Surrey's First ever proper Chinese restaurant!


Let me be blunt, Surrey has easily the worst Chinese restaurants in all of BC. Most are simply "Chop Suey" houses that specialize in the three item combo with a soda, it's especially bad since most of the restaurants here are forced to serve this...turd cuisine, as it is what pays the bills.

We have lived here for almost eight years and during that time we have found mediocre Chinese food at best.


Until now....Well sorta...


A few weeks ago the Neptune group opened up the Neptune Seafood Restaurant (fine dining) & Neptune Wonton House (casual dining), to our excitement! Both restaurants look gorgeous and are right next to each other. We have only been to the Neptune Wonton house so far so I'll focus on their food.

"Low Mein" with Spicy Pork pork sauce, first thing I thought when I saw this dish was... They used the wrong type of noodle, it's supposed to be a thin noodle, but no big woop. Overall was alright, and the portion size was gigantic, We'll try something else next time.

Empress Chicken, basically steamed marinated chicken. This was a great dish and easily the best dish I've had here, served warm (I hate ice cold chicken!!!) and was very good, I will order again for sure!

Spicy fried eggplant, Debbie ordered this one and she enjoyed it, another solid dish.

Stir fried pork cheek and with green beans, another simple dish, it was well done and not too salty, we'll order this again.

One dish not pictured, was the Malaysian Pork rib & Tofu Hotpot, and simply put... It was AWFUL. Extremely salty, pork wasn't fresh, the ribs were the cheapest cartilage pieces. We would never order it again. We told the waitress and they took the dish away and said sorry... But no refund or any attempt to replace the dish. Now one thing I should mention is that this is actually normal behavior at most Chinese restaurants, I don't really take offense to this reaction from them, but please be warned.

Overall a decent meal, but nothing mind blowing. Still this is easily the best Chinese restaurant in Surrey and we've already gone five times in a month!

Service is a little slow at the moment and there are some obvious growing pains right now as it has only been opened for a few weeks (they forgot to pack one of our dishes). I'm sure their going to hit their stride soon. Both restaurants are busy and afternoon dim sum is always PACKED with people (Dim Sum reservations are a must).

Overall I say go. Unless you like Chop Suey... :-P

Dinner at Chef Ben's House


An old friend of mine has moved back to town and invited us to dinner at his place. Did I mention that he worked for Mario Batali?....You know the fat pony tailed guy in the orange crocs?

He made us an Italian feast! Please forgive us for using of foam plates... :-(

We started out with some tasty pork meatballs & Foccacia bread, a bit salty but very nice.

Then came my favourite dish of the night, handmade Cavatelli pasta with a chicken and homemade (!!!) Guanciale (Pork cheek bacon) cream sauce. This pasta was amazing!

Next came the Oxtail ragu with handmade Garganelli! I love oxtail! Oxtail is so under appreciated! This is Batali's own recipe!

After this we took a break from the food, and we all went back to arguing about sports...

After an hour or so later he went back into the kitchen and made us some (again) homemade Gnocchi with the chicken & guanciale cream sauce from above, very good Gnocchi, but I loved the Cavatelli so much more!

For dessert he made us freshly baked chocolate lava cake. Yum!

 

Look at all the chocolate flowing out!

 

I'm kinda kicking myself as I missed taking photo's of his Blue Curacao skinless ravioli (What Ferran Adria invented!), and for lack of a better description a whipped ice cream from a dispenser, which was a great finisher.

Overall a great meal and evening, thanks Ben!

An Normal Nights Dinner


Nothing Fancy tonight, but needed to cook as we've been eating out a lot lately. The overall cost of this entire meal was probably about $15, so it pays to stay home and cook!


Sauteed Broccolini with Garlic & black pepper. This is more of a dish for Debbie!

Some Linguine in creamy tomato sauce with spicy sausage.

Marinated pork belly, pan fried until tasty!

