Shanghai Elan Restaurant

Hello everyone!

Sorry for the lack of blogposts lately. February is always the busiest time for me & Phil because it consists both of our birthdays, Valentines day, and soon to come, Chinese New Year.

So for Phil's Birthday dinner with his family, we ended up going to Shanghai Elan Restaurant which is located in Crystal Mall in Burnaby. Usually for his birthday we always choose to go to a western restaurant, but this year his uncle, auntie & grandma from Edmonton is visiting, so we decided to go for Shanghai cuisine. 

I've been here with Phil's family before and I always thought the food was decent. This time around is no differ. Some of the dishes we ordered this time is not what we usually order, so I was excited to try some new dishes!

First off, we got soup. This is called the Song Sao Fish Soup $12.50. It has heavy vinegar flavoring, so if you don't like vinegar, I don't recommend ordering this soup. Overall, I thought it was okay, the vinegar taste did overlap the majority of the soup so you can barely taste anything else in it.

Next up, Special Crab Meat Sauce with Tofu $18.95. At first glance I assumed this was a spicy dish, but nope, it's just the Crab meat coloring. The crab meat sauce soaked up the tofu and it was just absolutely delicious. Pairing this with white rice was just the perfect combination.

We also got Prawns $15.95. This dish has a very unique flavouring, there is both sweet and salty combination. I thought this dish was pretty good but I was never a big fan in taking my time to rip off the layers to eat the meat inside. So I only ate two. Definitely must eat this with your hands, so if you don't want to get your hands dirty, I suggest avoiding this dish.

On the side we ordered 3 bowls of red rice $2.00/bowl.

Next, we got the smoked duck $18.95. This dish also comes with bread on the side. Usually that type of bread is used for a more juicy type of meat so I thought this was kind of a weird combination. The smoked duck is rather dry so pairing it up with the bread was just odd. Overall the smoked duck was cooked very well.

Ah...my favourite dish of them all. Shanghai Thick Noodle with pork and veggies $10.50. I absolutely love this dish. It's one of my favourite noodles to eat all time. I thought they did a very good job on this and the flavour was on point!

So this dish here is considered a dessert! I was kind of skeptical in trying this because it looks like something I wouldn't like but it's actually pretty damn delicious. This dessert is called Sticky Rice with Flavor $8.50. The title is so pointless because it doesn't even describe the flavour of this dessert. Anyways, this dish is definitely sweet based and has red bean paste and other sweet stuff in it. Overall, I love this dessert but it was very stuffing because it's made out of sticky rice!

Service: 3/5

Food: 3.5/5

Price: $$

Overall Rating: 3.25/5

Enjoy!
-Jess