East Fusion Food in International Village, Chinatown Vancouver

It is very hard not to get excited about this place.

Like everyone else, we get excited over food that is good. The excitement doubles when it is cheap too. Actually, the excitement triples when it is also unexpectedly and ridiculously cheap.

LotusRapper emailed us alerting us to this place called the East Fusion Food with a link to Cheap Appetite where Tana had a bowl of wonton noodles for just $2.99. That was about 6 months ago. When we saw that, we immediately dropped our weekend lunch plans and head to this place.

East Fusion Food is located on the ground floor of the International Village or better known as Tinseltown for the cinemas it has. The shopping mall at the edge of Chinatown is rather dead and has low occupancy. It took us a while to locate East Fusion Food because we thought it would be on the second floor where the restaurants and food courts are.

Let not the East Fusion Food name fool you because I cannot see where the fusion is on their offerings. It is as Chinese as it gets.

The place is very busy but the turn around is quick. We were there last Saturday at 12:30PM which is right about the peak lunch time and we had to wait for about 5 minutes for a table.

The place is not very big. They are setup for small parties of 2-4 people normally. So you don’t expect big tables for an extended family dine out. With just about seatings for 40, 50 people max, this is very much a place for a quick meal.

It is very busy. The service is rushed — not rude but they have little patience. Not easy for many people I know, but look past that you are OK. The moment we sat down we already had the drinks and menu landing right in front of our face.

It is not a big menu.

In our usual slow pace, we read every single item on the menu. Within a minute, the waitress was already at our table asking if we are ready to order. We said we are still looking at the menu and before I even finished my sentence she was already turning away headed to the next table. To some this is rude but it was not a problem with us. I wanted to let you know so that you don’t go to this place on the account of this posting and felt slighted by this sort of things. LOL!

Our waitress was like a super women or something. She did not even write down what we wanted and remembered everything we said. We ordered six items in total and some of them were in noodle type/soup type/meat type combination. We were so afraid she will mess up our order but she repeated it back to us 100% correct. Amazing.

The one thing we wanted to check out was the $2.99 wonton noodles.

Well, the wonton noodles is no longer $2.99. The price had since risen to $3.88. I thought it is still cheap even the price had risen 30% since Tana had it 6 months ago.

It came in a big bowl with five pieces of shrimp wontons. The shrimp wonton are quite big. While I had much better shrimp wontons, this is really good considering the price.

I initially thought that there are very little noodles in it. I could not see to the bottom because of the cloudy broth …

… but it has more noodles than we expected. We thought the thin wire’ly egg noodles were done very well.

I am quite certain a number of people will like the wonton noodles at East Fusion Food and then will get excited and tell the world that it is just $3.88 — like us.

We actually thought that the servings in East Fusion Food will be small considering their prices. So, I went ahead to order two additional side dishes which they call “Starters and Appetizers”. All their Appetizers costs $6. Check the menu above … there are 24 types. All $6. I like that simplicity.

The boiled Gai Lan (Chinese Brocolli) was excellent. The thick stem and the leafy part were cut and arranged in a nice manner. I simply like the way it is cut to short, uniform and manageable sizes that you could easily pick up with chopsticks. I was asking Suanne why we could not get the ones we prepare at home to this level of texture — she doesn’t know.

The Deep Fried Oyster is also $6. There are four large pieces. The size took us by surprise … More after the jump. Click to read the rest of East Fusion Food in International Village, Chinatown Vancouver (454 words)

© ben for Chow Times, 2010. |
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Post tags: Chinese, Restaurant Review, Vancouver