Curiously Carmen - Page 3 of 157 -

Sun Yee Cafe

December 4, 2020 Leave a Comment

Sun Yee Cafe is a new Hong Kong style cafe that opened two-ish months ago and replaced Golden Penny Chinese Restaurant, which had been around for as long as I can remember. Even as a child, I remember Golden Penny being around! Sun Yee Cafe is by Hastings and Lakewood inside the small strip plaza.

While looking this place up online before placing my delivery order, I noticed that there were two previous Sun Yee restaurants in Vancouver. One of them was a block away from the current location many years ago, and the other Sun Yee was located on Victoria Drive. Both previous locations have since shut down, so I wonder if this Sun Yee has the same owners or not? Or did new owners take their name for recognition sake?

Anyway, I noticed this place on UberEats for a bit now. One afternoon, I noticed that they were offering a buy one, get one free deal so it was the perfect time to try it!

This post is a review of 3 separate orders. You’d think that it was good if we ordered it 3 times, but it wasn’t as you’ll soon read about.

Diced chicken and salty fish fried rice: I wished that UberEats lets you mix and match all the eligible BOGO items, but unfortunately you have to order the same thing. I tried to call the restaurant if they would be willing do make another fried rice on the BOGO menu, but unfortunately they said no.

Anyway, it has been awhile since I had this type of fried rice! The fiance doesn’t like salty fish (anyone else? haha I can see why it’s off putting, the taste is quite strong and pungent…) so I had this all to myself, with enough to last me 4 meals!

There wasn’t much diced chicken, salty fish or egg in the rice, which was a bit disappointing. Salty fish has a strong taste so you don’t need much for flavour, but it did feel stingy. I was also disappointed that the rice lacked the “wok hei” aroma that makes fried rice taste good.

In addition, fried rice usually comes with some peas or chopped choy. The fried rice here didn’t include that, but instead had some cooked iceberg lettuce instead. The lettuce was pretty limp, tasteless and slicked with oil.

If there wasn’t a BOGO deal, the fried rice would have 100% not been worth it. I’m not sure if the quality was not good because of the BOGO so they skimped out, or if that was their normal quality. Either way, my first impression of the restaurant was not good.

At least I was full and ended up having 4 meals (lunch and dinner for 2 days!) with it due to the promo, so the value was there. But taste wise, I’ve had a lot better tasting fried rice and I would not recommend it at full price.

Baked spaghetti with sausage: On another day, I saw that they were offering the BOGO promotion as well, so we ordered two of these dishes for the price of one. Considering that my first order was disappointing, I wanted to see if this dish would be any better.

The baked spaghetti was slightly better compared to the fried rice but still pretty average. At least there was a generous portion of meat in the tomato sauce. Although the dish said baked, it didn’t really seem like it was.

Beef fried rice: Lastly, we ordered beef fried rice during another BOGO promo. It seems like this BOGO promotion is always happening, at least right now since they are newly opened.

The beef fried rice was as lackluster as the diced chicken and salted egg fried rice. There weren’t many pieces of beef inside, and what beef there was, was small and crumbly. As well, there wasn’t much flavour and there was even less scrambled egg in here than our previous fried rice order.

After ordering 3 times, my verdict of Sun Yee Cafe is that it is below average and not worth regular price. We only ordered because of their buy one get one free promotion on UberEats. It would not be worth the price otherwise. The taste is not that good and they are pretty stingy with ingredients. There are way better Hong Kong style cafe restaurants out there.

Milssam Tacorea / Bobkim’s Kimbob

December 1, 2020 Leave a Comment

I had the sudden craving for kimbap one morning, but there aren’t many places around me that have kimbap. I ended up forgetting about it but as I was looking on UberEats later in the day, I noticed a new place that I haven’t seen before called Bobkim’s Kimbob Korean Rice Roll. What a long name!

I haven’t heard of this place before, and no results showed up when I did a Google search. Very weird… Then I looked up the address and Milssam Tacorea in Yaletown showed up. When I looked up the menu at Milssam Tacorea though, there was no mention of kimbap or Bobkim’s so I was pretty confused at where this mysterious kitchen was coming from. I ended up calling Milssam to ask. Turns out, Bobkim’s is sharing a kitchen with Milssam. Mystery solved, and I knew where my food was coming from!

Tuna kimbap: My favourite kimbap is tuna, so of course we had to get this. The price was pretty reasonable as well. At the time of writing, this was $4.50 for 9 pieces.

The tuna kimbap was alright. It did satisfy my kimbap craving though and the roll had a lot of fresh, crunchy vegetables inside. The tuna was also juicy and mixed with some mayo, so it wasn’t dry.

Kimchi kimbap: The kimchi kimbap was our least favourite. We found the kimchi to be on the watery side and not spicy. You can probably tell looking at the photo too. The kimchi was more vinegary and lacked spiciness.

On the plus side, look how jam packed it was and how much egg was inside!

Pork kimbap: The pork kimbap was nothing special and pretty average as well.

