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August 27, 2010

TOP PICK: Peaceful Restaurant

Posted by animox under Chinese cuisine, ethnic food, food, RECOMMENDED, restaurant, TOP PICK, Vancouver
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http://www.peacefulrestaurant.com/



The next in my series of favorite Vancouver restaurants is one I’ve been to more often in the last few years than any other restaurant: Peaceful on Broadway near the intersection with Cambie. Access is even easier now with the Canada line right there.

Why do I keep coming back to this place? Let me count the ways:

◊ The food, first and foremost, obviously. It’s good and interesting without being weird. The selection is big. (Peruse their menu here.) Their prices are reasonable. I’ve tried a lot of items on the menu and I haven’t been let down by almost anything.

◊ The service is consistently good. The staff are friendly and helpful every time I go there. They recognize your face when you’re a regular there, without necessarily smothering you with attention. The restaurant is laid out in a long shape with the kitchen right behind the seating area, so the waiters are literally right there if you need anything. You never have to wait for a waiter to come around or try to get their attention. They’re attentive and professional without being cold and distant, quite a refreshing change from so many Chinese restaurants where the servers literally don’t verbally acknowledge that they understood what you just said or even look at you.

◊ The food always comes out extremely quickly. Tonight we went there and ordered five dishes, naively expecting that that would keep them busy and we’d have time to go through each dish before the next came out. No such luck. The first dish came out not even ten minutes after ordering, and at an interval of one a minute, each of the remaining dishes arrived at our small table. I much prefer this to the alternative: waiting forever for each dish.

◊ They provide free tea. The first thing they do when you sit down is bring a big pot of tea. And it’s pu-erh tea, not just ordinary jasmine. I’m sure other restaurants serve pu-erh, but most do not, and it helps distinguish them. When the tea runs out, they’re very quick to replace it with a new pot. The tea goes very well with the food.

◊ They have a wide variety of uncommon ethnic dishes from regions that are not typical Chinese restaurant fare: Tianjin, Shanghai, Beijing, Yunnan, Xi-an, Xinjiang, Gansu and Shanxi in addition to the usual suspects like Szechuan. They specialize in northwestern cuisine, which is one of the less well-represented of China’s many regional cuisines from restaurant to restaurant. You wouldn’t know this if you didn’t understand Chinese, because it doesn’t say it in English on the restaurant’s window, but it does say it in Chinese. Hence they have a number of lamb items on the menu.

◊ They make their own noodles in-house. It’s one of the restaurant’s big selling points and gimmicks. They can be justly proud of their noodles. You can see the cook spinning the noodles by hand in the kitchen behind the seating area. I took some shots of him at work while I was there tonight. Their noodles are flat out the freshest and best I’ve had at any Chinese restaurant. I’ve been to so many Cantonese restaurants where the noodles are literally inedible. I used to think Chinese noodles just weren’t for me. But I hadn’t tasted what real quality noodles are supposed to taste like. They prepare the noodles a variety of different ways – in the typical thin shape made by stretching the dough out, as well as the blade-sheared style and the gnocci-like “cat’s ear” style.


We almost always discover some good new dish whenever we go back. This time around we got four of our favorite dishes and tried out one new dish we’ve never had before.
Xiao-Long Bao Steamed Buns ($6.50, filled with minced pork, ginger and a savoury sauce – 8pcs)

I get these almost every time I go. You can find these savory so-called “buns” at a variety of Chinese restaurants, but I really like the ones here. Some people have said they didn’t like Peaceful’s XLB, but I never had XLB before Peaceful, so they form my basis for assessing the dish, and so far I prefer them to any other XLB I’ve tasted at other restaurants in Metro Vancouver. I’m sure Richmond must have some killer XLB. Other XLB I’ve tasted either have a flimsy skin that breaks apart as soon as you touch it, releasing the precious cargo of liquid encased therein, or the skin is too thick and pasty tasting, or there’s too little liquid inside, or they’re dry… None of which have ever happened to me at Peaceful.

Peaceful Beef Rolls ($6.50, five-spiced beef rolled in a crispy green onion flat-bread & sweet hoisin sauce)

Another one I get often. Succulent, juicy and plump – Peaceful’s beef roll is almost erotic it’s so good. It can be a little bit greasy, but I don’t mind. The frying makes the skin really crispy. Long’s Noodle House has a nice beef roll that is drier and more wrap-like.

Mustard-Seed Vegetable Salad ($6.95, blanched carrots, celery & vermicelli tossed in mustard-seed oil dressing)

This is Peaceful’s signature dish (according to me). I get this almost every time I go there. It’s a great light appetizer that’s like no other veggie dish I’ve ever had. The mustard-seed oil is what makes this one. It’s crazy spicy and can nuke your nasal cavity if you’re not careful, the way a big chunk of wasabi can, but that’s part of the fun – inhaling frantically through each bite. It’s different from the spice of jalapeno or red pepper, which it complements wonderfully.

