Kongee Dinesty 金津粥品專門店

After a year long hiatus, I'm back with more reviews, and I'm starting with a newly opened restaurant in Richmond called Kongee Dinesty.

The restaurant is in an easily accessible plaza on Garden city and Capstan Way. The plaza is now filled with restaurants, but even at lunchtime there were plenty of parking spots. 

The interior is quite new and reminds me of Dinesty (same owner maybe?). It's bright, spacious, and plenty of daylight comes through the interestingly dressed up window that makes it near impossible to see into the restaurant from outside. 

We were given the lunch menu so it was quite limited. We ordered just a few dishes to see if it was good and we weren't disappointed.

Sampan Congee - A congee staple at most establishments, it was average to good. J doesn't meat pig's ears, so I don't know why she orders this. H didn't really care for it but she didn't complain either.

Sweet Chinese Donut - A favourite of mine. It was decent here, but tasted a little too doughy. H loved it though. I liked how it wasn't overly fried. 

Pan Fried Turnip Cake with X.O. Sauce - This dish was the main event of my meal. The turnip cake was cut into cubes and pan fried in sauce. The cubes were a little on the thick side, so you get a lot of soft turnip cake in every bite (as opposed to the crispy outside). It could be cut a little thinner to increase the ratio of crispness. The sauce was tasty, but they could have been a bit more generous with it. The one thing I didn't like was the bean sprouts. They were flavorless and seemed to be added to the plate as more of a garnish than part of the dish. 

Chinese Donut Wrapped with Rice Roll - in a nutshell I was disappointed with this dish. Maybe I was getting full and they served this nearly 20 minutes after everything else we ordered. However, I found that the doughnut was too doughy, and the rice wrap was a little below average. They provided a bit of sauce, but it felt a little stingy too. Overall, I probably wouldn't order it again. 

H also got a glass of warm soy milk, which was just okay. 

Service wasn't bad. There were probably 6 staff waiting tables and hosting, but there were also a few times we had to wait to flag someone down. The restaurant only has about 20 tables, so they can probably do with being a little more attentive. 

Overall, I think I will go back because it's new, there's lots of parking, and they have a more extensive dinner menu that I haven't even looked at yet. For now, I do recommend trying it out, but time might change that recommendation. 

Summary
Food: Good. Based purely on lunch, it was close to just being average.

Service: Good. There were plenty of servers, but at times they weren't very attentive.

Setting: Good. It's a new establishment.

Value: Good. Their prices are quite reasonable and the food is pretty good.

Kumare Restaurant & Bakery

Our friends wanted to get their Filipino food fix, so we booked Kumare Restaurant & Bakery for a Saturday night dinner.

Lumpiang Shanghai

The restaurant is in a small plaza and there were just enough parking spaces for the size of the restaurant. When we arrived, we were seated pretty quickly but it took a long time between visits from the servers to place our order. The place was quite busy, but the servers clearly weren't very attentive that night. The food also took a very long time before they were served, but it could have been due to the number of large parties dining that evening.

We ordered 6 dishes and split everything 'family style'. Following is what was ordered.

Chicken Pandan

Lumpiang Shanghai - Deep fried bite sized spring rolls made up of ground pork, shrimp, and onions. Served with a side of sweet chili sauce. The sauce was the best part of the dish. The spring rolls had a light, thin, crispy skin, but the stuffing was very 'mystery meat'-like. The ingredients were very well-ground up so the texture was very bland.

Chicken Pandan - Fried chicken marinated in coconut milk and wrapped with pandan leaves. The chicken was very tasty and juicy. I thought the coconut milk flavour was too light, and overall the dish was too greasy.

Kumare's Rice

Kumare's Rice - Shrimp paste (bagoong) fried rice garnished with shredded mangoes. The mangoes had little to no taste and didn't add much to the rice and could have been left off completely.

Adobong Sitaw - String beans, shrimp, and pork braised in soy sauce, garlic, and vinegar. The sour nature of the sauce made this a favourite at our table. It went well with the garlic rice and the flavours were well received. I never thought I would enjoy minced pork with vinegar.

