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Shanghai Wonderful Restaurant
Category: Restaurants Chinese Chinese [Edit]
8380 Lansdowne RdSte 110
Richmond, BC V6X 3M6
Neighbourhood: Golden Village
(604) 278-8829
- Price Range:
-
$$
- Accepts Credit Cards:
- No
- Parking:
- Private Lot
- Attire:
- Casual
- Good for Groups:
- Yes
- Good for Kids:
- Yes
- Takes Reservations:
- Yes
- Take Away:
- Yes
- Waiter Service:
- Yes
- Outdoor Seating:
- No
- Good For:
- Dinner
- Noise Level:
- Loud
- Has TV:
- No
- Wheelchair Accessible:
- Yes
22 reviews for Shanghai Wonderful Restaurant
Review Highlights
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"Their xiao long bao is fantastic." In 7 reviews -
"I agree with Marc D, very decent XLB." In 8 reviews -
"We had the Hot and Sour soup, spicy beef hot pot, Shanghai..." In 3 reviews
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22 reviews in English
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Review from Hans N.
Richmond, BC
5/13/2012
My family loves this restaurant. It's usually busy in weekends during lunch. Great food at a reasonable price. Unfortunately, finding a place to park your car can be a real drag. Shanghai can be wonderful if you can solve your parking dilemna.
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Review from Billy L.
Port Coquitlam, BC
11/23/2011 1 Check-in Here
The name itself may be laughable, maybe that should have used It's So Wonderful: Shanghainese Cuisine, cause the food is wonderful. First clue that it may possible be wonderful, a line up. Second clue, bumped into a friend in the restaurant and said they were pretty damn good. Overall I would say it's pretty good Shanghainese food and that I would return for lunch. XLB was very unique, soup inside the dumpling was very different from the other XLB soups i've had.
Tips: Parking is somewhat bad, if you drive a nice car you may want to park a little further and just walk cause you may get bumped by patrons who can't park ;)( Witnessed a couple close calls while i was waiting in line)
THUMBS UP TO SHANGHAI WONDERFUL!Listed in: The best and worst Shanghai…
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Review from Neill M.
Richmond, BC
12/18/2011
Really authentic chinese food, once you get past the entrance it's all gravy from there (or should I say soy sauce)
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Review from Reena M.
I must write this review before I forget about it! I came here for dinner tonight and it was wonderful!!! Pun intended! Let's break it down into what we ordered from best to eh...
Their xiao long bao is fantastic! They're cute and little, unlike at Wang's in Crystal Mall (also funny, because Shanghai Wonderful is called "Wang" in Chinese). The broth is delicious and the meat is well seasoned. They give you 6 for $5.25.
We also ordered these interesting duck with taro encased in batter and fried? They were amazing. It was served with these little steam bun taco shell-like things and hoisin sauce. You want to make sure you eat them fast or the buns get hard. I never had anything like those before.
The next best thing, which was also amazing, was the rice cakes with pork and some greens, shanghai style? I don't remember the name of it because of course our token Asian friend ordered everything in Mandarin.
The vegetarian hot and sour soup was also good. It was perfectly spicy and had two kinds of mushrooms--the chinese mushrooms and woodear mushrooms! It really warms you up on a wintery day.
We had ordered the sliced pork belly with garlic.. I don't know if the menu said pork belly or just sliced pork. This dish is served cold. It was good, but I didn't like the fat around it... and it was too much work to remove it. So it ended up getting left.
This is my first mind-blowing Chinese food experience in Richmond and I've been to a few other places before (clearly I have been going to the wrong places!). I can't wait to go back!
Oh, P.S. they don't take credit cards. Cash and debit only. -
Review from Lisa W.
1/5/2011 3 photos
3.75 stars
My unquenchable thirst for xiao long bao's have yet to be sated until I arrived at Shanghai Wonderful.
My last visit to Vancouver was approximately 19 years ago, any amorous memories of delicious chinese fare ingested have long been forgotten. On January 1st, I was fondly reminded.
Our group of 14 ordered 6 orders of pork xlb's,4 pork & crab xlb's, 3 tan tan noodles, a vegetarian wok tossed noodle, combination fried rice, chicken potstickers, shanghainese thick soup noodle dish, green onion pancakes and 8 large individual xiao long bao's.
