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…

Eating Vancouver Part 3 Dim Sum

While we have been to the usual trio of Vancouver dim sum of Dinesty (more of a soup dumpling place like DinTaiFung), Fisherman’s Terrace, and Sun Sui Wah, we wanted to try some place that does the usuals very well but also wasn’t afraid to have some new dishes like Koi Palace back in the Bay Area. We ended up at Chef Tony Seafood Restaurant. Located in a strip mall in Richmond, the outside looked like a run down 70s strip mall, the inside was more like the bar at the W. The usual dim sum staples were well done (which won’t be mentioned here), but they had some cool dishes we really enjoyed.

Creamy almond paste buns. Light and not too sweet almond cream paste in a bun. As light and ephemeral as Marzipan (which I also love) is heavy and substantive. A good in between of Marzipan and Annin tofu, in a bun.

Flaky almond meat loaf sticks. Tastes way better than the English translation sounds. Had no idea almonds went with mix of pork and shrimp.

 The usual tripe on the right. The left is egg plant with a meat ball on top. I actually liked it even though I am not an eggplant fan.

 The usual shumai but with a fancy topping of black truffles. It smelled absolutely fantastic, made a regular dim sum staple more magical. The difference between a regular Ford Taurus and Taurus SHO.

I had hopes that the mushroom tart would be equal of Koi Palace’s abalone  minced chicken tart, alas, it was not to be.

This artsy looking piece is the Longan jello with goji berries. Not too sweet, as a fan of longan, I can’t believe this isn’t at every dim sum restaurant.

Lastly, the fried taro with various fillings topped with an abalone. This was also quite good. Even without the abalone, the dish would have been great.  Crispy on the outside, middle layer of soft taro, and fillings on the inside. Mmm…

Eating Vancouver Part 2 French and Shanghai

For breakfast, after Yuji’s Japanese fare, some French pastry was in order. We ended up at Thierry. It is a chocolate shop and a cafe. Chef Thierry was pastry chef for a couple of 2 star Michelin in France and London.

From upper left clockwise. Ham croissant (Pain au jambon), butternut squash soup, chocolate croissant (Pain au chocolat), and a grill chicken on baguette.

For dinner we switched it up and went for Shanghainese at Shanghai River  in Richmond. The menu was impressive and vast. We ended up over ordering per usual. The steam dumpling was very good and more authentically Shanghainese than the technical precision of DinTaiFung. If DinTaiFung dumplings are Porsches, the Shanghai River ones are Corvettes. Meatier, not as uniformly pretty, but good in a slightly different way. Duck 2 ways, smoked fish, duck and scallop soup were all equally well done.

Eating Vancouver Part 1 Yujis

We spent a few days visiting Vancouver. We had been there quite a few times before, and continued to finding new restaurants.

First up is Yuji’s in Kitsilano. Located in a shopping center across the street from a Papa Johns. Their Omakase is more like a set menu and priced at $60 Canadian, really great deal considering the current USD exchange rate of 1.35 to CAD. Well worth the money. The restaurant itself was situated next to another pizza takeout restaurant at the corner of an unassuming shopping center.

Yuji’s first course of from upper left clockwise, yellow tail salad, uni, fish and roe, crisp taro and yam, fried soft radish, bamboo shoots. Lots of root vegetables for winter I guess. The uni was great, and way the yam and taro was made was fantastic even though I usually don’t even like either.

Second was grilled cod (no miso unlike Shiro’s) with picked ginger (the pink and red shoot on top), and grilled chicken.

Third was a tempura selection which I didn’t take a picture of.

 Fourth was the steamed egg with scallops and shrimp.

 Selection of sushi was fifth.

Lastly was the green tea Panna cotta with red bean paste on the bottom.