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Posts Tagged ‘Northern Chinese Cuisine’

Chang’An Restaurant 品味長安 – Chinese Fine Dining in Downtown Vancouver

Posted in Chinese, Dinner, Fine dining, Food Bloggers, Great Views, Joyce, Meat, Restaurants, Soup, Special Occasion, Vancouver, tagged Chang'An, ChineseBites, duck, Fish Stew, Fried Chicken, Granville Bridge, lamb, Lobster, mushrooms, Northern Chinese Cuisine, Peking Duck, pork belly, Roasted Duck, Sea Cucumber, Sliders, Sweet & Sour Soup on February 16, 2016| Leave a Comment »

Our friends at ChineseBites invited me to a Chinese fine dining experience at Chang’An Restaurant. It’s located right under the Granville Bridge, where Nu and Stonegrill used to be, with the gorgeous view of the False Creek.

It turned out to be an elaborate 17-course dinner. Hold the drool! This is going to be a long and delicious post!

Food

As each table of guests is seated, they would be greeted with Guo Kui Pita 鍋盔. This was like complimentary bread served at western restaurants. The pita bread was served warm, crispy on the outside, and soft inside. I really liked the fermented bean sauce that came with it; it’s nutty and spicy, kinda like XO sauce too.

But we were all distracted by what’s happening on the table-side. It’s the Chang’an Roasted Duck 長安炙鴨! This was what we came here for. It’s the restaurant’s signature dish, and you must pre-order ahead of time. Why? Because it takes 72 hours to prepare the duck, then it’s roasted in-house for over an hour. According to the restaurant, they actually schedule the cooking time based on your dinner reservation, so it would be served roughly 15 minutes after you are seated, ensuring the optimal tenderness of the meat and crispiness of the skin.

Usually for Peking Ducks, restaurants would just skin the duck and serve it with crepes, etc. Here they actually serve the skin two ways: first of all, they serve the crispiest part of the skin, and skin only with just a thin layer of fat, and you dip it in brown sugar. (more…)

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Beijing House Restaurant – A Taste of Northern China in Campbell River

Posted in Chinese, Dinner, Home Cooking, Mr., Vancouver Island, tagged Authentic, Beijing House Restaurant, Campbell River, Cumin, Northern Chinese Cuisine on August 11, 2011| 6 Comments »

I have to say, at first I cringed at the thought of having Chinese food in Campbell River. My previous experiences with small town Chinese food had been terrible. Short of making a sweet and sour pork burger, many of these places have bastardized Chinese food to a point where you can’t even recognize them anymore.

With subtle signage and a name far from Golden Dragon Happy Panda Wok, Beijing House gave me a sliver of hope, that a Chinese restaurant in a small town may have redeeming qualities. Will my hopes and dreams be fulfilled? Or will my heart get broken once again? You’ll have to read on to find out.

Chapter 1 – Through the door

The décor was heavily accented with red. A few pieces of Chinese art dotted the walls, along with pictures of their dishes. It’s clean, it’s relatively simple, and it’s pleasing to the eye. First impression wise, Beijing House did well.