Landmark Hot-Pot House

Landmark Hot-Pot House @ 2043 Cambie St.

Last night I had my first hot pot experience. Kweepo told me this was one of the most highly rated hot pot places in Vancouver, and I was interested in experiencing this classic in an authentic setting.

Landmark is located near the Queen Elizabeth Park near the end of the commercial zone, right by the skytrain station.

The interior is spacious and open. The place was packed when we arrived. Almost all of the tables were big banquet-style tables. Solo diners are clearly implicitly discouraged from eating hot pot. The hot pot is by its nature a communal activity.

People who doesn't read Chinese are also implicitly discouraged. At our table we found a bewildering array of menus, most of which are entirely in Chinese. Luckily Kweepo understands Chinese. Most of the people at the restaurant appeared to be Cantonese-speakers, including the waiters. The food came out promptly, since it doesn't entail any kind of cooking, but they managed to forget our drinks.

Servers run around the place like ants, but it's oddly difficult to get their attention, which is typical of Cantonese restaurants. When you want them, they're suddenly absent. I was staring out at the room for five minutes without being able to make eye contact with a single employee, despite there being about 15 waiters in the place.

On closer inspection, there turned out to be one main menu, two menus advertising special items like Kobe beef, and one special item menu. This was the main menu:

This was the special item menu:

Ordering was a frustrating experience. It was my first time eating hot pot, so I knew nothing of the procedure, or what it entailed, and was hoping for some guidance. Not only does the menu explain absolutely nothing about the procedure by which to order, the waiters aren't helpful either. We found ourselves completely on our own, forced to randomly choose a bunch of ingredients, on the assumption that that is how it's done.

Yeah, sure, it's hot pot, not rocket science, but it's also not obvious, on top of which the Chinese-only menus were a little off-putting. A little friendly guidance would have gone a long way. The waiter asked us what kind of broth we wanted, but we couldn't find anything on the menu indicating broth choices, and instead just followed the waiter's recommendation. I had no idea what it was I was getting into.

There's a lot of choices in terms of ingredients, and I didn't know exactly how much we were getting of each dish, so it was difficult to determine how many dishes to order. You've got a whole page of seafood items, a page of meat items, a page of vegetable items, a page of noodles, etc. I was able to gather from looking at the other tables that we were to pick and choose a number of items, and these would be brought out, uncooked, to the table, individually, on plates, and we would then throw them into the boiling broth in the middle of the table and eat at our discretion.

We wound up ordering five items: lamb, pork, fish, tofu, and rice noodles. We also ordered a side-dish of sticky rice. We hoped this would be enough and not too much. It turned out to be slightly too much, as we barely finished everything and were completely stuffed.

The price: about $60, or $30 each. Considering we weren't completely satisfied with the food, we felt it was a little too expensive, but that's the price at hot pot places I guess.

One good thing is that they brought out a big pot of loose-leaf jasmine tea, which was on the house of course. We had to order cold drinks, though, because the food was so hot, so we didn't drink much of the tea.

In addition, they have a bunch of little sauces on the table before bringing anything out. One is a peanut sauce, one is a satay sauce, and one is soy sauce. We weren't told what was to go in what. We had to randomly try dipping the various ingredients.

The first thing to come out was the broth. The waiter had mentioned satay, chicken and pork, but I assume it was one broth. Only when this arrived did I realize it was actually two broths: satay broth and chicken-pork broth.

You've got to be careful to not have the heat on too high or you can burn your hands on the flame. Pretty dangerous.

Next the meats started coming out. The pork:

The lamb:

The noodles:

In addition to pork, lamb and noodles, we also got one order of fish and tofu, and a side-order of sticky rice. The table was fully loaded once everything arrived:

One serious question I have is about the safety of bringing out and handling raw meat. Your chopsticks are basically touching the raw meat and going into your mouth. I assume the meat is safe, but it just strikes me as going against everything I've ever learned about washing your hands thoroughly after handling raw meat so as not to convey any bacteria that might be present into your mouth. But the Chinese have been eating hot pot for centuries, so who am I to argue with time-tested tradition?

Now then, we had all this food on our table, but I was still not sure what to do. So we did the obvious thing and just threw things into the boiling broth one piece at a time, took them out, dipped them in sauce and ate them. We tried every conceivable configuration - lamb cooked in satay broth and dipped in peanut sauce; pork cooked in chicken broth and dipped in satay sauce; etc. You name it. But none of them seemed quite right. The broth didn't impart much taste to the ingredients, and none of the sauces seemed particularly to suit any of the ingredients.

The ingredients themselves were obviously very fresh, and it was pleasant to eat such freshly cooked ingredients. The freshness was in itself appealing to an extent. But without the proper sauce to complement the taste of the ingredients, no matter how fresh, those fresh ingredients felt somewhat wasted. So while we enjoyed the experience to an extent, and it was fun being so busy cooking everything constantly, it was also a bit frustrating and disappointing, because nothing here really blew me away.

Kweepo tells me that the hot pots in Beijing are much better, but I have no point of reference, so I have to judge hot pot based on my experience here, and that experience was good but not great.

