Publicity-shy owner develops another unique dining experience in Richmond
Mia Stainsby
Sun
Yvonne (left) and Stephanie Wong with food from Hakkasan Restaurant in Richmond. On the small plate is Curried Seafood stuffed whelk, on the rectangular plate is Duo of Fish (roasted golden sea bass and smoked Alaskan black cod) and on the round plate is prawns and vegetable fried rice. Photograph by: Ian Lindsay, Vancouver Sun
HAKKASAN CONTEMPORARY CHINESE CUISINE
Overall: 3 1/2
Food: 3 1/2
Ambience: 3 1/2
Service: 3 1/2
$ – $$$
2188 No. 5 Road, Richmond. 604-273-9191. www.hakkasan.ca. Open for lunch and dinner Tuesday to Saturday; dinner only on Sunday.
Restaurant visits are conducted anonymously and interviews are done by phone. Restaurants are rated out of five stars.
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The woman who opened Hakkasan Contemporary Cuisine has run several successful Chinese restaurants but is happiest in the background. Thus, no photos, no name.
She opened Zen restaurant in Richmond, the one that got huge press when Jennifer 8. Lee called it the “greatest restaurant in the world” in her book, The Fortune Cookie Chronicles last year. But by then, the original owner had sold it to her brother Sam Lau, who became the chef/owner.
Going further back, she opened, then sold some popular, affordable Chinese restaurants — Bill Kee, Wonton King and Park Lane. I visited Wonton King last fall and her influence is still there where another brother runs the friendly, good-value, service-oriented restaurant.
Hakkasan follows the Zen restaurant model with tasting menus and contemporary presentations. (Zen, by the way, closed when the lease expired and the website says Lau will be relocating elsewhere, no address given.) It also offers a casual a la carte menu that includes a unique set of $11 burgers made with Chinese steamed buns and fillings like sweet cabbage pork patty and grilled eel; there are also some Hakka-style dishes like Hakka free-range chicken and Hakka-braised pork belly.
While the matriarch stays in the background, her daughters, Yvonne and Stephanie Wong, have caught her passion for food. “All she watches is Food Network. She collects cookbooks, travels, does a lot of research and tries the best restaurants in the world. Her life is all about food,” says Stephanie. The daughters quit their professional jobs (respectively, a professional fundraiser and a planner at a school board) to build up this restaurant and they’re responsible for the cheerful service in the front of house.
There are three eight-course tasting menus which you can view on www.hakkasan.ca. They’re $55, $75 and $98 — luxe ingredients, like Kobe beef and abalone (not the B.C. banned kind) are added as you go up the price ladder. Groups must order the same tasting menu and if you want the changing monthly tasting menu, you have to order ahead. Their marketing suggests the tasting menus are half the price they should be; I’d say they’re good value but at double the price, I don’t know how many takers there would be.
We ordered the $55 menu (seeing as it’s a recession and all) and I was dismayed to see foods on my “avoid” list for ecological or ethical reasons — sea bass, shark’s fin soup (real, not imitation) and foie gras. But I did indulge and was glad the sea bass was treated with great respect and was excellent; the foie gras (delicately crispy outside), with apple and pomelo confit was a nicely conceived dish.I enjoyed the subtly salty, tender Hakka chicken (served cold); sweet cabbage pork patty pot rice is a flavourful, rustic dish; a half lobster slathered in a blanket of chopped garlic (made breath-friendly by a secret method) is generous indeed but it was overcooked, thus tough. Dessert was a steamed milk custard made with egg white — light and delicate with a hint of sweetness.
I also tried a couple of dishes from the casual, a la carte menu and liked the seafood fried rice; fried tangerine spareribs were a little oily but good. Some of the dishes on the tasting menu appear a la carte — the Hakka salty free-range chicken, and wok-seared Kobe beef, and the sweet cabbage pork patty pot rice, for examples. The Hakka style food, Yvonne says, is rustic and rural with a lot of stewed meats, braises and roasting.
The tasting menu dishes aren’t quite as refined as at Zen, but the chef was formerly the sous chef there. Still, it’s a unique dining experience, the service is a cut above and dishes are, on the whole, tasty.
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