Since day 1 of this trip on Vancouver Island, we've been on a mission to find food that would keep our cravings at bay. In other words, we wanted Asian food of the same quality or better than what we can find in Vancouver! 

 

I wouldn't say Victoria BBQ House and Bakery is quite the same quality as some of the best Chinese bakeries back on the Mainland, but they had pineapple buns and BBQ pork buns, fresh out of the oven when we stopped by the other day, before the smoke (BTS? ha.). 

We devoured them right in front of their shop, on the street, so that they would still be warm and fluffy. The BBQ pork bun (on the left) was really stuffed with meat. Please ignore the angle of the photo, which makes it look smaller than the pineapple bun. I'd come back more often if they had a hybrid pineapple BBQ pork bun and served HK milk tea. 

Side note - if you look closely at the photo above, you'll see a sliver of baby S's stroller, where we abandoned her she was napping. 

"You know it's like, I dunno you... you float out... float out at sea then one day you find a port, say, 'I'm gonna stay here a few days'. A few days becomes a few years. Then you forgot where you were going in the first place. Then you realize you don't really give a shit about where you was going, cause you like where you at." - George "Noodles" Stone (Dave Chapelle), A Star is Born

Still watching a lot of HGTV these days, and they talk about "forever homes" a lot. This hotel sure isn't a forever home, but I would have to say it's been a pretty comfortable port for the past few days.  

I was excited to eat in Richmond last week, with H and his mom, at a Chinese restaurant that I’ve walked past many times, but never entered – River Chinese Cuisine:

We arrived around 6PM. The restaurant was empty, which is frightening, and in my mind, I was wondering if this quiet little restaurant would be any good. But it was a Thursday night, and I guess we were still early. Clearly, this place caters to the late night crowd, with hours from 5PM to 1AM, because it slowly filled up as our dishes came out. We ordered the above fried tofu and pork cutlet appetizer plate. I will probably crave crispy tofu one day, and will be grateful for this convenient location for the crispiest tofu I have ever had. How do they make deep fried tofu that melts in your mouth?  

The pork chops were good too, they use a special sauce on it. 

We also had this fried egg dish… I’m not sure what’s in it exactly, but I believe there were little bits of vermicelli. It was a vegetarian dish that H’s mom could have, so it definitely was not shark fin, although it could’ve passed as such just based on appearances.

The 3rd dish we had was a soup with winter melon and mushrooms. A comfort food for me. I don’t have any photos of it, because it just looked like a pile of goopy mushed up winter melon, but trust me, it was flavorful and delicious.

Good food, leaving me bright eyed and bushy… haired? I don’t have a tail. Lately, I haven’t been feeling very bright, although my hair is getting bushy. Feels a bit like the light’s dimmed slightly – tired from work, moving, settling into a new routine… Nothing that a good meal and some 2016 Avicii can’t solve.

Also, Alan Walker on Feb. 3! So excite.

Most of this weekend was spent eating, preparing for P&V’s wedding, and then replenishing my energy with more eating.

The preparations started with P&V’s wedding rehearsal, after which we went to Van Tea Cafe for a late dinner. Here is an example of a house special spaghetti at a Hong Kong style cafe:




Sauce to spaghetti ratio balanced, and the texture of the spaghetti was not too hard or too soggy. There were lots of toppings in it, including a copious amount of ham and chicken. The egg yolk that topped it off was still very runny and mixed in perfectly with the rest of the sauce. I surprised everybody by finishing the whole plate, and I washed it all down with lemon tea.



Other than the food, the restaurant seating area was bright and clean, although a bit cramped. We did have to wait a good 20 to 30 minutes before sitting down, despite making a reservation. Normally, this would have annoyed me enough to go down the street to another Hong Kong cafe, but it was fine that evening, because it gave us more time to plan for the wedding. Meals really are about who you are with.

