Curiously Carmen

Chad Thai – Revisit

June 15, 2019

I have been on a Thai food craze lately! I went from eating Thai perhaps once a year, to having it four times in May! It all started with watching Hairy Bikers Asian Adventure on Netflix, where there were two episodes featuring Thailand! Now I am hooked on travel/eating shows.

The first three visits were to Bai Bua, where I wrote an updated post. After going there three times in 3 weeks, we decided on going back to Chad Thai instead. We’ve been in the past and enjoyed it as well!

Here is my post from last year if you’re interested in reading that.

Chad Thai is located in my neighborhood, The Heights! It is a small and narrow restaurant so seating can be cramped during busy hours. However, service was friendly and efficient throughout.

Thai noodle soup: I wanted to compare Chad Thai’s noodle soup to Bai Bua’s! The broth here was more on the sweeter side. Although it was a pretty clear soup, there was still depth and a well rounded flavour to it.

In addition, there was also a nice garlic flavour to the broth too. Meanwhile, the chicken was nice and juicy. Since discovering Thai noodle soup, there’s no going back! Not all Thai restaurants serve the noodle soup but I would love to try other renditions if I saw it on the menu.

Green curry: The boyfriend went with the green curry with beef, which was an excellent choice! It was delicious and fragrant.

There was also a good portion of tender beef and eggplants. Coupled with the coconut rice, the two were a perfect match for each other! He didn’t have enough room to finish so he packed some of it up.

Coconut rice: We always make sure to order coconut rice when having Thai food! Having regular rice is just offensive…. Just kidding, some people don’t like coconut rice so I won’t judge 🙂

The coconut rice here was sweet and rich! It went very well with the green curry and was also fragrant enough to eat by itself.

All in all, we left very satisfied and happy with our meal. Chad Thai is a solid choice for Thai food, and would be worth driving to even if you weren’t in this area. They also gave us some sort of pink Thai candy after, which was really good. I wish I remembered the name of it because it was delicious.

Yay!

Prince Seafood Restaurant

June 12, 2019

Prince Seafood Restaurant is located in East Van, just off Renfrew St. While looking for a place to have Mother’s Day dim sum with my parents, I suggested this place since we haven’t gone here for many years!

It was quite busy when we first arrived, but that wasn’t a surprise since it was Mother’s Day weekend. We didn’t have to wait long though, maybe about 5 minutes which was nice!

Prince is a bit more upscale than other dim sum places, and the prices reflect that.

Prawn dumpling: When they first arrived, they were a disappointing sight because of how small they were! Taste-wise, they were pretty good though. The prawn was fresh and snappy. There was also some garlic inside that gave it more flavour.

Steamed beef ball: The steamed beef ball came with cilantro and some other vegetables. I didn’t try it but everyone else found it tasty, albeit small.

Steamed meat and dried shrimp dumpling: I didn’t try this either, but no one had complaints about them.

Black truffle and wild mushroom: This was a new dish that I haven’t tried before! This was a vegetarian steamed dumpling, which I quite enjoyed.

The mushrooms instead were soft and creamy. Meanwhile, the truffle made the dumpling very fragrant and exciting. I don’t think this is a standard dim sum dish but I’d definitely order it again if I see it.

Sticky wild rice dry & dry scallop with lotus leaf: Again with the small portion! We were a bit shocked to see how small the portion inside was.

The way that the lotus leaf was wrapped made it seem like there was more. The taste was nothing special, although the wild rice gave it a bit more of a crunchy texture.

Rice roll with fish paste: I didn’t try this, but everyone didn’t have complaints about it. The servers didn’t give any dipping sauce and it was too much hassle to try to waive someone down because it was busy that afternoon.

Rice flour roll with prawns: Once again, the portion size here was smaller which was disappointing. The taste was good, but I would have hoped there was another roll as it usually comes with 4 rolls.

BBQ bun: We weren’t planning on ordering this, but someone was bringing the buns around and advertising that they were freshly baked, so my dad got a plate! I sound like a broken record now about the small portion size, but that’s the truth! I didn’t have any, but no one had any complaints about the taste.

It seemed like the reoccurring theme of dim sum that afternoon was the small portions. For that reason, Prince wouldn’t be my top pick because I didn’t find the sizing worth the price.

Especially in a city like Vancouver where dim sum is very popular, I’d rather go somewhere else with bigger portion sizes. However, the quality is there and the unique truffle mushroom is a must try!

Mr. Red Cafe – Revisit

June 10, 2019

Almost 3 years ago, I wrote about my first visit to Mr. Red Cafe. Since writing that post, the restaurant has moved one block down to a newer location.

This visit was from March and I wasn’t going to write about it again, but now I feel like doing an updated post on it!

Mr. Red Cafe is quite popular for Vietnamese food, and for good reason! I don’t come here that often, but I do enjoy the food here and wouldn’t hesitate to recommend it.

Pho: I ordered the standard pho with rare beef and beef balls. The broth here is fragrant, flavourful, and has depth. In addition, they do not skimp out on the cilantro and onions! I was really satisfied with their pho and it was consistent with my past visits.

Lemongrass chicken: Cola was pretty satisfied with her lemongrass chicken too. The portion was quite big so she had enough to pack for lunch the next day.

