Jenkins and I were in the mood for Taiwanese food one day when I remembered that I had been meaning to try Lin’s Chinese Cuisine for a while. Although it appeared to feature an eclectic mix of Chinese food from several different regions, its claim to fame were its xiao long bao. We arrived on a busy Friday night at about 7:30PM and although the line-up to get a table looked daunting, we were seated after about 10 minutes or so.

Jenkins and I perused the menu for a bit and finally decided on what to order. First came the pan fried beef pancake. When it arrived at our table, they looked a little flat but taste-wise, they weren’t bad. However, I felt that the green onion pancake used to wrap the beef a bit doughy since I like my pancakes to be crispier and not as heavy.

Next up were Lin’s famous xiao long bao. The skin on these dumplings was very thin and light, just barely holding the soup and juicy meat filling on the inside. They certainly were quite good and among the best I’ve had but I think I prefer the ones at Shanghai River slightly more.

One of Jenkins’ and my favourite dishes are tan tan noodles so we decided to give it a try at Lin’s. The broth was made differently from the lighter coloured version we’d had at other Szechuan and Taiwanese places which seem to be more peanut-based. The noodles were cooked perfectly and the peanut flavour in the soup were balanced with some salty soy-based flavours and a nice amount of spiciness.

Finally, Jenkins and I closed off our meal with some peppery chicken. We originally thought this would be made in the same style as at a Taiwanese restaurant but our server explained to us that it was not deep fried and had a huge abundance of peppers and chilis. The chicken itself was pan fried until it was quite crispy and this dish was quite spicy. We could really taste the unique flavour of the Szechuan peppercorns used in this dish. We wisely ordered a bowl of rice to go with this dish. Jenkins noted later that there seemed to be quite a bit of MSG in this dish.

Jenkins and I quite enjoyed our time at Lin’s but also felt that it was a bit overhyped in recent times. We noticed that some of the dishes on the menu did not seem to be your traditional Chinese fare but we surmised that they had to do that in order to cater to its wide range of customers. Similar to most restaurants, you just need to know what to order. We haven’t been able to find another restaurant with comparable value and taste so we’ll definitely be back to try some of their other dishes.

Details:
1537 West Broadway, Vancouver
Tel: 604-733-9696

Summary:
Food: 3.5 out of 5 stars
Service: 3 out of 5 stars
Price: $$

So first of all, sorry for the lack of posts. I’ve been maligned the past week with the flu. And now back to our regularly scheduled programming…

While we were in Zhujiajiao, we stopped by one of the street stalls that sold candy. My brother and I split some sticky candy that came on a stick. I think it was pure sugar and it was very sweet…but it was fun to mold the candy using the sticks. These sugar candies cost about $0.50.

Here is a picture of a lady making the rice “tamales” that we ate for lunch.

Here are some more yummy looking snacks that we were much to full to eat!

While we were in Shanghai, we had the opportunity to spend part of a day in one of the region’s water towns. Think of Venice…but Chinese-style. It was pretty neat to visit Zhujiajiao, which is one of the closer water towns to Shanghai. After a nice gondola ride around the town, we stopped for lunch at a restaurant recommended by our gondolier.

We ordered some stir-fried veggies with bamboo shoots. The veggies were chopped up quite finely but had a nice crunch to it.

The fresh lai mein with preserved vegetables was quite tasty. The preserved veggies were not too salty and went well with the noodles. You had to eat this dish fairly quickly though because the noodles got mushy after sitting in the soup for too long. The preserved veggies seemed to be a specialty in this town as we saw quite a few people making them outside of their houses.

These vegetables were cooked in chicken broth (similar to the first dish). They had quite an interesting texture…similar to grass but still very crunchy.

The deep fried peppery pork was very popular with my brother. Personally, I would have liked it if there was more of a pepper taste but this still went very well with rice.

This chicken soup was one of the best chicken soups I’ve ever had. An entire chicken was used to make this soup. Most of the fat was actually skimmed off the top so I didn’t feel too bad about having several bowls of this stuff. The soup obviously had a great chicken flavour and the chicken itself was juicy and tender.

We saw a bunch of these braised pork hocks on the street so decided to order some to try for lunch. It came with a lot of sauce, which went very well with rice. I’ve had a version of this dish back in Vancouver but this one was not as sweet as what I was accustomed to.

These rice “tamales” looked better than they tasted. Similar to the pork hocks, we saw a lot of these being sold on the street so we really wanted to try it out. Although the flavour was good, it was not strong enough and I also found the rice to be a bit undercooked.

We also ordered some dumplings at the recommendation of our server. These were filled with vegetables and pork. Taste-wise, there was nothing special about these.

I liked our meal at the water town because it was different from the usual Shanghainese fare we were used to. I also liked trying out the new variety of vegetables, which I’ve never had before. Our entire meal, which fed 5 adults, cost only $40. Not bad, considering we were stuffed full.

Summary:
Food: 3.5 out of 5 stars
Service: 2 out of 5 stars