I still haven’t tried the straws that I mentioned in the last post, but this week, I have been living life:

• finished reading Ready Player One
• watched the new Deadpool 2 movie
• potted my first avocado plant into soil
• biked to Deep Cove:

• booked a trip in November to London and Iceland (remember getting lost there in 2016?)
• went to baby K’s 100 Day celebration at Sun Sui Wah:

I honestly forgot to take photos of the food until dessert (above, tapioca pudding with red bean, which looks gross but don’t let appearances deceive you). C&J kept me liquored up all the way through, and I was kept busy with eating and conversation. There were the usual dishes of lobster, chicken, fish, at a Chinese full course meal. C&J added on sweet and sour pork as one of the dishes, which was unusual because it had lychee added into it. In my drunken haze, I remember that the chicken skin was very crispy, and the fried rice and yi mein was not too oily.

There were also the boiled eggs that I had no space to eat:

Last week wasn’t all laughs - work is still work, living at home is rough sometimes, and I can’t wait to have more space in my life. I guess I should take control, seize the day, and make space. Make every 24 hour count.

This week seems to be starting off well though.

H and I visited North Noodle House right before watching Black Panther:

Above is the Zhajiang Pork with Cucumber on noodles, the lamb skewer, and the pork dumplings in sour soup. Honest opinion was that this place is not worth sitting down to eat at. Get the dumplings to go, and don’t bother trying to get comfortable in the cramped sitting area. It’s not even the servers that make this place hard to eat at, but it’s just the close quarters with strangers, who may or may not be rude (they were rude that night). I’ll give it a 4 for the food.

After all that food, I fell into a food coma and slept through 90% of the movie.

That was last week. I think I’m much happier this week.

I’ve heard that everybody has a default mood, a base happiness (or sadness) level that they revert back to no matter what happens. I’m sure there are some habits that happy people have, which make them default to positive, like eating better food or getting outside more or being surrounded by certain people. For some people, their whole life might be about figuring out how to elevate their mood, and there are different formulas for different people. I can’t make you happy, that’s up to you!

Hikes are one of the things I’ll wake up early for. Continuing on from the last post, I thought I’d elaborate on this a bit more (ie, I found photos that I forgot I took, and now I want to write more). We left the house around 7AM, and went for breakfast at a little cafe called BB開心茶座, located near the trail head to get to the Sir Edward Youde Memorial Pavilion (尤德亭):

Classic Hong Kong breakfast of sausage, sunny side up egg, and instant noodle, paired with milk tea:

H had the coffee + milk tea combo (yeen yeurng). His aunt and uncle had similar noodles and drinks. The quality at BB開心茶座 was really acceptable, despite being on the outskirts of Hong Kong. A steady stream of cyclists and motorcyclists stopped on the way up, and the parking lot was packed with expensive looking cars. Don’t forget it was only around 7:30 or 8AM… People in Hong Kong really don’t sleep.

I didn’t have to figure out how to get to the trail myself, because of our hosts (H’s aunt and uncle). They also took us to this waterfall/swimming hole, where there wasn’t much water at the time, because it hadn’t rained in a while. The trail was really easy to navigate, and not gnarly at all.

Go up past the houses in the photo above, and you will eventually get here: 

Two hours to get back to the car.

I know. Horrible directions, and not very informational, but hey, I was jet lagged. Easiest thing to do is just go eat at the cafe and ask around, if you really want to go!

H and I had dinner with his mother the other night, and because she’s super low maintenance, which is awesome, we went for some good, cheap Chinese food in this hidden gem in Richmond, Double Double Restaurant:

Pepper and pig intestine soup. A perfect level of spicy to warm up the tummy on these cold winter nights.

Sweet Chinese donut (“cow tongue so”) – so crispy and fresh and soft and omg, mouth happiness.

On the side: choi sum & sticky rice, vegetarian because H’s mom doesn’t eat meat.

Chinese donut in rice roll with the sauces for the dipping. Again, so fresh and crispy. It was 8PM and they STILL had it this fresh. A lot of places will have them fried up in the morning and sitting around all day until they’re soggy or really chewy. This tasted like it was freshly done.

How is it that I’ve never heard of this place before? Maybe because the name is sorta wack. I’ll be back before you can say… “2016 was rough”.

On a brighter note, Claire Marshall is doing VLOGMAS! How I love her videos, brightens up the season. She’s a true inspiration, role model, and overall creative genius. Watch her vlogs.

Let’s make some more memories before the end of the year.