I can only say that, if we did things correctly, as you're supposed to do when eating hot pot, then I think the idea of the hot pot itself just doesn't appeal to me. As a culinary experience, it leaves something to be desired. You wind up either overcooking the ingredients or undercooking them, and none of the sauces quite seem to go with the food. Perhaps you have to choose the right ingredients and broth to complement one another, and we didn't do this. I somehow doubt that.

Next time I'm in Beijing I plan to try authentic Beijing hot pot, but until then I'm good. Now I know.

After the meal they brought us each a glass of some kind of drink. Unsurprisingly, they didn't even bother to explain what it was.

I think it was some kind of a plum drink, but it had a smoked flavor that rankled in the back of my throat in a kind of nauseating manner and I was unable to drink it.

There was this funky sculpture next door to the restaurant:

A good landmark by which to look for the restaurant in case you miss the facade.

We had to park a few blocks away because the small parking lot was completely full, and on the way to the restaurant we spotted this funky house:

Wow. The owner of this house must be a real character. Right in the middle of an otherwise ordinary stretch of single-family homes is this strangely inappropriate thing that looks like nothing so much as a replica of the dwarves' house in Snow White, except more psychedelic. The roofer was either on drugs when he did this or is a big Gaudi fan.

Chow Times Cantonese banquet at Red Star

Red Star Seafood @ 8298 Granville

Red Star Seafood on Urbanspoon

For the last few months, the Vancouver food blog Chow Times has been organizing a series of feasts on the theme of the "eight great traditions of Chinese cuisine". They'll be having a total of eight get-togethers, each focused on one particular type of traditional Chinese cuisine. Before I discovered their blog recently, they had already covered two: Hunan and Shanghai.

Kweepo and I were lucky enough to attend the third in the series, which was a lavish 10-course Cantonese banquet at Red Star restaurant on South Granville. The Cantonese love having large feasts with big groups of people, but I'd never experienced anything like that before because I don't have any family here.

Their invitation to the event is an instructive introduction to the history and culture of Cantonese cuisine. It gave me a new appreciation of Cantonese cuisine's long history and variety, and a new perspective on how to better enjoy it.

Cantonese cuisine has been my least favorite of all Chinese cuisines for a long time, because my main exposure to Cantonese cuisine has been in the form of dim sum. After encountering exactly the same dim sum dishes at one Cantonese restaurant after another, I concluded that they lacked imagination.

In fact, to truly experience Cantonese cuisine, you have to either go to Guangdong, where I'm sure the dim sum has more variety, or try the more expensive dishes at a banquet. I almost never go to Cantonese restaurants for anything other than dim sum because their regular menus are so expensive and I don't know enough people to hold a banquet.

I decided to go to this banquet despite the steep price tag (about $60) because I thought it was a good opportunity to be exposed to a variety of the region's pricier, fancier, more characteristic dishes - to finally experience Cantonese food on its own terms, the way it's supposed to be experienced. The organizers of this feast clearly had this intent in organizing the meal, and considerable thought, footwork and research went into the preparation of this event, for which I tip my hat in their direction.

This is going to sound weird, but I don't like not liking something. In some cases, I feel like failure to appreciate a certain type of cooking is a shortcoming on my part. I feel like maybe I haven't tried enough, or maybe I haven't tasted the right dishes or been to the right restaurant. It's like an itch I want to scratch. I thought this meal might help finally show me what it was I'd been missing all this time.

To get right to the point, this meal was a great experience. The company was pleasant, and the atmosphere of conviviality was great, and it was great getting to taste such a variety of high-end dishes in one sitting.

Did it change my opinion of Cantonese food? Yes and no. Some of the dishes were good and some were less good. This meal gave me a better sense of what Cantonese do well, namely: fresh seafood, prepared in austere and simple dishes with very subtle sauces. I love fish, but other than that I have never been a big seafood fan. Sea cucumber, shrimp, squid - these things leave me nonplussed.

This meal did not change the sheltered, small-minded reservations of a westerner used to 'safe' foods. And unfortunately it's precisely in the strange and exotic that Cantonese seems to shine its brightest, or at least take its particular character. That doesn't mean there isn't a lot to appreciate in Cantonese food for me. It's just that I have to be more selective.

Let's get right to the dishes. Most of these were like nothing I've ever had, so in that sense alone it was a great experience.

~ Dish 1/10: ROAST SUCKLING PIG ~

This thing was the star of the meal. The restaurant roasted an entire suckling pig for this dinner. This was one of the main things that convinced me I wanted to come. There were two tables at the meal, each with 13 people. Each table got half of the pig. This wound up being slightly insufficient to feel like you got a good taste of the thing, which is a shame because it was by far the best dish of the meal.

This was like no other pork I've ever had. It's a special dish for a special occasion. This restaurant is known for its roasted meats, and this is undoubtedly the crown of all of those. The skin is crispy, the meat underneath succulent and tender. It's actually eaten in much the same way as Peking Duck - you wrap a piece of meat, a piece of green onion and some sauce in a little tortilla and eat it like a midget Sino fajita.

