Naan Bread!

My dad was telling me how he would always smell this wonderful aroma every time he passes by this Indian restaurant on his way to meet up with his friend. So, we decided to give it a try. This would be my third time trying Indian Cuisine. We ordered quite a few items, so we could take the leftovers home for the rest of the family to try. Although, my mother didn't seem to like it.

The first thing to come was a complimentary item. I can only describe it as Cumin Wafers. Since I'm not a huge fan of cumin, this item wasn't too strong in cumin flavor and it was a bit salty. Served with a sweet and mild Chili Sauce.

Here we have, Prawn Pakora. It was quite tasty and had a nice mild kick to it. The texture of the batter was soft and airy, with a bit of crunch on the outside. It was served with a Chili Sauce and a Lime Citrus Sauce, I believe.

I call this the Tandoori Combo, but it's really called Tandoori Dinner. It's just a variety of tandoori items served with a Butter Chicken Sauce, but without the chicken inside the sauce. There's chicken, lamb and fish with julienne green bell peppers and onions. The lamb was done two ways. One was ground lamb kebab pieces and the other was boneless lamb that's been cubed and marinated over night. The ground lamb kebab pieces and the fish were my favorite.

Everyone should try Butter Chicken if they go for Indian Cuisine. It is a must try. The sauce is not oily from the butter and it has a bit too much tomato flavor in it, but it's still tasty. However, I've had better Butter Chicken. The sauce is good, but the chicken isn't infused enough with the flavors of the sauce. It needs more marinating time.

You've got to have Rice to go along with Butter Chicken. I believe they said it was Basmati Rice. It has a nice texture.

Naan Bread is also another must have. Their Naan bread was so good. The elasticity and texture of the bread was excellent. I would have been happy with just Naan Bread and the Butter Chicken Sauce. Does anyone know any place that serves really good saffron rice? I've had saffron rice once and it was pretty good, but I don't remember where I had it.



Location:

Tandoori Kona
#170 - 11700 Cambie Plaza (Cambie Road & No. 5 Road)
Richmond, BC
V6X 1L5
1-604-279-9259

In the mood for...

Japanese Food. We had a few choices as to where we could go in Richmond city. We ended up going to Aji Taro just because we can't remember what their food taste like. Yes, we're quite random. Instead of eating all you can eat, we decide to order off the menu instead. All I can say is, my taste buds were confused through out the entire meal. We started off with a Boat Combo and it came with Miso Soup. The Miso Soup was pretty salt. The entire meal was pretty salty except a few things.

I'm one of those Asian child that don't eat raw fish and believe me, I've tried it before and it doesn't settle well. I really liked their salad; it was crisp and refreshing. The Chicken Karaage (wings) lacked some salt. It was pretty bland and yet, the California Roll was salty enough that I didn't need the soy sauce. Talk about confusion with the flavors. The experience of eating the California Roll was like eating baby food.

This Chicken Teriyaki came with the Boat Combo. It had a bit too much sauce in the Yakisoba and it was a tad bit sweet, but generally it tasted pretty good.

Obviously, we had no idea that the rolls were that salty when we ordered these. Salty and mushy.

Deep Fried Ika or squid. Again, the salad was very delicious and the deep fried squid was good as well. I only wished that it was a bit more dried or deep fried longer to get rid of the moisture.

BBQ Ika Yaki or grilled BBQ squid. It had a very pungent squid smell and taste to it, which means it's not that fresh. I had 2-3 pieces and ate the vegetables.

I'm starting to think I'm becoming a health nut, but I'm actually suppose to watch what I eat. Everything just taste extremely salty and sweet to me nowadays. My only temptations would be ice cream and chocolate. The chocolate part is easy to solve if you want a less sweeter version of it and just go for dark chocolate. Ice cream, sorbet or gelato is a bit harder to solve when almost every single item out there is so sweet. I have found a few vanilla chocolate dipped bars that aren't too sweet. If anyone knows any brand that has a less sweeter version, please let me know, thanks.



Location:

Aji Taro
101-4940 No. 3 Road
Richmond, BC
1-604-273-3838

Bad Experiences

Just as the title says, I had a bad experience with what I ordered on Saturday at both places. For lunch, we went to Golden Oscar and I ordered Curry Beef Brisket.

I've been to Golden Oscar numerous times and ordered the same thing before, as well. However, I was very disappointed with how it turned out this time around. The meat was tough and the curry itself was so salty. The dishes my family ordered was actually pretty tasty.

For dinner, we went to this Taiwanese Restaurant beside Richmond Sushi. I think. I'm really not too sure and I don't remember the name of the place, but I will probably never go back. We ordered some side dishes that weren't bad, but the main meal was pretty bad for all three of us.

