Green Village and Missing Scoble
How crazy is this? Last night we decided on a whim to head to Vancouver to pick up some stinky herbs from Tong Ren Tang (no 3 north of Westminster in Richmond). I immediately thought of one of our favorite bloggers up there, and although I knew his wife was nearing her due date, I sent Roland Tanglao a note to see if he wanted to get lunch. Well, it turns out that his wife had the baby just hours earlier, so I could understand him turning down the lunch. I shut off the computer and away we went. This afternoon we had lunch at Green Village and hung out downtown for awhile before heading home.
It turns out that we missed Scoble’s announcement by just a few hours, and missed the Geek Lunch!
Anyway, despite being bummed at missing an opportunity to hang out with Scoble, Maryam, Tim Bray, and the others; Green Village was pretty nice. We had a party of five, so we ordered a lot of different dishes. Everything was great. Some of the other Shanghai specialties we tried that Roland didn’t mention in his excellent review — steamed soy milk with fried donuts for dipping; jia jia mein (noodles in a meat sauce with cucumber slices); crispy rice cakes with shrimp+ham+pork stew poured on top so the rice cakes sizzle and crackle; onion pancakes. Normally when people think of Chinese food, they think of rice, stir fry, spicy foods, or vegetables; since these are the common elements from Hong Kong, Sichuan, Hainan, etc. However, the food from Shanghai and Tianjin is not like that at all — there are lots of breads, baked items, meat, gravy, etc. I think that westerners who are into meat and potatoes would really appreciate Chinese food more if there was more Shanghai and Tianjin food available. Anyway, Green Village has just moved to the top of our very short list of Shanghai places. Green Village also serves some Sichuan foods, and the normal staples like jiaozi, but there are plenty of other places to get that stuff. I noticed another Shanghai place in Richmond on no 3, but no idea how good it is. And AFAIK, nothing even close in Seattle anymore since Homestyle in Great Wall Mall closed down last year.