Diners swamped Zen after it was publicized that it had been named the ‘world’s greatest Chinese restaurant outside China’
Mia Stainsby
Sun
Sam Lau and Valerie Ann-Owen with the book that helped put Zen Fine Chinese Cuisine Restaurant in Richmond at the front of diners’ minds. Photograph by : Steve Bosch, Vancouver Sun
One moment, Sam Lau is watching his restaurant in a freefall. He’d let most of his staff go, leaving himself, his wife, a dishwasher and too few customers.
In the next moment, his phone line is jammed with people clamouring for reservations. CBC’s As It Happens and other media want to interview him. His life and restaurant went into a 180-degree tailspin after a story ran in the Vancouver Sun — it referred to a passage in a just-released book by Jennifer 8. Lee, a New York Times reporter, who called Zen Fine Chinese Cuisine in Richmond (his restaurant) “the world’s greatest Chinese restaurant outside of China.”
In particular, Lee, in The Fortune Cookie Chronicles: Adventures in the World of Chinese Food, referred to a $36 seven-course tasting menu. Well, you can imagine the ensuing stampede to phones.
It had been four years since I visited Zen. I’d given it a solid two thumbs up back then and ooh-ed and ahh-ed over some of the dishes. It was time to revisit.
Zen is definitely unique for a Chinese restaurant. It offers multi-coursed tasting menus with imaginative dishes and styled individual servings. (Wild Rice is another such restaurant in Vancouver, but its uber-hip feel doesn’t translate as Chinese.)
In his Richmond kitchen, Lau has the $500 El Bulli Cookbook, the bible of molecular gastronomic cooking from what some consider is the world’s best restaurant. He’s incorporated some El Bulli cooking magic into his dishes.
When I visited — the day my story ran — the restaurant was slammed. Choices of menus included the $36 bargain menu (now called The Vancouver Sun Special) and four others, topping off at $95. As I’d reported four years earlier, there’s a tedious pre-ordering process so Lau can shop and prepare for each evening. He’ll go through the menus verbally so you can decide which your party wants to order. And then there’s the other annoyance — each table grouping has to order the same menu and that’s because Lau is the only one in the kitchen. If I were Gordon Ramsay, I’d turn apoplectic and explode into furious and frustrated pieces.
But Lau is trying to change things as fast as he can, thanks in large part, to some volunteers who arrived at Lau’s door, eager to help this struggling chef. Valerie Ann-Owen walked in the day after the story ran, offering her considerable skills as a restaurateur and she’s been playing a managerial role as well as hostess; Bud Li-Lam showed up, offering his computer and Web skills, offering to set up an absolutely necessary website. Another fellow with a background in wines wants to help with strengthening the menu and marketing. Consequently, Lau will have a website running soon (it’ll be www.zencuisine.ca) and once Lau has some help in the kitchen, the group pre-ordering system will be relaxed. “Vancouver is proud and they’re flood the lines with support,” Ann-Owen says.
On my visit, I had to forgive the slow service as Lau was overwhelmed and unprepared for the onslaught. We had pre-ordered a $49 eight-course menu. On it: stuffed whelk with curried seafood (served on a whelk shell); double-boiled coconut soup (served in a coconut bowl which infuses flavour); steamed lobster (surprisingly, a half lobster with lots of meat); foie gras over fruit topped with a sweet foam; chicken which tasted like Hainanese chicken but Lau says is “his own style”; barbecued pork cheeks “with secret ingredient — plum sauce”; geoduck with scrambled eggs (sounds iffy if not icky but I’ve never tasted better scrambled eggs); and a black sesame custard.
Lau is doing wonderful work, quite amazing considering he’s on his own in the kitchen and he is an artist (and obviously weak on the business aspect) and he’s passionate. The geoduck scrambled eggs, for instance, was almost like a warm mousse. He achieves the bouffant eggs with chopstick action and by cooking it in warm (not hot) oil. Yet, there’s no trace of oil. But I would hesitate to say Zen is the greatest Chinese restaurant outside of China. Locally, restaurants like Sun Sui Wah, Kirin restaurants, Shanghai River and Shiang Garden are putting out some amazing food, although in heap-big servings.
I exchanged e-mails with author Lee. “Ah,” she responded when asked if she really thought Zen was the ‘best’ outside China. “The subtlety is that it is the ‘greatest’ — which is different from ‘best’. There is a little more sleight of hand in the definition of ‘greatest’. And I make a semi-rigorous case of it in the book of how it is specific to Chinese restaurants. But yes, I think Zen is a unique Chinese dining experience the world over.”
She explained to Zen restaurant inquiries, too, saying that their food manages to capture both high-brow and low-brow aspects of Chinese cuisine. And, she said, the $36 tasting menu is an amazing deal — an important component in assessing Chinese restaurants.
Zen is special; the food leaps beyond boundaries of the traditional. But I wouldn’t hop a plane to Richmond to try it out, as some are doing. But if you can walk, bus, or drive there. Definitely.
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ZEN FINE CHINESE CUISINE
Overall: 4
Food: 4
Ambience: 3 1/2
Service: 3 1/2
Price: $$/$$$
8580 Alexandra Rd., Richmond. 604-233-0077. Open every day except Tuesday for dinner.
Restaurant visits are conducted anonymously and interviews are done by phone. Restaurants are rated out of five stars.
