chocomoo

I love these! I wish they were cheaper here though... almost $4 Canadian sometimes (approx. 391 yen! ) I was surprised that the caramel part in the middle wasn't too sweet, & the cookies have just the right amount of caramel in the middle so when you bite into the cookie, there's a nice little crunch

I'm so happy Glico is making these again! The first time I had them was maybe 3 years ago in Taiwan, during the summer The latest Pocky flavour I tried was part of the series of the "grain" Pocky's, the one with almond paste & peanuts with a biscuit stick that reminded me of digestive cookies. It was ok, but I wasn't blown away by it. I haven't seen the Kinako kind here yet - still waiting!

But they wash dishes at the back of the room! Plus I found it quite cramped.

They're some sort of citrus peel, but I'm not sure exactly which kind of citrus. Not orange, at least. These citrus peels are sweetened, and I think also contain licorice (I seem to recall reading that from the ingredients). Apparently they're also good for stemming nausea.

Silver Palace on Fraser & 49th (same mall as Starbucks) is our family's favourite, & I believe it's less expensive than Koon Bo/Koon Lok (at least for lunch). The congee is superb, & fried noodles & such are really good as well. Koon Bo has excellent roasted meats - duck & squab, with juicy meat & crispy skin. I think you have to pre-order them though. Another yummy thing that you have to pre-order is their baked Chinese-style tapioca pudding with red bean filling.

Weird I thought there was a MexiCali's on arbutus and 33rd (ish) by the chevron station. ← There was...until that big fire wiped out all the stores at that strip mall. I think it's an M&M meat shop now (unless M&M is beside the old Mexicali location.

Saturday dinner The Eatery with my grandma & sister. My parents were out for a 50th wedding anniversary of friends, & my sister & I were craving chicken wings, so we took our grandma to the Eatery (& nope, it's not her first time there! )Saturday's their chicken specials night. Sadly, they had run out of wings... Don't get the bbq wings - wayyyyy oversauced. Anyway, our server suggested the chicken karrage, which was also on special that night. GREAT suggestion! They use the same batter for the wings & karrage, so our Eatery wings craving was more than satisfied. The chicken karrage that I've had in the past has always been little nuggets of dark meat, but these actually pieces of chicken instead of little bits. Plus they were battered quite lightly, which is a big plus. My grandma liked this the best. I realized that it's kinda the Japanese equivalent of Taiwanese deep-fried chicken nuggets ("yan su ji" in Mandarin, "yeem so gai" in Cantonese). We didn't get okonomiyaki though, because we wouldn't have been able to finish even half of it. We also got tuna tempura (yummy but not crispy enough), & the Tezuka sushi platter, which consisted of assorted nigiri, a tuna crunch roll (tuna sashimi w/tempura bits), california roll, & sweet little suji roll (tempura prawn, asparagus, agge, & flying fish roe). I really like the addition of tempura bits & agge in the sushi - adds a different kind of crunch. Sunday dinner Late dinner (10:15!) after watching Dalecarlians, a Swedish film, as part of the film festival. We attempted to watch a Shin Sung-Il is Lost (about schoolkids who're taught eating a sin by a bunch of hypocritical teachers), but I wrote down the wrong venue... LUCKILY, I got a refund for my ticket (my friend has a volunteer pass). Back to dinner - so we went to Vera's burger shack as it was close by & I was craving a good burger. My friend just got fries as she wasn't that hungry. The fries were quite good - nice & crispy on the outside, really hot on the inside, good potato flavour. I haven't had good skinny fries in a while. I got the 4-cheese burger with fried onions (hey, I pretty much skipped dinner so I was allowed more calories for my burger, right?). I don't normally liike blue cheese, but I like blue cheese dressing, so I thought I was ready for the blue cheese in the burger. I thought wrong. I did, however, eat most of the blue cheese. The provolone & cheddar flavours sorta blended together for me, so the only distinct cheese flavours I could taste were the feta & blue cheeses. All in all, a really good burger - I haven't had a burger in months!! Tuesday dinner Guu (Thurlow) with my sister & cousin & her husband before the Death Cab for Cutie concert (AMAZING!!). Some of the dishes we had were the salmon sashimi with garlic & sesame oil (this was my favourite dish - it's on their regular menu & I've never tried it), grilled chicken skin (NOT good - it was fatty, parts of the skin weren't grilled, & ...rancid?? I always think this is a horrible-sounding word in English - it always sounds too harsh, like the food is rotten), yaki udon (nice, chewy noodles), grilled tuna belly (overcooked for my taste), some kind of shrimp gratin (ok), & tako yaki. Service at this location is always harried, and when they moved us from our larger table to a tiny 2 top (a party had reservations at 7:30, we didn't), they forgot our tea. AND THEN, my sister's stool BROKE . My sister is FAR from heavy, & she had only been sitting on the stool for like 10 seconds... The legs of the stool literally fell off! My sister wasn't hurt, just highly embarassed. After that we just kinda perched on the stools. Thank God my pregnant cousin had a sturdier chair to sit in...

