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Published: July 20th 2010
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Litty is someone I've been good friends with since high school. A few years ago, she left us to take on a PhD scholarship in Cambridge and will be finishing that up this year. We caught up with her during our travels last year, and she showed us around her new home of Cambridge. She then joined us for the Alaska cruise with the boys and it was our turn to play host.
The two of us have a lot in common and despite how few and far between our opportunities to spend time with each other, we remain close and enjoy each other's company when we do see each other. We both come from immigrant families with Malaysian-Chinese backgrounds, have an interest in creative and artistic pursuits, have very similar attitudes to life and friends and boys and generally have a great time together. But there's one thing we both love and will always be able to indulge in together...FOOD!!
Litty was the one who suggested that I was most probably gluten-intolerant during our Alaskan cruise, so that is another thing we now have in common and together with Aaron we ventured on a culinary tour of Vancouver's
exotic and flavoursome delicacies.
First stop was the Richmond Night Markets, which are held on weekends during the summer months in an industrial area of Richmond, about 30 minutes transit from downtown Vancouver. There were a few dozen stalls selling weird and wonderful Asian delicacies including BBQ squid, dim sims, taro cake, potato swirls, pork knuckle soup, green tea ice cream, red bean soup, satay skewers, sticky rice and deep-fried tofu. We managed to sample a lot of the above.
The next day we ventured on to gourge ourselves with more Asian delicacies at a Chinese restaurant on Main and King Edward called Sun Sui Wah. Yum Cha was on the agenda, and they do it a little differently here in Canada than in Australia. For starters, they call it 'Dim Sum', and instead of ordering from trolleys that they wheel around the restaurant, pushing and rattling and crashing their way past with their precariously balanced deep-fried or steamed goodies, you order a la carte. The atmosphere isn't quite as chaotic and to me isn't the real Yum Cha experience, but at least you know that the food is prepared fresh, and not yesterday's leftovers. Chicken feet, prawn
dumplings, siu mai, har gao and eggplant stuffed with tofu were one of the dozen or so dishes we had. And the best part - it was only about $20 each.
After this we trotted on down to Granville Island, and bought some gourmet treats for an early evening picnic at Queen Elizabeth Park. A very tasty picnic of eggplant stuffed with feta cheese and sundried tomatoes, herb-infused chorizo, aged cheddar cheese, pepper-corn rice crackers and a bottle of white. It went down a treat.
On Litty's last day we went downtown to visit our sushi joint that we go to regularly - Excellent Sushi Restaurant on Granville St. It really is very excellent. It is not the most gourmet of sushi restaurants, in fact it is pretty much low on the atmosphere, experience, decor and service. But the sushi is fresh, well-prepared and cheap. For less than $15 a piece we had miso soup, a sushi platter (yam, BBQ salmon and california), tempura vegetables and seafood and a generous sashimi plate.
To continue on this seafood experience, we trekked out all the way to Steveston Fishing Village in the south end of Richmond, almost on the
border to the US. We checked out the farmer's and artisan's markets where I picked up some organic vegetables, and we snacked on home-made nougat, dried apples, gluten-free baked treats, gourmet cheeses and organic coffee. Then we went on to Pajo's fish and chips down by the wharf and shared some deep-fried and battered salmon, cod and halibut for $15.
I haven't eaten so much and so well in a long while. I wish Litty were here more often!
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