This is a great side-dish to order no matter what main you decide to get because it’s a good palate cleanser and cooler to have between bites of tangy or spicy mains. This time around I was a little disappointed by the dish because they didn’t put enough mustard-seed oil, and it didn’t scald your nose good the way it’s supposed to.

Xin-Jiang Noodles ($9.95, a traditional blend of chicken, potato & hot peppers in a reduced star-anise spice sauce, served with thick hand-dragged noodles)


Peaceful has a lot of great noodle dishes, but this is one of my favorites. Look at those noodles, all uneven and thick. They’re beautiful. This is supposedly a classic Xin-Jiang dish, although I’ve never been there. I did manage to find this dish in a restaurant when I visited China, but that was in Xi-an. And the amazing thing was that I actually preferred Peaceful’s. The chicken was more meaty and tender and the sauce tastier.

What makes this dish is the big chunks of jalapeno and the well cooked pieces of potato. And the smoky, savory sauce. And the soft, delicate, unevenly shaped, freshly hand-stretched noodles. And the big chunks of lightly braised garlic. And of course, lots of big pieces of well-cooked chicken, bone-in, the way it’s supposed to be.
They ask you how spicy you want it. I usually say not spicy because I seem to recall this one can be a bit much to manage if you ask for spicy. In the photo on the web site it looks like they’ve left the seeds in the jalapenos. That will make a big difference indeed. The jalapenos in our dish tonight had no seeds, and were quite delicious, just spicy enough without going overboard.

Xi’an White Lamb Stew ($7.95, a traditional lamb dish with napa cabbage, cilantro & bean vermicelli, in a light broth)

This was our first time trying this dish. It was the only adventure we took during our latest visit. It’s again a regional staple, this time of Xi-an. (Ironic that I never tried it while there, instead trying a Xin-Jiang specialty.) For some reason they don’t list the main ingredient of the stew – the big chunks of bread that dominate the dish. The lamb is quite soft and good, as is the bread and the broth. It’s a delicate and interesting dish. The lamb taste is maybe a bit too much for me, though. Not the best thing I’ve had at Peaceful, but very interesting and good nonetheless.

These are some of the other dishes we’ve tried in the past:

◊ Yunnan noodles – Kweepo and I visited Yunnan, so we know what Yunnan noodles are supposed to taste like. They typically have either thin or thick rice noodles served separately, and lots of bowls of various things you put in the noodles. This was actually the first thing I ever tried at Peaceful. I was walking down Broadway looking for lunch one day when the word “Yunnan” caught my eye on their placard. I entered the restaurant specifically to try this item, to see if it was anything like what I’d experienced in Yunnan. It’s a little different. When I tried it that day, they brought all the little bowls to the table but then they proceeded to mix everything together, which wasn’t how I recalled eating noodles over there.
◊ Szechuan Dan Dan Noodles – Quite good and hearty and among the better dan dan noodles I’ve had.
◊ Szechuan Thousand Chili Chicken – Lives up to its name. There were more chilis than chicken chunks in this dish the one time I tried it, but I recall it being quite good.
◊ Szechuan Broth Braised Fish – I got this together with the Szechuan Hot Chili Wonton once and the waiter thought I was crazy. The heat of the peppers combined with the heat of the soup makes this one quite challenging. Not the best version of this dish I’ve ever had. There’s a restaurant in Crystal Mall near Metrotown that serves a more authentic and tasty version of this, except nobody there seems to speak English, so it’s hard for a white boy like me to go there. Well, not really. Their menu has photos, so you can point your way through.
◊ Szechuan Cucumbers – A great, simple appetizer. The big chunks of crunchy sweet cucumbers and go great with the hint of spiciness from the red pepper flakes and the bite of the peppercorn dressing.
◊ Beijing Zha-Jiang Mien – Quite good and less oily than the Dan Dan Noodles, and a good deal at only $6.95. They put a lot of noodles in there. When I order a noodle dish for lunch at Peaceful, I don’t need to order anything else and I have a bit left over for another meal.
We’ve tried lots of other dishes, and we still haven’t even tried half of the items on the menu, so we’ll definitely be going back to do some more discovering for a good while to come.
 

