Fortune Terrace Chinese Cuisine — Restaurant in Richmond

Went to this restaurant with my family for a big dinner. Was expecting great things from it. Could not have been more wrong. The minute I was within the vicinity, I was greeted with the stench of cigarette smoke. The restaurant should make sure people who smoke are at least 6 metres away from the door. But that's not important, so my family and I take a seat. The service is great so far, they are patient with us as we choose what to eat. We place our order and begin to wait. That's when the nightmare begins.

We ordered two cold plate appetizers, two very standard and easy appetizers. Expecting the cold appetizers to come first, the restaurant serves a hot soup and one of the main course right away, before placing the cold appetizer on the table. The other appetizer did not even show up on our table. The host placed the order but lack of communication meant that the kitchen didn't prepare it. Even worst, the restaurant had the audacity to ask for payment for the unseen appetizer.

Moving on to the main courses. We order a few dishes, one being a steamed fish. The restaurant brought out the live fish to show us what fish they had chosen for us. It was nice and fresh, that was good. We then proceed to wait for the dish. We wait, and wait, and wait. We ask the host in charge of our table, he brushes us off saying it will take another 3 minutes. Okay, we tell ourselves, but another 10 minutes pass by, and we still don't see our fish. Suddenly, one of the waiters bring out a steamed fish. We are like yes! And then the waiter puts it down on the table next to us. The table next to us had arrived a good thirty minutes after us, yet their dish arrived first, something's not right here. We ask the host again, and apparently, the waiter had made a blunder and given the table next to us our fish. Wow okay. The host immediately went to get the kitchen to prepare a fresh one for us. At this point, we're not too pleased, but we still had some hope for this restaurant. But this hope dwindles as another 20 minutes pass before our fish, which is noticeably smaller than the one we originally had, was brought to our table.

After the appetizer and the main course, we were pretty much done with this restaurant. However, this restaurant offered a unique dessert. Caramelized banana that requires great finesse and skill to serve. If anything was going to save the restaurant it was going to be this dessert. The server had no idea how to serve the dish. He placed the dish in the preparation table, and then, looking at our table, where we still had dirty plates everywhere, proceeds to clean up our table first. The dessert HAS to be served hot, the dessert HAS to be pulled apart before the sugar hardens, but this server just leaves it on the table and begins to clean our table. This reflects that the servers do not have proper knowledge on the dishes provided! After cleaning the table, the server tried to serve the dessert, but the caramelized banana was squished and mangled to the point where it was extremely unappetizing and had to be returned.

Furthermore, the fact that the server did not know how to serve reflected how bad the training the service was. The host never apologized for the blunder he made with messing up our order, serving the dishes in a totally wrong order, serving the wrong table and not knowing the procedures in preparing the dessert. Instead, he feigns being extremely busy serving the other tables. If you mess up, at least have the guts to admit it.

The one star is deserving though, as the abalone they prepared was extremely good. The sauce captured the essence of the ingredient, and elevated the abalone to a whole new level. The other main courses were also relatively good, but a bit on the sweet side.

In conclusion, the main courses were good, good enough to warrant a one star rating, but if you do go, make sure to check the order, and don't expect exceptional service. If you do, prepare to be utterly...

Fortune Terrace is one of the many Chinese restaurants that you can find in Richmond. The thing that really sticks out in my mind whenever we visit this place is the humongous digital screen which takes up a whole wall. Seriously, I need one of these tvs for my home.

We showed up for dim sum service in early November and found that they weren’t too busy. It might be because their prices tend to be a bit on the high side (but we did get 12% off for our dim sum meal).

First off is the Beef Tripe in XO Sauce ($8.80). There’s plenty of tender honeycomb tripe in this dish and the spicy XO sauce that they use is really good.

Next up is the Chicken Feet in Supreme Sauce ($7.80). The 5 pieces of chicken feet were quite tender and easy to suck the skin and gelatinous stuff off the bone.

One of the dishes that looked impressive was the Sweetheart Red Bean Rose ($7.80) but I felt that it needed more red bean filling on the inside.

The Truffle Siu Mai ($8.80) were small dumplings with the faintest aroma of truffle but turned out tasty.

The last dish on our first visit was the Truffle Lobster Crispy Rice Roll ($9.80) which had a greenish crispy layer inside the red rice roll which encased the lobster. Again, just the faintest hint of truffle aroma in this dish.

On our next visit here, we were seated right up against the huge tv screen (which really isn’t the most ideal place to soak in the atmosphere).

We remembered that we really enjoyed the tripe so we did a reorder of the Beef Tripe in XO Sauce ($8.80).

