Tasty Village

Tasty Village
4735 Willingdon Ave.
Burnaby, BC V5G 3H5
Tel: (604) 437-8813

The Shanghainese boys at our church insisted that this was the best restaurant ever. There was a whole bunch of new things I’ve never tried… seeing that this was my first legit Shanghai cuisine meal, that’s not surprising.

This was probably the one thing that I have tried before—Shanghai Noodles. What can I say? It was good. I haven’t eaten enough of it to really say if it’s good or not … or if there was anything wrong with it. Can’t remember, but it was probably a little on the salty side—like all Asian foods.

This was called the Shredded Pork & Ji Cai Rice Cakes? It was really good! Eating the greens made me miss all those Asian greens I eat at home (I was hardly home during the summer).

This was the Gingered Beef? I thought there was going to be an overpowering taste of ginger… but it was actually pretty subtle—which I like. It was tasty though!

This is a failed shot of the fish head … but this was pretty much Sweet and Sour Fish. That’s probably not the name for it… but it tasted exactly like the sweet and sour pork…except this is fish. The boys who introduced us to this restaurant raved about how GOOD this dish was. The gang and I were on a different level of thinking. It wasn’t something extravagant…it was just decent.

I can’t remember what this was called…but it’s Jellyfish. This was so different from the jellyfish that I usually eat… crunch and tasteless.  They probably just cut the fish up and soaked it in soy sauce. Ugh. Even my dad can make a better jellyfish!

I really wish that I had my paper with me right now… this was pork wrapped in egg yolk. I didn’t like the yolk so much—I never did like it. But the pork was good.

Overall, this place wasn’t as good as I had been conditioned to believe. The people are really pushy about ordering more food—especially if you are a bigger group. They try and make you order pretty much a dish per person. If they can’t do that, they’ll suggest the more expensive items on the menu. They were quite rude too. I guess it was our fault that they were already closed and we were still finishing up their food … but did they really have to turn off half the lights in the restaurant (this place wasn’t big … so it was pretty awkward) and start putting up the chairs and mopping around us? I mean common! We were there until probably 20 minutes after they closed. This isn’t some where I’d go again for Shanghai food. I’ll try other places first.

Fortune House Dim Sum

Fortune House Dim Sum
247-4700 Kingsway (Metropolis at Metrotown, right outside the upper level enterance by the skytrain)
Burnaby, BC
Phone: 604.438.8686

I’ve always thought and been told that Fortune House restaruant is super expensive for dim sum… and it’s not that good. My thoughts were confirmed a while back when I went. However, since the renovations, a lot has changed! Their menu never looked so appealing and their food never tasted so good (this is in comparison to what I had a few years ago…)

Brenda, Ronald, and I decided to grab some quick dim sum. A heads up for the future: make reservations. There’s a TON of people who goes there to eat. Second heads up for myself: tell them I’m Michael’s friend. Darn those people who got in before us while we listened to the hostess say “You’re Michael’s friends right? Come in this way” –thinking it was US.

We ordered a bunch of stuff–a lot of things I had never tried.

Don’t know why, but our desserts came first. This was the Lychee & Osthmanthus Jelly Cake . It was a surprisingly good combination! The flavours were very clear and sweet ( translation from Canto’s qing teem). There were little lychee bits in it which made the texture better to eat–not just another peice of jello.

I forgot what this was called… but it was something along the lines of Beef Wrapped in Pastry (I think). I thought I’ve never had this…but I have. However, I’m pretty sure that this one owned the one I ate at Bubble World. The beef sauce was probably a little too salty for me… but balance out well with the unflavoured crispy outside. When you bite into it, you get a slight crunch into the soft tender meat.

Haha I can’t remember the name of this either… but it was some kind of shrimp spring roll. Salad Shrimp Spring roll? Ah, I can’t remember (why did I throw the paper away!! :( ) This was very enjoyable too! The crunch on the outside was what I expect all spring rolls to be like–maybe a little less oil, and the insides were exactly what I look for when trying spring rolls other than the usual veggies and pork (or some kind of meat).

This one is called the Steam Three Types of Mushroom Rice Roll (I think. And in Canto: Sam Guu Cherng). I’ve never actually had this before. I’ve heard about people eating it–and my Ga Jeh really likes it, but I’ve never tried it myself. There’s a lot of mushroom taste to it. If you don’t like mushrooms–especially the enoki mushrooms (which is the most fragrant of them all), don’t get this. This is also a good vegetarian dish.

I would definitely come back for dim sum again. I want to try all the different things they have on their menu! I want to see the difference. Besides, the new renovations is really nice and makes you feel like you’re eating at some high end dim sum place (which is probably true).