August 23, 2010

TOP PICK: Saravanaa Bhavan

Posted by animox under buffet, ethnic food, food, indian cuisine, RECOMMENDED, restaurant, TOP PICK, Vancouver, vegetarian
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Saravanaa Bhavan @ 955 W. Broadway
http://www.saravanaabhavan.ca/




Starting with this post, I’m going to try to occasionally highlight my favorite restaurants in Vancouver. I’ll call this series the ‘top picks’ series. These are the restaurants I go to on a regular basis because they’re good, they’re appropriately priced, and they are consistent at what they do.

I’m starting out with the well-known Vegetarian Indian buffet Saravanaa Bhavan on Broadway between Oak and Laurel. I tend to be skeptical of popular restaurants, because in my experience, more often than not, fame eventually gets to a restaurant’s head, and they go downhill. Or popularity becomes an echo chamber in which crowds attract crowds, giving the impression of the restaurant being far better than it truly is.

Saravanaa Bhavan justly deserves all the praise that’s been sung about it. I’ve been there probably almost 10 times over the years, and in a first in my entire life, rather than the food going downhill, it feels like the food only gets better every time.

Their buffet is always fresh and constantly renewed. The crowds help to ensure freshness. Every time I go there are some items I’ve never seen before. They have a huge variety of items on the buffet.

The interior is spacious without being well decorated. It’s really a functional interior, with enough space to pack in large families of Indians. It was packed when we arrived on Sunday for lunch, and it stayed that way for most of our time there. Again, the place is frequented by Indians, testament to its authenticity. Having grown up a vegetarian in Houston, where there is a large population of Indians and many great vegetarian Indian restaurants, I ate vegetarian Indian food practically every week for a large part of my lifetime, so I know what good veggie Indian food is supposed to taste like. And apart from Saravanaa Bhavan, I haven’t really tasted good veggie Indian food in Vancouver, though I’ve searched.

The food at Saravanaa Bhavan is very different from all the veggie Indian food I’ve had before. Perhaps this is because they are South Indian, or perhaps their cooks are particularly inventive. I don’t know, but no matter how many times I go, they never let me down, with consistent quality and new surprises.

One of the best things about Saravanaa Bhavan is the variety of fresh breads. In addition to bringing you a fresh Naan, they also have these delicious lentil-based donut-like bread called Vada, amazing steamed rice cakes called Idli, some kind of deep-fried chapati-like bread, and even a whole fresh dosa. And of course, pappadum with great coconut chutney and tomato chutney. Everything is steaming fresh. This is what my plate looked like:

A crazy heaping mess of all sorts of amazing little items! That’s why I love this place. I can revel in the delight of sampling all sorts of flavors, rather than slogging through a boring heaping mass of one dish with exactly the same flavor for the same price. I had about 12 separate items during this meal, every one of them perfectly delicious and totally unlike the others.

Even the desserts are amazing and unlike anything I’ve seen anywhere before. No gulab jamun in sight here. During our last visit they offered a curious spongecake-like confection infused with saffron juice and a wonderful substance that looked like tapioca at first sight but tasted nothing like the typical tapioca pudding dessert you find in Indian restaurants. They clearly are inventing their own new desserts.

Another great little touch is that each table has its own pitcher of water by default, so no having to stretch out that last quarter glass of water or struggle to get a waiter’s attention to get some water. And anyway, the waiters here are everywhere and very attentive. Kweepo and I were asked no less than three times if we needed anything else.

The price for the buffet is $10.99 on weekdays and $11.99 on weekends. I don’t know why the price increases on the weekend. The bill for Kweepo and I came out to $30 even including tips, which is admittedly a bit pricey for Indian food (I remember the buffets in Houston were $5). But it’s hard to find good Indian food OR cheap Indian food in Vancouver, and Saravanaa Bhavan at least is reliably good and fresh, so I don’t feel ripped off when I eat there.

I just noticed in the photo that they advertise a “$5 takeout lunch box”. Now that’s the price I want to pay for lunch. I will have to check this out.

I didn’t know this until I checked their website, but apparently this is a chain. They have four locations total. The other three are all in Ontario.

 

August 23, 2010

Cafe Xu Hue

Posted by animox under banh mi, ethnic food, food, restaurant, Vancouver, Vietnamese cuisine
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Cafe Xu Hue @ 2226 Kingsway

In my continuing quest to explore random banh mi places to see how different restaurants prepare them differently, the other day we randomly picked a spot on Kingsway called Cafe Xu Hue. It was neighbored on the same block by literally two other vietnamese restaurants also serving banh mi. The other ones seemed a little bit noisy and Cafe Xu Hue a little more family-friendly and quiet, so Kweepo and I chose that one.

The place was tiny but every table was packed when we walked in and we had to rush to get a table before someone else took it (the empty table in the photo was vacated midway into the meal). We were the only non-Vietnamese there, if that’s any sign of authenticity. It took a while for the very serious-looking waiter and waitress to come over to give us a menu. I don’t think they smiled the whole time. When I was paying, she didn’t even look at me or say anything. Not exactly the friendliest folks, but I think the small place was a bit overwhelmed with the weekend traffic.