Next up was the Scallop Tofu Dumpling ($8.80) which turned out nicely with these green dumplings that had a mochi-like chewy wrapper that encased the scallop and tofu filling.

The Ground Beef Rice Rolls ($9.80) seemed a bit on the expensive side of things. It was an okay dish and probably larger than some of the beef rice roll dishes at other restaurants but not sure if this is worth the price.

We ordered the Beef Brisket Hot Pot ($18.80) kind of expecting a different dish. Guess this is one of those times when the English menu translation doesn’t work well. In addition to the beef brisket, there was plenty of tendon and tripe which were swimming in the simple but flavourful broth.

The Rabbit Coconut Cakes ($7.80) has a very subtle coconut flavour (which suited us just fine). Probably wouldn’t order this again but it is a cute dish.

The dessert that really impressed us was the Matcha Black Sesame Flowering Pear ($8.80) which had a warm black sesame filling that oozed out of the crisp skin when you bit into it. If you’re gonna order a dessert dish here, make sure it’s this one.

Overall, most dishes here were pretty good. Well worth the visit just for the matcha black sesame pears.

Update: November 2024 - It's been about 4 years since we last visited Fortune Terrace. You have to pay for parking now (make sure to let them know when you pay as they give you $3.50 reimbursement).

Had the truffle lobster crispy rice roll ($13.80) with very tiny lobster in the roll (they have more shrimp inside than lobster). The matcha black sesame flowing pears ($9.80) are always a winner. Make sure to eat it while it is still warm and the black sesame filling is still lava-like. Also ordered the beef balls ($9.80), and XO pan fried radish cake ($15.80). The steamed shrimp and scallop dumpling with truffle ($12.80) had shredded scallop on the green dumplings in the centre piece.

Iwas surprised at how large the shrimp paste stuffed eggplant in Thai sauce was ($12.80). Seriously huge pieces and mainly shrimp paste on the inside.

Prices have definitively gone up here but mostly good...

You can put lipstick on a pig and it's still a pig! No matter how fancy this restaurant tries to be, this restaurant is a mess! From reception to departure. Reservations made and the hostess led us to a table that still have patrons sitting there. Then we were led back to the waiting area. The table cloth wasn't cloth, it was of a material similar to baby diaper. It was thick, tan colored, and it wasn't classy. The food menu was extensive and we specifically looked for items that were unique and promoted in the special menu.

Food: Thai chicken feet: Broken skin, roughly chopped and poorly presented. Sadly, this would turn out to be their most decent dish that we ordered Braised pomelo pith: bitter and rough texture! Showing poor preparation. Pomelo pith takes time to prepare and clean so the bitterness is removed. Deep fried fish roll: drenched in oil. The absorbent sheet of paper that it lay on wasn't enough to handle the excessive oil. Their deep fryer oil temp must be weak and overused to have this result Salt pepper chicken knee: supposed to be bite sized not McDonald's McNuggets size due to excessive batter. Salted fish chicken buns: Little filling, unpleasantly salty, shows poor preparation of ingredients and lack of generosity of filling yet charged high priced as a specialty item. Baked scallop taro pastry: supposed to be warm. It was truly cold and that caused the scallops to be rubbery Steamed fish rice roll: the menu picture shows pea shoots in the filling. We got cucumber slices. This is an expensive rice roll and this replacement of pea shoots with cucumber slices is a rip-off! Mochi mango rolls: artificial flavours abound. A promoted item that you'd assume should be good. Unfortunately, really bad and you can tell that it's artificial flavouring because of the aftertaste which is nothing resembling mango. It had a fruit rollup aftertaste! Steamed lava egg buns: supposed to be cute in presentation as it was also a promoted dim sum item. Laughingly, it looked like it was assembled by a preschooler!!

Total with tips (15%) and tax minus $2.50 for underground parking: $161 for 4 people

Conclusion: Every Chinese restaurant know that dim sum lunch is a gateway to evening dinner. If they show good preparation and sincere effort and decent mastery of cooking skills, patrons would be more willing to try their dinner offerings. I, along with my family, cannot in good conscience recommend this restaurant. We never had to use so much EQ to eat dim sum especially in Richmond! Service was no better than a Hong Kong cafe as the servers approach the table, cutting in between sitting patrons, and placed the food roughly. I don't care how busy you are, but if you present yourself as a classy dim sum restaurant, you serve your patrons with care! Their system of placing ready made foods on a long table along the wall for servers to pick up and deliver to tables is amateurish as we watched food getting cold because it was left on the long table for too long. All the while, patrons were walking too closely by the waiting food. Really amateurish. I don't see other Chinese restaurants doing this. And don't get me talking about their washrooms!!!...