We appreciated the amount of fresh, crunchy vegetables inside but the pork flavour itself was meh. It could have used more seasoning.

Fried gimmari seaweed roll: To meet the delivery minimum, we also added a fried seaweed roll which was something neither of us have tried before. It was a bite sized, deep fried roll with glass noodles and veggies inside (think of a deep fried japchae roll?).

In writing, gimmari sounds delicious, but I found that they used some sort of seasoning that made the roll taste a bit off. There was also a very heavy sesame oil taste.

Overall, we definitely have had better kimbap elsewhere. I also found myself pretty thirsty afterwards, so I suspect they added a lot of MSG in the rice because it did taste pretty salty. It’s weird because we found the main items (like the kimchi and pork) to be bland, but other things like the rice and gimmari were overly seasoned and too salty.

On the plus side, the rolls were filled with fresh ingredients and they did not skimp out. Seeing that there aren’t any Korean places around us that have kimbap, we may possibly order again but have our expectations lowered (or just go to Kim’s Mart instead).

Dosa Factory

November 28, 2020 Leave a Comment

Disclaimer: By the time I post this, I am not sure what the COVID protocols are because things are changing so quickly. At the time of writing, we are currently in a two week semi lockdown that began one week ago. This dinner happened before the lockdown when we were allowed to be with our safe 6 so please do not attack me.

Please be responsible, do not expand your social circle, stay home if you’re sick, and overall be a considerate and decent human!

Dosa Factory is an Indian restaurant that I’ve heard good things about. While looking for a place to order delivery from that I haven’t reviewed yet, I saw Dosa Factory on UberEats and suggested it for dinner!

Also, a heads up on UE incase this happens to you as well. This has nothing to do with Dosa Factory but I wanted to share our experience. Unfortunately that night, UE was experiencing issues. In the morning, we scheduled the delivery between 5:30-6:00pm. By 6pm, the app still showed that the food was being prepared so Nigiri called the restaurant. Turns out, the food was ready and had been waiting for a driver since 5:30! We waited a bit more until 6:30pm when Nigiri decided to pick it up because we were all hungry (btw the app was still showing that the restaurant was cooking….ugh).

By the time Nigiri drove to the restaurant, came back and we opened our food, it was lukewarm after sitting for 1.5 hours. Needless to say, we were not impressed with UE that night and requested a refund. I learned after this experience that if the app says that the restaurant is still preparing the food and it’s been an hour already like us, call the restaurant and check.

Again, I know this is not the restaurant’s fault and the experience with UberEats does not affect my review on Dosa Factory but I wanted to let you know incase your food is taking a long time.

Palak paneer: This is Nigiri’s must order when getting Indian food! The palak paneer here was not bad. The flavour was mild with not a lot of spice, so it was great to eat this in between the spicy dishes to cool our mouth. I’ve only had palak paneer at Chakra, and I found that Dosa Factory had more cottage cheese cubes inside.

Malabari chicken korma: The chicken korma here was delicious too! The meat was very tender, aromatic and flavourful. There was a good amount of spice to it.

Butter chicken: The butter chicken was sweet, creamy and a nice break from all the spicy dishes. Kimbap doesn’t eat spicy food so this was the perfect dish for her. There was a generous amount of chicken inside.

Tandoori chicken: Kimchi picked the tandoori chicken, which was essentially two very large drumsticks and breast. The chicken was marinated very well and wasn’t spicy. It was my first time having tandoori chicken so I don’t have much to compare it to, but I did enjoy it!

Fish and prawn kotthu parotta: Since we had a lot of chicken dishes already and Maki is a pescatarian, I chose this dish. I had a really good kotthu parotta at Kurumba and a not so good one at House of Dosa just down the block from Dosa Factory, so I wanted to compare.

First of all, this was jam packed with juicy, flaky pieces of fish! I would say there was more fish than roti bread which I am not complaining about. There wasn’t much shrimp though but the generous portion of fish more than made up for it. Taste wise, it was delicious and very flavourful, not heavily drowned with oil to the point where the roti bread wasn’t fluffy anymore.

Madras fish curry: This was a random addition after it looked like we wouldn’t have enough food. The Madras fish curry was the spiciest dish of all! It had no mercy with the spice level. The fish was cooked well and flaked off. There was a generous amount of fish inside the curry too.

Garlic naan: The curry dishes came with a free side of fluffy basmati rice and naan bread as well. We upgraded some of the naan bread to garlic bread. Both the regular and naan bread was delicious and doughy.

Despite the hiccup with UberEats (see intro paragraph) and our food being lukewarm by the time we ate, we were all very satisfied with Dosa Factory. Everything was very flavourful and not slicked with oil to the point that it wasn’t enjoyable.

After trying many Indian restaurants before deciding on a go-to, Dosa Factory would be one that I order regularly from! House of Dosa is on the same block but Dosa Factory is a lot better. Stay tuned for a review on House of Dosa! I actually have it written but I try to spread out my reviews on the same cuisines :).

