Today we went to Aroma Garden aka Gordon Park Xiangcai Museum. It serves up awesome Chinese food from Hunan. Hunan or Xiang cuisine is spicy. Not the numbing heat you get from Sichuan food but more the scorching dry heat you get from eating fresh chillies. This restaurant is a bit of a hard find as it is located deep inside a strip mall with no view of the street It is located on No 3 Road between Browngate and Cambie, in Richmond. The signage on the main road says Aroma Garden while the sign on the actual restaurant says Gordon Park Xiangcai Museum. The restaurant decor had these cool lantern type lights and was very clean.
We always like to order more than we can eat in one meal as we can eat the leftovers for lunch the next day.
We ordered:
Corn & Pork Bone Soup $9.95
Mustard Greens $9.95
Farmers Pork with Green Chilies $9.95
Immortal Rice Bowl (Thats what the menu calls them) $1.50
Steamed Salted Fish with Homemade Bacon $11.95
Green Onion Pancakes $4.95
The soup was a welcome departure from the cornstarch laden soups you find at a lot of Chinese restaurants these days. It had lots of tender pork meat and was very flavorful. The farmers pork was a bit too spicy for me. Felicia loved it, being from Hunan she can handle the heat. They use thinly sliced pork belly in the dish with has crispy fat and tender lean meat mixed in. The immortal rice bowls were steamed rice with a chinese jujube in the middle and steamed in little bowls. The vegetable was very crispy and fresh and not overly seasoned. I however found the vegetable a bit overpriced. Why is it that most Chinese restaurants price their greens at such a high mark-up? The green onion pancakes were just OK. It was silly of me to order green onion pancakes at a Hunan restaurant as they are not really part of the Hunan diet anyways. They came out very very dry and cardboard like. Out favorite dish that evening was the steamed salt fish with homemade bacon. It was really well executed. The salt in the fish was absorbed by the bacon. It reminded me of steamed pancetta. The bacon was sliced razor thin and blanketed over the salt fish. It went really well with rice and had a smokey earthy flavor to it. Service at this place rocked. I have come to expect surly or indifferent service at most Chinese places I eat at. This place was the exception to the rule. The waitress was warm, courteous, and efficient. She took the time to explain menu items we didn’t understand and actually smiled. Total damage was $53.00 plus tax and tip.
Plus
- Large quantities of food
- Pleasant service
- Food tastes great
Minus
- Vegetable is way overpriced
- Green Onion Pancake can be used as a frisbee