Clove

Clove
2054 Commercial Dr
Tel: 604-255-5550

Wow, I just read some reviews on this restaurant on dinehere.ca and they aren’t all that pretty! Honestly, I enjoyed my meal overall. The ambience was really nice too!

Mandy and I got two different meals, but similar drinks. I had forgotten to jot the names of these items down…thinking that I could get it off their site. However, it seems to be nothing more than a broken link!

Anyways, I think we ordered this Mango thing … and Mandy’s had a special name for it… it meant blended with yoghurt. All it tasted like to me was mango smoothie/puree. It was good, but nothing special about it. I advise you to stick with the non yoghurt drinks… the yoghurt isn’t all that pleasant.

I wasn’t too hungry so I settled for the salad (I think it was the Asian salad? No I lied. I don’t remember what it’s called). When this thing came to me, I was so shocked! It was HUGE. It reminded me of the Cheesecake Factory dish sizes… the salad was pretty scrumptious. It had cilantros in it… which I hate. But because it went well with the whole dish, I didn’t mind eating it. There were also curry dipped (sautéed?) cauliflower too. This worked out well to balance the strong balsamic vinegar taste (if it wasn’t balsamic vinegar, I fail at eating foods haha).

Mandy went for the butter chicken—since she was craving Indian food. She thought it was okay. Not great, but not bad. I had a taste of it and I agreed. This wasn’t your typical butter chicken that you get from Indian restaurants; it had a sweeter spin to it. And the naan bread? It wasn’t even naan bread! It was more like naan chips. The bread was thinly cut like chips, and crunched so loud like chips, and slightly salted like chips. If this was served to an Indian person, they’d probably thing they’re eating chips too.

So, I thought the food was pretty good. There were flavors I had never had and presentation was quite elegant. It’s a place I would go back to. What I enjoyed most was the atmosphere of the place. It was quite small, but very relaxing. There were only a few tables and could seat at most 6 people. The chatter (and music if there was any) was in the background most of the time. Mandy and I were so into our conversations that we (I) didn’t even really pay attention to anything else.

Dragon Boat Festival

Unless you know someone in the races or you are affiliatd somehow… you probably won’t find this very exciting. I initially thought it’d be very fun and a place where families could go hang out. They could…but it wouldn’t be my first choice for fun.

Even though I didn’t enjoy my time there that much, I enjoyed the scenary! Downtown Vancouver is just so pretty :)

update finally!

I know it’s been SO long since I updated!! I suck. I’ve done so many things…and have eaten so many things… that I haven’t documented yet! I swear once summer is over, I’ll update it all :)

But in the mean time…enjoy the book update! I’m adding children books to my list of savory things :)

Varmints

Varmints
Written by Helen Ward
Illustrated by Marc Craste
http://www.studioaka.co.uk/

I discovered this book on one of my usual Chapters runs. It seems like 9/10 times, I always leave the store with some thing in hand. This was one of the books that I got the last time I went (even though I did not have it with me physically… since I had to order online. Some of the books in store aren’t that well kept).

Anyways, it was the illustrations that originally caught my eyes. The front cover was absolutely beautiful. It was such an artistic cover! I quickly flipped through the pages on the inside and I knew that this was a book I had to get. Even though 1/5 of the pages were black and gloomy, they were all artistically crafted. I skimmed the story (because I always feel guilty reading the whole book in store..unless it was really really short) and found it to be so meaningful. It was about a world that was perfect in the beginning, but cluttered by crap later on. Unnecessary and complex things were built and beautiful simplistic things had been forgotten.
That’s kind of like all our lives, isn’t it? We were young innocent children living a simple and beautiful life. It wasn’t that the older we got, th more beautiful and more simple things got, it was quite the opposite. We’ve all forgotten what it is like to listen to the bees buzz. We’ve all forgotten what it is like to just listen in life. Instead, we’re too busy yabbering on about our own views and rights.
The book ends by going back to that simple life. In a sense, we do too… When we get older, we live the life we did back when we were kids. To me, this book is a reminder to retreat back to the simplicity often… instead of waiting till we are at the end, all whithered and old.

While looking for Helen’s website, I stumbled on Marc’s stuff. I found a trailer for his short for this story!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RJQ4RTo6hRg

Crystal Mall Food Court Run

SOoooooOo since I’m going to be spending 4 months at Crystal Mall (2 down, 2 more to go) and I have pretty much just stuck to my familar places of eats, I thought I’d try out all the different stalls of Crystal Mall. The latest place out of my usual was Hung’s Tepennaki. It was actually really good!

I’m going to be documenting each stall … and I will try something different if I usually go there, just so I can taste other things :)

Anyways, just thought you should know.

Iona Jetty

Iona Jetty
Richmond somewhere… near YVR
(I’m really bad with my way around Richmond)

After Jath told me about it, I was excited to go! I never knew we had this in Vancouver! I’ve seen it in movies and I thought it was a nice place to go watch the sunset… and not to mention, planes landing and taking flight as well.

