Tried Great Szechwan in Pacific East Mall and it was good.  Great Szechwan (3288 Pierce Street, Richmond)  took over the space that was formerly Shanghai Gourmet, thank God, since that place had gone downhill the last year or so.  To be totally honest with you, Great Szechwan has to be good to compete with China Village in Albany, which is seriously kick-ass.  It does seem to be, from the meal we had.  In fact, a couple of the items we ordered were dead ringers for dishes served at China Village.  I’ll have to look into this.  If anyone knows of a connection, like a stolen chef, please let me know.  For example, we ordered the ‘bacon cut’ pork (read:  pork belly) with spicy garlic sauce appetizer at Great Szechwan.  It arrived in a ring pattern loaded with sauce just like the other guys serve it.  This is a great little starter but it’s not for everyone, since it is more or less cold, uncooked, unsmoked sliced bacon served with a heavy garlic-chili sauce with significant heat.  If you eat this with hot rice, like I do, the fat in the pork will soften and render a nice mouthful.  The dry cooked pork intestines came next.  Again with the deja vu.  Blisteringly hot and complex in flavor, but you have to appreciate the texture of innards to like the dish.  Great Szechwan is clearly very good and they have a large menu with offerings from other regions, so if you don’t like heat, you’ll be OK.  Take care with your order, though, since the staff do not speak much English and we did not get exactly what we wanted even though it seemed like they understood.  Use the numbers on the menu!  Matthew ordered the fish fillet with Szechwan wine sauce (#90) but received the minced fish with pine nuts (#90).  Not a big deal.  It might be a big deal if you ordered sweet and sour pork and received flaming stir-fried pork kidney, however.

Pork rice dumpling at Daimo

Chinese breakfast at Daimo this morning, which is a real treat.  Up until 11 a.m. they serve a “one from A, one from B” type of meal for about $6.  You get your choice of congee, which is a thick, savory rice porridge – a whole, big bowl of it, the kind you get when you order it a la carte.  Then you select an item from the other list, which, in my case, is always the sticky rice pork dumpling.  I wrote about this last year but had no photos, which I am correcting here.  If you ate all that rice you would die, I think, so it is best to share the congee.  I refuse to share the pork dumpling because whenever I do, I am guaranteed to lose the salted duck egg that’s in there.  Never again.  Do I really need to tell you that Daimo is just outside Pacific East Mall on Pierce Street in Richmond?

We ate at Shanghai Gourmet at Pacific East Mall (3288 Pierce) in Richmond today and found that the place had gone downhill.  How sad!  No more chicken with chestnuts — it was taken off the menu.  The braised meatballs (often called “Lion’s Head”) had limited richness of sauce, which was markedly lighter than in the past and floury.  The pork with bean curd sheets — which should be pork belly and bean curd knots braised in a clay pot with the usual suspects, like wine, rock sugar and soy sauce — was a memory of its former self.  First off, half the pork belly was replaced with another cut of pork, which sent my mother into a tailspin.  Second, the sauce was weak.  Stuff was missing or the dish was not given enough time to braise – maybe both.  All I know is that it should have been obscenely savory but fell flat.  Matt ordered pan-fried bean curd with shrimp roe, which was very good, but none of us were able to detect much roe flavor.  When we talked with our server about the state of the food, he claimed there had been no change in ownership nor chef.  Then what the hell happened?  This calls for some investigation.

To cheer ourselves up, we went to dim sum at Asian Pearl in Pacific East Mall (3288 Pierce Street, Richmond).  This is our ‘regular’ dim sum joint and we like it fine.  It has a wide range of offerings and most items are quite decent.  Non-greasy, which is a plus.  Depending on the day you visit, the food might be fab or pretty good, but I’ve never had a bad meal here.  The prices are about average for this tier of quality, and it is conveniently located near chez akitachow.  That said, if you go on a Sunday at noon, be ready to be aggressive about getting a number and waiting, waiting, waiting…