Eating Our Way Through The Olympics Part 3: The Best Dim Sum Ever

Even though I've never been to Hong Kong I imagine the food would taste like the dim sum we enjoyed our last day in Richmond. The photos don't do the meal justice, but hopefully the food looks as delicious as it tasted.

I wanted to start out the photos with pictures of food people would recognize. We ordered three orders of ha gao (shrimp dumplings). This is my favorite and a staple dish for any self respecting dim sum enthusiast.

We also got a few orders of shu mai (pork dumplings), but what made these amazing was the shrimp and tobiko (crunchy flying fish eggs) topping. Also they were sweeter than most shu mai. This is another staple dim sum dish.

We needed some greens so Pert suggest choi sum which is on the left. It's basically a leafy green pan fried in garlic. Similar to gai lan or Chinese broccoli, but not as dense. On the right is deep fried eggplant with shrimp which was delicious. Deep frying the eggplant made it tender and sweet.

Steamed chives and shrimp wrapped in a wide noodle served with a sweet soy sauce. As you can see shrimp is a popular dim sum ingredient.

Beef chow fun noodles - this ended up being the dreaded filler dish of the meal. I tried not to eat too much of this dish because I wanted to save room for everything else. This was probably the only dish that made it to a styrofoam take home box.

Salt and pepper fried squid, salty and delicious. Usually salt and pepper anything is good at Chinese restaurants.

Now we're getting in to the more "unique" dishes. This was the fried chicken leg joints dish. Literally chicken knees and elbows were deep fried for us to pop in our mouths like popcorn shrimp. I'm a fan of tendons and cartilage so I liked the crunchiness, but this is definitely not for everyone.

Steamed BBQ pork hum baos another safe, predictable dim sum dish. Can't go wrong here, unless you want to save room for other dishes.

Shrimp bean curd roll. It sounds weird, but it was pretty good. The outside bean curd is like an unsweetened, wet philo layer like in baklava. Not a lot of flavor, more about the texture and the inside deliciousness.

Another fun dish is chicken feet. I make everyone try it at least once. I understand if you never want to order it again, but if you eat dim sum with me you have to try it at least once. Another dish that's good if you enjoy cartilage and picking meat off of bones.

I don't know what the hell this was. It came late in our meal and we found out we hadn't ordered it so they took it away. My guess is curried baby octopus. Hey I'll try anything, but this looked gross.

Turnip cake which also had chinese sausage, mushrooms, and green onions in it. Basically it tasted a lot better than it sounded.

BBQ spareribs, these things are amazing and I always order them when I eat dim sum. The problem is that the garlic makes me smell for days, seriously, ask Emi.

The best and only way to finish off a dim sum feast, egg tarts. For anyone who hasn't had one before the warm, buttery, flaky crust melts in your mouth when you bite into the sweet, rich, creamy egg custard. The slight sweetness to the egg tarts is a great way to end a salty, decadent dim sum meal.

I think the 8 of us who shared this meal would all agree that this was the best dim sum we have ever had. They know their Chinese food in Richmond. Even though only a few of you read this blog I don't have a name or address for this restaurant to share, but I'm sure I'll be up across the border again soon. Until next time!

- Kyle

Eating Our Way Through The Olympics: Part 1

A few weeks ago Emi and I got the chance of a lifetime to go up to Vancouver for the 2010 Winter Olympics. We went up with a group of friends to experience the Olympic festivities and of course to eat our way through British Columbia.

We stayed in Richmond which is a suburb outside of Vancouver. Basically it's Hong Kong Jr. The city is filled with Chinese people and with Chinese people comes Armani Exchange and great Chinese food. Not being big A/E fans we decided to focus on the food.

Emi ready to hit up the Olympics in her red, white, and blue gear

We got into Richmond around midnight and after hanging out with everyone at Calvin's condo, Pert got one his infamous late night cravings. So of course we decided to go find some late night Chinese food. We ended up finding a 24 hour Chinese restaurant that was still packed at 3am!

Garlic string beans with pork

Udon noodle stir fry. The Japanese udon noodles went great with this dish.

Chinese salt and pepper, garlic fried chicken, mmm mmm delicious, especially at 3am

Salted fish fried rice. I've never had salted fish before and by itself it might be too strong, but in combination with the fried rice it was amazing.

