Review: New Town Bakery

published by asingh on Tue, 07/22/2014 - 20:06

By Diana (Foodology),

Special to The Post

According to CNN, New Town Bakery is a “must-visit” place in Vancouver’s Chinatown. The bakery has been around since the 1980s and built a reputation on serving delicious Filipino and Chinese pastries. With multiple awards and an international recommendation from CNN, we decided it was time to try New Town for lunch.

The front of the restaurant houses the very busy bakery. There are a lot of pastries to choose from, but people tend to order the egg tarts, steamed buns, pineapple buns, and apple tarts. If you venture to the back of the restaurant, you’ll find the dining area where you can order full meals instead of just baked goods.

We started with the Sui Mai ($4.25), which comes with 4 pieces and consists mostly of pork and some shrimp. They were okay, but not the best dumplings we’ve ever had. The Iced Milk Tea ($1 extra with purchase of set meal) was standard in taste. Next we tried the Soy-Fried Flat Rice Noodles with Beef ($7.75), which was a good portion size for lunch. You can probably share this dish with a friend, but be warned, it is very oily.

Curry Fish Ball with Squid ($7.50) was disappointing. The squid was not fresh and was very chewy. I struggled trying to chew through the squid. The onions, peppers and carrots tasted fresh and the fish balls were very bouncy and tasted okay. The sauce was a bit gelatinous and salty.

The entire meal was not what I hoped for and I was disappointed. My recommendation: stay away from the meals and stick with the baked pastries.

Foodology is a top ranked food blogger on UrbanSpoon. These are the tales of her dine-out experiences.