There's a Daiso here in Vancouver (well, Richmond, to be more precise) a while ago when they remade Aberdeen Centre, a Chinese mall. It's 2 floors, & pretty huge - we go there for kitchen & home supplies. I've only ever bought food there a couple of times, as I'm worried about the freshness & quality of $2 food. Oh yes, instead of it being a 100-yen shop, it is now a $2 shop. And they carry lots of pretty dishes. Most, or maybe all, of the items are made in Japan or China (mostly China). I think I bought some cheapy okashi there, stuff like peanuts in a crunchy black sesame coating, and that mochi-like stuff that has flavours like pureed red bean, green tea, and chestnut. I have no idea what the Japanese name, only the Cantonese: "yeung gung". It's usually rectangular-shaped, soft, and always sweet.

For more on okonomiyaki, we can always turn to our trusty friends at eGullet.

English name for Yuk Ting Heen is The Jade Seafood Restaurant 8511 Alexandra Rd, Richmond. They do have excellent dim sum. Alex ← THANK YOU! I never remember the English name of this place. They have this new thing on their menu - it's basically deep-fried glutinous dumpling wih a pork filling ("haam sui gok") but it's shaped like a pear (with a toothpick in it so it looks like there's a stem), so cute! But the cutest dim sum item, in my opinion, are the porcupine buns from Golden Ocean! Deep-fried custard (I think it's some Southeast Asian-style custard - my family calls is "gayang", but we're from Hong Kong, so I don't know if that's the right name) buns, with slits cut into the buns before deep-frying so that they become "spikes" after they're deep-fried, & little black sesame eyes Sooo cute, not to mention delicious! They're not always on the menu though.

I was pleasantly surprised by the black sesame cake I got from Pine House (Parker Place) last week for a company lunch. The sponge cake was quite moist (though not as moist as Mega's), although the layer of buttercream was a bit thicker than Mega's. I think Pine House tends to use more salt in their items - in their cocktail buns as Ling mentioned, and also in their buttercream. The black sesame flavour wasn't as pronounced as I would've liked though. And it was also not in "roll" form - it was a layer of black sesame sponge cake, then regular sponge cake, then another layer of black sesame on top. Looked quite pretty! Today I had a cocktail bun from Mega for breakfast and a sushi (?) bun for lunch. Let me explain the sushi bun: sandwiched in the middle of a bun, there are 2 pieces of "sushi" (seaweed wrapped around thin slices of bread with ham in the middle, rolled up to resemble sushi) on either end of the bun, with an egg crepe between the "sushi" that's rolled up to kinda look like a flower. Maybe I'll take a picture of it next time I get it. The seaweed inevitably gets soggy though, so although I like the taste of it, I don't like the texture of it. Oh, I almost forgot to mention that they use Japanese mayonnaise in their buns Wait, actually, I'm not sure - it's not like Kewpie brand, but it's not as "eggy" as regular mayonnaise, & it's more translucent than opaque. They have really good Chinese style buns too, though the variety is not as great. My mom & I like the vegetarian buns - they contain mung bean noodles (I can't think of the name right now - you know, those clear noodles that're like vermicelli? "fun see"?), Chinese mushrooms, cabbage, cilantro, and lots of black pepper. Hmm, I think I'll get some next time I go.

