Hyack Sushi–New Westminster

A new sushi restaurant popped up next to Douglas College during October.  They seemed to have been renovating all summer and finally opened.

This is from their front street entrance:

They also have a back entrance with some parking spaces too:

They have an unusual wide open empty space at the front of the restaurant:

However, they also have a huge seating area so there shouldn’t be too many issues getting seating even when busy:

We ordered BC Roll and Dynamite rolls to try:

They were presented very nicely on a fancy plate.  The rice had perfect texture for both.  They had a generous amount of salmon for the BC roll.  Also there were two plump deep fried prawns inside the dynamite roll.  Usually at other places you only get one skinny piece of prawn, so having 2 here at Hyack felt like a bonus.

We also tried the deep fried California roll:

This was quite a modern take on the traditional Cali roll.  It was presented very nicely just like above.  It includes some spicy sauce and some teriyaki sauce to top it off.  The batter was very light and not too oily.  It was sort of like tempura batter.  This is a must try if you come to Hyack Sushi.

We also ordered assorted tempura:

It came with 3 pieces of prawn and the rest were yam.  It was the first time I had yam tempura where it was cut like yam fries.  We’d prefer the flat slices instead as this feels smaller.

We also tried chicken karrage.

It had about 8 plump pieces of boneless dark meat and came with a spicy mayo dipping sauce.  The chicken was quite fresh and was mildly seasoned.  It went well with the sauce.

Hyack is very new so it’s not too busy yet.  They have a lot of modern hip sushis that you can try out.  The assorted tempura would have been better if it had bigger pieces of yam or even some other veggies to spruce up the color.  The servers were very friendly and attentive and prices are actually quite good for what you get.  We’ll certainly be coming back to try out their other special sushies later.

SFDD gives 4 out of 5 Delights.

Patsara Thai Restaurant - New Westminster

I was out for a walk with a friend one day in New Westminster and he pointed out that there was a Thai restaurant in the purple building.  Wow, I was quite surprised it was a restaurant as there were hardly any signs or menus on the building to indicate that it was a restaurant.  I went inside to take a copy of their menu home to view.  Immediately I saw they had quite a good selection of value lunch specials for $8.50.

I headed back there a week later with some friends to try out the place.

The interior looks clean and modern with some hints of Thai ornaments decorating the restaurant.

This is their lunch special menu with pictures:

All of the lunch special meals include a free spring roll. 

It's a vegetarian spring roll with assorted veggies and vermicelli. The spring roll tasted quite good as it was fresh out the fryer and was not overly cooked.

For most of the lunch meals, you can choose your mean (beef/pork/chicken). some you can choose shrimp.  The server also asked our preference for spiciness (mild/medium/hot).

This is the pad thai with shrimp:

This was a good lunch size portion for one person.  It came out steaming hot.  I did not try the pad thai but the comment I head  was that it was a bit too salty.

This is the Panang curry with beef. 

We were unsure what this was since it looked similar to the red curry from the pictures.  The server explained it contained extra spices as well as some cream.

I asked for medium spicy.  It also came piping hot with a good size bowl of rice.The curry was very creamy, a bit of an orange colour which reminded me of a squash soup.  It had a deep taste and smell from the extra herbs.  Overall the flavour was good as long as you have it with rice.  It is a bit salty too though.  But the rice helps dilute the saltiness.   The beef was a tad too chewy.  I'm not sure of the beef used, but it tasted like the type used for beef fried noodle at Chinese places.

This is the lettuce wrap with chicken.  It was not from the special lunch menu.

It was also a good sized portion.

Finally this is just another shot of the spring rolls when ordered separately as an appetizer.  It includes 4 pieces as well as a small salad on the side. 

The service here was good as the servers were quite attentive and kept our waters topped up.  The food also came out fast and fresh. We knew the food was fresh as we can hear the food getting fried up from the kitchen in the woks.  Some of the dishes were a bit too salty though so it masked the better tasting curry spices. 

