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

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?

You know when you’re grocery shopping and you start getting super hungry? You wish there was a way you could sit down in the deli section and have a snack. Most grocery stores do offer that service, actually, along with the bland, over-buttered and soggy pre-made sandwiches that will alleviate hunger but not satiate. Not so at the Hmart chain of Asian supermarkets. Spread throughout North America, this Korean grocery store also has a built in food court, which, at the Robson Street location, comprises a Korean/Chinese noodle bar, Wang Ga Ma, as well as the Matoi Sushi stand.

At Wang Ga Ma I had the Spicy Beef soup (although I was very intrigued by what the Rice with Fish Raws would be). It was deliciously flavourful, with an intense, fiery broth, accompanied by a side of fiery kimchi. Even being spicier than expected and somewhat messy, it hit the spot and at $7.50 is a lot better than soggy sandwiches for lunch.

After placing your order, you hand out and wait for your number to come up on the flashing LCD screen. Then you pick up your food (which comes on plastic trays but in real stainless steel or ceramic bowls) and take it back to the main eating area, a bright, light-filled section of the store looking down on Robson Street from the second floor.

Returning to try out Matoi, I chose a spider roll, a chopped scallop cone and 2 pieces of Hamachi from Japan, all of which were excellent and tasty, but checking out the blogosphere, it seems I’m going to have to go back and check out some other dishes as well.

Service was sadly not awesome at Matoi and it was not do to a noon rush. At 2:30 in the afternoon, I watched patiently, then started drooling on the Plexiglas divider as the sushi chef prepared piece after piece and gave them to other people. To be fair, it seemed as though they had got a couple of big orders and he was going as fast as he could, but I was also starving. Next time I’ll try checking it out a bit before lunch and maybe pick up some Korean snacks from the market beforehand…just in case.

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Hmart
550 Robson Street, 2nd floor