Sherman's Food Adventures: Tasty Village

Tasty Village

*Restaurant is now closed*

Once again, I was destined to miss the Canucks game. Viv's car was all fixed and ready for pickup at 4:30, a mere half-hour before game time. Well, as mentioned before, I'm superstitious and I thought if I missed the game again, the Canucks would win. So after we picked up Viv's car, we were on our way to Crystal Mall to get some eats. However, we decided to go somewhere else. The reason? Well, it's hard enough parking ONE car at the crazy Crystal Mall parking lot, imagine TWO cars! It took us all of 2 seconds to decide on a different venue. I remembered when we went to #1 Beef Noodle House there was another Chinese restaurant in the same plaza.

The parking lot is insufficient for the plaza, since there are 3 restaurants. Lucky for us, there was parking since we were the first ones there for dinner. Tasty Village has a regular menu with various Chinese dishes and a dim sum menu. We love Shanghainese Dim Sum, so we ordered off that menu. We started off with the Seafood Hot & Sour Soup. The colour of the soup seemed a bit odd to us. Rather than being a dark, rich colour, we got a bright orange-red. No matter, its the taste that counts right? Well, it tasted more salty than hot and sour. However, the seafood in the soup was fabulous. The seafood consisted of perfectly cooked cold-water shrimp, real scallops and squid. Viv surmised that maybe if the broth was too rich, it would overwhelm the seafood. I suppose that could be the case here. But, it still didn't taste like hot and sour soup; it was more like salty and a bit spicy soup.

We also ordered the Beef Roll. It's essentially sliced beef shank, cucumber and hoisin sauce wrapped in an onion pancake. The roll itself tasted pretty good. The meat had a hint of 5-spice powder and cucumber provided some crunch. Viv suggested that the cucumber was cut too big and it overwhelmed the dish. I agree, if the cucumbers were julienned rather than large sticks, it would've been a better compliment. With that being said, the roll was still pleasant to eat, especially since the pancake was crispy and thin.

Of course, since we were having Shanghainese Dim Sum, we couldn't do without the mandatory Xiao Long Bao! When they arrived, I already had my preliminary thoughts. You can see that the skin is thicker than the ones at No. 1 Shanghai, Shanghai River, Shanghai Wonderful and Lin. Fortunately, when I bit into it, the thickness of the skin did not hinder the experience because it was quite soft. I thought the meat tasted pretty good; but Viv begged to differ and didn't like it as much as I did. The Xiao Long Bao were not that juicy either. Thus, the Xiao Long Bao would be considered average compared to other places. We also tried the Szchewan Beef Noodle. The soup was rich without being salty and the beef shank was tender. But, the noodles were terrible. They were undercooked making them a bit difficult to chew. I'm pretty sure this is not a regular occurrence, otherwise no one would eat it, especially since they are next door to #1 Beef Noodle House.

The food was acceptable for the price, I thought it was a decent meal. However, you can definitely dine on much better Shanghainese food at the aforementioned restaurants. But, if you don't want to head all the way to Richmond, Tasty Village can still satisfy your Shanghainese Dim Sum cravings. Oh, and about that Canucks game; they were winning until I got home to watch them lose.

The Good:
- Reasonable prices
- Clean restaurant

The Bad:
- Average food
- Lack of parking

Tasty Village
4735 Willingdon Avenue
Burnaby, B.C.
604-437-8813

Business Hours:
11:00am - 10:00pm (Mon - Fri)
10:30am - 10:00pm (Sat & Sun)

Tasty Village on Urbanspoon

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5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Poor restaurant, has to compete with #1 Beef Noodle....

Sherman Chan said...

Yes, #1 Beef Noodle House is better. No contest.

KGB said...

Hey Sherman, try the Spicy Szechuan Beef Noodle Soup at Garlic & Chili on Broadway in Burnaby. Actually...try everything! Great new restaurant.

Anonymous said...

We ordered Shanghai soup noodle and we got cabbage udon :(
with not much taste.

And this white lady complaint we parked in the last Japanese parking spot so she had to park in the Tasty Village. What?

Parking is terrible.

Sherman Chan said...

Not sure why your order was so crappy. But again, it's not my favourite place to eat either. Yes, parking is the pits.

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