i Café

Today's entry is semi-late, but it'll be short and simple.

This past Saturday, my parents and I went to i Café for dinner. They have a stairway leading up to their entrance and you would notice their giant decor to the right of it. The overall place is really simple, but spacious and with a nice view if you're seated by the window. I've never had any problems with their service, but their food is average. If you ever decide to order any of their beef dishes like prime rib, sirloin or their pork/beef combo set, you definitely won't regret it.

I ordered their Ying Yang Steak Rice. I've tried it before and it's really delicious. I can't really complain. This dish has always been consistent in flavor and taste. The carrots were a bit too soft, but they were still sweet and tasty.

My dad had ordered the Prime Rib set and the beef tasted fresh and flavorful. It tasted like it's supposed to. Most beef steaks nowadays lacks that beef flavor and taste.

For once, we ordered dessert and it's Tiramisu. I don't know whether they made it or had them made and shipped to the restaurant, but as for someone such as myself, who knows a bit about desserts, this is definitely not the typical Tiramisu. The texture was very different from the ones I'm used to tasting. It was more gelatin like than light and fluffy and dense in flavor. It just didn't seem very fulfilling.

Since I'm getting back into the work mode, I won't be updating as much, as I won't be free to go out as often as I like. The place I work is basically a 24/7 operation, so that will keep me quite occupied.



Location:

i Café
2525 Heather Street
Vancouver, BC
V5Z 3J2
1-604-630-0238

Mui Garden Restaurant

I'll be keeping today's entry short. We went to Mui Garden Restaurant last night and upon walking into the place, the surroundings looked so out of place. It seems as if, half of the restaurant was closed off or something. Service has always been bad there and I don't think they're planning on improving it either.

We ordered the usual and it came with flavorless Condiments.

The Free Range Chicken was tough. I really disliked this.

It wasn't great, but it wasn't bad. Just a tad bit too salty.

The rice was gummy because it had been cooked in too much liquid.

I don't really like Lamb Hot Pot. I just ate the bean curd and one piece of lamb, which seemed quite tender. The flavor was light and medicinal tasting.

I hope I never have to go back to this restaurant. Well, only this particular location.



Location:

Mui Garden Resturant
4327 North Road
Burnaby, BC
1-604-421-1822
http://www.muigarden.com

Rediscovery

Okay, so I lied about blogging the day after my last entry, but I sort of got distracted with other things that were more important.

Anyway, long story short, my dad thought it was a good idea to bring the whole family back to the same restaurant that my dad and I had went to the week before last Saturday. For those who missed it, you can read about it here. Obviously, I'm not going to post pictures that's already been seen. We're here for the new ones. When I walked into the restaurant on Saturday, I was a bit disappointed to see the servers back to normal without the bunny ears/tails and butterfly wings. I guess they only dressed up for Halloween.

We pretty much ordered the same thing as last time except for the Pan Fried Pork Dumplings and again, I forgot to take pictures of the Pork Pot Stickers.

Here we have a small tray of various condiments. There's chili oil, black vinegar, thinly shredded ginger and toothpicks.

Braised Beef Tripe. I didn't try this.

Shredded Pork And Hoisin Sauce Pancakes with shredded cucumbers underneath. My only major complaint is not enough pancakes to go around and after awhile the dish itself just gets kind of disgusting. Not that it's not good or anything, I just think the dish could have been cooked a bit longer with less Hoisin Sauce. The mixture was a bit too wet for my liking.

I'm usually not a big fan of noodles, but this dish was really good. I don't even need the vegetables or seafood there. The squid was rubber. I could be wrong about it being squid. It could have been cuttlefish and they're within the same species.

Cold Wined Chicken was not good at all. Didn't like the texture or the taste.



Location:

Dinesty Chinese Restaurant
160 - 8111 Ackroyd Road
Richmond, BC
V6X 3K1
1-604-303-7772

An interesting Discovery

It's Saturday and we're always thinking of where we want to go for our meal. Either for lunch or dinner and since I did an entry of what I had at Happy King Seafood Restaurant before, I won't blog about my lunch on Saturday because I ordered the same thing. Fast forwarding to night time, my dad and I wandered aimlessly around Richmond and we were always caught in by the heavy traffic on the No. 3 Road with all the construction happening there. It's quite understandable when the 2010 Winter Olympics event is nearing that people are rushing to finish Canada Line and among other things, as well.

We found ourselves parked at the Save-On-Foods parking lot and ready to go try this small Shanghai restaurant, but only to find out it's packed and there was a line of people waiting to be seated. So we decided to walk across the street to check out Ebisu. My dad scanned the restaurant from outside and decided he wasn't in the mood for Japanese Cuisine. There are numerous restaurants around like White Spot, Nando's Chicken and other smaller Chinese restaurant. When we were just about to stop looking for something different and go to White Spot, we saw a restaurant filled with people eating Xiao Long Bao. There was still some empty tables so we decided to go and try this place out.

Upon walking into this restaurant called Dinesty, I was quickly intrigued by the servers. Some of them were wearing bunny ears/tails and some were wearing butterfly wings. My thought was, "could this be a cosplay cafe?" I'm not sure it is since they didn't wear any of the typical outfits, but I was definitely amused. The overall design of the place was very clean, simple, spacious and modern. One perks of this place is, you get to see the kitchen staff in action. It's an open kitchen with glass panels acting as a barrier between the main sitting area and the kitchen. Here's two videos I recorded while I was there.

