Shanghainese | VanFoodies.com

Posts Tagged ‘Shanghainese’

Zhao’s Soup House – New restaurant makes soup with no MSG

Posted in Chinese, Comfort Food, Dinner, Joyce, Meat, Restaurants, Richmond, Seafood, Soup, tagged Alexandra Road, chicken, Clay Pot, Fish Head, Pork Intestines, Richmond, Shanghainese, Soup, Zhao's Soup House on August 15, 2014| Leave a Comment »

In Richmond, you will never run out of ideas for Chinese food: seafood restaurant, Hong Kong cafe, noodle house, Shanghainese, etc. There are many long-standing restaurants, but new ones also pop up all over the city. Recently, a soup house was opened on Alexandra Road, specialized in hearty soups without the use of MSG. I took the soup expert, aka Mama Lam, along with Papa Lam and Mr., to give them a try.

Food

Of course we had to try their soups. The small size, which serves up 3 bowls of soup, costs $12 each; some soup items are available in a bigger size for $48. To allow us to try more, we ordered two small soups. The Dried Vegetable, Almonds & Lung Soup brought nostalgic feelings to us as my grandparents used to make it for us when we were living in HK. You can taste a hint of sweetness from the dried bok choy and meaty flavours from the pig’s lung. The lung is soft and mushy yet spongy, not at all an unpleasant texture (for me anyway, non-Chinese may think otherwise). I quite liked eating it.

The elegant clay soup pot was piping hot when it arrived at the table and we must leave it to the trained server to pour out the soup, to avoid burning our hands. And as advertised, it’s not heavily salted (borderline under-seasoned) nor do you feel thirsty afterwards (the common side effect of eating a lot of MSG). I was convinced that they didn’t use MSG in their soups.

The second one was the Zhao’s Free-Range Chicken Soup. It’s named after the restaurant so I would assume it’s their signature soup. (more…)

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Dinesty Chinese Restaurant – Pay Up Before You’re Done?

Posted in Chinese, Dinner, Joyce, Meat, Restaurants, Richmond, tagged Bean Curd, Chinese Pancakes, Dinesty, Dinesty Chinese Restaurant, duck, dumplings, Fried Rice, Richmond, Shanghai, Shanghainese, Squirrel Fish, Sweet & Sour Fish, Xiao Long Bao on May 29, 2014| 1 Comment »

Surprisingly I’ve never been to Dinesty even though it’s one of the popular Shanghainese restaurants in Lower Mainland. Now that I’m in Richmond, of course I took the opportunity to visit one of the locations — the one on Ackroyd Road.

Food

With the four of us, we ordered a few appetizers and a few entrees to share. For appetizers we started with a cold dish, Chinese Spinach with Bean Curd. The Chinese spinach has more fibre than regular spinach, so it had a nice bite to it. The combination, served cold, was quite refreshing. I like that it’s in a small dish so there wasn’t too much to share. The Stewed Duck Leg in Brown Sauce was rather ordinary. The meat was tender, but wasn’t very flavourful. The thinner slices seemed to have more flavours; it may be helpful if it’s served with a little bit of sauce on the plate.

The Bean Curd Mushroom Roll is one of our favourite dishes, so we were excited about ordering it. It was good, with a lot of diced shitake mushrooms in the filling. It was a bit too crispy for our liking, though, as we prefer the pan-fried version. The dipping sauce was a hot, sweet and sour sauce, and it worked well with the fried bean curd. The Marinated Beef Wrapped in Pancake was a bit of a letdown. The pancake was thick, doughy, and there was not enough sauce inside the wrap. The one from Long’s Noodle House is still my favourite preparation of this.

Of course, you can’t go to a Shanghainese restaurant without the classic, Steamed Pork Dumplings, or known to many, Xiao Long Bao or XLB. This was probably one of the best I’ve had. (more…)

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Long’s Noodle House

Posted in Chinese, Dessert, Dinner, Home Cooking, Joyce, Lunch, Neighbourhood Gem, Soup, Vancouver, tagged Long's Noodle House, Main Street, Shanghai, Shanghainese, Wine Chicken, Xiao Long Bao on October 20, 2011| Leave a Comment »

I don’t often blog about Chinese food because my mom makes great Canton-style dishes (think stir-frys). However we do appreciate other Chinese cuisines and sometimes go out and about for great finds. Shanghainese is one of our favourites, and here’s one that we always go for our Shanghainese food fix – Long’s Noodle House. The restaurant doesn’t look all that fancy on the outside, but don’t let that fool you. It serves some really great food.

Food

I’ve been to Long’s many many times, and of course, when you go to a restaurant very often you start to forget to take pictures. However I do have some images of my favourite dishes here.

Beef Rolls is a must-order for me. I’m not a huge fan of strong, fragrant herbs but for some reason I just really enjoy this dish. It’s basically sliced beef, cilantro and hoi-sin sauce wrapped in a Chinese tortilla. It’s crispy outside and the beef was tender, flavourful with just the right amount of hoi-sin sauce. A great appetizer to start the meal.

Beef Rolls

Wine Chicken is also a popular dish at the restaurant. Despite the fact that we order it every time I actually don’t have a picture of it. It’s a chicken drumstick with thigh marinated and cooked in Chinese wine, and is served in a cute little jar. It uses Hua Diao wine which is super fragrant, so even though the alcohol content has evaporated during the cooking process, you can still taste the wine. This dish is meant to serve lukewarm.

How can you not order Xiao Long Bao at a Shanghainese restaurant? I’ve had XLBs at many restaurants and these are one of the best. Thin dumping skin with lots of juice inside. I found the size a bit too big so it takes a few bite to finish. By the way, do you know the proper way of eating XLBs? You are supposed to hold it upside down so the flat side faces up. Then you bite off a bit of the skin, drink the juice, then eat the dumpling with the dipping sauce. It works every time – no XLB juice splashes all over me.