筷炒 Corner 29 — Restaurant in Vancouver

Visited for dim sum on a Saturday around 1130. Paid street parking along main street so prepare for the usual dance of the cars. Had to wait 15-20 mins for a table despite a reservation. Regardless, the owner/manager was apologetic and was very personable and hardworking.

Food: We ordered har gow, teamed BBQ pork buns, handscraped rice rolls with beef + cilantro, shrimp-stuffed eggplants, fried shrimp & chive pastry, and ma lai go (brown sugar sponge cake). Waited 15-20mins for our order, which is unusually long for dim sum, but I can say it was very much worth the wait. The price was very reasonable, especially for the portion sizes.

Everything came all at once and hot out of the kitchen. We were actually quite stunned by the portion sizes, as we were used to smaller dim sum we find in Richmond. Everything tasted great, and not too salty (we didn't experience dry mouth after our meal which is a good indicator for our personal level of seasoning and salt) The handscraped rice rolls were excellent, and had bounce in texture. The pan fried chive pastry was delicious and thick with shrimp, the stuffed eggplants were remarkably huge, and the sponge cake was a great dessert to end the meal.

Atmosphere: they opened back in summer 2023 I believe. The building itself and interior appears a little older. Be careful when you enter--there's about an inch step at the door and I saw 3 people trip over the threshold while waiting for a table. The restrooms are down a flight of stairs that some people may find the steps a bit narrow, so if you have mobility issues or with older diners, you should take precaution when going down there.

All in all, would go back and dim-sum...

New Dumsum option, so decided to give it a try based on the reviews above. Needless to say, left dissapointing.

Service - yes, as most mentioned, it was lacking. I had to ask for tea 3x before received. Time it takes to place order and recieve out first dish was 15 minutes. This is extremely a long wait time for dimsum.

Also, when taking away dirty dishes, please don't try to hold dishes from other tables over the ones that you are clearing with food at the table still. At one point I was extremely worried the dirty dishes and utensils would drop.

Advice to restaurant - place dishes from other tables away first before trying to clear other tables. It's not appetizing looking at other individuals/tables plates of finished bones.

Cleanliness - floors were greasy where we sat, also had to return multiple dirty plates and bowls. Needless to say, the kids as a result did not want to eat on their plates.

Advice to restaurant - Please check your plates for simple things suck as grease and oil, it is very noticeable seeing orange oil spots all over. Example of what a lot of the dishes had.

Food - presentation of the food is good. However, the food had lots of MSG. I react to MSG and and by the end of the meal my head was throbbing. For those that are sensitive to MSG, stay away.

Washrooms - Functionally, not the best idea to place washroom on the basement of the restaurant. Anyone with seniors, please be careful. I saw a few struggling up and down the stairs.

Not a wheelchair friendly or walking cane...

Corner 29 is appropriately located on the corner of 29th (and Main Street). Formerly Meet Rice and Kings before that. The interior looks a bit brighter than before (they have an awkwardly placed skylight on one side of the restaurant which may have aided the lighting).

First dish to arrive was the hand scraped rice roll with beef and cilantro. Not a thin rice roll but nice and velvety and more of a mouth feel from the rice rolls.

Not bad steamed spareribs in garlic sauce and the chaozhou (chiu chow) dumplings were large with a thinish wrapper (tho it had a tendency to break due to the amount of filling).

The braised beef tripe with special sauce was tender and had good flavour.

Huge portion of eggplant stuffed with shrimp paste. We also ordered the deep fried dumplings with diced shrimp and pork (we always call these things football because of their shape). Unfortunately, it took forever for this dish to come out and we had to ask a couple of times for it.

Overall, the food is pretty solid, the portions are generous and most dim sum dishes were about $8-9. On the down side, the food seemed to take long to come out (football took an hour from when we ordered them). Washrooms are weirdly placed downstairs so you might have problems if you have...