Highlights:
The pork xlb's were blissfully tasty. The delicate casing split apart easily as I sunk my greedy little teeth into the skin. It was teeming full of flavorful broth, reminiscent of homemade soup made with love. The savory pork was juicy, fatty and succulent.
The crab xlb's were even more amazing than the pork, making the latter mediocre [if at all possible]. The crab/pork xlb's were dangerously overflowing with rich, full-flavored broth and the stuffing was piping hot and ineffably scrumptious. The subtly unctuous pork and the dainty taste of crab was a match made in foodie heaven creating a dangerous shangainese union.
The Tan Tan Noodles were another hit. The dish consisted of thin Shanghainese noodles cooked perfectly al dente in a sapid peanut broth, topped with a liberal sprinkling of freshly crushed peanuts and crisp, green onions. The addictively aromatic soup base and alluring color drew me in and the taste slowly seduced me into overindulgence. One bite, two bites. After 3 servings later, I was finally fulfilled.
Only con?
The xlb knotted tops hardened quickly creating an unpleasant thick skin, resulting in a terribly unappetizing layer which needed to be prompty removed before digesting [resulting in the 3.75 star rating]. -
Review from C R.
Vancouver, BC
11/22/2011
If you're Caucasian, don't expect any kind of service. Stood at the front door for 5 minutes w no acknowledgment, while Chinese people kept pouring in and were greeted and seated quickly. Never go back here.
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Review from Kristina C.
Vancouver, BC
11/14/2010
Not my first restaurant of choice if I'm craving xiao long bao, but it's not horrible.
The XLB are small and they don't have a lot of juice inside, in comparison to other, more superior places.(ex. The Place on Granville St, Shanghai Shanghai in Aberdeen Centre). They're handmade, though, which is a plus for them.
Most of their dishes are drowning in sauces which have been heavily cornstarch-ed. The lettuce wrap that came with the 2 course peking duck consisted mostly of chopped celery rather than the duck itself, which was a tad dry. The seafood hot and sour soup tasted a bit fishy, which was probably due to the dried scallops in it. I did like the tofu and mixed seafood in paper pot, though.
This restaurant is usually quite busy, so reservations are recommended.
Overall: not a horrible dining experience, but you can get better Shanghai-nese food elsewhere.
Menu: quite a large menu; appetizers, soups, noodles, fried rice, as well as an assortment of seafood, beef, pork, chicken, and vegetable dishes
Price: a bit pricier than your average Chinese restaurant, but portion sizes are fairly decent.
Service: not exactly what I would call friendly (I'm not sure any of the servers ever cracked a smile)
Ambiance: clean, bright lighting, lots of windows -
Review from Joanne L.
Richmond, BC
4/20/2010
I want to try all the Shanghai restaurants in Richmond and here I am at "Wong" (in Chinese). The place seems to be always full and buzzing with people. I came on a few occassions where there were 10 of us and then only 2 of us. This place is definitely better for a larger group, not so much for 2 people.
Their dishes are larger and a bit more pricey. They didn't have too many options for dim-sum/appetizer type dishes such as the dumplings, cold dishes, etc.
The steamed pork dumplings was just ok... not much soup inside and just average for taste. The main menu large dishes were good, Shanghai thick noodles was yummy but on the oily side.
If you want good Shanghai, go elsewhere. -
Review from Stephen Y.
Richmond, BC
9/19/2011 1 Check-in Here
The food is pretty good here. We had the Hot and Sour soup, spicy beef hot pot, Shanghai stir-fried noodles and spicy green beans. I would recommend you have the all but I was really let down with the poor service. Everything from the poor greeting at the door (it felt like we were a giant inconvenience to them) to the getting someone to take our order. Even getting the bill was a hassle....sorry, but with this many choices for Shanghai food in Richmond...you would do better to try somewhere else, like Shanghai River!
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Review from Adam K.
Vancouver, BC
5/10/2009
Shanghai Wonderful restaurant is a small chinese eatery, mainly doing shanghai dishes but also doing a few cantonese ones on the corner of the whole landsdowne complex. Interior / service wise, it was a notch above everywhere else in Richmond, especially for this price.
I agree with Marc D, very decent XLB. The broth was indeed porky, the XLB were actually pretty large (never a bad thing), and fairly think skin to hold in the piping hot juices. We actually ended up ordering two batches of six.
