traditional sushi joints, plus all types of Chinese eateries. At its inception in the late 80′s there were many Hong Kong style cafes, but now that immigrant patterns have changed and many more people are moving here from mainland China, the dining scene is starting to reflect that with Shanghainese and Beijing-style eateries.

Our first sit-down meal was at Cattle Cafe, a comforting Chinese-style diner with dishes like bakes seafood in cream sauce and choose your own noodles / sauce /topping. The photo above is of one of the most delicious laksa’s I’ve had in a while…a Malaysian style spicy soup with vermicelli noodles, brisket and basa fillet.

Some of the dishes were a little bit more adventurous (but no less delicious), like this unagi BBQ eel sandwich with cucumbers and sauce. Kind of like a Chinese grilled cheese sandwich, but then not really like it at all. I’m determined to recreate this for lunch this week.

The next stop was Nan-chuu by Gyoza King, a dark and sexy Japanese Izakaya where we sampled more strange and wondrous stuffs; chicken skin skewers, gizzard skewers, chicken hearts, salmon nori and more. It was the Hitachino Nest cask ale and the mushroom-bacon yakisoba that made me start planning a repeat visit. The beef tongue (below) was also spectacular, its sweet, rich flavours being complemented on all sides by the beer.

Finally we dragged our bellies into Jang Mo Jib, Korean for “mother-in-law” because she is the one running the kitchen while the rest of the family takes care of operations out front. Our guides had already ordered ahead for us and in short order out came soon dae jub see (blood sausage), jok bahl (BBQ pork feet), hae mool pah jun (seafood pancake), tohng gahl bee (BBQ short ribs) as well as some amazing glass noodles and an assortment of picked sweet potatoes and kimchi. 

Walking back to the skytrain, I started running down the list of strange delicacies we’d sampled…agar, bitter melon, chicken hearts, gizzards and skin, blood sausage, pig’s feet…I am an adventurous eater by most people’s standards and so I had had most of the “exotic” delicacies of the tour before, but I relished the idea of trying them as part of different cuisines and especially to be able to finally have a solid understanding of what Alexandra Road has to offer. Now there are only 197 restaurants to get through!

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Alexandra Road is between No. 3 Road and Garden City in the Golden Village area of Richmond.

Well Tea
4811 Hazelbridge Way, Richmond

Kam Do Bakery
1120 – 8391 Alexandra Road, Richmond

Cattle Cafe
1020 – 8580 Alexandra Road, Richmond

Nan Chuu Japanese Izakaya
1160-8391 Alexandra Road

Jang Mo Jib Korean Restaurant
8320 Alexandra Street, Richmond

A couple of days after the Richmond dinearound adventure, a friend invited me out to try Chen’s. Four Chinese restaurants in three days may seem excessive, but I’m  not one to turn down xiao long bao ever, so off we went.

Standing in line waiting for a table, the guy in front of me felt compelled to turn around and tell me how good the soup dumplings were. I grinned and said I had heard similar rumours until I realized that he was the same dude that had passed us in the parking lot with the Colorado plates. Colorado! That’s dedication. Tucked away in a strip mall in Richmond, I have no idea how he even found it, but he seemed pretty pleased to be there.

The first dish was the malantou, a bok choy type of dish, marinated and mixed with bean curd. It has a strange taste to it that I can’t quite put my finger on, but this being only the second time I’ve had it (the first at Suhang, only a couple of days prior), I clearly need a bigger sample set.

Next up was a noodle dish, in bean sauce, that was tangy and near perfect and then the beloved xiao long bao arrived. Soft and fragrant, they were a little too hot to eat at first so we balanced them on spoons, waiting for them to cool down. Until I have a row of XLB lined up in front of me, one from every shop in town (oh happy day!) it’s going to be pretty hard to rate them accurately. That said, I thought Chen’s dumplings were pretty top notch.

And then the pan-fried pork dumplings arrived at the table. Delectable goodness, they were thicker-skinned xiao long bao, steamed and then fried so that the outside crisped. Of course this made them even trickier to eat and we almost all made a mess, but it was worth it. I will be having these again and again.

The last dish, beef noodle with bean curd slices, was the only one that didn’t satisfy. Oily and spicy (with no complexity of flavours behind the heat), I worried as much about my sweater as I did about my tongue and finally abandoned the effort. It sure looks pretty tho:

What a great dining experience. I can’t wait to go back.

