Shanghai River

Food is very good here especially the fish in vinegar. Clean. (Haven’t been to loo though). Can get busy.

Mediocre food, horrible service, Probably the worst restaurant i encountered visiting richmond. Really disappointed with this one.
Servers are not attentive, they look lazy just chatting over the POS system almost always. I need to always catch their attention in order to ask anything rather them actually giving me the service and attention they should as a server. I noticed that If your chinese your treated well, greeted well, seated and serviced well. If not, then not… seating in this place trying to finish my food was like punishment.
Calling out to anyone reading this!!! Skip this place. Not worth the time.
XLB and ribs is not even comparable to Din Tai fung. Taste, skin to meat ratio, consistency… i can go on forever… its not that good. Worst part, service.

The customer service here is a joke. The host does not acknowledge you if you’re not Chinese. They seat way too many customers but not enough staff. The XLB and the fried pork dumplings was okay. The Shanghai noodles was too salty. Due to the terrible customer service here I did not tip well, and I totally got the death glare from the waiter who checked me out. Overall, I would recommend this place to anyone who want mediocre food and like to play the waiting game to get attention from the waiters.

Their soup dumplings are delicious! I got the pork and the crab ones. We ordered 5 orders and the waitress was very nice, she asked if we would like half to come first then half later so it would be fresh.
The only two downsides were there was a 20−30min wait 30 min after the restaurant opened on a Sunday morning, and my bowl was dirty (which I didn’t use anyways so it’s ok).

We had a great family meal. Highlights were the sweet and sour cod and banana fritters. The fish was light and not overly fried and the sauce just a little sweet without being unctuous. My teenage son said the banana fritters were the «best dessert» ever. Also good were the XLB. Skin a bit thicker than DTF, good flavor meat and soup filling.

Spicy beef and tendon noodle soup was yummy. XLB was good as in the meat and soup was on point, however, I thought their wrapper was thicker than Din Tai Fung. Wonton in hot and spicy oil was good too, again, the wrapper was thick so it was carb heavy! Spareribs were ok, but I do like their sticky rice. It is hard to describe, but it was yummers!

This place is ridiculous. The most awful, insincere, unorganized, and unprofessional restaurant to consider themselves fine dining.
Usually I hold Asian restaurant service to a lower standard – especially if it is a hole in the wall type of restaurant. This is not that type of restaurant. Dishes are an average of $ 20 & up. Which isn’t a huge deal if it were seafood or if this wasn’t typical Chinese fare you could get cheaper elsewhere.
My group of 9 were seated almost within minutes around late 8pm on a Friday night. That was probably the only highlight of the night. This was our second and final night in Vancouver, so had been trying to fit all the food we could fit in our stomachs since 7am (no lie!) We had heard about their XLB, so we wanted to try a couple dishes – even though we weren’t starving.
We placed 5 orders: steamed fish, taro crusted duck, fried rice cakes, bean curd wrapped mushrooms, and steamed pork buns. Our waitress took our order and made a snide comment, «Right now you only have 5 dishes. That’s not enough for you. You NEED to order more.» Who is our waitress, that she feels entitled to tell us how much we should be ordering?! My family then opted for a hot and sour soup. Our waitress then comes back and tells us that they sold out of their steamed pork buns. Perfect, as if we aren’t already irked. So we decided to try 2 orders of their XLB.
Our food arrived promptly. First up was the hot & sour soup. Usually at Chinese restaurants, the waiter divvies up the soup for us into bowls on the lazy Susan. Nope, the manager stands there and stares at us while my family struggles to serve ourselves. Then he finally offers to assist us. Then the rest of our food arrives… everything except the fish. The food was mediocre at best. For $ 20 a dish, we expected more. The taro crusted duck was mostly taro with the essence of some sort of duck taste. The rice cakes were overcooked and slightly mushy. The bean curd wrapped mushrooms and XLB were typical and nothing special. Let’s just say that at this point we are nothing short of happy nor are we satisfied. Our waitress came by to ask if we wanted to order more because it was the last call before their kitchen closed. We decided we were fine with the food we had.
We were slowing down on our meal and we’re still waiting for our fish. A waiter – who, keep in mind was not our waitress – just drops our check off at the table. How completely unprofessional to ask us to pay before we had even completed our meal – let alone not all of our food had arrived yet. We asked for the manager and told him that it was completely unprofessional – including our waitress’ prior remark. He apologized, walked away with the check, and publicly asked his service staff who was responsible. The young man admitted to it and the manager openly criticized him. This business is just unprofessional on top of unprofessional.
We wait a couple minutes and observe the manager and waitstaff – unorganized chaos. We finally just tell him that we don’t want our fish anymore. More minutes pass. The manager comes over and asks if we have our check back. We don’t have it. He grabs it, hands it to us, and we open it to find that the check is unadjusted. He returns it to us and he seems to only know the words «sorry” – completely superficial. To top the icing on the cake, another waitress starts to clear off our table when we haven’t finished eating yet. She hadn’t even asked us. Talk about in a hurry to close the damn restaurant. Customers should not be rushed out of a restaurant especially when there are still so many people dining.
Oh also, if you are a server and a table has upset you, maybe you shouldn’t be talking about us in clear view. Just a couple points about professionalism. I would recommend steering clear of this restaurant that is UNDOUBTEDLY not customer-​oriented.