They served us two glasses of tea and one small menu. Though you can’t tell in the photo, the tea looked very light. And no surprise, it tasted just like water.

The menu had a few pho selections, spring rolls, etc – the usual. They had only two banh mi items on the menu – house special and chicken – so we chose one of each. I was tempted to order a pho out of habit, but stuck to my guns and ordered banh mi. They came out about ten minutes later. Eating at pho joints is already cheap enough, but eating banh mi makes for a ridiculously small bill. We paid $10 total for the both of us.


In the picture above I’ve got a half of one of each sandwich in my hand, so you can see what’s inside. They didn’t contain any pickled daikon, which was disappointing. The chicken banh mi was decent but a little bland, but the house special was pretty nice, with two different kinds of meat on top and some delicious roast pork at the very bottom. The roast pork really made that one special. Not putting any pickled daikon in was a little disappointing though.

Unfortunately they committed a cardinal sin when it comes to banh mi: the bread was stale. Fresh bread is a must for a banh mi. It fairly ruined the sandwich. So I can’t recommend this place. At least now I have a point of reference to understand just why it’s so important to have fresh bread, and why Tung Hing and Kim Chau are so great. It takes a bit of funding to be really set up to make banh mi the right way, be it with a bread oven or special arrangements with a bakery to have fresh buns delivered every day, and this is too small a shop for such fancy things.

The banh mi here had this mysterious long-leafed herb in it that you can see below on top of the cilantro:

I don’t know what it is but it was incredibly aromatic and flavorful and made the sandwiches a lot better.

At the cashier’s counter they had this little altar-like setup with handwritten signs that I thought was cute and homey.

 

August 20, 2010

Chow Times Cantonese banquet at Red Star

Posted by animox under Cantonese cuisine, Chinese cuisine, ethnic food, food, restaurant, Vancouver
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Red Star Seafood @ 8298 Granville

For the last few months, the Vancouver food blog Chow Times has been organizing a series of feasts on the theme of the “eight great traditions of Chinese cuisine”. They’ll be having a total of eight get-togethers, each focused on one particular type of traditional Chinese cuisine. Before I discovered their blog recently, they had already covered two: Hunan and Shanghai.

Kweepo and I were lucky enough to attend the third in the series, which was a lavish 10-course Cantonese banquet at Red Star restaurant on South Granville. The Cantonese love having large feasts with big groups of people, but I’d never experienced anything like that before because I don’t have any family here.

Their invitation to the event is an instructive introduction to the history and culture of Cantonese cuisine. It gave me a new appreciation of Cantonese cuisine’s long history and variety, and a new perspective on how to better enjoy it.

Cantonese cuisine has been my least favorite of all Chinese cuisines for a long time, because my main exposure to Cantonese cuisine has been in the form of dim sum. After encountering exactly the same dim sum dishes at one Cantonese restaurant after another, I concluded that they lacked imagination.

In fact, to truly experience Cantonese cuisine, you have to either go to Guangdong, where I’m sure the dim sum has more variety, or try the more expensive dishes at a banquet. I almost never go to Cantonese restaurants for anything other than dim sum because their regular menus are so expensive and I don’t know enough people to hold a banquet.

I decided to go to this banquet despite the steep price tag (about $60) because I thought it was a good opportunity to be exposed to a variety of the region’s pricier, fancier, more characteristic dishes – to finally experience Cantonese food on its own terms, the way it’s supposed to be experienced. The organizers of this feast clearly had this intent in organizing the meal, and considerable thought, footwork and research went into the preparation of this event, for which I tip my hat in their direction.

This is going to sound weird, but I don’t like not liking something. In some cases, I feel like failure to appreciate a certain type of cooking is a shortcoming on my part. I feel like maybe I haven’t tried enough, or maybe I haven’t tasted the right dishes or been to the right restaurant. It’s like an itch I want to scratch. I thought this meal might help finally show me what it was I’d been missing all this time.

To get right to the point, this meal was a great experience. The company was pleasant, and the atmosphere of conviviality was great, and it was great getting to taste such a variety of high-end dishes in one sitting.

Did it change my opinion of Cantonese food? Yes and no. Some of the dishes were good and some were less good. This meal gave me a better sense of what Cantonese do well, namely: fresh seafood, prepared in austere and simple dishes with very subtle sauces. I love fish, but other than that I have never been a big seafood fan. Sea cucumber, shrimp, squid – these things leave me nonplussed.