Sticky rice mung bean dumpling: This is my must-get at Mr. Red! I normally don’t order this at other Vietnamese restaurants, and don’t even know if other places offer this. I introduced this to Cola that evening and she enjoyed it too!

I would recommend sharing this because the sticky rice makes this quite filling. The inside contains grounded mung bean, pork and crunchy peanuts. It is a savoury delight with different textural elements, with the chewy sticky rice, fluffy pork floss, and crunchy peanuts.

I find with Vietnamese food, I usually just go to the closest/most convenient place. There aren’t many Vietnamese places I’d purposely make the drive to if I wasn’t in the area. However, Mr. Red Cafe is one of the places where I would purposely make the trip to even if I wasn’t in the area!

Brown Bites: Popina Canteen

June 8, 2019

Brown Bites is a mini series on my blog featuring places the boyfriend has tried without me, so it wouldn’t be my own review. Why the name Brown, you ask? It is named after the Japanese LINE character, Brown. Brown is a cute, shy, emotionless cartoon bear but secretly full of love, and we adore him to pieces!

One of the traditions of my boyfriend and mine is to have a seawall biking date at least once in the summer. I recently invested in a new and better bike, and so biking has become a new hobby! So, we decided to bike over to Granville Island and start our biking tradition early!

I predict that there will be a lot more biking adventures this year now that my bike isn’t a piece of junk anymore. Which means hopefully more food reviews for places around the seawall!

After getting to Granville Island (so glad we didn’t have to deal with the hassle of parking in this crowded area), we walked around the market a bit!

We then came across Popina Canteen, which looked new and interesting, so we walked over.

Once the boyfriend saw that they sold soft serve in cream puff, he knew instantly he had to get one! Unfortunately for him, it was not instant because service was soooo slow as you’ll soon read about.

Popina Canteen is a new, upscale ‘fast food stand’ made in collaboration with a four popular chefs in Vancouver.

There is an option to order food to go, or you can take it inside to their covered customer-only (and pigeon proof because those pigeons in Granville Island are sure aggressive) area.

Inside the covered customer-only area, you can also order alcoholic drinks.

You can also order food on their touch screen computer, but there wasn’t any options for the soft serve there so we headed on over to the counter.

Unfortunately, the Malteser, which was the boyfriend’s first choice, was sold out already.

After ordering, the wait was quite long considering that there was only 1 other order ahead of us. The one staff member making the dessert worked at the pace of a turtle… she was so painstakingly slow in covering the soft serve with oreo bits. Imagine the sloth from Zootopia.

To make matters worse, she ended up making the wrong flavour so we had to wait another 7 minutes for her to make one soft serve, and dust the ingredients on. She was also pretty grumpy and unapproachable so it was awkward telling her that she made the wrong one…

I’m not sure why it took so long to roll the soft serve around in the dry ingredients… If this is a consistent thing, I really don’t want to imagine how long customers have to wait during peak summer hours.

Nutso: He ended up going with nutso, which came with crushed oreo cookies and a nutella center. The soft serve was great quality because it came from Birchwood Dairy, which is local (Rain or Shine and Glenburn also use Birchwood, if the name sounds familiar to you).

He also really liked the cream puff too. Since the soft serve was so high, the paper cup was a really great idea to keep it from getting messy. It was a bit overpriced at $8, but Granville Island is a prime tourist spot so prices reflect that.

Overall, he enjoyed the puffcream but it was disappointing how long the wait was despite it not being busy, and how slooooow we saw the staff member make it.

The staff here could also have been more friendly, they seemed pretty grumpy and hated their job. While waiting for the puffcream, I also noticed that the bartender inside their seating area was quite pretentious to a customer asking if they could have tap water.

So the customer service soured the experience a bit, but the puffcream itself was tasty.

Happy Valley Seafood Restaurant

June 7, 2019

During the Easter long weekend, my dad and I went out for dim sum ourselves seeing that my mom and the boyfriend had work. We didn’t know where to go, but he suggested Happy Valley which was fine with me! I’ve been here once a few months ago with the boyfriend’s family for dinner. I remember it being pretty decent for dinner.

Happy Valley is located in a random spot, with not many other restaurants near by. There is a huge parking lot and free street parking, but during peak hours it can still be hard to find a spot!

Beef omasum with ginger & onion: I was surprisingly impressed with the beef omasum here! Usually, I find this dish to be quite oily, heavy and the omasum to be not fresh tasting. However, this was not the case at all!

The omasum here was delicious. There was not much oil in it, so perfect for me. In addition, it was garlicky and gingery which I loved.

Shrimp rice flour roll: No complaints about the rice flour roll here. It was yummy and a good portion.

Sticky rice wrap: I wasn’t a big fan of the sticky rice wrap here. They use a different type of leaf, which is harder. My dad told me the name of this leaf, but I forgot it now.

Anyways, since the leaf is thicker, I find that the leaf flavour doesn’t fully absorb into the sticky rice. I like the thinner, more fragile leaves which give the rice a more fragrant flavour.

Steamed spareribs: I’ve never been a big fan of spareribs, but everyone else seems to like them. Spareribs usually come with a black bean sauce. Here, they were served with a garlicky sauce with some peppers.

Overall, I’m glad that my dad and I tried Happy Valley for dim sum. I wouldn’t mind coming back here in the future!