eatwith.ROBINLEUNG.com

Location: 5701 Granville St, Vancouver, BC V6M 3C5

Phone: (604) 263-3983

Hours: N/A

Hints:

• Pay parking
• Famous for abalone/shark fin and seafood
• Reservations recommended (on weekends)

Grand Honour Restaurant has been around for a very long time. I remembered being here for dinner way back when food bloggers never really existed. Anyhow, we’re back again for mom’s lunar birthday. Yes, Chinese people have two birthdays. It really drives me nuts sometimes because the thing with lunar birthdays is that it’s not the same day each year.

Anyways, we came for dinner tonight on a special occasion: Mom’s Birthday. It was a weekday, so there wasn’t a lot of people though we made reservations just in case. There are street parking on the road if you didn’t feel like parking in the complex that require you to pay.

You will know they are a higher end restaurant if they serve something like those 2 dishes on your table without asking. It really is an indication of class.

I haven’t been keeping up with the recent ban on shark fins in metro Vancouver. But they are becoming more rare  as people want to become more social responsible. Eating shark fin is another indication for class in Asian culture. The soup was a thick  texture soup. And if you’ve never had shark fin before, it almost tastes like thick vermicelli except with more density. The soup was good and clear.

The deep fried squab was tasty and juicy. It wasn’t the juiciest I’ve had, the best still remains at Koon Bo. But this one isn’t bad. It’s smaller though.

This was a new dish I’ve never had. It doesn’t have a lot of meat, but in Chinese we call it “yu shun” which is the fish’s lip. It was surprisingly very good. I glimpsed at the other table and they were complimenting on this dish, so we ordered the same dish. It was indeed very good.

This dish was piping hot when served, it wasn’t my first time having this exact dish at another restaurant. I’ve got to say they’re not bad at all. The scallops were fresh and big. My favourite is actually the tofu, which is deep fried and soaked back into the bubbly sauce. The sauce was a little sweet and a little spicy. The combination of the two was perfect.

This dish was a bit disappointing, the tastes were all good. But the beef was just a little fat. I’m not sure if this was kobe beef that was served but definitely not lean. Besides that, I really liked the sauce.

One could say it’s easy to make fried rice, you just put everything into the pan and just go at it. But it’s not easy to make good fried rice. And Grand Honour did a pretty good job here, the rice is not hard and not soggy. It was just right, on top of that it smelled really good when it arrived. Not many places use scallions on this dish, but it was actually not bad. One of my favourite fried rice of all times.

And for dessert, we have a sweet green mung bean soup. There’s an ingredient in there (the dark green looking strips) called “stinky grass” in Chinese. And it apparently goes well with this dessert. It’s not stinky or anything, just the name of it. The dessert was a bit sweet to my liking.

Overall, dinner doesn’t disappoint here. Especially food wise. It’s not super expensive, unless you start to order shark fins and abalone and the like. If you order just regular dishes, it’s pretty average pricing with the other Seafood restaurants. The service was alright, not spectacular. It never is at a Chinese restaurant. The bill came to just over $135 for 4. The ambiance is alright, it’s not spectacular. However, one thing to note is that their Air Con. is really high. So I recommend bringing a scarf or the sort for all those ladies.