Maple Castella - Pork Floss Bread

Restaurant: Maple Castella - Pork Floss Bread
Cuisine: Bakery/Breads/Pastries/Desserts
Last visited: March 7, 2010

Area: Richmond, BC
#1068 - 8700 McKim Way (In Admiralty Cenre)
Price Range: $10 or less

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

Food: 5 (6 for hits, 2 for miss)
Service: n/a (biased b/c they know me now)

Ambiance: 2.5

Overall: 5

Additional comments:

• Taiwanese bakery in Richmond
• Specializes in Taiwanese buns/baked goods (sweet & savoury)
• All breads/buns made on site daily
• Amazing breads and buns - cookies not as great though
• Bread are more on the sweeter side
• Always busy, familiar to locals and Chinese
• Taiwanese bakery not Cantonese - so buns are different than Chinese bakeries like Maxim's
• Closed Thursday
• Smells absolutely delicious inside and outside the bakery

**Recommendation: Pumpkin Bread, Pork Floss Bread, Pork floss bun with the egg wrapped around it

Maple Castella is still one of my favourite Asian bakeries. Sure they have some items that are better than others, but the stuff that is good is really really really good! For example the famous pumpkin bread that I have recommended to everyone – so far I haven’t received any negative feedback from it.

Everything is made daily and seriously the bread (the loaves) sells out as soon as it comes out of the oven. They only make about 12 loaves of each type of bread a day. It’s small bakery with a small operation so believe me when I say PRE-ORDER. Any of their loaves, even their white bread sells out at the end of the day. The pumpkin bread is a guaranteed sell out in like 2 hours on a slow day.

This entry is on another bread that I really enjoy there. The pork floss bread!

On the table:

**Pork Floss Bread 6/6

• $4.00 for half a loaf – don't think they offer them in whole loaves.
• I love it just as much as the pumpkin bread, and it’s quite different so I can’t compare. It deserves a 6/6! It's probably more for Chinese taste buds just because of the pork floss.
  
• The base of the bread is the same as the pumpkin bread. It’s a super fluffy egg and butter based bread. It’s delicious! So soft! It’s not a crumb bread but a stretchy fluffy one.

• It’s interwoven with swirls of pork floss or dried pork fluff.
• Pork floss is pretty much shredded pork jerky. It has a cotton like texture and it’s nice and salty. The pork is marinated and dried in soy sauce so that’s why it’s salty. I love this stuff! Asian kids grow up with it.
• This bread is delicious and it’s savoury bread.

• They bake it with a sprinkle of shredded cheddar cheese on top! It’s soooo good! It gives the bread a salty crust and goes great with the salty pork floss. Even without the cheese the crust is still good! Reminds me of those cheese pretzel breads you eat/ate as kids.
• Their breads are so soft and fluffy I recommend to eat them as is. Skip the toaster…if anything you can microwave them for 10 sec. to eat warm.
• Great as a snack!
  

Your Dessert

Restaurant: Your Dessert

Cuisine: Chinese/Dessert
Last visited: Oct. 14, 09
Area: Richmond, BC
Unit 2103 - 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!!

Food: 6
Service: 3
Ambiance: n/a in a food court

Overall: 5
Additional comments:

• Family owned and operated
• Specializes in Traditional Chinese egg batter desserts
• Fresh, made upon order homemade desserts
  
• Relatively healthy dessert - very light not as much sugar
• Eat as dessert or snack
  
• Gift boxes available
• Cash only

** Recommendation: Chinese Eggballs, Seaweed Phoenix Roll with Pork

This is the only dessert place in the food court. They specialize in Chinese desserts that are egg batter based like eggballs and egg rolls. They also make waffles and crepes, but I've never ordered it or seen anyone order it. I'd stick to the traditional Asian desserts - which are more like snacks than desserts. Not really sweet at all, very light.

Everything is homemade and made fresh daily. They don't have much business considering how small the food court is. But I think they make the best Chinese eggballs in town!

It's a husband and wife operation - he usually makes the eggballs (looks easy to make when you watch them, but it does take skill to make them really good) and she makes the Phoenix Rolls (takes skill and technique).

I order the Phoenix Rolls when I actually see her making them, she does it randomly throughout the day.

On the table:

The perfect ratio of soft chewy middle and crispy exterior. Airy and light.

• **Chinese Eggballs 6/6
• This is the Chinese version of a waffle. It's made of flour, eggs, milk and sugar. They put it in a special eggball waffle maker and it comes out like the above.
• It's better than a waffle to me. Not as bread like, but more soft and chewy.
  
