Taiwanese | Sean's Adventures In Flavor Town

The other night I had the pleasure of eating with my fellow blogger @MaryInVancity at Kin Resto Bar. It’s been on our radar for a while now because of the partnership with the great guy’s at VANEATS.ca, the have put together a great dining package called Kindle With Kin and for $25 it’s a great way to get a taste of the signature dishes at this great West End eatery.

The space is nice, it’s split into 2 area~one with a darker more intimate mood and a projector showing the game on the wall and a more lit dining area that can accommodate bigger groups.

We started with some beer, the Red Truck Lager was the drink of choice for us at $5.50 each, it went well with all the dishes in the package and was an extra cost and not included in the VANEATS.ca package.

For our starter we were served the Prawn and Thai Basil Rice Paper Rolls. These were totally delicious and we both gobbled them up, the prawn was nice and tender and the roll had some nice crunch from the lettuce and veggies and crispy noodles in the center, the dip for these baby’s was a great house made peanut sauce. These were enjoyed by almost every table that was dining when we were there and I can see why there so popular.

Next up was a combo plate of Beef Short Ribs and Kin’s Beef La Lot Rolls.

The short ribs were marinated and grilled in 17 different spices, they were sweet, savory and tender like a great Asian short rib should be, because they were so thin the meat melted in your mouth and again we loved this and should have ordered more.

The beef la lat rolls were something that I have never heard of or had at other Vietnamese restaurants, they consist of grilled minced beef, star anise, black pepper and jicama, rolled in betel leaves. They were totally delicious, the inside was crunchy from the jicama.

A salad was our next course, it was there Seafood Salad, it had shrimp, basa, asparagus, mango, grape tomato and rau ram sauce. Originally it was supposed to have scallops in it and we were both looking forward to this but they served it to us with the different fish so it was a bit of a let down, all the other ingredients were great~the shrimp were plump and juice and the tangy dressing with the sweet mango worked great.

The Chicken Chay Curry was our main you could say.

I’ve never had this before, it reminded me of a Thai yellow curry, it had chicken, lots of veggies and tofu. All the ingredients were cooked perfectly except a couple of pieces of yam which were on the underdone side but other than that it was a great bowl of curry, we could have easily eaten a bowl of this for each of us easily.

For dessert we split a Lemon grass Ginger Creme Brulee with Pineapple Chutney.

This was not your typical creme brulee, it wasn’t as heavy but still was satisfying and not overly sweet, the pineapple chutney was a great compliment to the custard, there was almost a jasmine tea sent to the custard part of the brulee. It was a great way to end the meal and we both really enjoyed this.

This was one great meal and for $25 it fed 2 people nicely, if you’re a more hungry eater a couple extra items from the menu would be a great addition to this dining package and would leave you full and happy. Were totally looking forward our next visit already.

To purchase a VANEATS.ca Kindle With Kin dining package they’re available till the end of February 2012, their for use during evening/dinner hours and the can be found by clicking here.

**Just a note of disclosure, this dining package was paid for by ourselves and not part of our normal previews of VANEATS.ca dining packages.**

Lets just start this post by saying that I have zero experience with Taiwanese cuisine, I’ve had my fair share of Chinese food but this is a new one for me. I was really exited when my fellow foodie George texted me up and suggested that we go and get some beef noodle in Richmond and I was totally in for this meal!. Of late I’ve had my fair share of soups~specifically ramen but I have heard good things about beef noodle from Follow Me Foodie so I had I had an idea of what I was going to be getting into.

The place we went to is located in Aberdeen Center in Richmond and is quite busy and known for line ups from what I have read. We were seated really quickly because there were only 2 of us, the room was nicely decorated and there is a private room for group dining to get your beefy noodle on!. I’m glad George was there because he was familiar with the menu and based on what my likes were he ordered up a few items so let the adventure begin:

Marinated chilled mixed tofu $3.5, I’m not sure what the marinade is for this but it was really good, the tofu used here is really firm so there is some texture to it, its accompanied with chopped Thai bird chillies I think~all I know is that they were small and really hot!.

I’m going to call this steamed greens with sauce (hoisin or oyster I think) with fried shallots or onions $3.5, I really liked these and am a fan of Asian greens with a meal, they were steamed nicely with some bite left in them and the sauce was a nice touch and not too salty.

Pan fried ground pork cake (2 pcs) for $3.5, by far this was my favorite savory item we had and could have had another order easily. The server cut them in half for scissors for us exposing the juicy pork filling, there are also scallions in this adding a nice light onion flavor.

the Championship Beef Noodle Soup with Beef Shank $10.95, with the soups here you get to choose the thickness and type of noodles you want, there also hand-made and pulled in the glass enclosed kitchen at the front of the restaurant, I found them to me too thick and even tho they were cooked properly they were still gummy for my taste. The soup broth had a beefy flavor that kind of reminded me of Campbell’s Beef Vegetable soup, the meat was nice~the fat in the shank was marbled throughout the meat and was tender, the dish also came with 2 hand torched and seared pieces of beef that were melt in your mouth tender. As for vegetables the soup only had some scallions and a piece of bok choy, I will add some more toppings sometime and get a thinner noodle. At the end of the day I’d totally order beef noodle at another place but I don’t think its worth the 11 bucks per bowl. George had the same as me but nuclear hot~it had a BP reminiscent red chile oil sheen all on the top of his soup that unfortunately didn’t get a picture of.

Now it’s time for a couple of deserts that I’ve never heard of before:

This is shaved ice milk from a popular place in the mall downstairs called Frappe Bliss, here it costs $3.50 a bowl plus $1 for each topping, they take a frozen block of ice milk and it shaves it paper-thin, it’s light at a feather and really doesn’t melt for some reason~I think it’s because of the shaving of the ice milk. I had mine with fresh mango and sweetened condensed milk and it was freakin’ awesome!, my buddy had his with red bean and taro jelly with the same milk as mine. I can’t wait to go to the shop down stairs and try the different flavors~I hear mango is great as well as the peanut flavor.

So my first out of the box food adventure was not too bad and I had a great time and can’t wait to try some other new places and share my experiences.