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