The only problem is they ran out of tortilla and green onion, which was disappointing considering the price of the dish. We were instructed to sprinkle a little bit of sugar onto the pork, and indeed this was a good suggestion. The sweetness was a surprisingly good match with the roasted pork.

~ Dish 2/10: STEAMED SCALLOPS WITH FUZZY MELON ~

This felt a lot more typically Cantonese to me than the previous dish in the sense of it having seafood and having a very subtle, neutral flavor - as opposed to the rich flavor of the fajita. The melon was very soft and added more texture and bulk than flavor to the scallop in the middle. I asked the waiter what the sauce was, and he said it was just a 'white sauce'. The random piece of broccoli thrown in for some reason, though? Could have done without it.

~ Dish 3/10: CANTONESE STYLE SPECIALTY SOUP WITH CHICKEN, WHELK AND JINHUA HAM ~

The way they prepared this soup is to boil chicken and ham pieces in the water and serve the whole thing as is, with the pieces of meat in the soup. They then took the meat out, cut it up, and you took some pieces and put it in the broth. The broth tasted basically like chicken soup you'd have anywhere, and the meat was very dry because it had been boiled and all the flavor had gone into the soup. Again very Cantonese in the sense of being very basic, without many added spices or sauces or anything. But not that great. One small bowl was more than enough of this.

~ Dish 4/10: HONG KONG STYLE SPICY CRABS ~

The crab was pretty good, though I'm not a huge fan of crab. They were deep fried and coated with a spicy sauce. The sauce wasn't too spicy.

~ Dish 5/10: STEAMED FISH ~

This was apparently cod with cilantro and strips of what appear to be leek. It was good, but one fish was not enough for 13 people, and we each got the bite-sized portion seen above, which wasn't enough to really appreciate the dish.

~ Dish 6/10: SEA CUCUMBER WITH BRAISED MUSHROOM ~

One of the more obviously exotic dishes on the menu, I was really excited about trying this to push my boundaries. Sea cucumber is normally something I would never have thought to eat. I hate the idea of gooey, squishy things as a general principle - all the more so when it comes to eating them. Fish I readily ingest, but mollusks, crustaceans and invertebrates I detest. The mere thought of eating a sentient undersea intestine is not something that strikes me as necessary.

But in the spirit of adventure, I gave it a shot. The specimen upon which we dined was a monster that even brought out cut up into fist-sized chunks went around the table and then some. The Cantonese 'sauce' was a tasteless paste that served mostly for lubrication it seems. We were hence on our own when it came to the mortal combat, left face to face with whatever gustatory challenge the monster might launch our way.

I was surprised to find that it was all bark and no bite - it didn't have that much taste. Not even salty or seafoody. Very subtle. Only the squishy texture reminded me of what I was purported to be eating. It's not something I would recommend or ever want to try again, but it was worth trying once.

I wound up eating a lot more of the bok choy bedding than the sea cucumber. The garnish of shiitake were typically very spare in their preparation and not particularly to my liking.

~ Dish 7/10: BARBECUE DUCK ~

The restaurant's forte is in roasting and the roasted duck did not disappoint. Somehow they managed to finagle the animal such that the pieces of duck had a lot of meat without excessive fat, and a rich smoky flavor. I often find myself leaving the fat in duck dishes because it grosses me out, but this time the proportion was just right. The Chinese are good at duck.

~ Dish 8/10: SIU GAO DUMPLING WITH NOODLES IN SUPREME SOUP ~

A simple noodle and dumpling dish was a nice change of pace from the heavy-hitters that came before. The dumplings were good and the thin wheat noodles were tender and easy to chew, unlike the inedible hard noodles I was served at Congee and Noodle House on Broadway. The dish came much ballyhooed by our boisterous maitre d', who pronounced it one of the restaurant's specialties. It was good, but I didn't quite see what was particularly special about it.

~ Dish 9/10: RED STAR'S SPECIALTY RICE IN LOTUS LEAF ~

The presentation of this dish was nice - it came in a bowl constructed of lotus leaves and molded into the shape of one of those old Chinese magistrates hats that you see in the historical dramas. With a flourish, the waiter pulled the top of the dish off, revealing the steaming rice contained therein. I don't remember the particulars of the rice's preparation or taste, but it primarily served as a palate cleanser and change of pace from the previous dishes.

~ Dish 10/10: BAKED TAPIOCA PUDDING WITH LOTUS SEED PASTE ~

I loved the dessert. I've never had tapioca like this. It was baked into a sort of tapioca pie, so that you get a bit of crunchy crust with each bite. The tapioca itself was really creamy and rich and unlike any other tapioca I've had before, almost like they put custard in there or something. It was a good way to end an interesting and eventful meal.

And it was a LONG meal. We arrived at the restaurant at 6:30 p.m, and by the time dessert came out, it was almost 10 p.m.

PHEW. That was a feast. Although we didn't leave stuffed, amazingly. I was a little disappointed that the beers weren't a little more affordable. $5.99 for a Tsing Tao seems very pricey. Other than that, it was an exciting experience and I look forward to the rest of the meals in the series.