Top Chinese restaurant at Richmond Centre close to airport. Food authentic and delicious. Must come back!

I thought I wouldn’t say this, but it’s gone downhill, my 3^rd time since my last good eating experience.
Their XLB: either the chefs’ bad day or whatever but one, the skin too thin so juices imploded, and two, a tad too thick on the knot.
And the smokey duck, or lack of it, didn’t have that hickory taste. Nor did the inside looked righty, quite bright red as you can see.
Surprisingly, wasn’t too busy last Fri for lunch.

Came with a big crew for lunch and was pretty wowed by everything.
Those donuts are insanity, people. Like, stupid insanity. Hot, fresh, crispy, flavourful, and with a little condensed milk? Absolutely to die for.
We also loved our candied bananas, peking duck, and the collection of noodles that we ordered. I wish I’d taken better notes — I promise to do so when I go back for dim sum!

This is a place that I usually hit up 99% of the time I am in BC… I think it’s just became like a ritual for us. The place is always busy and the food is always consistent, not to mention well staffed and clean.
The soup dumplings here are always good. The soy milk and Chinese donut goes well together. We didn’t order that much food as it was our 3^rd meal within 4 hours.

My hunt for the best XLB is over. I am a huge fan of Shanghai River. The restaurant is beautiful, the prices are reasonable, the service is decent (and much better than others) and the food is GREAT.
The first time I went, we waited about 20 minutes to be seated. We looked at the menu and ordered 4 XLB, green onion pancake, pan fried buns and shredded pork with garlic and chili. A lot of food for just two people, huh? We destroyed almost everything and unlike other places, the staff didn’t seem to think we were inhuman.
The XLB is smaller than some other places, but served with 8 pieces rather than ⁵⁄₆. I prefer this because I typically eat them in one/​two bites and I’m able to enjoy it better and not lose my juice. The skin is thin but not fragile, the pork quality is obvious and the juice has tons of flavour.
The green onion pancake is a little on the thick side, but it’s still delicious and definitely enough for two or more people. Shredded pork was great! Balanced spice with the garlic and even my 1 year old ate it without fuss.
Speaking of my 1 year old, they’re very family friendly. There are always kids here and they’re very accommodating. I’m never worried about noise because this restaurant is pretty bustling and not very quiet.
My Saturday dim sum spot for a long time to come, I’m sure of it.

My boyfriend’s family does Christmas Eve dinner every year at a Chinese restaurant, and this was a great pick. It was incredibly busy, first of all, and second of all, it was chock full of Asians! My table had four non-​Asians and besides that, I think I saw one other Asian in the restaurant. All good signs!
I didn’t do any ordering and am not usually a big fan of sweet & sour, but despite that, I really enjoyed our dishes. Everything was very authentic and made of high quality ingredients.
* Sweet & Sour soup — 3.5 stars
Lots of meat, tofu, seaweed/​greens — maybe just a few shrimp, though. This was good for a Sweet & Sour soup, though it’s usually not my thing.
* Xiao Long Bao — 4 stars
Very tasty! Great flavor to the soup.
* Sticky rice cake dish — 3 stars
Fine, but a tad plain. Could’ve used more veggies, a little more pop in flavor.
* Gai Lan — 4 stars
A well done and simple veggie!
* Pork & cucumber dish (came with peking duck sauce and tortillas) — 3.5 stars
The wrap with the sauce and all the ingredients worked well. The pork by itself was quite chewy though.
* Black vinegar spare ribs — 4.5 stars
This had an amazing sauce. The meat is quite crisped and hard, and if you’re not used to it, watch for the bones. But this was one of the more popular dishes of the night, a great crowd-​pleaser.
* Sweet & Sour fish — 4 stars
Despite myself, I enjoyed this Sweet & Sour sauce! It was thick and had a nice sharp flavor. The fish had a very nicely crisped fried skin, and the meat was flaky and tender.
For next time, there were a lot of dishes I saw being carried around that looked really good: Noodles, Jellyfish platter, Duck with lettuce wrap, King crab.

There is nothing like this in Seattle (where I’m from). I got the Shanghai stir fried noodles, steamed pork dumplings (lots of juice!!) Chinese donuts with savory and sweet soy milk for dipping (it’s soooo good & interesting), spicy pig ears and chicken soup with wontons.
Reasonable and very long waits. Good for big parties of 6−8+ even more. I recommend making reservation!

