I'm Only Here for the Food!

Azia
990 Smithe Street
Vancouver, BC

There has been a lot of times Sherman has been in Downtown Vancouver for lunch; however, for one reason or another, we can’t seem to agree on the time. I mean, what person who works regular hours have lunch at 2:00 p.m.? Anyway, this time Sherman was in the Downtown area and I checked with him if he wanted to go for lunch – at a *regular* time. By some odd circumstance, he said it should be OK until I realized there was one caveat: There will be some friends tagging along and they might not necessarily be the most adventurous group when it comes to food. That and other unrelated circumstances shot down a lot of options. As a result, I told Sherman: just come up with a place since he knew is group better than me. His choice? Azia.

When I read the email with the reservation for Azia, I told him that place was “NG”; however, since I haven’t blogged about it, I guess at least it would be bloggable material. Now, why that place is “not good”? When they say it will be a “culinary journey through Asia” and will “provide you with an Asian dining experience like no other. From our fresh sushi bar to our fine Chinese cuisine”, I knew it would be some sort of cultural lost in translation (and this even considering I am Chinese with some basic Cantonese and Hakka!). However, that was my perception from a previous visit – the question is whether this visit would prove me wrong.

What the hell is with that bent chopstick?!

I arrived a bit after our agreed meeting time; however, the rest of the party hasn’t arrived yet. That was a good thing, I had to rush from the West End and had to catch my breath. When all the party arrived, the thought process of what to order started. Since there will be dishes some of them won’t eat, we ended up going for a strange approach: Go for the combination menu and everybody orders a dish that will suit their palate. For the most part that work and, to complement that combination order, we went for two sushi rolls. So, to start off, we had…

Spring rolls. They were quite decent. Hot, not oily and decent amount of filling. But, then again, it is fried food; how can you go wrong with these? Oh, wait… Don’t answer that.

In the lunch combination order, for each dish we ordered, we would be given a soup. However, since the party was larger than the amount of dishes ordered as part of the combination (see note about the rolls), we were given some extra bowls. Nice touch, if you ask me. As for the soup itself, which is a broth with some corn and dropped egg was… OK. It had a slight stock texture/gelatinous, though, of course, it could have been other ingredients that account for that. Nothing extraordinary, not much to comment about.

Green curry. Now, I am not sure what are your thoughts of curry but, in my mind, it is one of those dishes that, if you follow the basic recipe, it is really darn difficult to mess up – specially when you are using prepacked/pre-mixed curry. I don’t know if they do that but, regardless, the end result was bland. It did have some coconut flavour but the curry itself was almost absent. The vegetables and the meat, by itself, were acceptable but nothing else and I thought the portion was quite generous.

Beef and broccoli. Visually it looks good; however, you should notice something odd – they are not mixed! I guess when they wrote beef and broccoli, they literally meant beef AND broccoli. They were able to impart some woke hei to it so, kudos for that. The vegetable was crisp in the dish, so again, kudos. However, past that, there wasn’t anything extraordinary. I guess that is what I should have expected from such type of bastardised dish…

Sweet and sour pork. OK, at this point, you might be wondering, WTF?! Please keep in mind, I did not particularly order this but a reflection of the other parties in the group. In fact, I started to understand what are the issues Sherman has to go through when he goes out to it with them! (Not to mention the face he might put up!). Anyway, there is nothing positive to say about this so I will just skip it.

OK, this is the dish I suggested: Ma Po Tofu. This is one of those odd dishes that even if bastardised (to an extent), it will look good in my books. That is because of the combination of tofu, bean sauce and chili oil (and, more often than not, some minced meat) is so simple, it is really difficult to mess. Why it is OK to be bastardised to an extent? Well, not everybody can stand the heat of this dish so, if it is toned down, to make it enjoyable is a good thing… In this case, it was OK for the most part, as the tofu did not crumble down and there were some slight hint of spiciness. Of course, it could be better but, at this rate, given what was served so far, it was starting to fall into a “that’s OK” situation.

Kung Pao Chicken. It was just a stir fry to me, not much to look/comment. OK, exagertaing here. There was some nutiness but, past that, it did not really “wow” me. As usual, it could be better.

In its attempt to try to catch up with all possible Far Eastern dishes, there were some dim sum items and Sherman and I couldn’t help to order one – specifically, xiao long bao. I won’t say it was among the worst XLB I have ever had but it could be a runner up. It had some soup inside and the skin was quite thick. If you never had any experience with XLB, you might enjoy its “juiciness” (thanks to the soup) and won’t burn you (as the soup was lukewarm) – provided you did not stab it while picking it up from the basket. However, having had XLB from other sources, these ones do not even compare. Probably good as an intro but nothing else.

Salmon Mango Roll. Did I mention something about going around Asia? Well, here is one of the two rolls we ordered. Construction-wise, it was decent; from a taste perspective, the mango overpowered the salmon completely. It felt almost as eating a fruit version of a roll rather than having some seafood. If that was the intent, they could have skipped the salmon, call it mango roll and charge several $$$ less.

Spider roll – the other roll that was ordered that day. I am not sure if, by then, they caught up with us and knew we were sharing. If that is the case, I wonder why some of the slices were cut so thin – almost to the size of half an Oreo, specially considering the roll is thick to begin with. It wasn’t a really pretty sight when you try to grab a piece and it falls apart. Furthermore, since it was cut so thin, none of the supposedly qualities of the fried portions of this roll was found.

Now, some of you might say that it was doomed for disaster based on the dishes we ordered. That might be true; however, when some of Sherman friends (who are Caucasians) started to comment that some dishes could have been better (for instance, the blandness of the curry), that is when you start to consider if they went a bit to the extreme to try to appeal to the broader market. And, while the service was good, that did not make up for what ended up on the plates, specially not at that cost. In fact, based solely on the non-sushi type dishes ordered, it might have been cheaper if we had gone to Kent’s Kitchen and got some of their 2 items with white rice dishes (of course, convincing them to go to that area of town might be a challenge in its own ways). In the end, my “NG” thoughts did not change with this visit. But, then again, Azia does not cater people like me…

So, to Constanza Pomegranate, LP and gang, thanks for being good sports and let us take the pictures of the food before you started to dig in. I am sure it is not easy when there is one person taking pictures of the food while everybody is hungry, not to mention there are *two*!