Szechuan Chongqing Restaurant 重慶大飯店

I've never been to this restaurant before even though it's so close to my house. I'll probably never go back after today. Szechuan Chongqing Restaurant is pretty easy to get to, just a few blocks away from Commercial SkyTrain Station and there's parking for customers in the back behind the alley. We got here pretty early but the restaurant soon filled with diners, probably because they have a $8.45 lunch special until 3:30pm. 

We initially wanted to eat Shanghai food, but the restaurant we wanted to go to was closed on Wednesdays, but my mom said they served Shanghai food here.

Hot and Sour Soup with Chicken and Shrimp (Small) $6.95

  

The first thing we ordered was the Hot and Sour Soup. It wasn't bad, but it wasn't good either. My mom said the balance of heat and sourness was off and I agreed. They added mushrooms and peas, which doesn't usually go in this soup, but that didn't bother me. What really did was that I could barely find any meat. My parents thought they gave us a vegetarian version by mistake, but I ended up finding a shrimp ("a" meaning just one!), and it was baby sized.    

Shanghai Chow Mein with Shredded Pork $10.95

This is another dish that we usually get. Stir-fried Shanghai noodles with meat and pea tips. It was way too oily for my liking and overall, it just didn't taste good. I actually ended up biting on a piece of egg shell when I ate this. My mom told me that they probably used eggs to make their noodles but that's no excuse for having the shells in the dish!

Pan Fried Pork Dumplings (10 pcs) $7.95

My sister was at school at the time, so my mom promised her that she would bring her some fried dumplings home. This was probably the best thing we ate today. The dumplings were hot and juicy on the inside with the meat filling and crispy on the outside with the pan-fried dumpling skin. 

Shanghai Style Dumpling (10 pcs) $7.95

These steamed dumplings, also known as Xaio Long Bao, are also on our list of usual orders and this restaurant really let me down. Xaio Long Bao are soup dumplings and the filling is a combination of ground meat and solid meat aspic (gelatin made from meat stock) and the steam from cooking is supposed to melt the aspic to create a soup in the dumpling. The dumplings should be plump with wonderful meat juices, but at first glance when I saw them on the table, my family could tell the juices were long gone from these poor dumplings. It's... it's devastating. Seeing these dumplings have nothing left to live for... Just kidding, we still ate them, but we were really disappointed that the main highlight of the dish wasn't well, highlighted.

Steamed Meatballs $3.25

Mom ordered this off of their dim sum menu and she was disappointed because most restaurants give you bean curd underneath the meatballs. 

This is probably the first time I've eaten a fortune cookie in an actual Chinese restaurant. Overall, the food wasn't great. I know we were ordering Shanghai food and not Szechuan food, which may have been a factor as it was not their specialty, but if it's on the menu, it should be good and executed properly. The pan-fried dumplings were good, but I wouldn't go back just for them. I can't really forgive them for the egg shell in my noodles though.

Hon's Wun-Tun House 漢記 (Chinatown Location)

In the heart of Chinatown stands a restaurant where I've been to loads of times throughout my childhood, and that's Hon's Wun-Tun House on Keefer Street. One of the very reasons is that my grandmother has been working here ever since she's been living in Vancouver (before I was even born). When I was younger, I would go with my mom, aunt, or grandpa to pick her up sometimes, but now that she's retired, it seems like ages since we've eaten here. Hon's used to be very popular, but it doesn't seem as busy as it used to be anymore (they actually shut down the Richmond location a while back). 

My mom and I were just grabbing a quick bite for lunch today, because we were in a rush running errands and lost time getting my new iPhone 4S. It's been pretty awesome so far and I've stopped using my digital camera. The photos today are actually taken with the iPhone!

Pork Potstickers (6 pcs) $3.50

We started off with the Pork Potstickers which were very hot and crispy. They are served with vinegar as a dipping sauce. You can choose to have them pan-fried (the best way), steamed, or in soup. The fillings that you can choose include pork, chicken, beef, and vegetarian. I remember when I was little, I would bite a hole into the potsticker, take out and eat the filling first, and then pour in some vinegar before I ate the dumpling skin. 

Stir-Fried Rice Noodles with Beef Slices $8.75

This is a pretty common dish that you can get at any Chinese restaurant. Nothing too special about this. What I try to look for in stir-fried noodles is that they should be cooked in a really hot wok to get a caramelized (almost burnt, as my dad would say) fragrance from the noodles. I also like it when some of the noodles are stacked in a clump of layers. The noodles were perfect today, and there was so much, that I had to take the rest for dinner at work. 

Overall, the prices are pretty cheap for good Chinese diner food. You can get congee (rice porridge) or a noodle soup for under $10 and be very satisfied. I love Chinese comfort food once in a while, but there's nothing too special about the food (you can get these dishes at other restaurants), so I probably won't come back for a long while.