Hakkasan Bistro

Hey everyone!

Domo Is Craving's team was invited to a dinner event hosted by Hakkasan Bistro. Our invite first started at Canada Berries, which is a local Richmond fruit winery. We went there around 5:30pm for a wine tasting. Their fruit wines tasted amazing and my personal favourite was the Gooseberry. Their staff was very informative in terms of their history, their products & you can definitely tell how passionate they were about their wines. I highly recommend checking them out because they only sell their fruit wines at their Richmond winery. I will include their address at the bottom of my post in case anyone wants to drop by and check them out! I highly suggest trying the Gooseberry & the Blue Queen Dry! The ones I like are not the super sweet ones but if you are the kind who like sweet wines, I recommend trying out their Princess Peach or Princess Cranberry Fruit wine. The Princess Peach wine is also a great sangria mix!
We were also served with appetizers on the side to pair with our wine. I was really enjoying their home grown grapes. They told us to try the grapes because apparently people always say Richmond can't grow great grapes. I can personally say that their home grown Richmond grapes taste amazing and they are extremely juicy and sweet!

Go check out our Youtube video HERE for more details about our experience at Canada Berries & Hakkasan Bistro!

So after the wine tasting, they prepared a shuttle bus to drive us to the restaurant for dinner. The restaurant is located in an industrial area and if you didn't know or heard about this place, you probably will never come across this area because it is very hidden. The interior space looks very nice and modern. It was nice seeing how they used a lot of modern furniture and wooden tables and tiles. You would assume this place would be very traditionally decorated but I really like how they made the space very modern but still have a slight traditional flare to it.

Now lets talk about the food!

First off, we got a dish with Jasmine Tea Smoked Mushroom Beancurd Crepes, Balsamic Cloud Ear Mushroom & Honey Roasted BBQ Pork Cheeks. This appetizer tasted great! They included very different components in this dish and everything was very fresh! These food items were great to start off the dinner!

Next up, we were served each a Double Boiled Whole Young Coconut Pork Soup. This was absolutely DELICIOUS. The waitress told us it takes 3 hours to cook this soup and it needs at least a day notification to prep for this. The soup just tasted amazing, especially when you scrape off the coconut meat off the side. The coconut is soft and creamy and just pairs really well with the overall soup. They also prepared a soy sauce dish on the side of our plate to pair with the pork and it just gave it extraordinary flavor. I highly recommend trying this soup because it is so worth it. This was by far my favorite dish throughout the meal.

Next came the Specialty Odorless Garlic Lobster on Jasmine Rice. We were very curious how this dish was going to taste because we know garlic is one of the main components to make this a tasty dish but because of the name "Odorless garlic" we were skeptical of whether this would still taste good. We were so surprised when we tried this because all the flavor was there, all the juiciness was there and when we were sniffing our breathes, you don't smell ANY garlic at all. We were so surprised and we just LOVED this.

Here we have the Ancient Style Hakka Salt Baked Chicken. They took the chicken out all wrapped up in parchment paper and was surrounded with salt. I feel like the chicken had a lot of flavor considering it is not a saucy dish. This was cooked very differently compared to the usual chickens I eat from Chinese restaurants. It was such an honor to try the traditionally cooked Hakka Baked Chicken.

This was the Country Style Fillet. Everyone thought this dish tasted amazing. The fish was very soft and the sauce has a slight sweetness to it and it just paired really well with the fish. Highly recommend ordering this dish if you ever come here because it just tasted fantastic!

Hakka Homestyle Steamed Egg, Pork & Duck Yolk. This dish was very interesting because the texture feels like its tofu but its made out of egg and there's minced pork within it. This paired really well with the Jasmine rice that came with the lobster. It was very savory and overall very enjoyable!

Braised Pork Hock. Surprisingly this wasn't as fatty as I thought it'll be. Usually pork hocks have really fatty areas to it but the piece I ate was very lean but it still has a lot of flavor and juice. They also served us Steamed Mini Flour Rolls, which is used to pair along with the sauce that was served with the Pork Hock.

This was one of my faves for the night, Mui Choy Stirfry Seasonal Chinese Greens. My whole family knows I LOVE mui choy. Considering my family is part Chiu Chow, they also have Mui Choy dishes so I was very intrigued by this dish because they paired this with Chinese Greens. I just love the flavor so much, the mui choy really brought this dish together. I think this is a must try from Hakkasan Bistro.

Last but not least, here is DESSERT! Thank god it's not the typical red bean paste dessert. This is made out of Steamed Milk. Super creamy, super soft. The texture of this dessert is very similar to the sweet tofu dessert. This was delicious and I would definitely go back for this dessert!

I know this is a super long post but if you got to the end of this post, I want to THANK YOU for reading our blogs and hopefully this gave you a clearer idea of how this restaurant is like and see if you are interested in trying Hakka style cuisine. This was my first time eating authentic Hakka style food so I was very happy with everything and it is definitely different compared to other "Chinese" restaurants.

My experience through this invitation was amazing and they really nailed every dish they had. I highly recommend checking this place out because overall was just PERFECT. If you guys read my blogs, you should know I always give my honest opinion about EVERYTHING so for me to think so highly of this place is beyond rare.

I would also like to thank Yvonne for inviting us to this dinner! It was such an honor to be invited to this event and we really appreciate it! Phil's dad is actually Hakka, so we will definitely bring him here next time for him to try out Hakkasan Bistro!

Also, if you did not watch our Youtube video yet, definitely check it out and tell me what you guys think about these videos. I would love to read your comments and see what I can improve on in terms of video content and what you guys would like to see more!

Go check out our Youtube video HERE !

Thanks for reading!

-Jess

Canada Berries

Address: 12791 Blundell Road, Richmond, BC V6W 1B4