I didn't order so don't know the individual prices of things but 7 of us got stuffed for $13 each which I thought was a bargain. I also will update this once I find out the names of the individual dishes we had.
We also had this chicken with noodles in peanut sauce, a classic shanghai dish (i think), which I've tried a few times back in china and it was pretty decent. Its basically really "slippery" cold noodles with cold shredded chicken and a peanut/sesame sauce. Overall, it was done right, coulda had a bit more chicken but was really refreshing.
They had a vegetable, which was braised vegetables with a massive slab of braised pork belly piled on top in a sweet/sour kidna sauce, which I've never had before. It was a little sweet, but balanced pretty well with the ultra fatty, slightly salty pork and would recommend it to anybody going there. The pork belly, which was massive basically fell apart because it was so tender and you had to grab it with a spoon, which is a good thing!
We also had an egg dish where basically egg whites, scallops, shrimp are cooked together to get a really fluffy sorta "egg fooyong" but much more subtle, which you mix with vinegar. This is a really a "texture" dish cause the eggs are supposed to be really really fluffy and light which they were. I actually this is a Cantonese dish but I'll double check with more knowledgeable friends. It was decent as well, but the scallops were a little bit on the rubbery side.
We ate a LOT!. also had some stewed cabbage in a cream sauce, which I don't know the name of, but was on the heavy side (doused in cream) and some deep fried battered fish fillets which were actually really tasty. They were really like fish and chips (i think they used cod), and came with ketchup. The batter had some seaweed mixed into it, which was actually nice and made sense, fish with seaweed batter.
Overall, this place is really good, especially given the cheap prices. The service is good, decor is nice, and the food very good I am definitely going to come back, and want to try the dan-dan mien which they'd run out of this time and also some of the cold "cured/confit" type of dishes you normally find at shanghai restaurants. -
Review from Billy C.
Richmond, BC
9/29/2010 1 Check-in Here
Disappointing XLB experience. Other places (i.e. Dinesty) were noticeably better. Skin was too thick, juice too hot, and meat too tough. Sorry I sound like a complainer. My standards are high, that's all.
Singaporean noodles were ok but nothing to write home about. Chinese veggies with Chinese mushroom were rather forgettable.
Service was good which was assuring... I guess. And how the hell can you NOT accept Credit Cards this day and age (especially when you're trying to portray yourself as an overpriced Shanghainese restaurant?) -
Review from Ernesto G.
3/21/2010 2 photos
Good for large parties and the set menu for dinner is so affordable! 12 adults eat until everyone is full and there's still 5 doggy bags for only $180!
Had dinner here last nite and the XLB is good, but the dish that really impressed me was the taro and duck. Good food for a great price. Nice large tables to accommodate large parties with kids.
Ample parking out front. Cash or Debit Card only.
Taste = good
Food Presentation = good
Bang for the buck = great
Would I go again = if already in Richmond -
Review from Cody S.
2/24/2011 1 Check-in Here
I really enjoy the xiao long bao....the dumplings are a fantastic part of any meal. The broth is perfectly seasoned and not salty. The meat is also great....i can easily devour an order of these. I don't know what it is about the jellyfish, but, I thoroughly enjoy it. They are like delicious crispy noodles tossed in sesame oil. I can eat the entire plate. The beef noodle soup is perfectly seasoned. It is spicy enough to enjoy the flavor and even drink a little at the end. Overall, the location is great, the food and tea is great, and the atmosphere is good. If you want a great experience eating 'Shanghai Style' food, this is the place to go!
Listed in: Saturday Morning Food in…
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Review from Phoenix mi m.
2/5/2011
We only ordered Shanghai Soup Dumplings. Not the best I've had or near close to it but good enough to fill a craving to lead to a happy stomach.
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Review from Jennifer C.
9/7/2009 4 photos
(This review is guest-written by my friend, eric l. who has a better memory than I do).
We were recommended Shanghai Wonderful by friends who celebrated their paper anniversary with a trip to the Pacific Northwest and a meal here. Overall, a solid recommendation, and Shanghai Wonderful definitely gets my approval for well-done Chinese food.
We ordered xiao long bao, steamed vegetables, this sweet fried chicken dish, rice cake stirfry (chao nian gao), and a savory, flaky daikon pastry (luo buo shi bing).
