Paper Rock Social Lounge

Oh. Paper Rock. I had many bad experience on sushi restaurant, I would say this was the worst one. Although I knew this from its outlook, there are no places around open at 4:30pm. Just give it a try, my partner said. We walked in and were greeted by a woman. I believe this place was designed to be a karaoke bar. There were multiple flat screen TV hanging on the wall. We ordered salmon maki, salmon cream cheese roll, spicy tuna sashimi and a teriyaki beef roll. You can judge how good they are by the photo. Soft, chewy seaweed, thin slice of pale orangey salmon with stiff textur… I swear, I would not come here again. I think this is just a place for alcohol and karaoke. Not for sushi. Definitely not.

Ap Gu Jung

Ap Gu Jung is a Korean restaurant on Robson street. I believe it is quite competitive to open a restaurant on this street but at the same time, you could easily earn enough money to pay the rent if the food is decent enough because that’s one of the busiest streets in downtown. We arrived Ap Gu Jung at 7pm. Since it was a Sunday night, the restaurant was already packed. Luckily, we can still get a table for 2 persons without waiting. We sat on the second floor. This time, we would like to try more dishes rather than just order one big hotpot. We have chosen the Kimchi seafood pancake on the appetizer page, they also have traditional seafood pancake under the seafood category. The later one was more thick and was served on a hot iron pan because I have been studying the food on different tables around us (sounds pervert, right? but I know you would do the same inside a busy restaurant). Anyway, the other dishes we ordered were:

Kimchi seafood pancake
This pancake was gorgeous (look at the picture). The outside was crispy and inside was soft together with a little chewy texture. There were octopus, chives and kimchi as the fillings. The sauce was very good, a little spicy and vinegary taste. The best part was it was served a hot fresh pancake rather than a cold mushy one.

Marinated prime beef slices, slowly braised in broth and topped with chives and served in a sizzling bowl (this comes with a bowl of rice)
As it was described, served inside a sizzling bowl and was sizzling hot. The broth was full of beef flavour, so as the beef itself. The beef is soft and tender, taste fresh, too. There were some korean glass noodle inside the soup, it absorbed every bits of the beef flavour. This was an excellent dish to have in winter (still not bad in summer, but need more effort to ignore the heat around us).

Homemade prawns, pork and vegetables dumplings
I cannot forget their dumplings after so many years (the first time I visited Ap Gu Jung was at 2002), this was the second time. I would like to try again. But this time, we ordered one with prawns inside. I was shocked when it was served, there were four giant dumplings inside the steamer. Well, it seems like a good deal but personally, I am not fond of large dumplings because there were so much meat inside and they were overcooked. Luckily, the prawns were still good. Next time, we should stick to the pork and chives dumplings, which were smaller in size.

I was happy with the service in this restaurant. Their menu had quite a number of selections but the fonts were too small and packed, this made it hard to read. Also, I hope they could serve us those little appetizer dishes before our meal came because we were starving that day. Anyway, I love their vinegary seaweed a lot. You cannot get them easily from other Korean restaurant.

Chop Suey

Pajo’s Steveston on the Wharf

Pajo’s on the Wharf is a wonderful location for you to enjoy both sunshine and delicious fish and chips. I prefer to sit along the wharf rather than on the floating part as I got dizzy in a short while, basically I considered this as sea sick. I wobbly placed my order and it was ready within 10 minutes. It was quite fast as we went there on a Tuesday afternoon. But still, there were enough customers to rapidly fill up the tables. My friend ordered a combo of large Halibut and chips and I got the small Cod and chips. I was the server this time and had to manage bring the food up along the patio area through the bridge. I had no problem at all because they offered you a very well designed holder (a plastic platform with eight holes on it), you just had to place all the cones and cups on the holes and you could lift the whole thing up. I really love this smart and simple design. How can I describe those beautiful pieces of fish? They are slightly crispy on the outside and the moisture were retained very well inside. Not over cook and perfectly done. The chips were on the soft side which I liked a lot. Don’t expect a lot of taste for the cod, you would like to order halibut if you prefer the fish with a stronger taste. I felt happy for this meal with a wonderful location, decent food and no lineups.

Red Star Seafood Restaurant

I don’t know why the English name of this restaurant was called “red star” because there is no meaning if “red” in its Chinese name. The only linkage of “red” would only be the pronunciation of its Chinese name. Anyway, this restaurant shares the same Chinese name as the Super Star Seafood Restaurant. I have been here three times already. That means I really like their food, service and price… Moreover, it’s a clean restaurant. That’s a quite important for me, a great dim sum meal usually started with clean tableware. I knew it sounds a bit silly, but you need to have a bad dim sum experience in order to appreciate this. The design of their dim sum order sheet reminds me of taking a multiple-choice exam. What a smart idea though. Don’t worry if you cannot read Chinese, they got a menu in English that the number matched with this order sheet. Let’s go back to the food. Jelly fish with boneless goose feet, the cold appetizer we ordered. Do not feel shy to ask for red vinegar and chill sauce if you wanted extra vinegary and spicy flavour. You can ask for whatever sauce you wanted while you are at a dim sum place because the charges was already included with your “tea” charge (usually $2 for each person). Of course, you won’t get any of those Hp BBQ sauce or Ketchup but only those they usually served like white pepper, soy sauce, mustard, ho sin sauce and sesame sauce or even Worcestershire sauce (“gip-jap” in Cantonese). You might want to know what “gip-jap” is for, it is the dip for beef balls or some of the deep fried dishes like spring roll. Well, there are too much things to remember when you go to yum cha. But you would love it once you know what’s going on. All of the dim sum were good in Red Star. They were even better than many of the dim sum restaurants in Hong Kong. The steam rice roll with BBQ Pork was very good because pea leaves were stuffed inside the roll. You might love this dish if you like pea leaves, some might think it’s weird because normally they won’t put vegetables in this dish. I have to say their seafood dumplings is a MUST order dish. Sorry that I didn’t take a close up picture because I could not wait and just ate them. There was a big scallop with flying fish roe on top of each dumpling, big shrimps inside and they were wrapped by a clear hot crystal skin. Now, you can imagine how attractive they are. An excellent dim sum meal ends with an excellent dessert – Three little Egg tarts. There you go. The chef garnished them with half of a lovely strawberry. Would you eat the garnish?

The Aviator 2004

A story about Howard Hughes. This movie portrait multiple scenes of how Obsessive-compulsive disorder affected his life. For me, the most compelling idea was the director could nicely linked the food with his extreme behaviour shots by shots. Although Hughes acted almost like a mad man, your heart would still reserve a kind of sympathy for him. I guess the scene of him obsessed about lining up peas on the plate was a memorable yet convincing statement that accurately reflects Hughes’ personality.

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