Dinesty Chinese Restaurant

Autumn is almost here/is already here, but I can still remember the heat in Vancouver this summer (someone told me the temp went up to 33'C one day!?). The worst thing is there isn't any air-con or fan in my house! So I tried to stay indoor as much as I could; it didn't have to be long, but just long enough for me to cool down a bit. In that case, being here at Dinesty is simple: I live near and it got air-con. But most importantly, it's the food that makes me wanna come back again and again! :)


Dinesty Chinese Restaurant
160-8111 Ackroyd Rd, Richmond BC

Ratings
1:Yucks! 2:Improvement needed 3:So-So~ 4:Good 5:Very good 6:Heavenly

Food: 5
Price: 4
Service: 3.5 (not always consistent)
Ambiance: 4.5
Overall: 5

• Mon-Fri 11am-3pm 5:30pm-10pm
  Sat-Sun 10am-10pm
• Dine in/Take out
• Parking is available (but again, good luck! ;D)
• Reservation is (highly) recommended. You can never tell when is their busiest hour.

• Shanghainese restaurant with a more modern decor compare to other Shanghainese restaurants in Richmond.
• They have an open-kitchen which you can see people preparing and making the food. It is fun to see them preparing the dumplings! You have to sit on the side in order to have a clear view though.
• Really neat, detailed menu, with pictures included.
  Sometimes when I order dumplings in restaurants, it's important for me to know the number of dumplings per order. Here, you can find pictures of both savoury and sweet dumplings that show the amount per order. Nice. :)
• When you have seated, they will bring you a set of menu: A booklet with all the dishes' names and pictures, an order sheet, and a pencil. The booklet has both English and Chinese, but I am not sure whether they have the order sheet in English...

Chinese Spinach with Bean Curd-5/6

• $3.95
• One of my must-order dish. I order this wherever I see it on the menu. Honestly, I can finish at least one order.
• This appetizer/side dish is normally seasoned with a bit of sesame oil. I guess maybe that's one of the reasons that make this dish a little moist. And also smell good, of course.

• The one here is moister than the one I had at Snow Garden in Hong Kong and other restaurants. It still tasted good and flavourful though. My favourite ones so far are from Chen's Shanghai Kitchen and Shanghai House Restaurant.
• I ordered this again when I revisited. It tasted sour! :( Maybe there's something wrong with their tofu or whatever.
• Just a random thought: I find many restaurants like serving this dish in an inverted-bowl shape :D

Sliced Lotus Roots with Sugar & Vinegar-4/6

• $3.50
• I like vinegary stuff, so when I decided to order another side dish, this caught my sight immediately.

• Tastewise. Its more on the tart side than the sugar side, which I prefer, so this side dish ended up pretty well.

Pan Fried Pork Buns-3/6

• $3.95
• After being pan-fried, the buns still came out soft. So whether it is good or not good really depends on a person's liking. I found them alright but if the base of the bun was crunchier, it would be better.

• For carnivores, I mean "real, big" carnivores, they will say the buns don't have enough pork. But for me, I find them acceptable. So again, whether this bun is a success or fail does depend on a person's liking ;)

Steamed Green Vegetable & Egg Dumplings-5/6

• $6.95
• The thing that made me order this right away was the word "egg". Why? Because I seldom see steamed dumplings have egg inside!

• The skin was surprisingly thin and the dumpling had quite a lot of finely chopped veggies. Once I bit open the skin, the vegetables already started to pop out! These were really good.
• So is there any egg? Yes. If you look closer, there are some light-yellow stuff in the fillings :P Well, since I did not expect much, I was already satisfied to see there's actually egg inside the dumplings.
• I have mentioned that I like Chen's Chopped Spinach more; however, the dumplings here are better than Chen's! I have tried their vegetables dumplings before but the skin is too thick for my liking. The dumpling skin here is just right.

Steamed Fish Dumplings-4.5/6

• $6.95
• Sorry that I forgot to take a picture of these :( They actually look similar to the dumplings above but have white colour fillings instead of green ones.
• This was a really light dumpling. If you are already half full and still want to order some dumplings but not the veggie ones, you can consider having this.
• While the dumpling tasted light itself, the fish/filling was not flavourful. But when you are planning to dip the dumpling into some vinegar anyway, that won't really bother you I'm sure ;)

Fried Egg Wrapped in Pancake-2/6

• $3.50(?)
• The above picture is just showing half of the pancake. We divided it before I took the picture.

• I was quite disappointed when they brought me this because I didn't expect the "pancake" to be like this :/
• Also, I thought the fried egg would be a little bit thicker. This was like an egg pancake with green onions, and it was a little too salty for my liking.
• The pancake tasted like the less-flaky crust of a pastry.
• They still offer plain fried egg/"egg cake". Maybe I will try that next time and see how it looks like.

Steamed Mashed Red Bean Dumplings-6/6

• $5
• These were sooooo good, seriously. I finished everything, yes, all 5 of them! My favourite red bean dumplings are actually from Din Tai Fung, and Dinesty comes the second :D
• As you can see from the picture, these dumplings are smaller than the regular ones because this is a dessert! (I suggest to cover it first while you are eating the main dishes, or you can tell the waitress to serve them later.)

• The skin was ultra thin! And despite it is a dessert, it does not taste too sweet; only a very starchy consistency of red bean paste!
• Beware when you eat this! Try not to put the whole dumpling into your mouth right away. Unlike me, I was too eager to try that I burnt my tongue :P

Steamed Sesame Bun-4/6

• $3/3pcs
• Sorry again for the unavailable picture :( This is just regular steamed buns with sesame filling.
• The buns were very fluffy and soft, but if they just gave us more filling, maybe this would become my another favourite dish here.

Steamed Mashed Taro & Gingkyo Buns-3.5/6

• $3/3pcs
• I am not a fan of taro but since it has gingkyo seed in it, I will give it a try.

• Same as the Steamed Sesame Bun, the bun was also fluffy and soft when it was served.
• Each bun contains half a gingkyo seed that is placed in the middle of the bun. Since I'm not a fan of taro, having that amount of taro filling was already good enough.
• One good thing of the filling is the taro was not as sweet as I expected. So I could still have one after all the foods I had!

*If you don't like to have buns/dumplings for dessert, you should really try the Glutinous Rice in Red Dates with Sugar Sauce. It was soo good and best to share with a crowd. Yum!

In my summer visit, they gave me a fan after I paid the bill. I didn't take it though, but...pretty good service eh? A good thing to have for summer ;D