Ceilis Irish Pub and Restaurant - Richmond

It's been a while since we posted! Been quite busy with work and haven't gotten around to writing much posts! Hopefully we can catch up on some of the back log we have :D

When driving down Westminister Hwy in Richmond, we drove past a Ceili's Irish Pub & Restaurant. I didn't know that Ceili's was opening up a new location here in Richmond! I found that there isn't a lot of pubs in Richmond and was excited to see that a Ceili's opened up here. I really like the food at Ceili's and was excited to give this location a try!

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Cattle Cafe (Richmond)

Flowerbunny and I had decided to try some of the smaller cheap Chinese restaurants near us, so one night after work, we took a walk down Alexander road and ended up at Cattle Cafe.  Flowerbunny already reviewed the Burnaby location, but I'd never been and I love noodles, so we decided to give it a shot.  They were fairly busy when we entered, but we were seated pretty quickly and given tea.

Tea

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Chef Hung Taiwanese Beef Noodle

I remember walking by this restaurant last year in Aberdeen and seeing the hoards of people lined up outside. I thought to myself that this must be a good Taiwanese beef noodle house. I've been wanting to try this place and finally decided to eat there with a few of my friends. The great thing about going a year later is that I get to avoid the lines!

Chef Hung's noodle restaurants was established in 1995 and he has also won the National Beef Noodle Contest award for 3 consecutive years. The restaurant in Aberdeen is his first North American location to open.

And again.... I forgot my camera. I should always remember to carry my camera with me. But I sometimes forget... So, again, we had to use the Iphone4's camera.

Open kitchen! You can watch the chefs make noodles.

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Empire Chinese Cuisine

It was my mom's 60th birthday over the weekend and we decided to go to the Empire Chinese Cuisine restaurant in Richmond. My mom wanted to go there because they had a special going on for one of their set menus. It's a pretty good deal. $398 for 10 dishes and it includes abalone, shark fin, lobster, squab and dessert. The only catch to this deal is that you can only book a maximum of 2 tables (20 people).

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Pearl Castle (Richmond Centre)

We were wandering around Richmond Centre, and decided to stop in at Pearl Castle for some bubble tea food. The place was pretty busy but we managed to get seated right away.  We had forgotten our camera so we were stuck using my iPhone 4 camera instead.

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Dinesty

I had a craving for some Shanghai food and wanted to eat some shanghai buns (xiao long bao) and some beef and green onion pancake. I remember the beef and green onion pancake being really good at Dinesty and wanted to go eat it.

We ventured out to Richmond and made our way to the restaurant. There are a couple of things that I like about this restaurant: 1) The decor and 2) Open kitchen. The decor is modern and well placed. You don't feel crowded when sitting at your table like in most Asian restaurants. With the open kitchen, you can see all the food being made and you know what's coming out of the kitchen.

The restaurant was surprisingly busy for a Monday night! But we were seated quickly and the menus were handed to us. I noticed that the menus were English friendly, being that all items were translated in English. I've been to Shanghai places before where the menus were partially translated. On the Dinesty menus, there are pictures and also a letter/numbering system for each dish which makes ordering easy if you do not speak the language. After debating on which dishes to order, we decided to order 7 small dishes: xiao long bao, vegetable dumplings, shiitake mushrooms wrapped in bean curd, beef and green onion pancake, radish cakes, wine chicken (or drunken chicken), and cucumber with garlic. About 5 minutes after placing our order, the first dish came out which was the xiao long baos.

Xiao Long Bao

The xiao long bao came out hot and exactly like how the dumplings are supposed to be: thin skinned and soupy. The one thing that I didn't quite like was that it tasted a bit greasy.

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