mindless ramblings

We decided to be adventurous today and headed to downtown to grab some dim sum at Imperial Seafood Restaurant, as we had heard great things about it. It’s located in the historic Marine Building on the corner of Burrard and West Hastings and has some excellent views of the Strait of Georgia. The restaurant is split into 2 floors, a main dining floor, and a smaller section upstairs. We got seated upstairs (no big deal) and took a look at the menus. We didn’t notice any dim sum on the menu, so we asked the waiter and its one of those places that use trolley carts… only that they don’t have trolley carts, so they get people to walk around with trays of dim sum to every table. I’d much rather they do a la carte ordering in this case. It’s either the trolley cart or a la carte for me.

Anyway, the first tray to arrive at our table saw us getting some ha gow (蝦餃) and fun gow and right away we were majorly disappointed. The food stuck to the bamboo steamer so badly that attempting to pull the fun gow away resulted in a split fun gow, with fillings strewn all over. The same went for the ha gow, sticky skin and small prawns. Next up was some lor mai kai (糯米雞), which wasn’t too good too. The rice felt soggy and it was somewhat lacking in flavour. The cheong fun (腸粉) continued the trend, the rice roll itself was sticky, the prawns were small and the soya sauce seasoning was bland. The trend continued for pretty much everything we ordered until the last dish. It was a deep fried piece of taro which tasted exactly like ngor hiang, which is a Hokkien sausage/spring roll.

A big disappointment then… we had high hopes for the place but the quality is comparable to the low-end dim sum restaurants in Vancouver. Considering the price (~$50 for 4), expensive parking and the food, I don’t think I’ll be going back. Back to Kirin!