There were also 2 pork dishes that I honestly can't remember the names/descriptions of. The grilled one was actually quite good and very flavourful. The only thing I didn't like about it was that it was extremely greasy. The second pork dish was a little overwhelming in terms of the 'porkie' taste. The sauce it came with was good, but it was a little light in taste and heavy on cream.

Adobong Sitaw

After all the mains, we also ordered a couple of Halo Halo desserts which I didn't end up trying because I was feeling sick (not from the food, just in general).

Foodwise, all the dishes were very tasty but they were also consistently too greasy. I'm not sure if this is something common with Filipino restaurants as 3 of 3 that I have tried in the Lower Mainland are all pretty greasy.

Grilled Pork

The restaurant location wasn't bad as they practically have their own parking lot in front of the restaurant. The interior was a little confusing as it feels modern with dark colours and dim lighting, but the nature of the food they serve is more family-oriented. 

Despite the hit on service and the greasiness of the food, I still recommend Kumare Restaurant & Bakery because the food is good. Although, I would also recommend the greasiest dishes in moderation. 

Summary

Food: Very Good. This one could have slipped down to Good, but in moderation the greasiness can be overcome. 

Braised Pork

Service: Poor. The servers are slow and aren't really attentive to all the tables in a consistent manner. The kitchen is also quite slow with serving up orders. 

Setting: Average. Just enough parking out front, and tables that can be easily arranged for large parties. 

Value: Good. Their prices are quite reasonable and the food is pretty good. 

Halo Halo

Po Kong Vegetarian Restaurant 普光素食

Aside from dining with vegetarians, every once in a while we have a craving of the meatless variety and we pick from a short list of restaurants that serve no meat at all (because vegetarian options at regular restaurants often use the same cooking implements or even the same oil as that used for meat dishes). We've been to Po Kong on Kingsway once before and chose to go again this long weekend.

Jai (Gluten) Combination

The restaurant is located at a busy section of Kingsway near Knight Street, so parking can be challenging. We ended up a block away right on Kingsway, so it wasn't so bad. The restaurant has about 3 parking spots out back, unless you feel like double-parking and having to move your car if you box someone in, or get boxed in yourself.

Baked Vegetables in Portugese Sauce

The interior is very... green. They have quite a few tables of various sizes and on the Saturday that we went, it was half full when we arrived. Throughout our meal, more patrons showed up and a small line started to form by the entrance, which is almost always a sign of good business.

As a Chinese restaurant, you get your choice of tea as you sit down and we ended up ordering perhaps a little too much.

Jai (gluten) combination. A combination of different kinds of marinated wheat gluten. Spongy in texture and easy to chew, Bo Kong's wheat gluten is a great appetizer and goes well in the main dishes as well.

Enoki Mushrooms on Fried Tofu and Broccoli

House special chow mein. A myriad of vegetables and thick broth-like sauce over a bed of crispy fried noodles. Meat or no meat, this dish is excellent for the variety of vegetables and textures of the ingredients. There's bok choi, bamboo shoots, marinated wheat gluten, wood ear (a type of fungus), broccoli and carrots. I think there was bean sprouts in there too. There is so much variety in this dish that you forget there's no meat.

Sizzling Steak with Black Pepper Sauce

Baked vegetables in Portugese sauce. If you like Portugese sauce and the chewy, stringy taste and texture of baked cheese, order this one as soon as you sit down. There's a 20-30 minute preparation time for it, but it's well worth it. The dish is comprised of mostly broccoli, cauliflower, carrots, and taro, baked with Portugese sauce and covered in cheese. The sauce works very well with the baked vegetables and the portion size is very generous.

Enoki mushrooms on fried tofu and broccoli. The overall taste of this dish is similar to the house special chow mein, except it is a little more subtle. The enoki mushrooms are mixed with carrots and poured over a stack of fried tofu on a bed of broccoli. The tofu and broccoli aren't completely dry, but there wasn't quite enough sauce to spread around the whole dish. This dish was pretty average overall.

