Red Star Seafood Restaurant 鴻星海鮮酒家

8298 Granville Street
Vancouver, BC V6P4Z4
Tel: (604) 261-8389
Fax: (604) 261-7877

Map

Service:

Interior Atmosphere:

Pricing:

This is a popular higher-end Chinese restaurant. I personally like the Granville location better than the Richmond one. Their interior is nice, pricing is average and the service is good. The food overall is tasty.

Blanched Geoduck
The geoduck was cooked perfectly so it wasn't too chewy. It goes great with the light soy dipping sauce.

Roasted Squab
This was perfectly roasted with tender meat and crispy skin. What can I say, it was yummy!

Steamed Fish in Lotus Leaf
Not particularly memorable...

Fish Soup
I have to say, I usually love fish soup, and I loved this one! Tastes clear and healthy.

Blanched beef slices with vegetables
I really like this dish too even though its super simple. You just take the fat beef and dip it into this special soy sauce and eat it. Goes great with the vegetables (菜苗 - baby veggies?)

Stir-fry Prawns with Lima Beans
Nothing too special about this dish, nonetheless it was sold. The shrimp and beans were very crunchy and fresh, even when covered in that sauce.

Rock Cod with Stir-fry Vegetables (1st half of the fish)
The fish was cooked well here, very tasty and good texture – what you'd expect from a fresh fish. Other than that, nothing special.

Rock Cod with Tofu (2nd half of the fish)
I was not a fan of this one, they took the rest of the fish and cooked it a entirely different way. It was tasty but some of the fish bones were swimming in that sauce so it was difficult to eat comfortably.

Jumbo Scallops with Garlic
These were sizable scallops, it was at least 2" in diameter. I'm a sucker for garlic flavoured seafood, but you can also order this cooked in different ways. I believe it was like $6-$8/piece.

Seasoned Chicken (Half)
This is one of those staple foods you'd find at ANY Chinese restaurant. This place was no exception, the chicken was well made. Juicy and tender, just the way I like it. I believe the chicken is cooked in a chicken broth to amplify flavour.

Red bean soup, almond cookies
Your standard Chinese dessert after a meal. LOVE the cookies!

Their name in English is 'Red Star' but that's not actully the meaning of their Chinese name. 鴻 (word for 'wild swan') sounds just like the word for 'red' (紅). My aunt told me there's a popular restaurant with the same name in Hong Kong, but we don't know if they're affliated.

Others' Input:

Hokkaido Ramen Santouka 山頭火

1690 Robson St
Vancouver, BC V6G 1C7
Map | Website

Service:

Interior Atmosphere:

Pricing:

After hearing all the good things about this new ramen restaurant, I finally gave it a try. As expected, the place was packed at around 8pm on a cold rainy weekend, I guess that's the perfect time to have noodle soup! Their soup bases feature tonkotsu (pork bone) so its creamy, light colored and nutritious. Overall, the ramen here is tasty (a bit too oily for me) but I wouldn't purposely come all the way out just to have this ramen though..

Miso Ramen ~ $8

The flavour of the miso ramen (compared to the shio ramen) is too salty. First spoon might be okay, but after eating the rest of the noodles it's way too salty – ironically 'shio' which means salt wasn't as salty by far. It's got a strong miso flavour so it differs from the miso ramen from Kintaro.

Shio Ramen & gyoza ~$9
I'd have to say this was a solid bowl of ramen, the pork (chasiu) was very tasty and had an appropriate amount of fat attached to it. The noodles are a bit stringy compared to what I'm used to. Unfortunately, the soup has a distinctive layer of oil on it which makes me not want to drink the soup.

Other Input:

Hakone Sushi

80 Keefer Place (by Stadium/Tinseltown)
Vancouver, BC V6B 0C9
Map

Service:

Interior Atmosphere:

Pricing:

Located just across the street from Tinseltown, this is the only sushi place near Chinatown. The restaurant is tiny and pretty busy during lunch time. I have to say the only things worth eating here are their california rolls and negitoro rolls. Their dynamite roll was appalling (sorry I don't have a photo of it right now) with soggy prawn tempura and mushy rice. I only came here to eat because there aren't any other sushi restaurants around that was walking distance from Chinatown. I probably won't come here unless I had a major craving for negitoro rolls...