So good that I came back two days later with some friends! Once again, superlative Chinese food that lets its fresh, amazing ingredients do the talking.
This time:
Squid with salted vegetables: holy cow this was good. So delicate and flavorful.
Stone pot eel. Incredibly flavorful and tender and tangy… this dish is sublime. Highly highly highly recommended.
Crab with ginger: fun to eat. A total mess. I went through four or five napkins for the portion of it that I ate, and honestly I didn’t get a lot of crab meat out of it. What I got was, admittedly, very good, but this was more about the experience of trying to open up slippery saucy crab legs than it was about eating them. Still, we laughed the whole time. By the end, my hands were yucky and sticky and stinky. Awesome.

Came here with family for Sunday brunch and felt their food was just alright. We ordered their 小籠包 xlb and the dough layer was a bit in the thicker side. The flavor wasn’t impressive either but it was alright.
We also ordered other dishes including: sliced cold pig’s ear with spicy sauce, pan fried dumplings, fried rice cake with pork, beef rolls, & sour and spicy soup. Overall all the dishes were average and nothing too spectacular I felt.

This is one of my favourite shanghaiese restaurant. As a note when you call in to make a reservation, they will tell you your table will be ready at 1:30 pm earliest. That’s not true. You will be better off to walk in.
I have to say this place serves very authentic shanghaiese food. My favourite is the potsticker. It used to be the xiao lung bad and for some reason, today the skin was a bit too think. Not sure is it because they screwed up or dumplings chef changed.
Services is always good here. But over the years prices had gone up and the portion has gone smaller. We used to come here frequently, now it’s one a month or even just couple times a year. I remember when they first open back in around 2004, the noodle are huge and is around $ 6 for a bowl and now it’s $ 8. Ouch! Again like I said portion is smaller. For dim sum, a family of 5, it costed $ 60. But mind you is mostly noodles.
Décor is nice and clean. Washroom is a hit and miss. Will I come back. Yes but not frequently.

3.5÷5, +.5 for service
This had to have been a stop for me due to the excellent reviews and the fact that it’s in Richmond: The Asian food mecca of Canada. Of course, there are several different categories of Asian food, with this one being Shanghaiese food. Reservations are pretty much required for this restaurant. During the night I went, the restaurant didn’t even take walk-​ins! I didn’t make the same mistake twice, as I was told the place was full when I went to Kirin… at 10am.
Once we were in the restaurant, our whole night flowed relatively smoothly. Despite the fact we were in the corner of the restaurant, there were waitresses ready to take our orders.
We ordered the bok choy with egg whites and clams, fried crab meat and shrimp in crab claw, crab and pork dumplings, and lamb chops. The crab and pork dumplings were superior compared to what I get back home in Markham (yes I’m looking at you, Ding Tai Fung…). Both the fried crab meat and the lamb chops were delicious and well done. However, the bok choy with egg whites and clams were, for a lack of better word, ordinary. The clams they use are actually those canned abalone you can get at your local T&T, though the egg whites were quite unique in preparation.
It seemed a popular item in this restaurant is the Vancouver crab, however the sizes were way too big for my party of 3.
Overall, I definitely liked this place, despite the fact it’s extremely busy and you would not have a seat unless you reserve beforehand.

Quantity doesn’t always mean Quality
Vancouver is supposed to have one of the largest population of Chinese in the world outside of China. Although that doesn’t always mean it has the greatest food. Having ate amazing chinese cuisine in Los Angeles probably didn’t help either.
Prepare to pay
The décor is really really modern and nice and it looks like because of that they build it into your food price. A few fish dishes get up to the $ 40 range which is really expensive for a Chinese dish. Xiao long baos were good but the dough is a little too thick for my liking.

Hands down the best meal I had in Vancouver/​Richmond during my recent visit. This is the most Unilocaled placed in Richmond BC. We had come the first day 20 minutes before closing and wouldn’t take us. Came back the next day with a vengeance!
Food:
We ordered the set meal for 2 people. It was $ 50 something dollars.
Vinegar ribs — Crispy, tangy and slightly sour flavors. The crisp sold me!
Shanghai crab dumplings — I thought these were better than the ones I had in Top Shanghai. Still not as good as Din Tai Fung (Taiwan, USA) but a close 2^nd.
Veges with crab roe — They just turned plain vegetables into a very unhealthy delicious dish. I like their style…
Chicken soup — Thumbs up
Seafood fried rice — Shrimp and scallop. Well executed.
Service:
They were a bit busy and I can sense some frustration from some of the staff, but they were fairly attentive whenever we needed anything.
Environment:
Fairly centralized location. Parking was okay at night. The place is a big on the elegant side where you can have more formal dinner meets.
Price:
That set dinner provided a lot of food for the price.
Food: 5
Service: 4
Environment: 5
Price: 5