We have enough for both our breakfasts and lunches! Which in turn can allow us to go out and eat again!

Hooray for cooking!

Back to Tamarind Hill


I love the new bridge, it shortens my daily journey from 70+ minutes a day down to 35+ minutes a day. But I hate the tolls! So on weekends we will avoid the Port Mann bridge if possible and use the dangerously fun Patullo Bridge!

So back to Tamarind Hill! I figure you would like to see some better images as the last time it was very dark!

Roti Canai! All this for $6, best Roti deal in town!

Hainanese Chicken, at bit pricey at $16, but I like it!

Ginger & Sweet Soy glazed Sablefish, very very tasty!

Stop reading and go there already!

A New Bakery!


New to me at least! Sorry for the delay folks I've been a bit pre-occupied as of late. Here's a quicky!

One day on our way to Granville Island, we happened to stumble onto Beaucoup Bakery & Cafe, now normally most coffee shops have some relatively low quality baked goods that are brought in or made in house, and simply are not very good.

This place is the exception!

Here's the box...neato.

Inside is a small but tasty Eclair, and Apricot and Hazlenut Chocolate bar, and an Almond Fruit tart with a mini Macaron on top!

In the other box with have a really tasty Valhrona Chocolate Chunk cookie (amazing!), a really rich Brioche with almond paste, and a Roll.... I forget what it's called but it's good, trust me!

I give this place a very strong recommendation, everything to my knowledge is made in house, which is very impressive for a small coffee shop!

Next time I might even try the coffee!

One Tasty Sandwich


Meat & Bread. A simple name and a simple idea, when done wrong you get Bologna on white bread, when done right you get this...

Roasted Pork belly & loin, with Salsa Verde and topped with Crispy Crackling. Served on a toasted warm Ciabatta bun.

Here's another angle, they have one person cutting fresh roasted Porchetta's all day long and making fresh sandwiches. The lunch lineup can be up to 25 minutes long, but it is worth it.

Need I say more?

Craving a Shanghai Feast


We're out to celebrate our friend's birthday, and to enjoy a Chinese feast. We wanted to get King Crab, but were about a month late! The prices are now at $30lb!! Only a month ago they were down to $15lb!!! Oh well, there's always next year...

But not to worry! We had lots of other foods, this is a feast after all!

Dishes come fast and furious




We started with Fried thread buns with condensed milk, if your new to this, these are buns made of a bread dough, but rolled into tiny noodles and wrapped with fresh dough, and fried till crisp. A guilty pleasure!






Next is the Kung Pao Chicken, and this is the only place I order this, nobody seems to get this right. It's tasty and spicy. Not pictured is the Mapo Tofu (the photo was really blurry, my bad), which our friend Jackie gobbled up!






Seared Sablefish with a ground pork sauce on top of green beans, I know it's a weird combo, but it work!

Right next is the Spicy eggplant and pork (pork is in every dish!)








Shanghai noodles, probably the simplest dish of the night but one of my favourites. The noodles are hand pulled, and are a lot better than your typical noodle dish. Unfortunately the only disappointing dish of the night was the Sweet & Sour Rock cod. The fish wasn't very fresh, and the sauce was just too overpowering. At $32, I would order something else.

Then comes the house specialty, the steamed pork dumplings, known as Xiao Long Bao. These are made in front of the house. The handmade rolled dumpling skins are stuffed with a pork mixture and cold jellied broth (doesn't sound tasty yet) then steamed. What comes out is simply amazing! The dough is very thin (almost translucent), the pork is perfectly cooked with this warm broth surrounding the inside of the dumpling. A must have at any good Shanghai restaurant.

The surprise of the night. Simple fried prawns with a homemade mayonnaise and candied walnuts. This was the best dish of the night. Period. Everyone was shocked at how tasty, this deceptively simple dish was. Must order again!

Overall another good meal, and one of our regular haunts. It gets very busy and parking is a pain in the ass! So get there early!