Plain Rice Roll 

Sizzling steak with black pepper sauce and broccoli and cauliflower. The steak is imitation meat or sausage (really made of tofu or other bean ingredients) and sliced up and pan fried on the sizzling plate. The black pepper sauce very good and adds a bit of kick to the 'meat' and the vegetables. It might be better with corn or cabbage to soak up the sauce, but it's a good pick regardless.

Plain rice roll with sesames. The rice rolls are pretty standard. The dipping sauce is pretty good with a peanut taste to it which goes well with the sesame seeds.

Sesame sticky rice balls with lotus paste. J had a craving for these so we ordered a small plate of them. The balls were served piping hot and we had to wait a few minutes for them to cool down. The sticky rice balls were thin, soft and not too sticky. My only criticism was that the amount of lotus paste inside was little more than the size of my pinky fingertip.

Service at Po Kong was pretty standard for a Chinese restaurant. The owner/manager (I think) was very active in playing the part of host for new guests and departing customers.

After this good experience, we will definitely be back.

Summary
Food: Very good. The food is made well with quality ingredients and not as greasy as average Chinese restaurants that serve meat.

Service: Good.

Setting: Good. The interior is brightly lit and spacious.

Value: Good. The prices are similar to meat-serving restaurants, but the food quality is on par, if not better, than many.

Green Lettuce 貴賓閣

Indian and Chinese fusion? Yes please!

It's been a few years, so we planned a dinner at Green Lettuce in Vancouver with our friends. We made reservations and showed up for dinner on a Friday night. We were surprised that the restaurant wasn't very busy, as in the past it was always packed for dinner.

Spicy Chili Garlic Wings

We started off with a couple of orders of Spicy Chili Garlic Wings. The wings were quite crispy depite being covered in their chili garlic sauce. They tasted fantastic and had a bit of kick to them. Peeling away the sauce and the skin, the kids had some as well.

On top of the wings, we put in our order for a few share plates.

Chili Beef

Chili Beef - This dish is listed with 3 chili peppers next it (the maximum), and When asked if we could turn down the heat level, the server said that it can't be adjusted for this dish. As it turned out, it was only mildly spicy. The beef was rolled in batter before being fried. As a result, we had a bit of difficulty discerning 'where's the beef'? The texture of the fried batter made it taste very much like fried fish. Upon closer examination, the beef was thinly sliced and likely pre-tenderized so there wasn't much beefiness spring to it.

Sweet & Sour Fish with Pineapple

Sweet & Sour Fish with Pineapple - This fish tasted very similar to the beef in that it was battered and fried as well. The blend of sweet and sour sauce mixing with the batter was quite delicious (even though the result was that it was hard to tell the difference between fish and batter). There could have been more pineapples though.

Vegetable Korma - This dish was quite simply a stir-fry of vegetables with some curry sauce. It wasn't spicy despite the chili rating in the menu. I would have preferred a thicker curry, but the vegetables were a good break from the other (fried) dishes.

Vegetable Korma

Service and setting weren't bad overall. When I spilled some water on H, our server came by quite quickly and gave us extra napkins (racial stereotype about Chinese and Indians purposely omitted). She also recommended a small bowl of rice which would be enough for all of us.

When the restaurant is full, it can be a little crowded. However, that Friday night it wasn't very crowded at all, so it was quite comfortable. Parking is also readily available in the nearby residential streets if you can't find a spot on Kingsway.

Overall, the dining experience was good, but I would definitely order some different dishes the next time so we don't end up with 75% of our dishes being fried.

Summary
Food: Good. The wings were excellent, but the heavy batter on 2 of our dishes was a little too much.

Service: Good.

Setting: Good. Restaurant is clean with many tables, and there is parking nearby.

Value: Good. The prices are moderate, with the popular dishes being a little pricier.

Szechuan Chongqing Seafood Restaurant 重慶海鮮大飯店

We bought a Groupon for Chingquing months ago, mistakenly thinking that it was part of the same restaurant group as the Chongqing in Burnaby. We realized our mistake when we read that it was only valid at the Broadway restaurant. We made reservations for a Saturday night for our family and our regular dining buddies.