Paddra called me and asked if I wanted to go out since it was such a sunny day. Obviously, I can’t refuse a date with my lo por. So we decided to go Iona Jetty.

Although it wasn’t the nicest sunset day when I went… it was a nice change. We got the clouds, the red glowing skies, and some nice breezes.

I actually thought that Jath was lying when he said the jetty was a poo pipeline… I mean what the heck! But it turned out to be real. The jetty IS a poo pipeline! Paddra and I ended up calling it the pooline. It was also… far bigger than I had expected.

You see how it curves on the side? That’s the outside of the pipe…. and from we were about 7-8 ft off the ground? Yea. It’s THAT big. A little disgusting…but you don’t smell anything.

The whole walk is 4km one way. It took us probably an hour to walk to the end… with a lot of detours to look at the flowers at the bottom, attempting to take a selca with the “half way” shed, and other random things.

We arrived at the end at 9:44pm and made our way back. The park actually closes at 9:00pm. So you’re probably wondering what happend …. something amazing happend. You can read about it here.

I actually wanted to spend more time when we got to the end of the jetty… but it was getting dark and it was actually kind of smelly…so we left. I can’t even remember how the area looked like! But apparently, it’s a nice place to do some graffiti. People wrote happy birthday.. and some random Chinese wordss.

My goal for next time is to come back and walk the whole 8km… before the park closes.

JP Malone’s

Hello world! Okay, I think I’ve been absent for far too long… my bad! Been busy and not all that excited about doing this anymore :( but doesn’t mean I won’t.
I mean, this is more of a collection of things for me anyways! :)

J.P. Malone’s (or J. Malone’s?)
9031 Blundell Road
(Blundell & Garden City)

Introduced to this “secret” place in Richmond by a couple of friends who claim they were there and have been eating the 15 cent wings before it got popular (I’m not saying they’re lying.. I’m saying I wasn’t with them.. but they claim that!)

That’s right. 15 cent wings. They’re nice and crispy and you can dip them anyway you like :) However, the sauces are $1 each… but as long as you have a big group to share the wings, that $1 will seem like nothing.
The choice of sauces are pretty limited, but the favorite that gets everyone is honey mustard. My second choice of sauce would be the pineapple curry. It is… very interesting–in a good way of course.

The beer selection is alright (this is coming from someone who does not drink often) but when I brought my friends there, they were disappointed that they didn’t have Asahi (or something) …. but they did! I guess the beer they have does not really cater to Asians (unless you like non-Asian beer… like my other Asian friends).

In the hunger of gorging, I totally forgot to take pictures of the wings!! Here is a picture with my super Asian peace sign friends.

downtown part 1

I say part one because.. I don’t think I’ve explored it enough. There are still some places I need to go… Nonetheless, this post will include gastown, west georgia, cupcakes, vancouver central library, the candy aisle, and japadogs. 

It was an AMAZING day to go out and explore :) The weather was beautiful, special incidences I would have never dreamed of encountering… it only goes to show how diverse Vancouver can be on a daily basis. I can’t say that I’ve captured everything I want to in this post. What can I say, I’m not exactly a good tourist of my own city. I get distracted and I also miss out on things I would have wanted to take pictures of. Oh well. 

 

1. Gastown
 Being one of the few historical places in Vancouver, it is definitely a tourist attracting area. There are tons of souvinier shops, unique style of clothing shops, a wide range of non-clothing shopping (ie. jade and household furnishing and items), and many yummy restaurants. The only restaurant I’ve been in (many times might I add) is The Old Spaghetti Factory–which I thought was pretty good. It’s been a while since I’ve been there… so I must go down for another visit before I can do a post on the restaurant any justice.

 

You know when you are stepping on brick-covered ground, you’ve step inside Gastown. It’s what distinguishes Gastown from the “outside”. 

 

I can’t remember the name of the souviner store that I stepped in… but I know the outside was covered with hello kitty advertisement! When you walk down Water st, you won’t miss it. They had so many great things… and a lot of great souviners. Maybe a little bit pricey… but they’re pretty good quality! Oh, and they accept Japanese Yen and will convert it to Canadian dollars for you when you buy something :)

Canadian cookie monster? Get out. 

Duff energy drinks …. and many other funky junky drinks!

 

There’s this really neat shoe store in gastown too. I didn’t take a picture of it… but they had boar hair shoes for guys :S They also had a super big billboard type thing which attracted my attention in going in to the store (and apparently many other customers too). 

“Architecture is the art of wasting space” Philip Johnson. 
Well said man, well said. 

Apparently it was this while board that the store had. They had some guy draw some designs on it for a store event (party?) and they had pens and whatnot to let the guests go and add their own thing. People have just kept on adding and they decided since it was such a attention drawing piece, they’d keep it there. 