• They make it upon order and it's the perfect texture - they use more egg and and less flour. Perfect amount of sweetness too.
• Besides the flavour of the batter, the trick is to pour the perfect amount into the waffle maker. It's excellent here because they pour just enough batter to keep the perfect balance between crispy outer shell and chewy soft middle. It's light and airy and the inside kind of springs back.
• 
• 
  
• **Phoenix Roll with Pork Floss 4.5/6
  
• This is a Chinese egg roll with dried pork floss wrapped inside.
  
• They make them daily so they're really fresh.
• It's really light. Very flaky and crispy paper thin layers of fresh egg roll pastry that are very slightly sweet. It's crispy and crumbly and very delicate. Then you get a salty bite with the fluffy pork floss. Amazing texture and unique flavours!
  
• 
• Pork floss is dried pork - it's almost like jerky but shredded and made really fluffy - almost like a rougher cotton candy. It's marinated in soy sauce and then dried, so it's savoury but has a slight sweetness (like soy sauce naturally does). Asian kids grow up with it.
• It works really well in this dessert because of the slight sweetness. I know it sounds really weird to put meat into a dessert. I guess it's more of a snack than a dessert, although Chinese people would call it a dessert. If you know what to expect I think you'll like it. I love them! I just wish they put more pork floss in these Phoenix rolls.
  

• The Cooking Process:

• 

Adding the pork floss

• 
• 
• Folding the Phoenix roll, must be done quickly before it hardens and becomes crispy.
• 

Set aside to cool.

• 

• They also offer Seaweed Phoenix Roll with pork where they wrap the Phoenix rolls in a thin sheet of seaweed.
• Seaweed and pork floss go hand in hand. It's a great combination that's commonly seen in Chinese cuisine. They both have that salty taste and kind of sweet taste at the same time. I like these ones, but that's because I'm already acquired to the taste.
• Work up to these ones, try the ones without seaweed first if you're not as adventurous. You might want to try each ingredient separately and then try it altogether.
  

Chen's Shanghai Kitchen

Restaurant: Chen's Shanghai Kitchen
Cuisine: Shanghainese/Chinese/Asian/Dim Sum

Last visited: August 28, 09

Area: Richmond, BC

8095 Park Road

Price Range: $10-20

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

Food: 5

Service: 2

Ambiance: 1

Overall: 4

Additional comments:

• Hole in the wall Shanghainese
• Shanghainese chefs/cooks/staff
• Familiar and popular with locals
• Menu in English and Chinese, but some hot items only in Chinese
  
• Line-ups/busy/crowded
• Feel a bit rushed cause of the line-up
• May have to share a big table with others during busy hours
  
• Open for lunch and dinner
• Quick service

**Recommendation: Baiyulan steamed mini pork dumplings "Xiao Long Bao", Shanghai pan-fried pork buns "Sheng Jian Bao", beef roll (sliced beef wrapped in Shanghainese style crepe) , sticky rice "chee fan"

This is a fantastic place if you're looking for some cheap, fast and good Shanghainese food. Super casual, fresh and hot food, nothing plated fancy - this is authentic Shanghainese home cooking with no fuss. This place gets busy by 6pm, so arrive early to avoid line-ups. We went at 7:30pm and there was still a line-up at 9pm. The line-up never goes away, but it moves super fast. The service is fast, and your food arrives quickly - it's all fresh and hot too so they must have a really good system working in the kitchen.

All of my recommendations are pretty much what every single table ordered as well, so they are obvious favourites. The staple Shanghainese item "xiao long bao" is the soupiest here. I've had several at different Shanghainese restaurants, but they are the soupiest here for sure. I couldn't bite into one without it squirting everywhere. The soup isn't necessarily the most flavourful of the bunch I've tried, but they definitely are the soupiest. They do sell out of some popular dishes, so place your order in early.

On the table:

• **Baiyulan steamed mini pork dumplings 6/6
• This is the staple menu item when dining Shanghainese. They should always be made fresh and upon order - everything should be done in house - from making the dumpling pastry to making the ground pork stuffing. There is usually one chef/cook responsible for just making these the whole night.

• It's a pork dumpling filled with hot soup broth. A good "xiao long bao" has a thin skin and A LOT of flavourful hot soup. The goal is to have the skin as thin as possible to still hold the most soup possible and not having it leak out at the same time. It takes a lot of experience to master this skill - it's not easy at all. The whole thing is super juicy and filled with hot soup - so be careful not to burn yourself when you bite into them. You dip it in the ginger vinegar they give you before you eat it.

• There is a skill when eating these. You can either wait until they cool down and pop them in your mouth whole - or you can bite the top off, suck the soup out, and then eat the dumpling. I like eating them whole, but be careful because they're really really hot!