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Chen’s Shanghai Kitchen
8095 Park Road, Richmond

*Cash only*

It used to be that I thought Richmond was where the airport and IKEA were located and so I rarely made the trek, save when I was travelling or redecorating. But then the richness of the food culture opened up from the Richmond Summer Night Market to the splendours of Alexandra Road (with more than 200 Asian restaurants) – and now it’s a gastronomic destination in it’s own right. This is in large part due to the efforts of Tourism Richmond who recently invited me on a Northern China dinearound to a couple of restaurants specializing in key cuisines.

The first stop was the Point Zero Four Fusion Restaurant, a casual hot-pot and Chinese BBQ eatery frequented by students and families. When we arrived, a spread was already laid out for us, including a selection of cold appetizers, many of them pickled or cured in some way; Beijing-style pork “jelly” - boiled meat and pork skin allowed to gel into cubes, pickled Napa cabbage and lotus root, spicy black fungus, and beef slices with sour chili sui choy.

We filled up on hot pot cooked in two distinct broths (a milder chicken and scallion mix and a spicy chili soup) and served with two distinct sauces (sweet and sour Canton sauce and delectable Beijing bean curd and salted leek sauce) and BBQ’d skewers but there was a surprise. And then another.

A spicy chicken wing had been offered, almost as a dare. How bad could it be, I thought? And then it arrived at the table, coated in chilis and served with a “fire extinguisher” of frozen grapes and tomatoes.

I went slowly and had some grapes and while it was a little too hot to have much flavour, it wasn’t all that bad. I was the only one of the group to finish it all, but then some ”Chinese Famous Liquor” brand baijiu (56% proof rice wine, similar to grappa) was brought out and I was sure I was going to be breathing fire.

Somehow I managed to not kill my tastebuds and we continued on to secret Suhang, tucked in a corner of a strip mall. This is a more formal Shanghainese restaurant, specializing in some exotic delicacies. We had ma lan tou, a marinated bean curd and vegetable dish (made with a special type of leafy green, similar to spinach, that needs to be ordered from China and then flash-frozen), crispy smoked fish, gluten with sesame oil, peanuts and mushrooms, yellow fish deep-fried with seaweed and served with Worchestershire sauce.

But the pièce de résistance was a Hangzhou-style clay-baked chicken. Rice, gizzards, eggs and assorted other ingredients are wrapped in lotus leaf then covered in clay and baked for 5 hours in the oven. You have to order ahead for this one but then it arrives at dinnertime, looking like an asteroid on a plate. Deconstructed, it’s a delicious dish, but I’m not sure the same effect couldn’t be attained by roasting a chicken.

By this time our bellies were full to bursting but we still had one more stop and at least one more coveted item to sample. Anyone who reads this blog knows how much I love xiao long bao, those little dumplings filled with soup (and I’m sure some kind of edible crack), and Shanghai River has some of the best around. They arrived at the table and people dug in almost immediately, despite the temperature and despite the 2 previous dinners. They’re just that good. We also had an order of crab-filled xiao long bao, which I have only had at Joe’s Shanghai Restaurant in New York City. I don’t like them nearly as much as the pork dumplings (something aout the sea taste doesn’t come across as well) but these were miles better than theirs.  

Next up was a Peking duck with hoisin sauce. Traditionally divided into two dishes – the skin and then the meat – we had a platter of crispy fried duck skin wrapped in crepes with scallion and hoisin followed by stir-fried duck meat and lettuce wraps. Both were done well, although I’ve had more flavourful versions in other restaurants.

I was planning on skipping dessert, because I don’t normally have a sweet tooth and I was so full anyways, but all of them intrigued me; a sweet, milky dessert soup, deep fried dumplings with red bean paste and pink sugar, and sesame dumplings with peanut coating. This last one, the sesame and peanut deliciousness, has now made it into the dumpling love club along with the xiao long bao. It is not too sweet, actually even a bit salty, with a creamy inside. It wasn’t on the menu but Stacey, our guide, assured me it can be found at most Shanghainese places. Despite ordering something similar yet not at all the same at Chen’s a couple of days later, I plan on attempting to order it everywhere from now on.

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Point Zero Four Fusion Restaurant
160-8500 Alexandra Rd.

Suhang
8291 Ackroyd Road, Richmond

Shanghai River
7831 Westminster Hwy., #110

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.

UPDATED: City Temple of Shanghai is sadly now closed.

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City Temple of Shanghai
3755 Main Street, Vancouver

Cash only.

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

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

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

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?

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.