Our meals came with complimentary
Black Tea 紅茶, which was quite refreshing, we enjoyed it. We had the choice between a house soup or tea.
This dish is one of the standards that I hold a Taiwanese restaurant by. You can find this pretty much everywhere in Taiwan, mostly on the streets. What makes the standard is good bite size pieces, a good marinade and a good final seasoning when serving. In Taiwan, most places will offer basil (some will even offer freshly chopped garlic) in addition to the final seasoning. The
Chicken Nuggets 鹽酥雞 here was a fail. The pieces were too big and the chicken was too soft (without being moist). Moreover, they only sprinkled the seasoning over the top, not tossing it and mixing it like it's supposed to be. I'll forgo the lack of basil and fresh garlic. So far, the best place for this in 604, in my opinion, is
Tapioca Express in Richmond, and that's depending on if the oil is fresh...it can be hits and misses there.
We had an order of the
Deep Fried Pork Chop 炸排骨. For $2.50, this was a good deal. The good part was the flavor, which was one of the best I've had, even better then the
Din Tai Fung version in Bellevue. The bad part was the coating, it didn't need that much, but they seemed to have over-coated to the point that some areas had super thick crusts.
Buddha Girl ordered a
Ali Shan Railroad Bento 阿里山鐵路便當. Served in a Japanese bento box, the nostalgia of a railway box was lost.
The One, further down Kingsway in Burnaby has a better presentation for their railroad box. In Taiwan, we even went to a place that served the a railway box in a mini wooden bucket (see post
2009-10-22 Day 7 @ Taichung or
picture). In terms of the food itself, it was pretty basic, deep fried pork chop, cabbage, fried egg, corn and shrimps. Overall, not bad, but nothing too memorable neither.
Originally, I wanted this with no noodles, but apparently, it must come with noodles...so I ordered a
Satay Pork Pottage with Noodles 沙茶肉羹麵. My first and best experience of these pork nuggets (rou-geng) was at the
Raohe Night Market 饒河夜市 in Taipei. Smack dab in the middle of the market was a stall that even Buddha Girl says it's one of the best around, and you all know how picky and snobby Buddha Girl is. My standard for this is a nice thick soup (with mushrooms, cabbage, carrots, and perhaps egg swirl) poured over small amount of sha-cha sauce at the bottom of the bowl (scooped in before the soup pours in). Rou-geng is basically a mixture of pork and fish and when you bite into it, there should still be a "crunch". The soup at Alishan was too thin, too heavy in the sha-cha sauce and the rou-geng was not properly tenderized. The rou-geng lacked "crunch" with coatings of the fish being very inconsistent. Suffice to say, we did not enjoy this. This has got to be one of the worst we've ever had.
Yup, after reading this, I think Buddha Girl's right, I am a snob when it comes to Taiwanese food.
LOL BB has converted!
ReplyDeleteI had the Bento box on a previous visit, nothing special really.If you want it to look like a "TW lunch box" ask for it in their togo containers. They use the the same kind like TW but taste is not the same.
My brother just came back and I asked him about the rou geng tang @ Raohe jie, he didn't remember seeing it. :(
@gloria
ReplyDeletemy 3 items that are a must at Raohe are: rou geng, black pepper bun (of course), and the takoyaki. the takoyaki place isn't popular or anything, but because they don't sell much, the balls really crisp up nicely. The black pepper bun, everyone's heard of and I think it lives up to it's hype.
I went to there for lunch in July. I had the red-braised pork belly lunch box. It was overall kind of meh. The pork belly portion was small and lacked flavour. But they sure piled on the "side dishes" which weren't exactly the star of the show neither. The meal was, like you said, nothing too memorable.
ReplyDelete@LR:
ReplyDeleteWhat's with these Taiwanese places piling on all the side dishes? This happened to me when I was at Richmond Public Market too. The red-braised pork is it the 紅糟控肉?