Like canucklehead, I'm not a big fan of shark's fin soup, so I have no idea where you can get good quality shark's fin soup. Be careful though, there's imitation shark's fin out there. I would go for abalone, if I were you - it's still pretty expensive, and many of the upper-end Chinese restaurants offer good abalone. One abalone will run for maybe $25-$40. Actually, Silver Palace on Fraser Street & East 49th Avenue in Vancouver has good quality shark's fin soup & abalone, & it's probably less expensive than most places in Richmond. It's a really tiny restaurant, & doesn't look like much, but the quality of food there is really good. I wouldn't recommend Sun Sui Wah - something happened to the food there, maybe the chefs went elsewhere? Not uncommon in the world of Chinese restaurants. There's another dim sum restaurant with carts in Vancouver, on West 41st Avenue (in the Kerrisdale area) on the 2nd floor, called Golden Ocean. Dim sum's not bad there. For more innovative dim sum, I recommend Yuk Ting Heen in Richmond on Alexandra Road (I'll get the actual name of it tonight). It's Chiu Chow style dim sum, so it's a bit different from your regular fare. There's stuff like abalone mushroom & cucumber steamed rice rolls, XO sauce pan-fried radish cake (rests in a "bird's nest"), and sesame paste buns. They even had some kind of durian dessert once *holding breath involuntarily*. Their menu changes monthly (I think).

Strangely, the Eatery. Mochi okonomiyaki & gyoza okonomiyaki are some of the choices. More normal ones include prawn, beef & chicken. Their recipe has changed though. I think there are still noodles on the bottom, but not as much as before, & now it doesn't look as homestyle as it used to. They always recommend the mochi one, but I actually don't really like it - too floury for me. They also have really weird sushi on the menu, but much of it's pretty good (I've never been brave enough to try the cream cheese sushi though... ). Their okonomiyaki is Osaka style, by the way. I think Guu's is Tokyo style. If you've never been to the Eatery, I warn you, it's umm, not the cleanest place. Luckily most of the light is provided by candles.

Oh I have to disagree with this one! I had bubble world a couple times and found their drinks to leave this powdery aftertaste in my mouth. Boobies...i mean bubbles were either really hard or too sweet. Oasis on the otherhad has good bubble tea! The one in coquitlam was empty when I went in and it took a full 35 minutes to make two bubble teas which didn't taste very good. I wonder if this one is part of the same chain. ← I guess I should mention that I never drink the powdered drinks at Bubble World Their pudding bbtea does exactly that - leave that powdery aftertaste. I've never had hard bubbles in my drink there, but again, I hardly ever get my drinks with the bubbles anymore. I don't think I've been to Oasis since highschool! Try the fresh fruit ones, or the green/red tea drinks (the passionfruit green tea is wayyyy too sweet though). Wow, there's even a Coquitlam location now? And to think they started out manually shaking the bubble tea! Now they even that machine to seal the lids on! Ahhh, Jack's Loft... where all the "cool" kids hung out I always thought the drinks were overpriced & not tasty.

Ling's right, bubble tea's not as "in" anymore... That being said, I think the best places nowadays are Pearl Castle and Bubble World. I think Bubble World was the first bubble tea place in my area (Marpole/South Granville). Or maybe it was Oasis? I dunno, but they were both owned by Taiwanese people. Dragon Ball isn't bad either, but there is absolutely no room to sit there. The heat is unbearable in the summer... Their Bartlett pear bubble tea is so delicious though! Many of the better bubble tea places have both fresh fruit & powdered fruit drinks now. Bubble World's tea is among the cheapest - the prices at the Granville location didn't change until a couple months ago (they've been open for what, 10 years?), and it only went up 25 cents to $3.75 for the regular drinks. Fresh fruit costs more, of course. I don't usually like tapioca pearls with my bubble tea because it's sooo filling, and Bubble World has extras like coconut meat (the canned, clear kind), green tea jelly, coffee jelly, lemon jelly, and pudding. Right now I like grapefruit green tea with green tea jelly My favourite used to be regular bubble tea with coffee jelly, and before I liked mango slush with coconut meat. I still like them, it's just that I got tired of them. The taro tastes like cookies & cream to me, for some reason. Nobody else seems to think so They also have green tea ice cream bubble tea now! Pearl Castle (at Continental Centre) is really good because you can really taste the tea in their drinks. Even their pudding bubble tea tastes of real tea (Bubble World's is powdered). They offer Taiwanese food now, and it's pretty good compared to most of the other bubble tea places. They have Chinese style oden, Taiwanese sausage fried rice, and some kind of roasted corn (seasonal), among other things. It's usually quite busy on the weekends - there are lineups at 11 p.m.! Cute Pearl House on 40th (or 39th?) & West Boulevard has really good Taiwanese style fried chicken. Deep-fried nuggets of spiced dark meat sprinkled with salt & pepper with crispy skin. My friend & I used to go to this place after school sometimes & share a basket of these - perfect afternoon snack!! I had bubble tea once when I was in Taiwan a few years ago - I had the stomach flu (damn you, curry fish ball from street vendor in Hong Kong! ) but I couldn't resist 50 cent bubble tea! Where else in the world can you get bubble tea for under a dollar? Maybe China, but I don't want to think about what would be in it...

