Our meals came with complimentary
Black Tea 紅茶, which was quite refreshing, we enjoyed it. We had the choice between a house soup or tea.
This dish is one of the standards that I hold a Taiwanese restaurant by. You can find this pretty much everywhere in Taiwan, mostly on the streets. What makes the standard is good bite size pieces, a good marinade and a good final seasoning when serving. In Taiwan, most places will offer basil (some will even offer freshly chopped garlic) in addition to the final seasoning. The
Chicken Nuggets 鹽酥雞 here was a fail. The pieces were too big and the chicken was too soft (without being moist). Moreover, they only sprinkled the seasoning over the top, not tossing it and mixing it like it's supposed to be. I'll forgo the lack of basil and fresh garlic. So far, the best place for this in 604, in my opinion, is
Tapioca Express in Richmond, and that's depending on if the oil is fresh...it can be hits and misses there.
We had an order of the
Deep Fried Pork Chop 炸排骨. For $2.50, this was a good deal. The good part was the flavor, which was one of the best I've had, even better then the
Din Tai Fung version in Bellevue. The bad part was the coating, it didn't need that much, but they seemed to have over-coated to the point that some areas had super thick crusts.
Buddha Girl ordered a
Ali Shan Railroad Bento 阿里山鐵路便當. Served in a Japanese bento box, the nostalgia of a railway box was lost.
The One, further down Kingsway in Burnaby has a better presentation for their railroad box. In Taiwan, we even went to a place that served the a railway box in a mini wooden bucket (see post
2009-10-22 Day 7 @ Taichung or
picture). In terms of the food itself, it was pretty basic, deep fried pork chop, cabbage, fried egg, corn and shrimps. Overall, not bad, but nothing too memorable neither.
Originally, I wanted this with no noodles, but apparently, it must come with noodles...so I ordered a
Satay Pork Pottage with Noodles 沙茶肉羹麵. My first and best experience of these pork nuggets (rou-geng) was at the
Raohe Night Market 饒河夜市 in Taipei. Smack dab in the middle of the market was a stall that even Buddha Girl says it's one of the best around, and you all know how picky and snobby Buddha Girl is. My standard for this is a nice thick soup (with mushrooms, cabbage, carrots, and perhaps egg swirl) poured over small amount of sha-cha sauce at the bottom of the bowl (scooped in before the soup pours in). Rou-geng is basically a mixture of pork and fish and when you bite into it, there should still be a "crunch". The soup at Alishan was too thin, too heavy in the sha-cha sauce and the rou-geng was not properly tenderized. The rou-geng lacked "crunch" with coatings of the fish being very inconsistent. Suffice to say, we did not enjoy this. This has got to be one of the worst we've ever had.
Yup, after reading this, I think Buddha Girl's right, I am a snob when it comes to Taiwanese food.
