Heritage Asian Eatery — Restaurant in Vancouver

The website looks good – I liked the picture of the deep fried tofu and the presentation. That’s what I am going to order. This is a case where the pictures look better than the actual food – was that stock art? I expected to see a nicely laid out board with the menu items presented in the same style as the website, but two old fashioned light boxes tells a different story. The other people in front of us studied the tiny printed menu sheets instead of choosing from the light boxes. The main fare are the rice bowls. But we already had rice at lunch time, so I ordered from the side menu: crispy tofu, marinated eggplant, XLB dumplings and steamed Bok Choy. Except for the XLB, every side dish has the same flavour. Intense and aggressively spicy. I was disappointed with the tofu because I really wanted to taste the tofu shown on the menu page of their website. Our tofu dish was drenched in hot sauce with a different kind of hot sauce on top. The egg plant seemed to have been deep fried, the meat was very soft, but the skin was tough. I expected the steamed Bok Choy dish to be the neutralizer – for clearing our palette in between flavours. But it had the same sauce as the eggplant. The XLB took 15 minutes to arrive as we were warned, we were very glad to have them because our mouths were too hot sauce bombed by that time. While crispy onion with ginger seem to be the de facto garnish, the XLB is missing the ginger flavour, too porky. It seems that the side dishes are not meant to be eaten without a rice bowl. With so many sandwich places in the area, a quasi Asian Eatery is a good idea. But a lighter hand and more variation in flavour will provide a better balance. 2 stars for the won’t go away. 2 stars for the house sauce taste that caused a sleepless night, 2 stars for execution, 2 stars for the lack of taste variation, 3 stars for the concept of local produce. 2 stars for...

this place has the cooollest dark green and gold aesthetic / interior design !!

the desserts were for sure the best part. the brownie was DELICIOUSSS, it was super warm, had a really good crunch from the panko coating, not overly sweet, and went perfectly with cold ice cream. i am just a sucker for warm desserts paired with ice cream. the black sesame balls had a super thick, chewy outer layer that was a subtle pairing with the sweet black sesame filling. it was super good was some milk.

i got the bbq plate with all three meats and substituted the rice with thick egg noodles, and it was pretty delectable. the meat isn’t as high quality and juicy as some other bbq places in specialty richmond restaurants for example, but they definitely weren’t bad either. some bites—especially the pork belly—were nice and fatty which i really liked. both sauces that came with it (ginger scallion oil and the sweet orange one) went super well with all the meats and definitely added a nice salty and sweet kick. the skin on the chicken and the duck were also good, but there was quite a lot of bone imo, and some pieces were a tad dry. the noodles were really well made too, and it was a nice change of pace from the rice that i usually eat alongside the meats. although i do think the ratio of noodle to meat was a bit off — there was a lot more meat than noodles.

the prawn toast was also a highlight, it was super crispy on the outside and had really creamy filling, i would definitely recommend ordering this. all the other appetizers were just...

Generous portions at a good value.

We tried the following (from best to least enjoyed):

Cauliflower ($5) - AMAZING. I need to start making a list of the city's best cauliflower, this one would be near the top of the list. You get a HEAP load of cauliflower for $5. This was almost a meal in itself.

XLB Dumplings ($7) - There's a bit of a wait time for these to be steamed but it's well worth the wait. Juicy and thin-skinned. My only complaint is that the skin of the dumpling stuck to the bottom paper which caused some of them to rip.

Pork Belly Rice Bowl ($13) - Fatty portions of soft pork (melt in your mouth) with some fresh ingredients tossed in made this delicious and (somewhat) light.

DanDan Noodles ($12) - I was most excited to try this dish but ended up being disappointed as it was a bit too peanut-buttery for my liking.

We did not anticipate the big portions for each order so we ended up packing up a lot of leftovers to take home. The guy at the front even asked us if there was going to be another person joining us. HA, no, we're just two gluttons.

It's an eatery so you order at the front, find seating and wait for your name to be called. The self-serving water, cutlery, napkins, sauces and leftover take out boxes are handy and efficient.

That doesn't mean that we didn't experience some great service while we're there though. Once the rush died down, one of the guys from the back came out to clean off the tables, offered to clean our trays and made sure we had a paper bag to carry...