This meal did not change the sheltered, small-minded reservations of a westerner used to ‘safe’ foods. And unfortunately it’s precisely in the strange and exotic that Cantonese seems to shine its brightest, or at least take its particular character. That doesn’t mean there isn’t a lot to appreciate in Cantonese food for me. It’s just that I have to be more selective.

Let’s get right to the dishes. Most of these were like nothing I’ve ever had, so in that sense alone it was a great experience.

~ Dish 1/10: ROAST SUCKLING PIG ~



This thing was the star of the meal. The restaurant roasted an entire suckling pig for this dinner. This was one of the main things that convinced me I wanted to come. There were two tables at the meal, each with 13 people. Each table got half of the pig. This wound up being slightly insufficient to feel like you got a good taste of the thing, which is a shame because it was by far the best dish of the meal.

This was like no other pork I’ve ever had. It’s a special dish for a special occasion. This restaurant is known for its roasted meats, and this is undoubtedly the crown of all of those. The skin is crispy, the meat underneath succulent and tender. It’s actually eaten in much the same way as Peking Duck – you wrap a piece of meat, a piece of green onion and some sauce in a little tortilla and eat it like a midget Sino fajita.

The only problem is they ran out of tortilla and green onion, which was disappointing considering the price of the dish. We were instructed to sprinkle a little bit of sugar onto the pork, and indeed this was a good suggestion. The sweetness was a surprisingly good match with the roasted pork.

~ Dish 2/10: STEAMED SCALLOPS WITH FUZZY MELON ~


This felt a lot more typically Cantonese to me than the previous dish in the sense of it having seafood and having a very subtle, neutral flavor – as opposed to the rich flavor of the fajita. The melon was very soft and added more texture and bulk than flavor to the scallop in the middle. I asked the waiter what the sauce was, and he said it was just a ‘white sauce’. The random piece of broccoli thrown in for some reason, though? Could have done without it.

~ Dish 3/10: CANTONESE STYLE SPECIALTY SOUP WITH CHICKEN, WHELK AND JINHUA HAM ~


The way they prepared this soup is to boil chicken and ham pieces in the water and serve the whole thing as is, with the pieces of meat in the soup. They then took the meat out, cut it up, and you took some pieces and put it in the broth. The broth tasted basically like chicken soup you’d have anywhere, and the meat was very dry because it had been boiled and all the flavor had gone into the soup. Again very Cantonese in the sense of being very basic, without many added spices or sauces or anything. But not that great. One small bowl was more than enough of this.

~ Dish 4/10: HONG KONG STYLE SPICY CRABS ~

The crab was pretty good, though I’m not a huge fan of crab. They were deep fried and coated with a spicy sauce. The sauce wasn’t too spicy.

~ Dish 5/10: STEAMED FISH ~


This was apparently cod with cilantro and strips of what appear to be leek. It was good, but one fish was not enough for 13 people, and we each got the bite-sized portion seen above, which wasn’t enough to really appreciate the dish.

~ Dish 6/10: SEA CUCUMBER WITH BRAISED MUSHROOM ~

One of the more obviously exotic dishes on the menu, I was really excited about trying this to push my boundaries. Sea cucumber is normally something I would never have thought to eat. I hate the idea of gooey, squishy things as a general principle – all the more so when it comes to eating them. Fish I readily ingest, but mollusks, crustaceans and invertebrates I detest. The mere thought of eating a sentient undersea intestine is not something that strikes me as necessary.

But in the spirit of adventure, I gave it a shot. The specimen upon which we dined was a monster that even brought out cut up into fist-sized chunks went around the table and then some. The Cantonese ‘sauce’ was a tasteless paste that served mostly for lubrication it seems. We were hence on our own when it came to the mortal combat, left face to face with whatever gustatory challenge the monster might launch our way.

I was surprised to find that it was all bark and no bite – it didn’t have that much taste. Not even salty or seafoody. Very subtle. Only the squishy texture reminded me of what I was purported to be eating. It’s not something I would recommend or ever want to try again, but it was worth trying once.

I wound up eating a lot more of the bok choy bedding than the sea cucumber. The garnish of shiitake were typically very spare in their preparation and not particularly to my liking.

~ Dish 7/10: BARBECUE DUCK ~

The restaurant’s forte is in roasting and the roasted duck did not disappoint. Somehow they managed to finagle the animal such that the pieces of duck had a lot of meat without excessive fat, and a rich smoky flavor. I often find myself leaving the fat in duck dishes because it grosses me out, but this time the proportion was just right. The Chinese are good at duck.