However we are not deterred at all. We will still come back to try other dishes but I think I would request less salt at the time of ordering just to be safe next time.

This place has good value choices for lunch and looking at their regular dinner, the prices are not over the top either.

SFDD gives 3.5 out of 5 Delights.

Banh Mi Bar - New Westminster

Banh Mi Bar opened sometime during the Summer 2016 and we had a few chances to try it out. It is about a block away from Douglas College.

Banh Mi Bar is run by a young and very friendly couple.  It has a simple menu with about 6 or 7 different varieties of the typical banh mi flavours you can find elsewhere.  This is a small shop with just a few counter seats available if you want to stay and eat.  Most people I’ve seen usually get take out.

I ordered the chicken banh mi.  Like others, it’s made to order and has the usual toppings like cilantro, cucumber, pickled carrots and radish.   They will ask if you want jalapeno too.

The banh mi is presented reasonably nice in a plastic basket  The bread is very fresh while crunchy on the outside and soft on the inside.  I also like the sauce that was used.  It is kind of like mustard sauce which I don’t recall having tried before at other banh mi places. Perhaps this is their special secret sauce.

Overall, the prices here are quite reasonable and the sandwiches are quite fresh.  They have a stamp program where you get a free sub after X number of purchases. It’s good to have something different in this neighborhood.

SFDD gives 4 out of 5 Delights.

Boston Pizza - New West Queensborough

We visited Boston Pizza (BP) to try out their $10 lunch specials being promoted since Fall 2016.  I think this is our first time visiting BP.  We arrived just before noon and the restaurant was still quiet.  We were seated promptly.

There was quite a variety to choose from in their $10 half time lunch specials.

The first lunch plate we chose was the roasted Veggie and Pesto flatbread.

This was presented beautifully with a generous amount of fresh toppings.  It was cooked perfectly.  The flat bread was very fluffy as well.  The size is probably equivalent to a small pizza.

The second plate we chose was the Thai chicken wrap paired with a side salad. 

This was not part of the $10 lunch menu but the price was just a couple of dollars more.

There was lots of chicken breast strips inside the wrap.  The lettuce and onions were also quite fresh.  The Thai part of this wrap was the fried crunchy noodles and Thai chili sauce.  This tasted quite good.  The side salad was also quite fresh.

Unfortunately, we found something wrong with the 2nd half of the wrap (hair).  However, they corrected this issue for us right away when we brought this to the attention of the server.

Service was quick and friendly and the food was quite good (except for the hair).  I’m sure this was just an isolated incident.  We still would like to visit BP again to try their other $10 half time choices for lunch.  Probably we would visit another location.

SFDD gives 3 out of 5 Delights.

Thai Box 2Go - New Westminster

Thai Box is a small family run Thai restaurant along 6th St in New West. We got there just past noon on Friday for lunch and found the restaurant was rather quiet so we had our pick of seats.  You can find plenty of street parking in the residential side streets.  It’s pay parking if you want to park right outside the restaurant.

The restaurant had lot of Thai decorations all around.

We saw their menu ahead of time and were targeting their $10 set lunch specials. 

There were 4 of us and we all chose something different.

With each dish, you can choose your meat or vegetarian option.  All of the dishes we ordered came with 2 fried dumplings.

Pad Thai with chicken:

The pad thai was not flavoured very well. It was way too sweet.  The noodles were not too overcooked while portion wise, it was reasonable for $10 lunch 

This is the yellow curry chicken. 

It includes a serving of rice.  My lunch mates commented that it was good.

This one is the green curry chicken and my lunch mate also mentioned it was good.

Thai Box had nice presentation for their dishes.  Their prices were reasonable and the server was very polite. They even offered to split the bill for us.  As a bonus they accept credit cards which is rare for Asian restaurants.  The pad thai can use some improvement in terms of flavor balancing.

SFDD gives 3 out of 5 Delights.

