Shanghai Wonderful

I'm always on the lookout for new places to try, so when I received an invitation to dinner at Shanghai Wonderful I was quite excited. It is apparently the place the people who used to run Shanghai Wind went to after they sold that restaurant. After they left Shanghai Wind just wasn't the same, so I was keen to learn that this was where they were. A packed restaurant when we arrived at 6:30, I was glad we had a reservation. There were 10 of us so we ordered their $188 set menu, an incredible value as you come to see. Dinner began with a selection of appetizers. Some roasted pork, edamame and a couple of things that I really don't know what they were, but all tasted pretty good. Somebody said one of them was an ear dish, but I don't know.
After that came what I think is one of the the restaurant's signature items. Their xiao long bao. A dumpling with a soupy liquid centre. These are what people when to Shanghai Wind for and I'm sure they will come to Shanghai Wonderful for. They were great, albeit after we let them cool a little. They were pretty hot when they hit the table and they can be a little awkward to eat like that. There is nothing quite like biting into one and having the liquid burst out. Very fun to eat.
Then came the crab, but it was unlike any crab I have had in a Chinese restaurant. Served with these beans and little bits of glutinous rice, the white things in the picture. Two pretty decent sized crabs for a table of 10 meant plenty to go around. The guts from the inside were terrific with the sauce and little bits of rice and beans, I really liked this.
But as much as I liked the crab, the best dish of the night came next. It was this braised pork belly covered in a sweet sauce and served on top of wilted greens. This was the richest dish of the night and the best. It was rich. I mean heart stopping rich. Cardiac inducing rich. I could only have one serving of it even though I loved it. It was that rich.
After that came a duck and taro root dish that was a close second to the pork dish. It was kind of crispy on the outside and rich in the middle with the duck and taro. Loved it and again something I'd never had before.
The dishes kept coming including a soup that was a cloudy broth with bits of pork and bamboo shoot that was almost palate cleansing after the incredibly rich duck and pork dishes and then a deep fried fish that was covered in that red sweet and sour sauce. I loved fish done like this. So often when I'm with family we get the steamed fish with ginger and green onion, but I really like the deep fried one. I'm sure that comes as a big surprise to regular readers of this blog.
After that the dishes came fast and furious and I couldn't keep up with them. Greens and mushroom. A noodle dish among them. It was just so much food and there were only 10 of us.
The final dish of the night was a sticky rice dessert. It was interesting, but I wasn't super excited about it. I would have rather eaten more crab or fish or another one of the terrific dishes that came before it.
Dinner at Shanghai Wonderful was fantastic. Vancouver has so many great Cantonese restaurants, it was nice to have dinner at one based on another region of China. It brought back memories of a couple of great meals I had in Shanghai years ago with a big group of friends and people I had just met. And this was almost as reasonable. For the set dinner after tax it worked out to about $23 per person, I think it was an incredible deal considering the many dishes we had including the crab and fish. I'll be back again the next time I can round up 10 people for a feast.
Shanghai Wonderful. 8380 Lansdowne Rd. Richmond, B.C. 604-278-8829

Comments

[Johnny]

Interesting pork dish!