Giant Pancake and More at Phnom Penh

I know we've had lots of reviews of Phnom Penh, where the Chicken Wings are idolized, the Butter Beef exalted to beyond belief, so I decided that this post will not feature any of those things. Afterall, they have plenty of other offerings and they deserve their time in the spotlight too, wouldn't you say? 
  This is one of my favourite noodles from Phnom Penh. The Beef Stew with Egg Noodles, aka #8. This is slightly spicy, but not enough, thus the hot sauce on the left. Just dump the whole thing in there for the right amount of heat. This is hearty  with beef brisket, tendon, stomach and honeycomb tripe. If you don't like offal, then stay away. But if you do, then this is a real treat if you're tired of the tried and true Dry Mix Noodles. 
I haven't seen too many photos of this Trieu Chau Fried Oyster Cake, #72, either, but it is a favourite of mine too. Due to its large size, it's not something I order often unless we have more than two people. Well, this time, we threw caution to the wind and went for it. Served with some fish sauce for dipping, this omelette is loaded with chopped oysters and it's fried to a gooey centre with a crispy edge. Perfect when you dunk it into the fish sauce. Drizzle over some vermicelli and you've got yourself a real traditional treat.
Another dish great for sharing is their Combo C, #66, with a Beef Brochette, Rice Noodle Rolls filled with minced meat, and a Prawn Ball on a sugarcane. There is also a smattering of vermicelli, some mixed greens and a few slices of Vietnamese ham. It is a lot of food and really, great as an appetizer amongst a few people. The only thing is the prawn ball, either order more a la carte, or get a side order. 

 

So I said I wouldn't talk about the Dry Mix Noodles, but my actual favourite noodles are the Phnom Penh Two Kinds of Noodles in Soup, #5. A blend of egg noodles and rice noodles, it's loaded with pork, liver, spleen, kidney and some ground pork and a few shrimp as well. I tend to like noodles in soup more than not, purely because the noodles stays hotter in soup instead of not. 
Oh, and have you tried their Trieu Chau Fried Rice, #37? The rice is fried with great heat, and lots of fiery wok action. I love Chinese sausage, and there is lots of it in this. Simply fried with eggs and green onion, this is one dish where the sum is greater than the parts. To heighten the flavours a bit more, sprinkle pepper allover before you eat this, and maybe a squirt of lemon juice too. 
And no post is complete without the Wings, #78! To read other reviews on their more famous items, click here. For a review of more non-traditional items such as the above, click here. 

Jade in Chinatown

Chinatown. It's where I went to elementary school, it's where my grandmother went to buy fresh veggies for our dinner, before the Richmond boom. But I am ashamed to admit, once I didn't "have" to go to Chinatown, I didn't. Well, just like Gastown is having a resurgence, I think it's time for Chinatown to enjoy the same. There is a restaurant that has reinvented itself and deserves a mention. They serve all the variety of foods you would expect in Richmond but in a slightly different setting.  Because they do a strong dimsum service, we decided to try one of their dim sum dishes, not all dim sum items are offered at dinner, but some are. Throughout the dinner, I noticed many of the walk-in customers ordering from the lunch menu. So we settled on the spring rolls. These were a good way to start our dinner, a crispy and crunchy bundle full of pork and shrimp, served with some Lea & Perrins, a staple at most dim sum places. These were a touch oilier that I would prefer, but the ample filling made up for it.   One of my all-time favourites for family dinners is Peking Duck, served two ways. Here is the first one, where they slice the skin off the duck. And the skin here is perfectly crispy, not too meaty nor fatty, just the way I like it. Can you see how thinly sliced the skin is, with just a touch of fat and meat? That's the way I like it. And I love how it's not greasy.  So how do you eat the skin? With these crepes! You put a piece of the skin into the crepe and roll it up! These crepes were good but I'm not used to them being served this way, they usually appear in steamer baskets. Also, they were a bit paler in colour than I am used to, but presentation aside, these wraps were good and did the job. They stayed pliable and didn't crack when you rolled them up. I hate it when that happens.    Normally, you put some green onions and maybe some sliced cucumber (see my Shanghai Wonderful post for details) into your wrap, but here, they served it with carrots and celery! I found the crunch was too hard to go into the wrap with the Peking Duck, but they were good to munch on as a snack.  One of the delicacies served here is their Snake Soup. The texture of the soup is quite thick and reminds me of hot and sour soup, but the flavours are completely different. Not spicy at all! However, it is loaded with much of the same ingredients too, such as shredded woodear, chicken, lemongrass, mushrooms, bamboo shoots and of course, the snake meat!   This restaurant serves many of the dishes with a fun accompaniment of crunchy bits of fried dough. Throw some into your soup for added texture. The snake is shredded quite a bit so that the meat is tender, and with a deeper flavour than chicken, but a similar texture.   Here is the rest of the duck that we saw earlier. The meat is chopped up and stirfried with celery, carrots and some green onions. What I liked most about this dish is that the duck wasn't diced into little bits and then stirfried, which tends to dry the meat out. See sample from Grand Dynasty post here. These were chunks of duck, and the size made them stay nice and juicy. I really enjoyed this one.   Another dish that I rarely eat is Braised Pork Belly. It's a whole pork belly braised for at least two hours, in a sauce made with soy, fermented bean paste with some Chinese rice wine and sugar. Other flavours you can taste are star anise, sometimes fennel and five-spice powder as well. Once you cut into it, the serving is roughly half meat and half fat. So no, this isn't a "healthy" choice, but hey, eat some of the broccoli and make yourself feel better. Despite being half fat, the feeling isn't greasy, it's more creamy and juicy. You can eat this dish with rice to soak up the sauce or you can have it with some steamed buns.  The buns are slightly sweet and are meant to be pulled apart and stuffed with some of the pork belly. It's like an Asian Pork Belly sandwich, and oh, it's good. The inside of the bun is porous and does a great job of soaking up the sauce. And because the buns are so soft, the texture of the pork belly is actually enhanced by this lack of contrast.  To round out a meal of Duck, Snake and Pork, we had to get a vegetable dish, we went with the Braised Baby Bok Choy with Bean Curd Skin and Enoki. This was a lighter dish and was a great complement to the oilier foods we had earlier. For those unfamiliar with Bean Curd Skin, it is also called Tofu Skin or Yuba. It is the film produced when boiling soy milk. These skins are collected and folded into the skins you see above. They are slightly chewy in texture and in other preparations, it even produces a meat-like texture.  No meal is complete without dessert and we treated ourselves to some Deep Fried Doughballs filled with sesame paste. These are then rolled in some black and white sesame seeds before being served. A nice crunch from the frying process, but the dough and sesame paste are gooey on the inside, it's an Asian zeppole of sorts. 
Now I rarely take pictures of my leftovers, but I was really impress with the way they packed these two dishes. They could have just swiped everything into the box, but I really appreciated the extra care they took to present these dishes as best as possible, even though we were "just" taking them home.
This place is better known for their dimsum, but if you are in the Chinatown area in the evening, I'd say it's well worth a visit!