~ Dish 8/10: SIU GAO DUMPLING WITH NOODLES IN SUPREME SOUP ~

A simple noodle and dumpling dish was a nice change of pace from the heavy-hitters that came before. The dumplings were good and the thin wheat noodles were tender and easy to chew, unlike the inedible hard noodles I was served at Congee and Noodle House on Broadway. The dish came much ballyhooed by our boisterous maitre d’, who pronounced it one of the restaurant’s specialties. It was good, but I didn’t quite see what was particularly special about it.

~ Dish 9/10: RED STAR’S SPECIALTY RICE IN LOTUS LEAF ~


The presentation of this dish was nice – it came in a bowl constructed of lotus leaves and molded into the shape of one of those old Chinese magistrates hats that you see in the historical dramas. With a flourish, the waiter pulled the top of the dish off, revealing the steaming rice contained therein. I don’t remember the particulars of the rice’s preparation or taste, but it primarily served as a palate cleanser and change of pace from the previous dishes.

~ Dish 10/10: BAKED TAPIOCA PUDDING WITH LOTUS SEED PASTE ~


I loved the dessert. I’ve never had tapioca like this. It was baked into a sort of tapioca pie, so that you get a bit of crunchy crust with each bite. The tapioca itself was really creamy and rich and unlike any other tapioca I’ve had before, almost like they put custard in there or something. It was a good way to end an interesting and eventful meal.

And it was a LONG meal. We arrived at the restaurant at 6:30 p.m, and by the time dessert came out, it was almost 10 p.m.

PHEW. That was a feast. Although we didn’t leave stuffed, amazingly. I was a little disappointed that the beers weren’t a little more affordable. $5.99 for a Tsing Tao seems very pricey. Other than that, it was an exciting experience and I look forward to the rest of the meals in the series.

 

August 8, 2010

Long’s Noodle House

Posted by animox under Chinese cuisine, ethnic food, food, Vancouver
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I discovered this restaurant today as Kweepo and I were deciding where to go for lunch. We try to explore some new restaurants every week, and on the weekends I particularly like to explore Chinese and other Asian restaurants, because there are so many out there. You can try a different restaurant every day in Vancouver and never run out.

I ran across this one in a nice Vancouver food blog I just discovered called Chow Times whose writer (also named Ben like me) seems to share with me a passion for Chinese food. His blog entries are wonderfully presented, with lots of tantalizing photos, and the descriptions and photos in his entry for Long’s were too much to resist.

It turned out to be a good decision. Despite being innocuous and located way out in the middle of nowhere, Long’s is one of the best Chinese restaurants I’ve been to in Vancouver. You would never know just walking past it how good it actually is. It looks as ordinary as the many mediocre Chinese restaurants that litter the city. We ordered five separate dishes at lunch today, and we weren’t disappointed by anything. Everything was delicious, and there was great variety between the dishes, and there is still a lot more I want to go back to explore.

Long’s serves Shanghainese food. I’ve had lots of other kinds of Chinese food, but it wasn’t until I came to Vancouver that I found restaurants serving Shanghainese food. So I’m not too familiar with the cuisine, and eager to learn. I’ve had not too good luck at other places in the past when I tried to sample some Shanghainese specialties, but this time I feel like I got a feeling for what true Shanghainese food is like. It feels particular to the region without being excessively weird.

I’m pleased to report that the first thing they did when we sat down was to serve us a glass of hot tea. I couldn’t identify the tea, but it had a floral smell. Kweepo hazarded it might be Osmanthus, but I don’t know as I’ve never had Osmanthus tea. Anyway, it was delicious, and a good accompaniment. And, of course, complimentary, as it should be.

As other reviews have noted, the service was friendly and fast. The restaurant is quite small, the decor nonexistent. It’s good Chinese food, to the point, without frippery. When we arrived, every table was full except for the biggest one. Luckily a small table was leaving right as we arrived, so we got to sit fairly quickly. Orders came out quickly at an interval of a few minutes. The atmosphere is convivial without being harried or noisy.
Gong Cai Shanghai Style – $4.50
This was a delicious if slightly salty vegetable appetizer featuring some obscure Asian vegetable called Gong Cai that’s like a limp cucumber. It was spicy and flavorful and crunchy. The flavor is quite pungent, so it made a good side-dish to nibble on between bites of the other dishes. Excellent. Like nothing I’ve had elsewhere. Why do I love Chinese food? Because they never cease to bring out some obscure vegetable or item like this that I’ve never even heard of but that’s truly amazing and like nothing else I’ve ever had.
Wine Chicken – $5.95

One of the restaurant’s signature dishes, the Wine Chicken did not disappoint! This is a must try. It’s served cold, but it’s delicious and uniquely Shanghai in taste. A true authentic regional staple. Also affordable, as the portion is fairly generous. The rice wine in which the chicken pieces are folded gives the chicken a great flavor like nothing else out there – sweet in a rice wine kind of way with a hint of alcohol to make things exciting.
Beef Rolls – $4.95

Very good beef rolls. The been inside is preserved, you can taste the cilantro, and there isn’t an excessive amount of hoisin sauce. Very finely balanced and light beef roll. Peaceful on Broadway serves a killer beef roll that honestly is a little better than this one, but this one is drier – more like a wrap – which I prefer, as the one at Peaceful can be a bit greasy.

