Goodbye Canada

On our last day in Canada before leaving at 3 o'clock in the morning the next day we took a trip to Calgary to check out their Chinatown.  There was actually a decent number of restaurants in what was considered Chinatown and it was way too hard to pick one restaurant to eat lunch at.  We decided on Gee Gong (珠江菜館) because it was less nice looking but it was still crowded.  That means it must be very good and somewhat inexpensive.

We were seated at the last open table which happened to be right next to the bathroom but who cares?  The waitress served us tea right away.  The sheer number of dishes made it difficult to chose just a few.  You could choose dishes that you eat with rice, or you could order things like noodle soup or jok (Chinese porridge).  I just wanted to order everything and devour it all but after some compromising, we ordered 3 dishes from the 合菜 menu and 2 noodle soups from the paper menu.

榨菜鴨絲湯麵 (Duck noodle soup)
(front) & 牛肉湯麵 (Beef noodle soup)

The noodle soups came first.  The noodles are Hong Kong style noodles that you would typically find fried but in soup form, it tastes just as good.  The Peking duck was still crispy and juicy making it even more scrumptious.  Everything about the soups were excellent except they seemed a bit saltier than necessary and they clearly used the same soup base for both.  But it's hard for us to waste any food so we downed the bowl.  The size of the bowl is more than enough for one person unless you are a big eater which in this case, it would probably be not enough.

煎封龍利 (Fried fish)

Everything else was superb and delicious.  Nothing was dissatisfying and not before long, the plates were squeaky clean.  Even though I dislike eating fish, I found this one to be ok because it was fried to the point that even the bones could be eaten.  However, I wouldn't eat it if you are worried about your health.

牛肉炒時菜 (Beef with seasonal vegetables)

五香牛腩煲  (5 flavor beef pot)

I have to point out how interesting the way the serve their rice is.  At most Chinese restaurants, they either give you bowls of rice or in a larger plastic bowl, but Gee Gong had it in a metal bucket.  We were totally fine with that and it even adds to the traditional Chinese restaurant, making it even more authentic.  They also charge for rice but it isn't as expensive as the Silver Dragon restaurant we ate at.

Yea we had some fast food

A friend of ours told us that in Canada, Tim Horton's dominated McDonald's and if we had nothing else to eat at home, we could eat their donuts.  She claims that because Canada is so cold, you'll end up burning through the calories so don't feel guilty about eating a donut.  Sounds tempting.  We decided to give it a try since all of us were tired and didn't feel like cooking anything later.  However, my brother and dad took one look at the menu and saw it wasn't burgers and fries and marched right over to the Wendy's next door.

Besides donuts, Tim Horton's mainly sort of a "cafe" or small meal style restaurant because they have bagels, paninis, soups, etc.  To be honest, nothing really appealed to me and the price didn't seemed just a tad expensive so I just ended up ordering a bagel and soup for around $5.  My mom did order a panini which was fairly large and thought it was delicious.  A very rare comment for a western dish.  I guess Tim Horton's is like a Einstein Bagel type shop so it's not really a place for a meal but not at all similar to the Wendy's next door.

Wendy's Poutine

Apparently there's this thing called poutine that Canada is famous for and my brother said it was absolutely necessary to try it while we are here.  Poutine is basically fries with gravy poured over topped off with cheese curds.  Sounds like an American dish right?  But it's Canadian and my brother just had to order it from Wendy's.  The gravy made it pretty salty and the cheese wasn't completely melted but I can't expect much from a fast food chain.  Making this at home must be a piece of cake.  I mean all you need is some fries, gravy and cheese curds and voila, you've got poutine.  And it would probably even taste better if you bought some McDonald's fries to use instead of trying to make your own fries.  Usually ends up nothing like fries unless you're a pro, which I'm not.  Wait, I usually bake mine so that's probably why.

Oh Canada

My week in Alberta, Canada was fantastic.  For someone who comes from the desert, the weather was great, a bit chilly but bearable and oh my, the trees and foliage was so green.  If any of you haven't visited Banff or the surrounding National Parks in Alberta, Canada, I would really suggest it because aside from the green, the water is gorgeous.  The lakes and rivers all run aqua blue with little contamination because the source of the water comes from glacier melts that has a concentration of rock flour.  The rock flour that scatters the light and makes the water blue comes from the glaciers grinding up the rocks into tiny granules like flour.  I tried to take as many pictures as I could on my 2 gb memory which was around 180 pictures until I realized when I got home that there were 4 videos that took up half the memory.  Definitely pay a visit to Canada and you won't regret it.

