Best Dim Sum in Vancouver?

[prasantrin]

My flight was a whopping 2 hours late (we stopped just after pulling away from the gate for about an hour, then had to wait for a new plane), but luckily, my aunt checked Air Canada, so we arrived at the baggage carousels at the same time!

We went to Sun Sui Wah around 11 or 11:30. It wasn't terribly busy (but there were quite a few people there), so we didn't have to wait at a table at all. We limited our order to 7 things--cha siu bao, hum soi gok, chee cheung fan, lo bak go, har gau, and two other things. . .gailan with oyster sauce and. . . something else. Or maybe we just had 6. Oh, sticky rice in lotus leaves!

The highlight was the lo bak go. It's generally not one of my favourites, but they did it very well. It wasn't pasty like some lo bak go can be. My aunt and her friend liked the sticky rice in lotus leaves (nor mai gai), but I didn't care for it as much. The filling had some unusual (to me) ingredients for nor mai gai. We all liked the gailan a lot. When it first arrived, all we saw was some blanched gailan with just an itsy bitsy bit of sauce. The others expressed their disappointment, and I tried to rationalize it by saying the gailan must have been very good, so they did not want to overwhelm it with sauce. After we tried it, we decided I was right! (Even though I just made it up.) The gailan was perfectly cooked, and it lacked the bitterness that gailan often has.

The hum soi gok--my favourite dim sum item--was a disappointment. The filling was OK, but the outside was soggy. It was as though they had fried it earlier and then just microwaved it. Oh well.

I thought the cha siu bao was OK, but they use sliced cha siu and I prefer cubed. Both my aunt and her friend said the cha siu bao at New Town Bakery was better. New Town is owned by ethnic Chinese Filipinos, though, so it could just be that their cha siu bao's flavour profile is more familiar to my aunt (my mother's side of the family is Filipino, part ethnic Chinese). They offered to take me to New Town, but since my flight was so late, I didn't want to risk not getting back to the airport in time (traffic in that area is a little busy!).

Thanks for the suggestions! I hope to try more of them next time!