• These were definitely the soupiest xiao long bao's I have had. The broth was not necessarily the most flavourful - although they were still very flavourful, but they are definitely the soupiest. There is a lot of soup in these, so try to eat them whole. The best xiao long bao's for me are still either from Shanghai Wonderful or Shanghai River, both in Richmond. But Chen's is still really really good! At this restaurant it's 6/6, but compared to others it's 5/6.
• $4.30 for 6 - super cheap, and they're not sacrificing on quality either.
• **Shanghai Pan-fried Pork Buns 6/6
• These are almost like xiao long bao's but instead it's a pan-fried bun. These are almost famous here. These again are the soupiest I've ever had them - they were a bit oily though. Usually the xiao long bao's have more soup than the buns (buns absorb more), but at Chen's they both equally have just as much soup - I don't know how they do it and that's why I give them 6/6. Again you dip them in vinegar before you eat them. These are harder to eat whole because they're bigger than the dumplings, so I had to bite half and the sou p just squirted everywhere...if you can eat t hem whole, eat them whole.
• $4.30 for 5 - deal.

  

• Malantou with Diced Bean Curd 5/6
• Minced Chinese leafy green (similar to spinach) mixed with minced dried bean curd. It's served cold.

• This is really good. They offer it at some other Shanghainese restaurants, but the method they make and serve it is different at each one. I've never seen it done this way (except in Shanghai) and I like it the best at Chen's so far. It's a very typical Shanghainese appetizer. A local and authentic dish. I would definitely order it again. The presentation isn't very nice, but it doesn't matter because it tastes better this way rather than all rolled up and all fancy.
• At Chen's everything in the dish is finely minced and you eat it just as it's served. It's very healthy too, and you eat spoonfuls of it. It's a savoury dish that has a hint of pickled flavour. It tastes and looks almost like a finely minced spinach omelette served cold. A little crunchy, but not crispy - the dried bean curd is obviously rehydrated - so it's a soft texture. The crunchiness and slightly pickled taste is from this pickled type of Asian radish that's also minced up in the dish. This Asian radish is similar to the Japanese yellow carrot you find in s ushi (oshinko) - both are delicious!
• Order it here cause I can't find it anywhere else. It's not like it's done particularly well here or anything, but it's still really good.

  

• **Beef Pancake Roll 6/6
  
• Slices of beef and green onion rolled up with a Shanghainese style crepe or pancake - freshly made in house.

• You know that Peking Duck crepe you get at Chinese restaurants served with the Hoisin sauce and green onions? This is the Shanghainese version of that. Every single table ordered this. It's delicious. The pancake is delicious and they make it in house upon order. The star of this is the pancake - not the beef, and that's ok because it should be. It takes great skill to make this pancake the perfect texture.
  
• 
• This is one of the favourites and you also can't find it at every Shanghainese restaurant. The crepe is soft and chewy - it looks crispy, but it's not really. It's more chewy. It's savoury and sweet at the same time with a nice onion flavour. The onions are cooked, so it's not a strong onion flavour. These are really delicious. I'm craving it.
• Shanghai Rice Roll Noodles with Pork Chops
  
• These noodles are found only in Shanghai cuisine. They're think and sturdy, but also soft and very chewy. The texture and consistency of mochi. It's made out of rice flour and they're really filling. It comes either in thick logs (like we had them here) or in oval slices almost the size of cucumber slices.
• This dish is served with 3 pretty big pieces of pork cutlets - they're more cutlets than pork chops. They're battered and deep fried - and they are quite heavy on the batter. This dish is covered in this savoury brown sauce that's quite thick and more like gravy than it is sauce.
• This is really delicious in general, not particularly here because you can find it better at other Shanghainese restaurants. I would have appreciated more veggies in it though. It came with 2 pieces of Chinese veg gies which was pathetic. It's really oily and greasy though (just look at the picture) - but this is VERY common in ALL Shanghainese cuisine, so don't be surprised.
  
• **Chee Fan (Sticky Rice)
• I didn't get a chance to order it, because they sold out by 7:30pm! I was so disappointed and we JUST missed the last one. This is another popular Shanghai dish. It's sticky rice (different from the sticky rice you get at Chinese dim sum), the Shanghainese kind is drier and much more chewy - almost bread like, and it has this pan-fried exterior. Slightly crispy on the outside and super chewy and soft on the inside.
  
• Chee Fan is stuffed with stuffing such as dried pork floss and that pickled radish - similar in taste and texture to the yellow Japanese carrot you find in sushi (oshinko). They make Chee Fan differently at every Shanghainese place - but I'm dying to try it here because they sold out before I could even order it.