Shanghai Spring Rolls – $4.95

At first glimpse these might look like ordinary spring rolls, and indeed the wrapping itself is unremarkable, but the filling is surprising. It’s mostly cabbage and other vegetables, but it has a great flavor that’s like no other spring rolls.
Shredded Pork Wrapped With Sticky Rice – $3.95

My favorite discovery of the meal was this fascinating example of an authentic Shanghai staple. It’s hard to tell from the photo, but inside is actually a Chinese donut, some preserved vegetables and the pork. It has an exquisite texture when bitten – a bit crunch, a bit flaky, a bit chewy. It all meshes perfectly together.

In addition, we ordered a glass of warm soy milk, and I recommend doing the same if you want to have that true Chinese meal experience. It goes really well with the food and it’s only $1.50 for a big glass.
This is the kind of meal I like – rather than two big, expensive dishes, a lot of small, inexpensive dishes, to make for a meal of tremendous variety that doesn’t hurt you in the wallet. After all of this food, we were stuffed, and still had most of the beef rolls left – and it all came out to just a bit over $30 with tax included. Truly a good deal, and we’ll be back to sample the other items on the menu. There were many other items that sound interesting.
Important note: This place is CASH ONLY. I had to run out and get some cash at a corner store after we finished eating because I didn’t notice the tiny sign saying “cash only” at the counter.
 

August 8, 2010

Josephine’s Restaurant Filipino Cuisine

Posted by animox under ethnic food, Filipino cuisine, food, Vancouver
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This is a little joint on Main Street just south of Broadway. A few years ago another Filipino restaurant opened up a few streets south on Main Street. It was more upscale and pricey, but it has since closed down. There is another Filipino restaurant called Cucina on Joyce that we may have to try out sometime. I’m not very familiar with Filipino cuisine apart from a vague conception of satays, so I’m very interested in sampling any Filipino restaurant I encounter. And luckily there are a few in Vancouver.

It’s hard to recommend this place, which is disappointing, because it’s one of the few authentic Filipino restaurants I know of in Vancouver, and it’s not a fancy bistro but a buffet-style eatery, having instead a fairly large selection of authentic Filipino dishes prepared and on display. I would have liked to be able to have a reliable little Filipino place to be able to have available to come back to every once in a while. But I don’t envision myself coming back to this place.

Our recent visit there didn’t endear us to the place for a number of reasons. When we walked in, it took literally about five minutes until anybody paid any attention to us. There is no menu – what is in the buffet is all there is available. There are about 20 different items, and none of them have any labels whatsoever – no title, no ingredients. Asking about each of the titles seemed to harass the lady behind the counter, and there was a line of people waiting, which put pressure on you not to ask too many questions.


I know next to nothing about Filipino cuisine, so this made it very difficult to make a decision based on anything but appearance, which can be deceptive. Something that looks good might be scary – one of the decent-looking dishes turned out, upon inquiry, to be a mash of liver and heart or something.

I wound up blindly choosing two items, as did Kweepo. The food at this place is food court level. It feels like it should be $5.99 for two items, like it would be at a food court. The problem is that it’s $8.99 for two items, plus a dollar extra for one each of an Empanada (a vegetable-filled pastry) and Lumpia (a thin egg roll), which are staples that it would be unthinkable to omit if you want to have an authentic Filipino meal, as we did. The lady was sneaky – when I asked what these items were, she grabbed them and put them in my plate and said “They’re good, you try?” I was tempted to say no just to protest the rudeness of her action, but decided not to make a big deal out of it. I wanted to try them anyway.

Another problem is that a lot of the stuff doesn’t look fresh. It looks kind of burned and dry, like it’s been sitting there for a few hours. Paying $8.99 for two small portions of this stuff with a huge pile of rice doesn’t feel like a good deal. For that price I’d expect it to be an all-you-can-eat buffet. Another thing that disturbed us is that, after placing Kweepo’s two items on the plate, the lady behind the counter proceeded to place the plate in the microwave and microwave it. Isn’t the point of a hot buffet that it’s supposed to be hot and ready to eat? And on top of that, microwaving food in plain sight of the customer seems a breach of restaurant etiquette. You’re not supposed to microwave food to begin with, much less do it right in front of the customer.