Negitoro roll, salmon roll, miso soup ~ $8

The only thing I like from this place was the negitoro roll, its arranged in a flower shape! The salmon roll was expensive for what it was so I definitely won't order that again.

Other Input:

Lin Chinese Cuisine 林

1537 W. Broadway (near Granville St.)

Vancouver, BC V6J 5L1

Tel: (604) 733-9696

Map | Website

Service:

Interior Atmosphere:

Pricing:

A little Northern Chinese restaurant that's receive a lot of local attention is located by a busy intersection. Parking is difficult but that's expected of the Broadway/Granville area. This place is packed on a regular basis with lunch combos (miniature versions of various full size dishes) serving the local businessmen/women on their lunch breaks.

上海砂锅菜饭
Shanghai vegetable hotpot rice $6.99
I actually really liked this rice even if it is a bit on the oily side. It tastes refereshing because its basically just rice and veggies, a good choice since most of the stuff on the menu is heavily meat-based. It also smelled really good.

生煎包
Pan fried pork bun $4.99
This tastes average, a bit too oily for me. I guess my mouth isn't as used to the Northern Chinese food as it is to Southern Chinese.

葱油饼
Pan-fried green onion cake $4.99
Sometimes referred as green onion pancake, its usually available at dimsum as well. There are generally two kinds, deep-fried or pan-fried. This one here had a strong green onion flavour which is perfect. A good pancake has many little layers inside with chopped green onion sprinkled in between. Interestingly enough, there are two pancakes stacked here when its usually served as one.

小笼汤包 (Xiao Long Bao)
Shanghai juicy pork dumpling $4.99

You can't go to a Northern Chinese restaurant without ordering this staple menu item. As usual, the chef in charge of making these dumplings is situated inside the dining area behind a counter and glass window so customers can see how they're being made right before their eyes.

蜜汁大虾
Honey Prawn $15.99

This dish looks like your typical 'lemon chicken' 'sweet & sour pork' aimed at Caucasian taste buds with one exception that this actually tastes really good! (No offense to those other 2 dishes, but coming from a more traditional Chinese food tasting background, I don't like them because they really misrepresent Chinese food) Anyway, this dish is seriously delicious, I might have eaten the whole plate myself if everyone else I was with didn't also like it too ...

上海炒年糕
Shanghai style rice cake $9.99

They've got some good stir-frying skills because this dish, even though it looks simple, actually takes a lot of technique. The chewy rice cake pieces can stick together and form a giant blob if you're not careful. Its also easy to undercook them which causes them to be hard and impossible to chew.

黄鱼响铃
Crispy tofu wrap fish $12.99

The server who took our order recommended we try this, and I'll have to say I wish we didn't. It was hard to eat because the outside yellow bean curd layers were crispy on the outer parts but unbreakable on the inside. The fish inside was tasty but because of the odd outer wrap, it made eating each wrap really difficult due to their large size. It was also the last lingering dish to arrive which was not impressing.

肉末担担面

Tan Tan noodle soup with minced meat $6.59

This was alright. The name is misleading, and the noodle is underneath.

牛肉烧饼
Beef sesame cake $4.99

Crispy wrap around sweet beef. Yum.

蒸或炸银丝卷
Deep fried sliced roll $2.99

Can't really go wrong with this one, its a popular item. This comes in a deep fried version as well as the plain steamed version. Both types can be dipped in the condensed milk.

上海粗炒

Shanghai style chow mein $8.99

This tastes really similar to the rice cake one, if not identical in flavour. It was pretty good except for the overly oiliness. I've had this dish at other restaurants and having it less oily but still great-tasting is entirely possible.

Others' Input: