Vancouver Chinese Restaurant Awards 2009

[felix the hound]

Ha anybody seen these,? They don't appear to be mentioned in this board. I wholeheartedly agree with their choice for best "juicy dumplings" , I am interested in your opinions as to the rest.

http://www.cityfood.com/EN/news_&...

[fmed]

We had a thread about these awards a number of months ago. Some of the dishes are so esoteric and unique that I can't imagine having an easy time finding consensus amongst the judges. Of the many dishes listed, I've tried maybe seven or eight of them. I've also never thought to order most of these dishes at these particular restaurants...most likely due to ignorance on my part.

From my own experience...the ones that are worthy of a special trip are:

Long Noodle House's - Salty Duck Egg Yolk Puffed Rice (I just had some of this yesterday with their Hot and Sour Seafood Soup...and some of their rightly famous Drunken Chicken)

Lin's - XLB

Koon Bo - Soy Spot Prawns (they also have a killer Chinese Chicken Salad which I think is their actual signature dish)

Parker Meat - the Roast Pork...though I think HK BBQ Master's in Richmond is better.

Excelsior - the King Crab.

Some of these places are actually more known for other dishes that weren't mentioned. (eg Sea Harbour's Kabocha Crab hotpot, Sun Sui Wah's squab, the aformentioned Chicken Salad at Koon Bo, etc.)

The awards are a great idea...they need to tweak the overall process for next time (especially the Diner's Choice Awards where the choices were pre-filtered by the panel of judges).

[felix the hound]

Thanks fmed. It sounds that we could have a Chowhound Vancouver Chinese Signature dish award with the likes of you, grayelf and yimster as judges.

I did do a search for the awards but nothing relevant came up, sometimes I think we get better results with google if you add "chowhound" to whatever you are searching. Would you mind pointing me to the original thread if you remember what it was?

[ck1234]

I think this is the thread:

http://chowhound.chow.com/topics/568397

[fmed]

Thanks ck1234!

[fmed]

Haha. That's very kind of you felix. The CRA panel are well qualified experts in Chinese cuisine in town and their choices were solid (albeit controversial - but you can't really help that.).

Addressing the "Signature Dish" issue that is so much part of Chinese restaurant culture is such a great idea and quite necessary. IMO, their choices (whether I agree with them or not) are irrelevant within that context.

I have much more of a problem with the Diner's Choice awards which had some real head turners. That particular selection process is flawed beyond repair.

[grayelf]

I'd have to bow out and nominate Canucklehead from another board for that job. I love to eat Chinese food of all stripes but I know nothing about it :-).