Sushi Yen - New Westminster

A couple of my friends and I were craving for some sushi so we checked out this relatively new Sushi place on 6th Street in New West.

We got there on Friday just a few minutes past noon and the restaurant was rather quiet since they usually open at 11:30am.  We were seated in a cozy corner giving us a good overview of the restaurant.

According to the menu, all orders come with a free miso soup.  So we got a few of these served with our order.  My friend commented that this is the sweeter type of miso soup. I don’ t think I’ve tried it before but it was indeed, less salty and had a tad of sweetness to it.  It had not seaweed in it, but some visible pieces of tofu.

We ordered some fried octopus (karaage). It came with a spicy mayo dipping sauce.  The octopus came fried in a very light batter so it was quite good.

We ordered a couple of their knock off Japadogs to share. This one is the Orishi Ponzu.  It has some grated daikon inside of it.  I thought the raw daikon was a bit strange, I usually have it cooked and never had it inside a hot dog before.  Both of the hotdogs had a thick full sized wiener.

This one is the Teri-Mayo.  It had a couple of different sauces inside and similar to the one above it had seaweed scattered on the top.

This is Korean Style fried chicken. There are a couple of flavours to choose from.  We got the sweet and spicy  one.  It comes with about 12 large pieces. They are boneless and had a light batter with some sesame sprinkled on top.  It had a unique zing to it and was complemented well with the sweetness too.  It was not overly saucy too.  This dish would have went well with a bowl of rice.

We also got a BC roll to try.  It was a bit small.  They put some sweet sauce on the top which tasted well with the salmon inside the BC roll.

This restaurant appears to be family run.  Service was attentive but one hiccup was that they could not provide us with a table knife as we wanted to cut the hotdog ourselves.  The server was apologetic about not having a knife available so we didn’t think much of it.

We’d certainly like to come back soon to try their other Korean style fried chicken as that was the best part of our meal.

SFDD gives 3.5 out of 5 Delights.

Shang Noodle House - New Westminster

Shang Noodle House is located in New Westminster’s Starlight Casino.  We found a Groupon deal for this place so we decided to try it out.  There is also a location in Richmond too but we thought New West would have less people.  They serve a variety of Asian noodles.

We got here at around 6pm Saturday and the place was rather quiet but more people trekked in to fill up the place after 6:30pm or so.

The restaurant is large with a lot of seating.  It’s a rather casual dining area. When we first walked in it felt like a cafeteria because it was so big.  The service was quite good as the servers were quite attentive and friendly to bring us to our tables, take our orders and bring us tea.

For the Groupon deal for 2, you get a selection of appetizers, a choice of noodles from their menu, 2 pops and dessert.

The spicy wonton came first:

There were 5 pieces of the wonton in a spicy soy sauce.  It was a plump average wonton.

Then came the fried chicken wings:

It came topped with some fried garlic.  The wings had a good zing to it and was not too oily nor overly fried.  It would have been better if the wings were consistently sized.  As you can see there were a couple of mini wings.

For the main noodle dish, we both chose the featured ramen in lobster bisque soup with grilled pork chop.

The noodle was a rather large portion.  In terms of taste, the soup was not overly seasoned/MSG.  The noodles may have been a tad too soggy for our liking.  We would prefer the noodles to be more chewy (al dante).

The pork chops came on a side dish like this.

They were already sliced but as you can see, the pork chop was rather thin.

The dessert was mango pudding:

The mango pudding was quite good, it had pieces of real mango inside and was not too sweet.  We were quite full from this Groupon deal.  Overall the food was good and they did not skimp because we were using a Groupon.

This location’s parking was quite convenient as you can use the large casino parking lot.  You also don’t have to walk through the casino to get to the restaurant as it’s located outside of the actual casino.  The servers all seemed very friendly.

We’d certainly like to come back to try their other noodles too. Even without a Groupon, their regular prices are very reasonable for the portion they serve.

SFDD gives 3.5 out of 4 Delights.