The restaurant is in a complex that has its own parking lot accessible from the back lane so we parked there. There were plenty of spaces available. When we walked up the stairs to the restaurant, our visit didn't look very promising. The restaurant had its own patio overlooking Broadway, and of the five or so tables two of them were occupied. Not bad. When we walked into the restaurant, it was completely empty.

We were greeted by three different people, of which one I'm sure one was a manager. All three of them greeted us in English, which isn't normal for a Chinese restaurant. Regardless, we were designated a table and I asked for a high chair for H. As the rest of our party arrived and settled in, there was still no high chair. H was walking around having fun, but I was standing the entire time looking at the server I requested the high chair from. He looked at me a few times but never brought a high chair and then disappeared. I asked a second server and he walked out to the patio to check on the diners there and came back in to finish setting up a different table, completely forgetting about my request. Finally, I got his attention again and he ended up bringing a high chair.

High chair shenanigans aside, we all sat down and looked over the menu. I don't normally criticize badly designed and constructed menus, but the menus at this restaurant were very low-grade. I can make vastly better menus with some freeware and my camera phone in under 2 hours.

One other problem that came up was the air conditioning. When we arrived, they had the patio doors open and the restaurant was hot like a sauna. We asked them to turn on the AC so they did. However, they turned it up to the max and a couple of the vents were pointing right at our table. They fixed that a few minutes later which was good. What was not good was that there were swarms of flies in the dining area. Just looking towards the entrance of the restaurant I could see at least 5 of them flying in circles waiting for some food scraps. It wasn't a pleasant sight and no one seemed to care.

Anyway, we ordered several dishes including the lemon chicken and some stir fried dishes. I can't recall exactly what we ordered, but they weren't very memorable. In fact, the lemon chicken was pretty bad. There was too much batter and very little chicken. The chicken was also a little rubbery. The other dishes were mediocre to average at best, and every dish was quite small.

Service was pretty average throughout the meal. The Asian servers all spoke to us in English. Even when we spoke to them in Chinese, they replied in English (with very strong accents). Maybe they were trying to improve their English, or maybe they are instructed to only use English. Who knows? It was very bizarre.

I will not be returning to Szechuan Chongqing Seafood Restaurant again, and I wouldn't recommend it to anyone... unless I don't like them.

Summery
Food: Poor. Some dishes were average and some were downright bad. Don't get the lemon chicken.

Service: Average. Dinner service was okay but they have an extremely short-term memory for things like my high chair.

Setting: Poor. I'm sure this could be Average on days when they don't let the flies in, but then again they didn't do anything about them either.

Value: Very Poor. Prices were moderate to high, but the servings were small. Even with a Groupon it wasn't worth it.

Max's Restaurant

It's been a while since I've been back to Max's Restaurant on Kingsway near Boundary. In terms of the location, the restaurant is in a highly visible spot right on a main street. It is very large with capacity of probably 200 or so. The interior set-up, layout, and furniture resembles something like an up-scale fast food restaurant and is brightly lit and clean.

I've been to Max's for lunch before, and it wasn't very busy. However, on this trip for dinner the restaurant was bustling with diners and servers. There was a constant queue of people waiting in the lobby for tables. Luckily we made reservations in advance. We still had to wait a few minutes for them to set-up our table, but it was well worth it because they gave us a table in the corner of the restaurant (perfect for the little ones to run around and play after dinner).

Although they do serve some set meals, we ordered several dishes to share family-style so we could all try a bit of every dish. Despite the restaurant being very busy, the food came out very quickly and all at once (which is rare for an Asian restaurant - they usually serve the dishes as they are ready). I think we waited less than 15 minutes.

The first item on our order list was the Lumpiang Shanghai which are deep fried spring rolls of ground pork and spices with a sweet and sour sauce on the side. The lumpia wrapper was thin and didn't taste greasy at all. The ground pork and spices are finely chopped/ground so they don't fall apart when you take small bites at a time. The sweet and sour sauce was a little too thin/runny for me. I ended up eating them with the Banana Sauce that comes on every table instead. The Banana Sauce is like ketchup. H loved eating the spring rolls, but for some reason she ate all the lumpia wrapper first and then ate the ground pork after. I guess she loves her fried food.

