Luck's Gourmet

Restaurant: Luck's Gourmet

Cuisine: Chinese/Shanghai/Asian
Last visited: October 29, 09
Area: Richmond, BC
Unit 2088 - 8700 McKim Way (In the Admiralty Mall food court)
Price Range: $10 or less

1: Poor 2: OK 3: Good 4: Very good 5: Excellent 6: Tres Excellent!!

Additional comments:

• Family owned and operated
• Specializes in Chinese/Shanghainese cuisine
• A few items not available on menu
  
• Fresh, made upon order
• Take-out
• Small selection of desserts
• Very cheap
• Cash only

** Recommendation: n/a

I haven't tried enough of their menu to make a fair judgment, but what I ordered was good and it will make me go back to try other items.

I actually wanted to try their steamed pork buns aka "xiao long bao" but they didn't have any. A lot of their English translations are off, so it's hard to know what to order or what they're trying to describe.

On the table:

• Sesame Seed Pastry 4.5/6
• It's under "sesame seed pastry" as a dessert on their menu board. It is not a dessert! I was lucky enough to have someone translate so I wasn't in for a surprise. It was only $3 and it was huge!
• This is actually an Asian style sesame seed pancake or crepe stuffed with ground pork and raw cucumbers. It's traditional Shanghainese. It's a meal in itself although it's considered a snack.
• The dough for the crepe is made in house and it's hot and fresh because you have to wait at least 15min. for it. The crepe is delicious and it's pretty thick. It would be more salty than sweet, it's almost like puff pastry. It has multiple layers and the outer layers are nice and flaky. It's soft and chewy on the inside and has a crispy filo-like exterior. It's a Shanghainese style roti with less layers than the Malaysian style roti. They pan fry it so that the sesame seeds taste all nutty. Surprisingly it wasn't that oily or greasy.
• The inside of this sesame seed pastry is filled with relatively lean ground pork with an Asian soy-based pork gravy and some raw cucumbers. It was so good! The cucumbers are crunchy although they do semi-cook from the steam of the meat and pastry.
• I only wish it was a bit saltier. It looks really saucy, but the sauce could have been saltier. It's probably not the best out there, but it's excellent for a hole in the wall place like this and you probably won't find a better deal! I'd order it again for sure.
  

• Tasty Twist Idea: It needed Hoisin sauce or something. I actually ordered something with Hoisin sauce at the stand next to it so I ended up dipping my pastry into the Hoisin sauce. That made it a 5/6! It made it taste like a Peking Duck wrap.