Because we lived in a resort, there wasn't many opportunities for us to explore the restaurants and eateries around the area.  But we did eat at a couple of Chinese restaurants and a fast food chain.  I will be writing about all of them in separate entries.

In the small town of Banff located at the foot of Banff National Park, my family craved for some food for dinner.  But everything that wasn't fast food was very expensive so we resorted to some Chinese food because we knew the portions would be sizable and my brother counts as 2 people.  Not surprisingly there was a Chinese restaurant right in the center of the town on the third floor called Silver Dragon.  It's easy to miss the entrance but it's there I promise.

106 3rd Avenue SE, Banff, Alberta, Canada 

Silver Dragon is a good sized restaurant and very clean with a good view of the rocky mountains if you sit near the window.  The waiter was very nice and immediately seated us at a table that had the view of the mountains instead of sticking us off to the side which happens very often.  The dishes were quite authentic, or at least more authentic than take out Chinese food and we ordered 4 dishes that I may or may not be able to translate correctly.

The beef noodle soup is one of my all time favorite dishes and Silver Dragon did not disappoint at all.  The stock was savory and the noodles were clearly handmade so it's chewier and more tasteful.  The vegetables like the broccoli and carrots were also a good addition to it so at least you were eating some veggies with your food.  There was enough to go around.

My dad prefers to eat vegetables over meat so there always has to be some vegetarian dish and this time we chose a tofu dish that look and tastes like the dish tofu family style.  The tofu used in this dish is fried tofu so there is a yellow skin on the outside with the normal tofu in the inside.  My mom raved about the tofu because it was so soft and fresh tasting which I guess none of the Chinese restaurants in Tucson had that quality.

 

雜菜牛湯麵 Beef and Miscellaneous Vegetables Noodle Soup and 雙菇紅燒豆腐 Two Mushroom Braised Tofu

  

The last two dishes were meat dishes that sound slightly unappetizing to a normal person mostly because I have no idea how to translate and "pickled mustard" never really sounds good.  But trust me, these dishes are amazing, at least if you don't have a picky palette.  We expected the Sichuan Chicken to be somewhat spicy but it only has slight sting to your tongue so if you can't take much heat, don't be fooled by the name of this dish.

梅菜扣肉 (top) Pickled mustard pork and
 川椒油淋雞 the chicken

川椒油淋雞 Sichuan Pepper Oily Chicken

And last but least, the pickled mustard pork.  Ooooo soo nasty sounding.  I guess it's to weed out all the people leaving the brave souls and you should be one of those.  If you don't want to eat the picked mustard, just eat the pork and your taste buds will be just as happy.  You might be surprised to see that the meat is literally a layers of fat and meat like a thick piece of bacon meat but as you should know, fat adds to the flavor.  Just don't eat too much of it because absolutely no benefit to your health.  

I apologize for not being able to describe the taste of these dishes for you but all I can say is that they are all savory dishes, salty and delicious.  You must eat all the dishes except the soup with rice like most Chinese dishes because there is too much flavor and you might just not be able eat anymore after a few bites.  But beware, Silver Dragon charges around $2 for each bowl of rice but they will not charge if you refill, at least for us they didn't.

If you are some kind of budget, this may not be the restaurant for you because the dishes can be quite expensive but compared to the other restaurants around the avenue, it's probably one of the better deals.  Silver Dragon did not disappoint at all.  The waiter was friendly and the food was heavenly so it's a place worth going if you're craving some Chinese food.

What am I doing?

Honestly, I have no idea what I'm doing with this blog but I thought it would be pretty cool to just have a place where I can put pictures of things that I eat and where I ate it.  Kind of random but because I like food so much, I take pictures of my food and put it in a place where it can last forever.  FOREVER.  Maybe.  I'm really hoping my writing doesn't suck so much since I really don't like writing in general and maybe it'll just end up being a blog with just pictures...but that's cool too right?

And hopefully I can figure out how to use this blogging thing because right now it kind of just looks like a word document.  I have no idea how this will translate onto the main page and maybe Blogger is a magic application that will just transform it into a better looking rant.

I don't live in a town busy and populated enough to have a huge variety and amazing foods that I've never tasted before so most of the things I blog about will probably be from trips.  You might encounter months of inactivity.  But if there are people reading this, I'll probably post pictures of homemade food that my friends or I make for lunch or just randomly on a Friday night.

This summer is going to be some huge food overload because I'll be heading to Canada for a week and then to Taiwan (the Mecca for Asian foodaholics) and I'll be posting some major ton of pictures and textual drool.  Get ready guys.  Prepare for the bombardment of delicious food!