Next on the list was the Spicy Liang Tilapia which is a fried tilapia fillet with spicy taro leaves cooked in a rich coconut cream sauce. This is a favorite of J's and our friends. As J would say, any boneless fish is good fish. The creamy sauce on top really makes the dish. The taro leaves are very similar to chopped spinach and it blends very well with the coconut sauce. Despite the name, the sauce is only mildly spicy. H didn't like the sauce at first, but she ended up gobbling it up because it mixed well with rice, and she really loves her fish. Don't let the small size of the dish fool you. With all that yummy sauce, it ends up being quite heavy in the tummy.

Whenever there is pork belly on the menu, my buddies will order it. At Max's, the belly on the menu was the Lechon Kawali which is crispy deep fried pork belly with liver sauce on the side. The belly was crispy on the outside and edges, and soft and tender on the inside. I didn't really taste any seasoning on it, but it really wasn't necessary. Admittedly I did not try the liver sauce. I ended up mixing the pork belly with some of the other foods all on my plate.

The next dish was the Bangus Sisig Boneless Milkfish which was a sizzling plate of diced boneless milkfish, onions, and some other ingredients I don't remember. The milkfish was very meaty and tasted almost like chicken. The plate came with two slices of lemon wedges, which we squeezed onto the place. However, the milkfish had a lot more tang to it than those two wedges could have provided. It was very tasty and became the talk of the meal. The dish was featured on the menu in an insert and not available in their online menu so it's probably relatively new. This is one dish I would definitely order again.

No meal is complete without at least some form of vegetables, so we ordered the Pinakbet which is a vegetable stew made with vegetables, sauteed ground pork, shrimp, and shrimp paste. The vegetables were soft but not overcooked and included a mix of okra, green beans, onions, eggplant, zucchini, yellow bell peppers, pumpkin (I think), and the shrimp and pork in the dish description. The shrimp paste was light and subtle, wrapping up the dish very well.

The last item on our order was Max's Fried Chicken. Our whole chicken order was served with some yam fries on the side which H just loved. The chicken itself was fried golden brown without batter. It reminded me a lot of fried chicken at Chinese restaurants, except the taste was a little different. It was a little on the greasy side (just the skin) but quite tender on the inside. The chicken was a little bland on its own, but it went very well with the Banana Sauce.

After we finished devouring all the food from our table, we ordered a couple of desserts to top off our meal. First up was the Halo-Halo which is a blend of refreshing tropical fruits, beans, milk, and
sugar in shaved ice, topped with a scoop of
Ube (purple yam) ice cream and rice flakes. The ingredients went well together and the rice flakes were the star of the show. They added a crunchy texture to the desseert without adding to the overall sweetness. I did not try this one myself, but I was told that it was very good.

The dessert that I ordered (along with half the table) was the Buko Pandan which was young coconut mixed with pandan leaf (screwpine)
gelatin and tapioca in a rich fluffy cream sauce, with
macapuno (coconut) ice cream and rice flakes. The dessert was a little overly sweet due to the cream sauce, but once again the rice flakes stood out the most in the dish. The gelatin had a subtle flavour to it that I found hard to distinguish because the cream was overbearing. The coconut ice cream was delicious and I wish there was more of it than the cream sauce. Overall, it was good but too sweet.

Service as a whole was quite good. Our server was quick to respond to all our requests and was very polite and well-mannered. He was always happy to help and quick to serve most of the time. It was a busy night at the restaurant but it didn't feel like it based on the quality of the service we received.

Summary
Food: Very good. Every dish was good and well-made. I especially like their Lumpiang Shanghai spring rolls.

Service: Very good. It's a busy restaurant but the servers are attentive and very polite.

Setting: Good. Plentiful parking and the restaurant is well-lit and clean.

Value: Average. The dishes are pricey but the quality of the food pulls this up from a Poor rating. The good service also helps.