In general I couldn't think of a better way to start off the trip than with a Chinese, family style shared late night dinner with friends.


After sleeping off our late night Chinese food hangover we woke up and took the SkyTrain into downtown Vancouver to check out the Olympic Village. After walking around for awhile, we worked up quite the hunger so were lucky to fall upon a few food vendors for lunch.

Pert and I shared some cheap dim sum: shumai (pork balls), hau gau (shrimp balls), and some hum baos. Basically we got what we paid for.

One of the stranger foods I witnessed in Canada. Hurricane French Fries, "the new model of french fry". Basically it was a whole potato deep fried on a stick. None of us tried it, but I needed a photo of this bizarre snack.

Ali's chocolate, banana crepe, lunch of champions

Emi's friend, Katie and her bubble cake, Emi tried it and described it as sweet and crunchy

After perusing all of the vendors, I found someone making takoyaki. Takoyaki is a popular Japanese dumpling made of batter, pickled ginger, green onion, and tako also known as octopus. I was definitely excited to try out a cool Japanese snack, but things went sour quickly when I found out the two guys running the stand were from Hong Kong and the first thing the guy said to me was "I'm slow".

At least he was honest, it took him about 20 minutes to make 6 of these things for me which is outrageous because in Japan they crank these things out like hot cakes!

The finished product. After they cook up, they add on okonomiyaki sauce which is made up of ponzu, sweet mayonnaise, and bonita flakes (dried fish). It ended up being really good. Takoyaki is best served piping hot, so hot most people usually burn their tongues enjoying the sweet, doughy, chewy octopus balls.

After lunch we headed to Subeez Cafe in downtown Vancouver. Katie works there and hooked us up with a cool table and suggested we order some buckets of Whistler beer to enjoy before the Czech Republic vs Latvia hockey game. Katie thanks for the great recommendation!

Even though we were only in Canada from Thursday night through Saturday morning we ate so much that I'm going to have to split up a recap of our trip into three separate blog posts. Next up will be a post about Japa Dog.

- Kyle

ps - I messed up the timing of the posts, so read on below for Part 2 about Japa Dog.

Eating Our Way Through The Olympics: Part 2 - Japa dog

What is a Japa dog you might be asking yourself.

Is it a Japanese dog, like a Shiba Inu? Nope.

Or maybe a Japanese American Puggle like Mia and Buster Suzuki? Nope, still not right.

Actually Japa Dog is a famous hot dog street vendor found on Burrard and Smithe St in Downtown Vancouver. Even though we had just finished dinner we knew we had to find Japa Dog to find out what all the fuss was about.

With the boom of late night hot dog vendors outside of bars and clubs, Emi and I have seen all varieties of hot dogs. Emi's favorite is a late night Belltown hot dog with cream cheese, grilled onions, mustard, and ketchup. I even tried one once with siracha because this girl in front of me, who looked like she enjoyed food, ordered it. Bad choice, it tasted like burning.

You haven't really had a hot dog until you've tried a Japa Dog. We had to wait in line for over 30 minutes for this bad boy, but it was well worth the wait. Emi who was skeptical is now a true believer. A Japa Dog if you couldn't tell by now is short for a Japanese Hot Dog. This beauty above is the Okonomi which is a kurobuta (pork) hot dog covered in bonito (dried fish) flakes, fried cabbage, Japanese mayo (sweeter than American mayo), and special okonomiyaki sauce. If you've ever had okonomiyaki it's like that, but with a fat piece of pork.

Emi ordered the kurobuta terimayo. It was a teriyaki kurobuta hot dog covered with Japanese mayo and seaweed. It was amazing, the okonomi was good, but this was amazing. I've never thought to add nori (seaweed) to a hot dog, but I guess that's why they're famous and I'm not. Funny side story, we all waited in line for what felt like forever for these special Japa Dogs and one of our friend's ordered a plain hot dog. Seriously?! So now he's known as "plain hot dog". Don't worry he probably won't read this blog because plain hot dog doesn't like food.

I think it will be difficult for Emi and me to go back to the Belltown hot dog vendors when we know we could have so much more. I guess in the future we'll just have to make more trips across the border for a Japa Dog.

- Kyle