2011-03-02 Dinner @ Gingeri Chinese Cuisine

#323 - 5300 No.3 Road, Richmond, BC

604-278-6006

 

I procrastinated with this post because we were extremely disappointed with the experience...to the point that I didn't even wanna bother writing it.  The dinner started off quite nice with the first dish...then it went completely downhill, actually, it went way below the lowest point of the scale...yup...it was bad.  Courteous service, but inattentive and slow.  We will not visit again.

Right at the start, we've reached the peak of our meal.   The Deep-Fried Chicken Knees with Spicy Salt (椒鹽雞膝) was battered lightly and deep-fried just enough to get that crunchy outer texture, yet still moist and juicy on the inside.  Yea...it's quite sad that this dish was the best dish for the night.

Next was the first course of our Roasted Peking Duck (北京片皮鴨).  Each piece of skin was nicely cut and plated.  Not much meat, but a lot of fat, attached to the skins.  We got quite sick from the fat.

The second course of the duck was the Minced Duck Meat Lettuce Wrap (鴨鬆生菜包).  The dish looked like a good portion and it's got lots and lots and lots and lots of water chestnuts.  Don't get us wrong, we like water chestnuts, however, with that amount of it, it's a turn off.

Usually with the second course, I like to add XO Sauce (XO醬) in the wrap.  The sauce, one word to describe it...oily, and that's pretty much it.

Our third duck course, the Roasted Duck Bones with Vegetable in Soup (鴨架湯).  This soup pretty much gave us the instant MSG attack, and the attack stuck with us all night long.  The soup had no duck taste at all, very oily (we could actually see the layer of fat on the top), over-salted, and too much MSG...an extreme failure.

Buddha boy ordered the Jelly Fish with Cold Pork Slices (海蜇燻蹄) to try...not bad, but not great, definitely not worth the price.

MomJ ordered a Pan Fried Seasonal Vegetable (清炒時蔬)...the manager guy suggested to go with choy-sum (菜心).  This was quite salty.

Since Buddha Boy and MomJ both like Honey Garlic Spareribs (蒜子蜜汁骨), we got an order to try.  As soon as the order came up, MomJ made the comment "this looks ugly"...hahahaha!  Yup, it looked horrible and it tasted horrible, period.

For complimentary desserts, they offered Almond Cookies (杏仁餅), Sesame Balls (開口笑), and Black Sesame Dessert Soup (黑芝麻露).  The cookies were nice, fresh and warm.  The balls were a bit stale, but had lots of sesames.  The dessert soup was tasteless.

I forgot to take a picture of the worst dish of the night, the Steamed Rock Cod (清蒸石斑).  It was horrendous!!!  The fish was not cleaned well and properly, so it still had lots of scales on it.  The fish was over-cooked (over-steamed), in a bland mix of sauces, to the point that it started to butterfly on the back.  And we weren't the only ones.  The table next to us had their fish over-steamed to the point that the butterfly folded outwards...gee...I wondered why that young couple even accepted the dish?!?!?