Colour See See 上海本色 — Restaurant in Burnaby

This is one of the few authentic Shanghai restaurants in Greater Vancouver. Both the owner and the chef are from Shanghai. As soon as you step in, you're greeted by the soft Shanghai dialect, and not long after, an old man comes in. Hearing the boss's soft, sticky call of "Mr. Zhao" in Shanghai dialect, I suddenly feel like I'm back in Shanghai in the 1940s.

We ordered the Lujiazui set with mini wontons (小馄饨) and pan-fried buns (生煎包), plus an additional oil tofu vermicelli soup (油豆腐粉丝汤) and preserved beancut (烤麸). The preserved beancut has an authentic taste, slightly sweet but not greasy, with a good texture. It would be top-notch even in Shanghai. The oily tofu is not soft, very chewy, and when bitten into, it exudes a unique fresh flavor of bean products, which is also delicious. The soup as a whole is a little bit light, if it's in Shanghai, it should be a lot of spicy or 5-Spice powder, I wonder. Anyway, it's already very delicious and authentic. Oh yes, the soup itself feels a bit like Shuang Dang (双档) soup.

The pan-fried buns are a typical Shanghai style, with the opening at the bottom (the Xiao Yang's pan-fried buns are the North JiangSu style, with the opening at the top). The preparation is authentic, and the meat is well processed (those who have stayed in North America know how difficult it is to handle pork here). Unfortunately, the bottom is not crisp enough, a bit sticky, which is a pity.

The pan-fried buns and panfried dumplings (锅贴) here are made to order, very fresh, and especially delicate. The restaurant is very clean and stylish, and we should come often in the future.

There are two parking spaces behind the restaurant, and if there are no spaces left, you can park across the street at Metro Town and walk over, which is generally convenient. They also sell dumplings and buns in frozen, but considering the taste, I didn't buy them - such a good restaurant...

DO NOT COME HERE. We never got our food b/c they never put in our order.

Firstly, we came in through the backdoor b/c that's where the parking is and no one greeted us at all when we walked to the front and waited. Ended up having to go up to someone and ask for a table for two, even though I was clearly standing there for ages.

We filled in our order sheet, and my husband got up to give the sheet to the waitress at the counter (because the waitress was terrible and doesn't check on her customers). We waited around... had to ask two different people for tea... literally half an hour later, one of the staff came by, looked at us in confusion and said something to us in Mandarin (which we don't understand) and started speaking to the waitress and rifling through papers at the counter. Basically, the waitress NEVER PUT OUR ORDER IN. She somehow just left our order sheet on the front counter for the whole 30 minutes we were sitting there.

We ended up walking out after that because we weren’t going to waste more of our time - I'm really not sure how long the food would have taken after that if they had put in our order by that point but I was fed up with their awful service.

There were only 3 other tables...and the waitress was clearly a disaster. Their staff were just yelling at each other the whole time we were there, and we could see other tables getting their food piecemeal and constantly discussing with the staff and pointing to their order papers - couldn’t understand Mandarin, but I assume they got their orders wrong or items were constantly missing. A Fantuan delivery person came to pick up an order at some point, and after some discussion, he left because I assume the order wasn't even ready for him to pick up.

Overall, worst restaurant experience of my life and will never,...

I always walked pass this joint and finally tried it today with my mom. I used to come to the Japanese restaurant that was here before but when they closed down I never came back to this area. Anyways, limited menu but as per the owner explained (I'm surprised I understood his Shanghainese when I barely practice it anymore) they are a very small operation so they only focus on certain dishes. My mom actually asked them if they would do noodles but they can't due to the limited resources. Back to the food, I'm pretty blown away by the actual authenticity of food (dude my mom didn't complain for once 😂 and she always complains) we personally don't like XLB so we ordered the wantons, we ordered both the big and small one. I loved the big wontons, the ratio from veggie to meat is perfect imo. My mom prefers the small wontons because it's easier for her to eat. The broth reminded me how my grandma used to make and it brought back memories. You notice there are seaweed, dried baby shrimps in the broth. The pan fried buns and shrimp/pork filling dumplings were so juicy it squirted out so please bite it carefully 👍 the spring rolls are not your typical ones you get at dimsum places with shrimp. This Shanghainese way is cabbage and mushrooms and it's with moist/wet center. We liked the wontons so much we ordered frozen ones to take home. They do try their best to offer both English and Chinese menu but the ordering sheet is entirely in Chinese so it may be challenging or...