Munchie Adventure: Top Shanghai Cuisine 上海一只鼎, Richmond

Went go-karting for the first time in my life with SW and JC!! It was pretty fun, but next time, I'll see if I can gather enough friends to rent out the race instead of having aggressive strangers hit me haha After that we decided to go to a Shanghai restaurant nearby, since I went there with family a few times before and it was good. However... things didn't turn out as pretty this time around, I'm actually quite disappointed in them :(

Restaurant: Top Shanghai Cuisine 上海一只鼎 (view their menu here)
Location: 5880 No. 3 Road, Richmond
Cuisine: Shanghai
Price range: $15-25 per person for dinner
Date of visit: August 8, 2012



Atmosphere: 3/5
Staff/service: 1/5
Food variety: 5/5
Food quality: 3/5
Buck worthy? 2/5

To be fair, there was one, ONE nice lady working there. So the story goes like this: I made reservations earlier for 8pm, so when we got there, she gave me the table that just emptied. Quick service, like it. Then we think of things to order, and try to flag someone down to take our order (first lady disappeared somewhere)-- we were totally IGNORED! It took like 15 minutes at least to finally get someone to take our order, so it was already around 8:30pm... We chat for a while, the nice lady shows up to clean the table beside us, and is surprised to see we still weren't eating! She asked if we ordered yet, and if anything was wrong, but we just put in our order, so we told her we were fine. Tick Tock Tick Tock... OH! It's 9pm now! And NONE of our food has arrived =.= So we try to flag someone down, which took a lot of effort... and another 10 minutes. The waiter goes in and comes back telling us we never ordered anything. WHAT???? I wanted to leave then. But we re-ordered everything since he said it would be a rushed order and placed first. We finally got the food... and well... guess when dessert showed up.. >.>

Here's the food though (most of them were too oily for my liking, but the taste was really good)

The first to arrive was the appetizer, which consisted of crushed tofu and veggies. It was a cold dish, and very good! A bit salty though.

When you're at a Shanghai restaurant, you have to get steamed Shanghai dumplings. It's almost a must. (for me anyways) And this place makes some very good steamed dumplings, they came very fresh and so JUICY!! Not a bad price either ($4.95 for 6)

Ah... guess what shows up next at our table? (I thought they'd be sensible enough to not do this) Our dessert showed up. And it wasn't that good anyways... so not worth $9.95 for 6 >.> Better at other places haha!

Next came a fish dish (haha it rhymes!), it wasn't bad, my friend really liked it. I thought it was a bit saucy, but flavored well. Would've been really good with rice!

Pan fried pork buns, kinda looked squished, but it was juicy, the buns were kinda soggy from the juices, so it's getting a "meh" xD

Last dish! My favs at Shanghai places, stir fried egg whites with seafood (I don't think this one had seafood in it)-- It's supposed to taste like crab, but the eggs were overcooked, so not as good as I liked them. :(

I still remember that luke-warm tap water they gave us, whatever that waiter was thinking, I don't think I'll ever understand.

Overall, this wasn't worth the $22 I had to pay, we didn't tip either, since the service was so bad...and not all the food was spectacular. Despite them having a great selection of food (over 300 items), maybe they should concentrate on customer service and less dishes instead.