I was really hungry by the time we met up for dinner, at around 8:15PM on Friday. There were 8 of us celebrating F’s birthday at Jun Yuan:



Sometimes, you pay for what you get. That doesn’t necessarily mean quality, because at a Chinese hot pot place, it usually means quantity. For about $40 each, we had unlimited slices of pork, lamb, beef, meat balls… Basically, whatever was on their menu.

While all the food was very fresh, it was difficult to tell the cleanliness of the restaurant. Our cutlery felt grimy and a few of the bowls appeared unwashed so we asked for exchanges. Then, the soy sauce looked mysteriously oily and had bits in it… That didn’t stop us from just dumping all the food into the communal pot in the middle, to boil away whatever bacteria existed.



Something funny did happen while we were there. We also asked for extra fried chicken wings, which were actually quite juicy and crispy. These were also supposed to be unlimited, but when we asked for 16 wings so that we could each get 2, they came back with a much lower count of only 3 wings. Apparently, these were the last ones and they had run out, but after we paid the bill and were getting ready to leave, we saw them serve more chicken wings to another table that started after us.

Not only are they liars, they’re DIRTY liars. Be aware that their bathroom is pretty intimidating to use, and it takes some navigation to get to the toilet. The floors are slippery and marked with black foot prints, there’s a weird fishy smell, and the walls have strange brown spots and markings…

It was an experience that I don’t think I would choose to try out again.

If you do plan on visiting, make a reservation, because there was a small line up to get in. Why? I don’t quite understand.

This was the start of my food filled weekend. More posts to come! Some people are lucky that they can keep eating and not gain too much weight. I’m not one of those people, so I’m going to go to bed now and wake up early to bike.

It’s taken me a while to write about the 2nd part of P&V’s wedding (Part 1 can be found here), because it was such a packed day, full of memorable moments that I want to blog about all of it, but which would take forever to actually write up. When in doubt, go back to the basics, so I’m going to start by writing about the feast that P&V treated us to. The dinner portion was at Fortune House, located in Metrotown. We had a typical Chinese-style menu, with multiple courses, including abalone (these were a good size, for larger fist sized image of abalone, see my post about B&S’s wedding)

…and a whole slice of shark fin, versus the usual bits that are used for soup:

Traditional Chinese weddings are not for animal lovers. Don’t hate me for eating this and enjoying it, it was already cooked, so might as well not waste it. I know for sure I won’t be having this at my wedding. The rest of the food was fine, I don’t remember too much else from the dinner because of too much red wine.

The other very memorable part was the door games, which J, H, and I prepared for in great detail. P loves Winnie the Pooh (which I might have forgotten to mention in this post about her bachelorette at Disneyworld), so we planned around this theme. We made them dress up in Winnie the Pooh themed onesies, and sing Disney love songs before they were allowed into the house to see P (for those who want to see how this went down, leave a comment or email me and I can show you the video). Here’s a shot of the groom in the Winnie the Pooh onesie, and all the other groomsmen:


Onesies were purchased online by J. They were a bit pricier, ranging from $30 to about $50CAD, but you pay for what you get, and I think P will be keeping these for a while. The Eeyore suit actually has a tail that attaches/detaches via a button. They were all very warm and cozy, and roomy enough to slip over all their suits. Links here, for those who want to purchse some:

Piglet: https://amzn.to/2KtUd0U
Pooh: https://amzn.to/2AKBP4p
Eeyore: https://amzn.to/2vot36Q
Tigger: https://amzn.to/2M4VOz3

Finally, here’s a photo of me and my lovely fiancé in the morning. We will be taking lots of photos in preparation for our upcoming wedding/engagement photoshoots, and this truly shows how I feel about that (scared and worried about having to smile all day, in case you’re wondering):


Congratulations P&V.

This was the last weekend before H and I went to Hong Kong/Taiwan, so we had to have a meal together with his folks. We went to a Northern style Chinese restaurant in Richmond, called Northern Style Chinese Restaurant ( lol ):

The food is not bad, rather oily and full of MSG/salt, so don’t expect anything healthy. We had the leek scrable eggs, one of the fried noodles, a onion pan fried pancake, and another… Chinese fried dough thing. We also had dumplings with parsley: 

The food was cheap, which is always a plus. Horribly slow service, and I suspect if you speak only English, they’ll ignore you forever. The thing to order next time would be the tomato scramble egg and perhaps more dumplings.



This year started with so much hope, and it’s been fun, but I’m pretty burnt out now, really looking forward to the end. I had to take the day off today from the headache. Even had to go to a doctor to get meds to dampen the pain.. I haven’t felt this 9 out of 10 type of pain that brings tears to my eyes in a while.

The pain will go away (has gone away) and things will change again, I'm sure.

H was craving Asian food, so for lunch, we trotted over to Chinatown to see what we could find. D was able to take a break from work, and met us at Asian Legend for a quick bite of Shanghai. We were not disappointed, despite the outside of the restaurant looking dingy and the inside looking dimly lit. The washrooms were quite nasty. Typical Chinese restaurant smell and atmosphere, we felt right at home.



We had the hot soy soup (?) with a Chinese donut, the drunken chicken (bottom), XLB (top left), and the dan dan noodle (top right). I think this was probably my favourite drunken chicken EVER, it was so tender and soaked with flavour. I still think about this chicken, even 2 weeks later. The prices were what we were used to, I think for the 3 of us for lunch, it came to about $30 – $40.



Weekend! Some things I want to do this weekend…
-replant my father’s aloe plants
-try some new macarons from Monplaisir
-watch Master of None Season 2
-start a scrapbook of all the wedding invitations I’ve received so far (cliché, I know)
-use the YYoga class that I haven't touched in 3 weeks

Again… Who knew vegetarian food could be so delicious?

Winter Melon Soup.

Our dishes.

The best rice on earth. Baked Portuguese brown rice.

Sweet and sour fried bean curd.

Vegetarian spicy wonton.

Fried spicy mushroom.

It’s one of those places where you could eat forever, and not realize you’re stuffed until you get up to go. I had to hold myself back to make sure I fit in the bridesmaid’s dress the next day. H’s family knows the owner and go there pretty regularly now, so I’m really looking forward to more visits to this little Chinese restaurant.