Tatsu Japanese Restaurant

November 21, 2020 Leave a Comment

Despite ordering delivery more often due to the pandemic instead of eating out, we have yet to find a go-to sushi place that we like. Well, I really like Samurai Sushi for casual, no frills sushi but unfortunately don’t see them on delivery apps often. We saw Tatsu Japanese Restaurant and it was pretty close, so we decided to try it out.

Tatsu Japanese Restaurant is located on Commercial Drive. There are a bunch of sushi restaurants on Commercial Drive. So far, the ones we’ve tried are Kishimoto (for more upscale sushi), Sushi Ville, Ginger Sushi, Naruto Sushi, and now, Tatsu for delivery.

California donburi: For myself, I was feeling like a donburi. I was going to get a salmon donburi, but last minute, I saw the California donburi and ordered that instead.

The donburi was densely packed with sushi rice and was quite filling. Essentially, it was all the ingredients of a California roll in a bowl setting with the addition of salmon sashimi and baby shrimp.

Although the donburi was densely packed with rice and a huge scoop of crab meat, there wasn’t much salmon sashimi. The pieces were chopped up like poke style, but I would guess that there was only about 2 pieces of salmon sashimi.

The wasabi mayo was delicious, although it may be too spicy for some people. The donburi was good with fresh ingredients and crunchy vegetables, but I didn’t feel like it was worth the price for how little salmon sashimi there was in the bowl.

BC Roll: The fiance likes to try BC rolls whenever we try a new place. The BC roll was alright. The salmon skin could have been a bit crispier, but that could also be due to getting the order as delivery.

Chopped scallop roll: The chopped scallop roll was delicious! The roll was jam packed with juicy, fresh pieces of scallop.

Tuna tataki roll: This was ordered off their specialty roll section, but it was a disappointment. It was basically a California roll with a thin piece of seared tuna on top and some spicy gochujang sauce. The tuna was quite dry too. For a specialty roll, I was expecting more and would not order this again!

Negitoro roll: The fiance has become a negitoro roll expert and can usually tell right away if it would be good or bad. He was happy to see that this was one of the good places.

The negitoro was fatty and soft. There was a lot of fresh green onions inside too.

Overall, we found that the items were hit or miss. The usual go-to items we get like the chopped scallop roll and the tuna roll were delicious though, so we would order again. The ones we didn’t like as much, such as the tuna tataki roll and California don, are items that we don’t normally get.

I’d only recommend this place if you were in the area or they had delivery. It wouldn’t be a restaurant that I’d drive purposely to but we wouldn’t mind getting delivery from them again since it’s close and fast for us.

Deer Garden – Fraser St Revisit

November 18, 2020 Leave a Comment

I have a few reviews on all of the Deer Garden locations, but it bothered me that the last time I wrote a review on the Fraser St location, my go-to Deer Garden location, was five years ago! The fiance and I come here often, but I never ended up writing a revisit post until now. You can also read my previous posts on other Deer Garden locations.

We were quickly seated and asked for contact information for tracing. Service here is usually not friendly, but at least they are efficient and fast.

Desert chicken wings: We rarely order the sides here because the noodle portions are so big already, but we were very hungry that day!

The name “desert chicken wings” always gave me a chuckle because I’m not sure where the desert part comes in. Nonetheless, the chicken wings were delicious! They were piping hot, crunchy and juicy and reminded me of chicken karage.

Drinks: The soup combos come with a drink too. The hot drinks are usually free unless you order one with lemon. I got the almond milk, but I should warn my lactose intolerant peeps that I’m pretty sure they add milk powder or condensed milk to it because it’s quite creamy. The fiance got the cold calpis drink.

DIY Soup Noodle: I’ve been getting the same bowl of noodles with a few minor revisions over the past 5 years. My go to is the century egg and parsley soup with crystal noodles. For the toppings, I’ve been getting sausage and extra bean curd these days.

I used to get the vermicelli noodles, but about a year ago, they changed noodle brands and the new one wasn’t as good. Also, they used to have fresh bean curd which I was a huge fan of… They “temporarily” sold out though, and by “temporary” I mean that there has been a hand written sign on the wall for over a year. I’ve pretty much given up on having fresh bean curd here anymore, which is more silky and light.

Despite the changes, the broth was delicious as usual. The sausage was nicely grilled before putting it into the broth. The portion was enormous as usual and it’s hard to leave Deer Garden hungry.

DIY soup noodles: The fiance either picks from the spicy peanut broth or laksa broth. On this visit, he went with the laksa broth. I never got into laksa broth surprisingly enough, but I don’t mind taking a few sips here and there. The laksa broth was creamy and flavourful with a subtle hint of spice.

For the toppings, he went with egg noodles, luncheon meat and beef. It was a very satisfying bowl of noodles.

No matter which Deer Garden you go to, they are always consistent and delicious. It’s a staple Asian restaurant in Vancouver and popular for good reasons. They have the best DIY soup combos with huge portions and a decent price.