Vancouver has hundreds of Chinese eateries, ranging from the cheap and sustaining, such as Legendary Noodle (4191 Main Street, East Vancouver, 604-879-8758); to the traditional and expensive, such as the Imperial Chinese Restaurant (335 Burrard Street, Downtown, 604-688-8191); and including the hip, or “modern Chinese,” of Wild Rice (117 West Pender Street, Downtown, 604-642-2882, www. wildricevancouver.com).
Actually, Wild Rice is in some outer Oriental cosmos. I mean, how do you categorize a slightly listing stack of Shanghai sweet-and-sour sticky ribs with root and tuber frites, followed by a sauté oflong and glistening green beans with chilies and almond brittle, capped with grapefruit and lychee sorbet and Mandarin oolong tea? For added pleasure, watch the happenings from the terrace bar while you wait for your table (no reservations).
Back on earth, you can pick up cabbage-and-noodle dumplings, steam buns filled with beans or taro-root paste, and sweets such as pineapple spring cake at the family-run Tachia Bakery and Deli (4111 Macdonald Street, Westside, 604-731-7766).
For middle-of-the-road Chinese, the Cantonese-style Hon’s Wun-Tun House is always topping someone’s best Chinese list and is perennially busy. The most authentic locations are, of course, in Chinatown (288 East Pender Street, 604-681-8842; also 280 Keefer Street, 604-688-0871), where pans flame on the open grill and everything moves at a hyper-efficient Chinese pace. But Hon’s is also downtown (1339 Robson Street, 604-685-0871), where you can order heaping bowls of Hong Kong—style congee, plates of barbecued meats, and vegetarian options.
An ever-popular take-out or eat-in choice is Ho Ho Fast Food (1224 Davie Street, West End, 603-688-9896); a late-evening option is the Congee Noodle House (141 East Broadway, East Vancouver, 604-879-8221).
For those looking for a typically spacious Cantonese restaurant filled with extended families seated around a white-cloth-covered circular table, you can’t go wrong with the Pink Pearl Chinese Seafood Restaurant (1132 East Hastings Street, East Vancouver, 604-253-4316). Keep your eye on the parade of dim-sum wagons that arrive loaded with steaming goodies and return to the kitchen empty.
According to New York food writer Steven “Fat Guy” Shaw: “Vancouver is, in my experience, the best place in North America to eat Asian food, but.. . the action now is in Richmond — also known as Asia West — where I’ve had the best dim sum and seafood I’ve experi¬enced outside of Asia.” Chinese foodies should get over to Richmond and just roam (see " Asian Malls”). I’ll recommend a restaurant well along on the road to Richmond: Granville Chinese Seafood (8298 Granville Street, South Vancouver, 604-261-8389).
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