This is Deep Fried Tofu with a chili soy sauce. It's not bad, just average.

Next up we have, Deep Fried Pork Intestine. Very crispy on the outside. I ate the very small pieces since I'm not too fond of pork intestines.

I ordered this Vermicelli with cuttlefish and fish paste in soup. The mouth feel of this, kind of reminds me of the sour and spicy soup. It had so much vinegar added to it that I almost wanted to gag. It's a healthy portion of vegetables, but everything was just drenched in vinegar and cornstarch thicken soup. It was nasty. I tasted the cuttlefish and its rubbery texture, but the fish paste wasn't really fish paste. It was more like, bits of cuttlefish tossed in a batter and deep fried. It was all soggy. My parents weren't very impressed with what they ordered, either.



Location:

Golden Oscar Cafe And Restaurant
3868 Rupert
Vancouver, BC
1-604-437-8138

Mini Dishes

It was nice to have a long weekend last week. Unfortunately, I wasn't myself on Saturday night when I forgot to bring my camera with me into the Korean BBQ restaurant. So, no pictures of that lovely and delicious meal. However, I did take some photos during lunch on Sunday and Monday. Be warned, I'm going to post a lot of photos with brief comments.
Starting with Sunday, we went to this restaurant that is divided into two section that had two different menus. One side served Shanghai Food and the other side served Cantonese Food. We tried the Shanghai side first.

You can't eat at a Shanghai section without ordering Xiao Long Bao. On one of my earlier entries, I've mentioned Xiao Long Bao and how good they were. On this occasion, I was quite disappointed. It's not to my liking and the skin was thick. There was tons of liquid, but it tasted like it had msg. Now, I could be wrong, but I still didn't like.

Next dish was a cold appetizer. Sliced Braised Beef. The texture was great, but just a slight bit salty.

I don't have a problem eating lamb, but these Steamed Lamb Dumplings was just not my favorite. Call me picky, but I had a hard time swallowing it. I added a lot of vinegar to mask the lamb flavor. The good side of this was, it had a nice springy meat texture to the filling and that's it.

I have one word for this Shanghai Stir Fry Noodles dish and that is, "greasy".

I finally got my Fried Mantou or Fried Steamed Bun. I haven't had this in ages. It is served with sweetened condensed milk and I wished I had ordered another one of them.

These are Pan Fried Steamed Pork Buns. They have the same filling as the Xiao Long Bao, but they tasted better because the flavors was absorbed by the inner wall of the bun. It was perfectly pan fried and it wasn't burnt.

These were sort of like crepes but it was thicker and it was filled with a red bean paste and deep fried. I've never had these before, but they were so good. Nice and crispy on the outside and warm on the inside.

This cold dish has julienne cucumbers, chicken and strips of rice noodles. It's nice and refreshing, but at the same time I kind got sick of it towards the end. The peanut sauce was a bit thick and pasty. I know what you're thinking; it's a peanut sauce, what did you expect? It was obviously mixed with something else, but I could have done without this dish.

I don't fancy eating red beans whole like that, so I just ate the flaky thin wraps.

So, the next day we went back to the same restaurant for lunch, but we went for the Cantonese Side. The only reason why we went to the same restaurant again was because the restaurant we wanted to go to nearby, was packed. It wasn't just one restaurant, it was numerous restaurants.

The first dish to come was a Deep Fried Bean Curd Shrimp Roll. It had a oily texture on the outside because it was such a thin layer and the filling was alright. I didn't like the combination of parsley and shrimp.

These Steamed Shrimp Dumplings were good. The texture of the filling wasn't too mushy or too coarse. The outer skin was just a tad bit thick.

Steamed Shrimp Paste on top of Fish Maw. These were pretty tasty and the juices at the bottom was so flavorful. I wished they had a small bowl filled with those juices.

Steamed Chicken Feet tasted just alright. They're not bad or good.

Not the traditional Shiu Mai you would see in other restaurants, but these were like the best of the best Shiu Mai. It was like eating at an upscale restaurant. It had such a nice texture, but it wasn't too coarse and the flavors were subtle.

The meat was slightly fatty. It wasn't super salty or anything, but all I taste was salt flavor pork spare ribs.

The funny thing is, the service on the Shanghai side was poor and the service on the Cantonese side was superb. There was also a piece of paper with a list of the dishes for us to mark off the items we wanted on the Cantonese side, but no paper to mark with on the Shanghai side. It's literally two different restaurants.

On Tuesday night, I made some blueberry cakes. We were given tons of them and next time, I plan on making blueberry sour cream muffins.



Location:

Empire Mandarin Restaurant/ Empire Chinese Restaurant
8251 Alexandra Road
Richmond, BC
1-604-303-9710