Family Dinner at Garden Villa

This unassuming little place is known for its push cart dimsum at lunch. For dinner service, they only open if there is a demand. On the night we decided to go, they were really busy, almost the whole restaurant was full. I had never been here before, but it's a popular place for my family to have our family dinners. It's been a long time since I've had an honest-to-goodness Chinese meal (HK-style cafes don't count!), so I was really looking forward to this.

Any meal that starts off with a crab and prawn claw is a good meal.

This is by far one of the larger ones I've had. Good thing I had a spare berry battery...now you have something to compare this to. Very hot inside...I sliced it open just a bit and whoa, holy steam!

I took a bite and I have to say, the texture of the meat was very good.  It wasn't mushy with a lot of filler, something I expected due to its extra-large size.

The soup of the evening was Fish Maw with Chicken. Very clear broth, thickened by slow cooking and the fish maw. It's very good on a cold day. Add a bit of white pepper to bring out the flavour.

Our next dish was StirFried Veggies with Shrimp, Fish slices and Mushrooms. Everything was really fresh, large prawns, huge chunks of fish and sliced mushrooms. There were lots of celery and some chives...very healthy!

This is one of this restaurant's signature dishes. Lamb stew served with Tofu Sauce. The lamb is cut into thick chunks and is stewed bone in and with loads of bean curd skin.

See the overwhelming pile of lamb? Oh, boy this is such a rare treat, very few places do this right, and when it's done properly, the juiciness of the lamb is maintained and the gamey-ness is minimized.

Here is another family favourite, Chinese-style Fried Chicken. The skin was so crispy, and the meat was so moist and tender. The only disappointment? No prawn chips to accompany it!

This was my piece...I prefer dark meat so this drumstick was eamarked for me. Such crispiness...I almost don't miss the prawn chips...almost!

Our craving for carbs was satisfied by this Egg White and Scallop fried rice. Very mild and delicate, not at all heavy. A delightful way to end a very satisfying meal.

The egg whites and scallop were tossed gently into the rice, along with small chunks of celery. I would have preferred it with gailan, but that's a small complaint. It's just that the flavour of celery can be overwhelming, when the rest of the ingredients are so mild.

The dessert of the night was another signature item. Double-Ground Black Sesame Paste. So smooth and rich...and not nearly as sweet as you would think. Just loads of sesame flavour and rich velvety texture.

Even just a small bowl of this was too rich for me...I decided it to share it with my cousins...I think I had about half a bowl. I haven't been to a family dinner in a long time, and I am so glad I went. Great food and great company sure make for a perfect evening.