Thanks for the heads up. Sorry to hear they are gone. ← The new place is actually pretty good, I've been a few times. I haven't been lately (there are just too many dim sum places to choose from!), so I can't really remember what was good.

Are they better than the non-fruit Boss Swiss Rolls? There's a Chinese grocery store in Winnipeg that brings in Boss roll cakes. We only get the coffee flavoured one, and I think it's divine! I think I'm going to have to make a trip to Vancouver sometime soon. Or maybe Hong Kong...it's closer! ← Yep, they're even better than the Boss Swiss rolls! They're not too sweet, either. Flavours include red bean, marble (chocolate & regular), green tea, coffee, and "regular". The regular one is really good - the egg flavour really comes through.

My parents get the pastries from the Richmond location. The cocktail buns always look very pale...I prefer a dark crust like the ones from Keefer. ← I agree with Ling, I don't like the Pine House ones as much either. I find that Pine House's buns tend to dry out quite quickly. I like the darker crust too!! Mega's brown crust is calling out to you... I should mention that they don't always have them though - they sell out pretty fast They're like twice the size of Pine House ones. Speaking of egg tarts, we really rediscovered Maxim's egg tarts - nice & flaky, & there's some special on them on the weekends (3 for the price of 2, or something?) @ the Richmond Centre location - a lot of people buy them so they often come out freshly baked . Anna's has really good egg tarts as well - the tart is really buttery, almost like shortbread, & crumbly, not flaky. I like both the crumbly kind of tart & the flaky kind though, I guess it depends on my mood. Anna's walnut napoleons are also reeeeally good - not the coffee or Swiss kinds, the one with the layers of light flaky pastry, walnut crisp, & cream Don't buy more than you can eat in one day though, cuz the pastry gets soggy really quickly. OHHHH one more thing about Anna's: they use Philippine mangoes in their mango mousse cake It's not as pretty as Michele's mango cakes, but you can really taste the difference. About mango cakes - we used to get ours from King's Bakery ("Golden Lion" in Cantonese) on No. 3 Road, near Cambie - less expensive than Michele's & I liked the mousse to cake ratio better (more mousse, less cake). It's the same King's Bakery that used to be in Hong Kong, but the owners retired maybe a year ago, so it's under new ownership and it's not good anymore We bought cake from there once after the new owners took over, and the cake was kinda misshapen and the mangoes not layered right... That's what happens when you don't listen to the pros Plus the cake wasn't very moist, like it was day-old. We used to get these little coffee raisin rolls (like dinner rolls) there, & they were so packed with coffee flavour...and those paper-wrapped sponge cakes, MAN, they were so moist.... We don't venture to the east side too often as we live so close to Richmond, but I do like this place called King Wah on 41st & Victoria. They have this loaf that I swear is like brioche (sooo buttery, and what's the word? I can only think of the Cantonese word for it, "soong") - they don't call it brioche though. They probably call it Danish loaf or something similar, cuz it's got this braid pattern on the top (don't ask me why that means it's Danish). Can you tell I like butter? By the way, I think T&T does make their own pastries, but I think the ones at Yaohan are the freshest. Every night they put various leftover buns in bags & sell them for a really cheap price - poor girls, they always get swarmed!

