Eating Vancouver Part 4 Shanghainese and more

Richmond near Vancouver is the place to go for Chinese food. Probably best I’ve had outside of Asia. Highest concentration of quality and variety. Over the summer, we have gone back a couple of times and discovered some new places.
Now as it turns out Shanghainese cuisine is pretty trendy now, and popular in Vancouver. Most authentic Shanghainese foods I have had outside of Shanghai / Asia has been here. That includes NY, SF, and LA. Two places that I particularly liked are Top Shanghai (Yelp), and Yuan’s Shanghai Serendipity Cuisine (Yelp). Don’t trust the Yelp ratings. Top Shanghai is more like a mid range Shanghai Applebees. Crowded, long lines for a reason, the food is as close to Shanghai comfort / traditional dishes as they come. 36 Page menu is a extensive tour of Shanghainese cuisine. Their Shanghai breakfast / dimsum menu is page 27 and on. Of particular note is their duck seasoned with soy sauce, exactly like Grandma’s. With her passing, no one else in the family can make it, but Top Shanghai nailed it. Their glutinous rice ball with pork filling is authentic but out of this world ginormous (that’s a regular sized rice bowl in the picture!). Their Shanghai noodles and braised pork are also excellent in an unassuming authentic kinda way.

Yuan’s is a slightly more upscale restaurant with an interior attempting to echo 1930’s French Concession Shanghai. Food is overall good across the board, some dishes better than Top Shanghai, others a different take, but to me not as good. However, the best Shengjian mantou (panfried mini buns) this side of the Pacific is here.

As for dimsum of the cart variety, we decided that Chef Tony is the best overall. We didn’t have a great experience at Fisherman’s Terrace last couple of times. Don’t get me wrong, better than anything Seattle has by miles, but have fallen behind Chef Tony’s for sure. I mean look at the egg yolk custard bun (official English menu item name: Steamed bun filled with salty egg yolk lava) that is worthy of a James Bond villain! Squid ink black, perfectly fluffy, gooey creamy slightly savory inside.

Of course there’s the night market, much has been written on the interwebs on it, and YouTube videos everywhere. The fried chicken that’s flattened and fried like a weinerschnitzel size of your head, and the rather expensive stinky tofu.

As for Taiwanese food, and really there for the flavored Taiwan Beers (see previous post on beers of Taiwan) and casual food there’s Maji (Yelp). Also the slushy topped beer we had in Japan now exists at Guu, looked like Richmond location is now closed. Hopefully the beer slushy machine survived and got moved to another location…

A visit to stationary heaven aka Itoya in Ginza Tokyo

Itoya is the most awesome stationary store I have ever visited, period. Everything stationary you every thought about, have seen on the internet, all in one place. The Itoya store in Ginza is actually 2 buildings separated by an alley and Tiffany’s (English floor guide). One is called G.Itoya (13 floors) and the other is K.Itoya (7 floors). The G.Itoya is the fancier of the 2 stores, more like a department store feel, with a cafe, travel, gifts, etc. The most amount of fountain pens I have ever seen in one place is on the 3rd floor. Major major sensory overload. Fountain pens I have seen on manufacturer’s websites, all in person, all in one place. Not just Japanese fountain pens either, I have never seen so many Cross pens, or really any other brand I have ever heard of in one place. I can not understate the amount of fountain pens on display here as someone who is more used to either a Mont Blanc store in a fancy mall that sells mostly lifestyle accessories or the local Staples. Also ink, lots of ink, mostly in drawers. There is also a mini Mont Blanc store on the same floor. Fancy paper has its own floorin G.Itoya, and you can customize your notebooks on the 2nd floor of K.Itoya (also get your tax back if you have foreign passport).

K.Itoya is much more like an day to day art and stationary store with ballpoint, gel, and pens of every kind, staplers, cool paper clips. It is still 6 floors of stationary supplies. Including the most complete selection of Faber-Castell artist pens, it is like everything on their website in person. Including the Graf von Faber-Castell wooden pencil. The 1st floor is pretty much all pens, the great thing is that most of them had testers.

I ended up buying 2 bottles of Pilot iroshizuku, the Tokyo Limited Edition in fukagawa-nezu which is grey, and shimbashi-iro which is a light blue teal. 50ml bottle is ¥1500 each, or you can get a set of 3 smaller 15ml bottles for ¥2100. The one I didn’t get was the de-murasaki which is more of a purple. All of the pilot iroshizuku inks had testers in Pilot clear bodied Prera fountain pens. The more expensive fountain pens were all behind counters. The ¥1,000,000 Namiki appropriately behind a glass display.

Very much worth a visit for anyone who ever thought Staples should sell less electronics and more fountain pens.