Shanghai River 滬江

When it comes to Shanghai food, it can range from quite economical to quite expensive. Shanghai River is supposed to fall onto the latter.  But it didn’t seem to deter people from going there.  There was a small group waiting for seats as we got in.  Because Wendy and I are the rare ‘couple’ to go to this restaurant, we got a seat quite quickly.

You can see the group of people huddled inside the glass door waiting for seats.

Quite a busy Wednesday night!!!  We’d thought it would be semi-quiet, but we were wrong!

The staple to all our Shanghainese dinners.  The “soupy” pork dumpling (Shao Long Bao – pinyin).  So delicious!

No.1 Shanghai Cuisine 滬上 – CLOSED

There are many types of Chinese cuisine. Tonight, we explored another venue for Shanghain-nese food in the great plains of Richmond. This place calls itself “Number One Shanghai Cuisine”. I don’t know about you guys, but I sure want to find out if in fact they are “number one”!

I must say, however, that the parking availabililty there is TERRIBLE.  There was probably less than 50 parking spots for the entire strip mall (right beside Aberdeen Centre).  There was an incident where a middle-aged Chinese man driving a Silver Mercedez C300 ( i will refer to the driver as the ‘crazy dude’) that wanted to ‘save’ a spot for his friends by attempting to occupy BOTH parking spots (front and back parking spaces) by parking his car in BETWEEN the two spots.  Needless to say, when Wendy was trying to back in, the crazy dude backed up even further to prevent us from going in.  Even when the parking lot attendant saw the incident and told the crazy dude that he can’t ‘reserve’ spots, he continued to backup.  So Wendy’s dad and I got out of the car, the guy quickly gave up and moved back into his original spot – allowing Wendy to park.  Honestly, what sane man will try to save his buddies a parking spot in this fashion while a car is actively trying to get in there?  Worst of all, he thought it was perfectly fine.  I thought I have seen most of the crazies on the road centered in the vicinity of the Alderbridge/Hazelbridge area but this won takes the cake.  Why do these people insist in continuing to cement the fact that Chinese are bad drivers?  We’ve got people that probably bought their driving licences under the table (or could only pass the test in Sunshine Coast like my aunt), driving massive European branded vehicles going at 40KPH on the fast lane through highways, changing lanes when they didn’t mean to, braking out of nowhere when it’s past midnight on a major road, never showing appreciation when you allow them to budge in, so on.  Seriously…  /rant.  On with the review.

Here is the internal view:

A bunch of chinese families and a LCD screen decorate the place.  The restaurant is quite clean and spacious (probably until we walk into the kitchen) and it was a comfortable place to eat nevertheless.

We ordered a set meal ($62) and we added a ‘DF Fish Fillet w Se’.  Please allow me to decipher: Deep Fried Fish Filet with Seaweed.

Since there are a quite a bit of dishes, I will only provide a brief comment for common items, while the special items will receive some deeper thought.

On the receipt, this dish was called “Comb 2 Cold Dish”.  I am very confident that it meant Combo 2 Cold Dish.  It comprised of some vegetarian offerings (foreground) and some ‘salty chicken’.  The veggie part was great but the chicken was ‘too skinny’, as Wendy’s mom would say.  The chicken definitely did lack some meat but overall, a good start to the meal.

Northern Delicacy 客滿庭 – CLOSED

We’ve been to Northern Delicacy numerous times.  It is located in Aberdeen Centre.  Did you know that on some maps this area is called “Golden Village”?

It was a Monday.  I thought the mall would be relatively quiet.  Nope.  I forgot that is was THANKSGIVING MONDAY.  One thing I know is, weekends and holidays are a BIG NONO for Hazelbridge/No. 3/Alderbridge/Alexander Road.

I’ve always liked the decor here.  As with most shops at Aberdeen, they really seem to have taken care in the interior design of the place.  This is one of those restaurants where they have the shao lung bao maker enclosed in a glass cage for your viewing pleasure.

They also took care with their menu design.  There are quite a lot of pictures so non-Chinese speaking/reading patrons can point and order relatively easily, as the pictures are mostly their more famous dishes.

Shanghai House Restaurant 上海人家

This location seems to have many change of hands.  This time around it became a Shanghai restaurant.  The outer decor is left the same, except for obviously the restaurant sign.  They’re located on No. 3 Road across from Richmond Centre, in the mall that houses Staples.

I have never been inside the previous identities, so I don’t know if they’ve done any changes to the inner decor.  However, I notice that this seemed to be one of the cleaner Shanghai restaurants I’ve been in, at least in the dining room.

One thing you have to constantly let go is, that Chinese restaurants like this most of the time have typos or inexplicable English translations in their menus.  This restaurant did not deviate from that trend.