The xiao long bao were a little too large for my liking. I don't necessarily need a mouth full of pork grease to convince me I'm eating a delicious pork dumpling. Flavor was worth going back for, otherwise.
All the dishes we ordered were tasty and not too salty, saucy, or msg'd (and that's basically my criteria for delicious). Clean flavors, well-presented dishes, a welcoming environment. What else do you need but hot tea? Unfortunately, we did not get new tea leaves or hot water frequently enough; still, just a small gripe. -
Review from Seth W.
6/1/2009
Xiao long bao! Shanghai Wonderful epitomises everything that I love about good Chinese (especially Cantonese) restaurants. Average service, a bathroom so hidden you find yourself looking over your shoulder to see if anyone notices that your lost, secret menu of dishes, and a dining room without any empty seats.
Though I have to admit, my friends I decided to try Shanghai Wonderful's xiao long bao based on the previous yelps. We were not disappointed. Each of us had an entire order of xiao long bao, and all of us had the mega xiao long bao (served with a straw). I was in xiao long bao heaven, floating on a cloud of soup dumpling goodness. Highly recommend. -
Review from Lee N.
Vancouver, BC
2/14/2011 3 Check-ins Here
Very good xiao long bao as noted in many of the reviews, I can't add to that, I can say "remember your money" this place like many Richmond restaurants is CASH ONLY, no cards at all. But I think the XLB is very good.
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Review from Janel Y.
2/28/2010 4 photos
I'm an xlb addict and whenever I head to Richmond, that's all I want to eat. My cousin was kind enough to take me here and as long as they sold xlbs, I'd be a happy camper.
We came in for an early dinner around 5PM. We were the only diners so scored one of the booths along the wall. The place is average size and typical Chinese decor. Service was standard as well.
Here's what was ordered:
-pork xlbs: 6 in an order with thick skin and not much juice...felt it needed a kick of flavor
-pot stickers: had juice in them as well, pan fried perfectly, tasted a bit better than the xlbs
-soup with rice cakes: I've never had this dish and it was awesome! You add a piece of the rice square to a bowl of soup and you hear the rice crackle so it's like eating Rice Krispies for dinner. The soup is well flavored and full of shrimp, mushrooms, char siu, veggies...a definite get!
-beef stomach: didn't try
I would come back for the soup and rice cake dish...but being an xlb addict, would skip that dish. Not sure about pricing since didn't pay. In a small arcade so plenty of parking. -
Review from Marc D.
Vancouver, BC
11/5/2008
Very good xiao long bao. The broth is very "porky." I also really enjoy the green beans in wine sauce - which is nothing like what the name sounds like. They mash the beans together with sesame oil and then cut the mash into rectangular cubes of delicious goodness. Others have commented on the food not being consistent here, but I have been lucky and haven't had a bad meal.
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Review from momo c.
Calgary, AB
10/6/2010
Disappointing!
Overload with salt!! The place was highly recommended but we were disappointed. Perhaps we went at wrong time at 2pm. Our order was first forgotten and then the foods were overloaded with salt. The dumplings were salty and the shanghai fried noodle was layered with this heavy salty sauce. The pork was all fatty meat. We did not enjoy our meal. Not sure we will give it a try again. -
Review from Q B.
Vancouver, BC
8/12/2010
Good shanghainese. Good for large groups so you can share the dishes. It's hard to try more than a few dishes if you are in a small group. I would recommend calling ahead to get seats as they are usually quite busy.
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Review from Diana N.
1/6/2011
Not your typical Chinese food, that's for sure! It's not a secret that Richmond has the best of the best in Chinese/Hong Kong cuisine in the Pacific Northwest... I recently visited Canada for the weekend & some friends showed me some great places to please the tummy! This was the first time I was introduced to the crispy rice dishes (word's can't describe how delicious it is!!!!) and of course, the famous "soup dumplings". You can even see the chefs's making & handrolling them into balls. I guess there's an art to eating soup dumplings without the hot broth exploding in your mouth & tongue yet I think I've mastered it! Soup dumplings are like a hybrid of a won ton dumpling and a gyoza. The meat is abundant, tender & moist with the great broth you can't wait to slurp all up! It's really a pocketful of sunshine in your mouth! The restaurant itself was very clean and the dishes are ones you usually never encounter at other restaurants. The staff is very swift and quick, and it was a full house (which is a good thing, right?) and they do take reservations (which thankfully was what we did!)
