After visiting the Beard Papa’s at Crystal Mall, we decided to see if there were any differences at the Richmond Centre location.  This store is not located at the food court.  Instead, it is right across from Old Navy.  The entire hallway was filled with the yummy smell of pastry.  WOW!  If you can’t find the store, then just follow your nose!

Here are the other desserts that they offer.  My favourite is the fondant chocolate.  As you can tell from the picture, the fondant was already sold out when we visited.  So instead, we ordered something different.

This is the winter limited edition chestnut cream puff.  It says on the poster that the chestnuts were French; however, I really couldn’t taste any difference in the French chestnut and the regular kind we buy at T&T.

And here it is…the chestnut cream puff!  We had to wait a couple more minutes for it because they had to be specially made.  The cream puff had a swirl of creamy chestnut on the top.  They also added a dark chocolate covered chestnut on the top.

When I ordered it, I expected the cream to be chestnut flavoured.  But I was wrong  The cream inside was the original flavour.  So basically, we paid more money to order the original cream puff only with an added drop of chestnut on the top.  We were a bit disappointed that the cream was not chestnut flavoured.  I will definitely order my fondant chocolate again next time though!

Liu’s Taiwanese Restaurant is a small family run restaurant located in Union Square Shopping Centre.  This place is located right next to Richmond Sushi.  You can expect to find a variety of rice and noodle combos here.  We were here on a weekday for an early lunch and the restaurant was quite busy.  We started off the meal with the marinated egg.  This is only 75 cents and is Rockia’s favourite start to a Taiwanese meal.

We were very hungry so we ordered the satay beef noodle, a fried chicken drumstick with rice, and an oyster cake.  They were all very delicious, but a bit oily.  The first to arrive was the satay beef noodle.  This was the oiliest because of the satay sauce.  If you’ve ever bought a whole can of satay sauce from the super markets, you will see that it is actually mostly a can of oil with satay soaked in it.  We expected the oiliness and didn’t mind it very much.  There were a couple pieces of vegetables in the dish and upon the first bite I noticed that they were very crunchy!  This dish was pretty good overall because the thick savoury satay sauce was really the heart and soul of this dish.

Our next main dish is the fried chicken drumstick.  This was thickly coated in batter which made it very crispy. I didn’t mind the thick batter because the crunchiness worked well with the sauce and the chicken didn’t taste too oily because of this.

The dish came with a lots of mixed vegetables and rice.  The rice had Taiwanese meat sauce on it which made it even better.  I was amazed by the size of this dish because it was actually not that pricey!

I was curious about the oyster cake and ordered that as well.  This was different from what we usually have because the oyster cake isn’t made with only egg and oyster.  Instead, they used a clear floury dough as the base of the oyster cake.  As well, there were pieces of cooked vegetables on the bottom.

The oyster cake was topped with the same sauce that was on the fried chicken.  We didn’t really enjoy this because it was actually slimy!  The dough, sauce and oyster was all overly moist.  The dough was not cake-like but more like a chewy dough.  We weren’t used to the texture of this dish so it wasn’t a big hit with us.

The bill for the lunch came out to be $20.75.  We thought this was reasonable because we ordered a lot of food for only two people.  Liu’s does offer some main dishes like tofu and eggplant, but this place is known best for their rice and noodle combos.

Overall impression:

Good:

• cheaper prices
• big plates

Bad:

• dishes can be a bit too oily

Koi sushi = hmm…  I have mixed feelings about this visit to Koi Sushi.  The food is a bit lower quality than typical All You Can Eat restaurants.  However, we had a buy two get one free coupon which made this dinner cheaper than other AYCE places like Richmond Sushi.  I guess this is the place if you want lots of cheap food and not looking for quality.

The fried scallops were interesting.  Panda was having dinner with Rockia and the Fish King.  As you can tell from his name, Fish King is a pro when it comes to seafood.  So it was perfect that we were having Japanese.  And according to Fish King, these little fried scallops aren’t scallops at all.  I’ve never really paid attention to it, but apparently these are imitation crab meat cut into circular slices and then fried.  I studied these little things more closely after he mentioned it and realized that he was right!  It was imitation crab meat!  Haha. Oh well. It’s still good!

I love peanut butter spinach.  I’ve always loved anything with peanut butter sauce on it.  BUT!  The enormous thick blob of peanut butter on the top of this was way too thick.  It tasted like they just put peanut butter on it and didn’t mix the peanut butter with sauce at all.  It was way to sticky.

The sashimi was ok.  They offer wild salmon in their menu, but it didn’t taste like wild salmon at all.  As well, the pieces were VERY tiny.

The oyster motoyaki was a bit better.  They served them in plates instead of the shell.  I think it’s because it’s cheaper to buy oyster from a tub than to buy each one.  One small tub of oysters at T&T is around 10 dollars on sale. I was ok with this as long as the oysters were fresh.

As some of you might know….Panda doesn’t eat slimy things….  So I didn’t touch these raw oysters.

The only thing I truly enjoyed at Koi were the chopped scallop cones!  I think they are many people’s favourite.  There were lots of scallops inside and not a lot of rice.

We had a lot of other things too.  Nothing was special and should be mentioned.  I enjoyed the juicy ribs, but it was pretty normal.  Many readers have been messaging me to say that Koi is going downhill.  They don’t give people what they ordered and takes forever to bring food to the table.  As well, the waitresses have pretty bad attitudes as well.  Hmm…Take note, fellow foodies!  I personally will not be visiting again.

Overall impression:

Good:

• chopped scallop cone and ribs were ok
• cheaper prices because of coupon

Bad:

• bad service
• mediocre tastes
• low food quality