One of my favourite Chinese bakeries at the moment is Mega Bakery (美之香餅家 for those of you who can read Chinese) in Richmond. The cocktail buns here are giant, with more filling & less bun, which I like. I can't get enough of that sugary, buttery, coconut filling. Yeah, sure, it's probably got like 600 calories, but who cares, it's not like I eat these every day . I hate how when I bite into the normal coconut buns, it takes 2 bites until I hit the filling, & by that time the bun's half gone.... It's a Taiwanese bakery, so I guess some of the offerings are different from the Hong Kong bakeries like Maxim's and Anna's. Mega is located at Continental Centre on Cambie, in between the grocery store & Vogue. The storefront is quite small, but there are so many different kinds of buns & other bakery-related things there. Pork fluff (can someone explain this better than me please?) buns, buns with soy sauce-marinated eggs sandwiched in the middle, and "pork patty" buns (the patty has green onions in it, yummy!) are just a sample of the savoury filling buns. Oh and just for Ling (who I seem to recall had something similar at Hapa Izakaya), one of their new products is a Chinese bun folded over with braised pork belly & pickled vegetables (I had it for breakfast at work & the fatty part in the pork belly melted in my mouth, it was so good. There were crushed peanuts in it though, kinda a weird addition). They also have taro swirly buns, assorted "Swiss rolls" (moist, & the buttercream isn't a centimetre thick...an added bonus is that they don't have the artificial "fruit" flavoured ones like strawberry or melon, ewww! I always get scared by the green & pink Swiss rolls at Maxim's & the Boss). They also have these bags of broken pieces of assorted flavours of Swiss roll that they bake until slightly crispy (? it's not actually hard though) which are in the sale section from time to time. And of course they have pineapple cakes, those tiny squares of pineapple (or whatever fruit)-filled shortbread yumminess. By the way, their Western-style desserts in the display case aren't that special, it's not worth it getting them there. And right now, because it's Midautumn Festival time, they're selling Taiwanese style mooncakes! For more on mooncakes, click here. They also have "ice skin" ("bing pei") mooncakes in their display case, with flavours like oolong tea (I think it's a new flavour? It's really flavourful in any case), green tea, kumquat, mango, & black sesame. p.s. Yes, I realize that I sound like I'm doing an ad for them, but I just really love this place! We go at least once a week Oh I almost forgot!! Their original location is (or was?) on West 41st, near Dunbar in Vancouver.

Tough Cookie, you should go to Yaohan in Richmond - Osaka supermarket & the candy store upstairs (Candyland) both have a few varieties of the Calbee chips - I've seen curry, tomato, & seaweed flavours as well. Plus there are other brands of chips with flavours like okonomiyaki & ones I can't remember right now

Oh I'm sorry, I didn't realize you hadn't been there before! Here's the website for the Old Country Market, located in Coombs (I thought it was called Coombs, oops!). I don't remember whether they have a restaurant or not, but you can find all sorts of goodies there. The ice cream (Island Farms, I think?) cones there are HUGE, a meal in themselves (well, maybe not for Ling ) Plus you can point out the grazing goats on the roof to your little one There are maps on the above page, but they're not very clear... This is more specific (from britishcolumbia.com): "Coombs is located on the Port Alberni/Tofino Highway 4, 5.5 miles (9 km) west of Parksville on Vancouver Island.".

I tried these on the weekend: I was very impressed with the shrimp & salt one, as it doesn't have any of that biscuit taste & texture of regular Pretz. It's basically a shrimp cracker shaped like Pretz. The edamame one is yummy as well, also not biscuit-like in taste or texture. Crispy, & it really tastes like edamame! The English ingredients list green peas.

Don't forget Coombs!!

I bought a couple of weeks ago - blueberry yogourt Fran! I don't normally buy Fran because it costs so much more than Pocky & Pretz, but I couldn't resist promise of blueberry! The yogourt coating didn't make much of a difference, but the blueberry flavour was Not as sweet or fake as I was expecting it to taste - perfect!

Oh yeah! I thought it was fermented something... I do like lam yue though - in those "little chicken biscuits" (gai zai bang), lam yue roast chicken, lam yue roasted peanuts, & also lamb hot pots & tong choy (for a minute I was thinking "tong ho", as in chrysanthemum leaves, which I DESPISE. It's one of the few vegetables I won't eat).