Home & Garden Publications

Chow town: Richmond, British Columbia, has the best Chinese food this side of Shanghai

Sunset, Feb, 2005 by Linda Lau Anusasananan

The cuisine has taken interesting turns as well. At intimate, elegant Zen Fine Chinese Cuisine, chef-owner Sam Lau cooks what he calls modern Chinese food, which he offers in a prix fixe tasting menu. "It's not fusion," Lau insists. "Some courses are straight Chinese. I cook the authentic way, but the presentation is Western."

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The Richmond Public Market bustles with shoppers seeking seafood, snake soup, or herbal remedies. For a sleeker, more controlled shopping experience, head to T & T Supermarket, part of the largest Asian grocery chain in Canada. Here, across the street from Aberdeen Centre, customers are serenaded by softly piped-in music while they fill shopping carts with live crabs, clams, and abalone from T & T's fish tanks; they can also buy tropical fruits seldom seen in the U.S. (purple-skinned tart-sweet mangosteens, spiky durians with their unforgettable stink) and fresh, frozen, and canned foods from all over Asia.

"Our customers are used to high standards in Hong Kong and Taiwan," says T & T's marketing manager, Melina Hung. "They expect that here. Every Chinese is an expert on food."

So powerful is the Richmond food scene that it can even alter people's lives. Take Maggie Lee. I arranged to meet her at Fisherman's Terrace, a restaurant inside Aberdeen Centre. When I arrived, she wasn't there yet. A few minutes later, I saw a striking, curvaceous woman with short, spiky hair being shown to her table. I was then shown to the same table. Both of us were surprised. Lee expected to see a white face. After hearing about Lee's food expertise, I expected a Chinese grandmother.

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We relaxed and began our meal. On the table was a dish of pea tips with fresh bean-curd skins, perfect in its simplicity. Hargow (shrimp dumplings) and siumai (pork dumplings) then arrived. Both are common dim sum offerings, but here they were anything but ordinary. The plump hargow were rich with chunks of shrimp. ("Eat them now, when they're hot," Lee advised me.) The siumai had a topping of fresh tobiko (flying fish roe), added after steaming so it glistened like jewels. We were then offered a small dish of XO sauce. The condiment, made with expensive ingredients such as shredded dried scallops and dried shrimp, is usually reserved for special guests or regular customers--which we were treated as, because Lee had been referred by a friend.

As we ate, Lee told me her story. She and her two sons came to Canada nine years ago from Hong Kong. Her youngest son wasn't interested in regular school, she said, so he applied to culinary school. "Then we decided we would go together.

"I tried to withdraw three times," Lee told me. But she stuck it out. "Now I'm really proud of him. And of myself. He was the top student out of 20. And I was the one after him." Her son is now apprenticing to become a chef, and Maggie Lee is enjoying a new career as a cook at a casino here in Richmond.