After spending two months in Whistler for work, eating gourmet cafeteria food (aka institution food, or mass produced bland and unimaginative food), my tastebuds basically went into hibernation. Aside from the couple good meals I had up there at Sushi Village, The Keg and the occasional pub like Merlin’s or Crystal Lounge, I found myself sustaining on a steady diet of either cafe food or McDonald’s. Now before the hate comes out for McDonald’s…. sometimes it was just the better choice of the two at work. That should give you an idea of how bad the cafe food could sometimes get…

So with that little bit of back story, you can now understand why when I finished work and came home to Vancouver, I was craving absolutely everything. Food that stood out immediately to me was  Taiwanese beef noodles, tacos, pupusas, REAL Chinese food, and good burgers. Of course, I could have all that anytime I wanted though.  What I really wanted to do was splurge a bit, throw around a bit of that money I earned and treat myself to a nice dinner.  What great timing it is then that king crabs are currently in season! Even better so was that Ed Lau had posted about a place in Richmond, Empire Seafood, that had just what I wanted. I gathered up 7 friends and we were off to dinner!

Forgetting all the Chinese you learned as a kid is bad. Especially if the restaurant has no English menus. None of us could read, so we had to rely on just speaking with our server and asking what was in the set menu. FYI, we got the set menu for 6, which is $168 and includes eight courses.

1st Course – Fish Maw Soup. The stand out ingredient of this soup is of course crab meat, but it also contains prawns, and fish maw. The soup bowl contained just enough to serve the eight of us, even though we had ordered a 6person set menu.

2nd Course – Garlic Steamed King Crab Legs. Lots of garlic, so much that Kevin even picked up the plate and drank the juice after….. *shudders*. Anyways, some of the pieces were really small, which is inevitable since most of the crabs weight is water, but they were juicy regardless of the size.

3rd Course – Deep Fried King Crab. Gotta say, this was all kinds of disappointing to me. I was expecting a lighter batter, and tons of garlic & chili bits… similar to the deep fried chicken wings that I had at Chu Kiang. Even the typical Dungeness Crabs are probably prepared better than this!

4th Course – Honey Garlic Spare Ribs. Normally the 4th and 5th course would be Peking Duck and the accompanying lettuce crap, but the restaurant had sold out of it that night. Seems like every table there had the same thoughts as us and ordered the set menu. To accommodate this, our server said we could pick two things in lieu of the Peking Duck.

5th Course – Crispy Chicken w/ Shrimp Chips. All I remember about this chicken was that it was reallllly really salty. Even the bland boring chicken breast was salty, and that’s not something easily accomplished!

6th Course – Bean Curd with Bok Choy. Finally, some vegetables to cleanse the palette and balance out the meal.

7th Course – E-meen w/ enoki mushrooms and bean sprouts in King Crab Essence. This is obviously not what the dish name is, but it’s what Kevin came up with. Essence of King Crab, aka “crab juice, veg oil, garlic and water from the steam.” At first this came out with the wrong noodles, and we had to send it back. What we all then questioned was “How are they going to get the essence from the noodles?” I guess they just drained it and whatever they missed they made up with adding more water. Half jokingly, I suggested that we demand they steam another crab and make up for the loss.

8th Course – Portuguese Curry Fried Rice w/ Seafood. Normally it’s just fried rice for the last course, but this is an option that you can add on for $15. Whatever was leftover from the crab was used up in here with a typical fried rice. The curry was only put on top and then baked, so we had to mix it in a bit. Even so, it was still not enough curry for me. Definitely filler food for the end of the meal though.

Oh yea, and then as customary at most Chinese restaurants, we were given dessert, the typical red bean soup.

om nom nom nom, the crab is looking at you. Do any of you eat the stuff in the shell when they serve dungeness crabs? You know, all that yellow/green cholesterol sloppy stuff?  I don’t personally, it puts me off a lot and I don’t enjoy the taste of it, but I know my dad will always eat it and even gets mad when the server takes it away.

Overall including tips and the add on, we paid $34 each. In my opinion, that’s a very decent price to pay for the amount and quality of food. We weren’t informed of how much the king crab/lb was, nor the weight but I didn’t feel cheated at all. Obviously going to places such as Sun Sui Wah or Kirin would have been a lot more desirable and the quality and service would have been better, but then you also pay a premium, as they were going at $14+/lb! Another alternative would have been to go to T&T and purchase your own crab for $9.99/lb..when in season and on special of course.