Review: Lanxuan Restaurant

The shrimp toast is impressive at the new Lanxuan Restaurant

When Chinese people get together, they invariably talk about which restaurants are good these days. This one's not as good now, we went there recently, or we heard the chef has left this other place, and so on. You have to keep track of when you heard the news as things may have changed since then.

The latest is that Chef's Choice, a restaurant on Broadway and Ash used to be pretty good, but the chef left. Where did he go? South to Richmond to a recently opened restaurant with a Mandarin name.

Bizarre beach scene lights up the restaurant

Called Lanxuan Restaurant, it replaces Marina One Richmond Seafood Restaurant next to Tom Lee Music on No. 3 Road and Capstan. Before that it used to be a Knight and Day.

The head dim sum chef who used to be at Chef's Choice is Wei Lai, who has over 30 years' experience in the kitchen, and in May won gold in the team and individual categories of the ninth World Championship of Chinese Cuisine.

Lanxuan's interior is very mainland Chinese in style, with a massive digital screen at the back of the restaurant showing a beach resort scene, with palm trees, blue skies, sandy beach and low couches that look inviting...

This "picture" is so incongruous with the rest of the restaurant which serves a combination of Cantonese and northern Chinese dishes... in a way a strange combination as well.

On the dim sum menu, diners can also order boiled water fish or 水煮鱼... most of the staff speak Cantonese, but some customers are mainlanders. 

Pan-fried vermicelli with beef was a highlight

Nevertheless, overall the dim sum was pretty good, made fresh and interesting fillings. We also ordered rice roll filled with beef paste and had chilli sauce drizzled on top which was different, and shrimp toast was actually pretty good. Shrimp mousse was placed on top of a slice of white bread, deep fried and covered in sesame seeds. There's a decent ratio of shrimp mousse to toast, and hardly oily too which is impressive.

We also had some steamed cake which looked dense, but was actually fluffy and not too sweet. 

We may have found our new dim sum spot, but that digital beach scene has got to go... 

Lanxuan Restaurant

3631 No. 3 Road #170

Richmond, BC

604 285 8989