 

Check out these wicked “signatures” on the shoes!

Yea, there are so many dividers in Gastown. There’s one at the beginning, and here in the middle. I think the right road takes you all the way to Chinatown (if my memory serves me correctly… or was it just the road on my right hand side? Ah, can’t remember)

 

2. West Georgia
 You know amazingly, there are quite some treasure along West Georgia. I never thought anything of it… it was just merely a road my friends and I would take down to the seawall. I guess I never really took time to look out for the things around.

A RAINBOW on a bright sunny day? Spectacular!

 

Neat art displays too!

 

3. cupcakes (and starbucks)

Okay, this is horribly taken. I was so sure I took it right the first time…but apparently I didn’t. I was TRYING to show that I was inside a starbucks… looking out diagonally at another starbucks. 
This reminds me of the Simpsons episode where Bart is getting chased by Nelson and friends (or by someone… Sideshow Bob?) at the mall.. and he went by stores that were: starbucks, starbucks, starbucks, and coming soon: starbucks. Haha I guess we can’t have too much starbucks… 

 

My friends were pointing something out to me and were really excited about it. I looked across and saw it was Cupcakes! I loved this place… but I had no idea they opened one on Robson. And so, we decided to cross over and grab some.
While we were crossing.. there seemed to be this huge crowd and some girl getting her picture taken and posing in front of the store. I don’t know why but I took out my camera and tried to take a picture of her posing. Before it actually took it… my camera died. By the time I changed the batteries, she stopped posing. First off you must be wondering why would I be taking a picture of a girl posing? I asked myself the same question. But as time went on… and the more I stared at her, I was sure that she was someone famous! I just couldn’t exactly put my finger on it. Finally, I decided she kind of looked like Lola from Zoey 101. I told my friend and she said that it did look like her after I said it (hindsight bias I guess). I tried to take a clear picture of her just so I had proof I saw her… and if she turned out not to be famous, oh well!

This was the stalker picture I took. As we were leaving, I could not help but feel a little… uneasy. I’m sure that was someone famous! I was so sure… that I wanted a picture with them. The only famous person I’ve met and had a picture taken with was “ho yee” from “zun ching”. I decided that I would ask my sister if she knew her. Apparently she didn’t.. until I asked if she looked like Lola from Zoey 101. She looked at it and said it was! Her name was Victoria Justice.
OHEMGEE! I saw Victoria Justice …haha. Oh man. Sorry. I just went on a rant there… cough.
The MORAL of my rant is that you’ll never know who you’ll see downtown Vancouver :b

 

Their mini cupcakes are so cute! So good! And awesome for sharing :)

4. Vancouver Central Library

I’ve always thought that it was such a cool building… and what a perfect excuse to finally get a picture of it! Not to mention there’s apparently a building similar to this in France…England…or somewhere in Euorpe (which I heard from a classmate who went travelling).

As we were walking closer to the library… we see these things moving near the top of the building. It was people. 

Yea, PEOPLE. 

Apparently they were dancing. 

 

5. Candy Aisle

This is every child’s dream store. Honestly, I don’t even need to explain. The following pictures will do justice.

 

Yea, I just wanted to mention though… you can get your supply of UK (& Aussie) candy here!! They have so many… tons which I had the priviledge of tasting …thanks to some amazing friends from UK :)

The only thing they’re missing is ASIAN candy. If they did… this store would probably have to be 2 floors. 

5.Japadogs

On the Corner of Smithe and Burrard, stands one of the best hot dog stands in Vancouver. It’s not your ordinary dog with ketchup and mustard. This is the original Japanese style dog with mayo and seaweed. You may not be intriged… but many before you (and after you) have been intriged. According to some food guide of Vancouver foods, it is a part of the 101 things you must taste before you die … book? guide? I don’t know what it is. I just read it. 

 

 

The hotdog just melts in your mouth. Okay that sounds gross… but it’s a nice kind of melting! You have the balance of crunchy seaweed on top (which you can kind of pick out and eat some so it does not attack your face as you take your first bite and it will give you a nice Japanese feel to begin with). The bun itself is probably really ordinary. Even the dog is ordinary! But how it’s dressed that makes it extraordinary. Probably really fattening… but SO GOOD.

 

6.mishmash

There were so many eagles around! I put this one up… cause it’s special and kind of like a memorial piece..lol. 

The countdown thing out at Vancouver Art Gallery. 

The “posh” side of downtown.  

 

 

This is only the beginning of the downtown tour. Until next time! 
(The thing I don’t like about WP, is I don’t know how to change my fonts….:( and umm yea, the margin for my pictures is way too small! Make my reupload. Ugh. Excuse the flaws of this post.