As for the food, I got pepper chicken and a tomato sauce meat dish. Both were fairly good, but WAY oversalted. The chicken was very good, but paradoxically, it was very dry when chewed despite swimming in an oily sauce. The beef was well cooked but they left big pieces of fat on each piece, which I personally do not care for, though I know other people might not mind.

The combo came with a broth-like soup that I almost gagged on when I tried to have a taste because it was so insanely salty. Kweepo got barbecued chicken and tofu & green bean. The tofu & green bean were completely ordinary and unremarkable, but the barbecued chicken was tender and well seasoned, if also oversalted. What is it with Filipino cuisine and salt? I bought some salted tamarind confections from a Filipino grocery store further south on Main today, and they are so disgustingly oversalted I couldn’t even eat one.

At the very least, I can’t deny that the food here feels authentic. Everyone in the restaurant apart from me and Kweepo were Filipinos, testament to the fact that this is one of the places that is apparently frequented by the expat Filipino community that lives around this neighborhood. There are things there that I’ve never seen anywhere else and that I’m sure are very authentic. For that alone it is worth at least one visit. I just wish they would improve on the saltiness thing, and wish there was a way to take small samples of various dishes instead of being limited to getting only two items and a big serving of rice.

 

August 6, 2010

Worst Service of the Year: Roundel Cafe

Posted by animox under bistro, brunch, cafe, ethnic food, fine dining, food, restaurant
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There are three essential elements that corporate into fine dining – food, atmosphere and service. Whereas food quality outweighs the other two components, outstanding services and friendly ambience of a restaurant certainly adds a brownie point to its value and tremendously enhances the dining pleasure. My personal favorite restaurants with best services would have to be Fraiche, Tojo’s and Mistral on West Broadway.

I do not expect attentive services and gorgeous views though, when it comes to ethnic dining. Sometimes sloppy services even strike me as part of the being authentic package deal. Servers in most Cantonese restaurants, for example, have such an attitude in that first, they do not bother learning proper English. We have encountered waitresses using sign languages to take our orders. Cantonese as a language also harbors a taste of harshness in its tone that words can come off impolite and curt. Second, they never make eye contacts with you when bringing food to the table, neither do they respond when you say “thank you.” Cantonese restaurants, especially dim sum places (Kirin as an exception), for some reason do not prefer single or couple diners. Animo and I once experienced some restaurant seat waiting courtesy fail when we visited Sun Sui Wah on Main, supposedly one of the best dim sum places in town. At least two large parties of people went ahead and got seated before us, and we had to wait another 15 minutes to get a table, because they only provide 5 out of 30 tables available for two-person dining. Go figure the small table turnover rate. After we got seated, our server asked me and Animo, a white boy, that if we needed an English menu or Chinese menu. Did she just assume that just because Animo is Caucasian, he does not know how to order Chinese food? Isn’t that borderline racism, or at least discrimination of some sort?

That being said, I do have great appreciation for their inexpensive food and admirable efficiency. Now I have learned to order everything all together, including drinks, appetizer, entrée and dessert, in a Chinese or Vietnamese restaurant, as server would only appear by your table once. We should not expect to pay little and get pampered. I get it. However, if I go to a brunch café and get charged $10 for some food that is essentially eggs and bread, I do have some expectations on services, or at least I do not anticipate rude behaviors and insulting comments from a server. Animo and I recently visited Roundel Café on Hastings, and it was regrettably one of the worst dining experiences ever. At first this café looks like a hip, funky neighborhood gathering spot, with an easy-going atmosphere and warm, friendly staff. We ordered juice and iced tea for drinks, which were $2.5 each as told by our server. Food was passable, but service was not attentive – I had to get up to the counter and ask for some jam. When the bill came, it was written $3 for both drinks. We thought there might have been a mix-up, so we brought it to attention to our server, a lady in her 50s. We expressed our concerns over the bill, our server said, “Oh I don’t know, I am not the owner.” She then left and a younger waitress came to our table, and confirmed, “Drinks are $3, not $2.5.” “But we were old that they are supposed to be $2.5.” Animo explained where our concerns came from. She became extremely defensive and condescending, raised her voice saying, “Look we are all humans and we all make mistakes. Are you saying you would not have gotten the drink if it is 50 cents more?” She clearly did not understand what we are trying to say. We as paid customers are simply pointing out their errors and a simple apology would solve all the matters. This lady did not apologize after making the rude comment, and left our table abruptly while Animo was still talking to her. At last, she turned around, shrugged sarcastically and blurted out “sorry” to us while rolling her eyes.

After witnessing such unbelievably rude and unprofessional service, it was almost laughable when I saw that their tip option on their Interac machine was 20%. Tips? Zilch.

 

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