Did anyone catch any of the servers with their bunny ears/tails and the butterfly wings? You can clearly see the kitchen from the videos.

So, we obviously ordered the Xiao Long Bao. The skin had the perfect thickness, but the flavor of the meat inside wasn't awesome. However, it has the most liquid inside than any other Xiao Long Bao I have ever tasted.

I had to order this Fried Mantou, it's one of my favorites. The outer texture is definitely crispy and crunchy. However, the inside just didn't taste like a regular mantou. It was so light and fluffy, but usually it's firmer than that and it has a real distinct flavor and taste to it. It's still tasty, though.

This was the Beef Wrap. The wraps are Green Onion flat bread/pancake. Overall, this was a good dish minus the scallions inside. It's just a personal preference and I happen to dislike eating raw scallions. It was lacking a bit of sauce, though.

Now this dish was interesting. If anyone ever decides to order this Pan Fried Steamed Pork Dumpling, I suggest poking at it when it arrives. It's like poking a light and fluffy sponge like bun. It's been nicely pan fried as you can see from the lovely color on it. The filling is basically the same as what you get in the Xiao Long Bao and they used a bit too much oil to pan fry it.

We also ordered the Pork Pot Stickers, but I forgot to take a picture. I'll remember to next time.

At the end of the meal, you get this cold refreshing teaser drink that comes in their own paper mini cup. I can't quite figure out what exactly I was actually drinking, but it was good. I'm calling it quits for today, there will be another post tomorrow. It'll be short, I promise.



Location:

Dinesty Chinese Restaurant
160 - 8111 Ackroyd Road
Richmond, BC
V6X 3K1
1-604-303-7772

Insadong birthday dinner

A friend of ours decided to celebrate her birthday with friends and family over a dinner on Saturday. I suggested this place called Insadong, not because it was Korean Cuisine but because it was easy on the wallet for large groups of people. It's also plentiful in food and the service isn't always that bad. That restaurant is usually packed and so, the service isn't great all the time. It differs from time to time, but the staff are generally pretty helpful. The restaurant itself is quite spacious and open, until you get a table in one of their rooms. The room we were in had several tables to fit maybe four or six large parties. It was quite suffocating and I don't think their ventilation was awesome. It's better to have a party out of those rooms and I wish they would change their water bottles; those darn things always leak. If you visit their website, you will see that they have a link to their blog. It has pictures of their restaurant, food dishes and other events. The restaurant is quite big and it can seat a lot of people. They also have WiFi Hot Spots.

We had several dishes and I only managed to take a few photos of some of the dishes.

One of them was Japche. It's stir fry potato noodle with marinated beef Bulgogi and mixed vegetables. This one was really tasty and you can really taste all the flavors absorbed by the noodles.

This is the Seafood Salad. It has jelly fish, shrimp, seaweed, julienne cucumber, pea shoots, minced garlic and small scallops. Also, there's some small side dishes at the back. It's light and refreshing and has a great mouth feel.

We also had Seafood Pancake, Stir Fry Beef Udon Noodles and Noodle Soup.

Then we have the BBQ. It's Beef Bulgogi, Chicken Bulgogi & Beef Galbi. Obviously, there's more than just what you see in that photo. Their Korean BBQ is decent. I have had better, but their Spicy Pork Bulgogi is the best.

And here we have a very expensive looking pink rolled fondant, butter cream and three layered marble cake that comes with a plaque. I've never been a cake fan, especially a butter cream one. This one isn't even close to winning me over. However, I do like ice cream and really well made chocolate cakes. It can't be extremely sweet.



Location:

Insadong
301 - 403 North Road
Coquitlam, BC
V3K 3V9
1-604-936-3778
http://www.insadong.ca

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

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

It was a long wait for...

Dim Sum. I'm rather impatient when it comes to waiting to be seated in a restaurant. We, as in, my family went to one of our frequent brunch restaurant. It was extremely busy and if it weren't for their lack of staff to help clean and clear the tables, we wouldn't have had to wait so long.

We started off with some deep fried rolls. The one on the left is a Seafood Fruit Salad Roll and the one on the right is a Bean Curd Shrimp Roll. Both tasted very good and had a nice crispy texture on the outside.

Next up is, Shiu Mai. The texture inside tasted pretty coarse.

We have an assortment here. Top left is Beef Balls and the top right is Beef Tripe. Bottom left is Chicken Feet and the bottom right is Chicken Buns. I don't like the taste and texture of Beef Balls served for dim sum so I never eat them. The Beef Tripe tasted alright, but it was too soft. The Chicken Feet was over cooked and tasted very strong in flavor. I did like the Chicken buns, though. Nice texture and tasted just right in flavors.

The Cha Siu Bao (BBQ Pork Buns) didn't taste like they used to. It was lacking a bit of flavor, but the texture of the buns was good.

This time around the Pai Gwat (Pork Ribs) wasn't too fatty or too over-powering in taste, but it still wasn't great. Right about now, we're starting to think that the chef isn't feeling like himself or it's a different chef.

This is the last picture for today. It's Ha Gao (Shrimp Dumpling). It tasted just dandy. No complaints and no compliments. We also ordered, Cheng Fun (Meat or Shrimp wrapped in Rice Noodle). I didn't bother taking a photo of and it was beef. So, I didn't eat it.



Location:

HKYK Seafood Hot Pot Restaurant
4020 No. 3 Road
Richmond, BC
V6X 2C2
1-604-273-3202