Dessert

• Pan-fried Pumpkin Cake stuffed with Red Bean 2/6
  
• This shows up on a lot of Shanghai menus - and it's not good here. It's way better at Shanghai Wonderful. The pumpkin dough pastry (tastes like mochi) is made fresh and upon order at both, but they're just done really poorly at Chen's. They were way too oily too - even for Shanghai standards. Barely any red bean filling too - you can tell from looking at the picture.
• $3.95 for 3 (I know they're cheap, but still don't try them here, because they're better than this)
  

Green Basil Thai

Restaurant: Green Thai Basil
Cuisine: Thai
Last visited: August 1, 09

Area: Burnaby
4326 Kingsway
Price Range: $10-20

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

Food: 2
Service: 2
Ambiance: 2
Overall: 2
Additional comments:

• Not the best Thai in Vancouver, it's ok
• I'm not Thai, neither was the clientele
• More Chinese Thai food than authentic Thai food
• Nothing looks like the pictures on the menu
• No presentation
  
• Lunch specials available M-F: 11-3pm @ $6.95
  
• Spiciness levels are pre-set
• Food comes quickly

**Recommendation: I can't really recommend anything because it was all ok, but out of the things I had, the Khaoo Phat Sap-Bpa-Roht (Fried rice with pineapples, peanuts, raisins & pork floss) was the best...actually quite tasty.

Alright so I'm not Thai and neither was the clientele. I have Thai friends and they've never heard of this restaurant, so I really question its authenticity to traditional Thia food. I felt like it was more on the Chinese side. It wasn't horrible, but it wasn't great. Just average Thai food, and if I was in the area and really craving Thai food I would go here. But I wouldn't plan a dinner just to go here again. The owner/waiter was also kind of rude, but the rest of the staff was ok. The food also came very fast, which usually means it's all pre-made sitting on heaters or stove tops in the back all day. Because you can't adjust the spiciness to your liking, you know it's all somewhat pre-made and reheated. Yes, some curries cannot be adjusted because the curry paste is spicy on its own - but you can just tell it's probably a buffet style set-up in the kitchen...which is out of sight.

On the table:

• Tom Yum - Soup 2/6
• Hot and sour soup with mushroom, tomato, lemongrass, and Thai herbs.
• I had it with prawns. I've had better, this was actually kind of disappointing. it doesn't look like the picture and they could have been more generous with the ingredients. The care wasn't there, everything was more or less just thrown in.
• The waiter/owner was really poor at serving the soup equally - some people had no prawns, some has no mushrooms, some had more soup...bad job.
• Gaaeng Ka-Ri - Yellow Thai curry in a hot pot 3/6
  
• Yellow curry paste with carrots, potato, pineapple and coconut milk
• I ordered it with seafood and it did come with a reasonable amount of seafood for $14.50. Good amount of seafood to sauce ratio. It was better than the green Thai curry we ordered. It was more flavourful and their were some fresh green and red peppers that were probably sauteed in before serving. I feel that the potatoes, carrots and curry sauce were all precooked though.
• Gaaeng Kiew Waan - Green Thai curry 2/6
• Green curry paste with basil, eggplant, green beans and coconut milk
  
• I ordered it with chicken - which was slices of chicken breasts. It doesn't look like the picture and I feel like they could have gone heavier on the green curry paste. For 3 chili peppers, it wasn't that spicy either. Nothing really rave about, it wasn't bad it wasn't really good...just meh.
• Khaoo Phat Sap-Bpa-Roht - Thai fried rice 5/6
  
• Fried rice with fresh pineapple, peanuts, and raisins topped with dried pork floss
• Does not look like the pictures again! But it's pretty good, so I guess it's ok. It needed more cashews and raisins, we barely had any. It also had no dried pork floss when it was served, so we told the waiter and his excuse was lame. He tried to convince us that they purposely don't serve it with pork floss because we already ordered it with chicken and that most people don't like pork floss on it etc. It was a stupid excuse.
• The pineapples were fresh, plentiful and there were pretty big chunks of them which is nice. The chef did a good job frying the rice as well - each rice grain is separate (a skill to master) and it took longer to come out, which means it was made upon order. I like the sweet, salty, tangy and hint of spicy flavour this rice has. Hits all the taste buds in the right way.
  
• It was the best thing out of everything we ordered. I like it with the dried pork floss, even though it was the cheap kind...which is still good though. The pork floss, to me, is a Chinese influence, Thai style fried rice anywhere else doesn't come with this. I liked it though, even if it made it less Thai...I'd call this a Thai/Chinese style fried rice for sure. The chef is probably Chinese, hence why this was the best dish - I'm only assuming though so don't take my word for it!