Richmond

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Quick and easy fish soup

Gulf of Georgia Cannery

Gulf of Georgia Cannery in Richmond's Steveston Village. Photos by David Lansing.

When I look at a map of Richmond it looks to me like the profile of a pig’s head and down at the bottom of the pig’s snout is Steveston Village, which probably should be its own little town but is actually still part of Richmond.

Back in the early 1800s, Steveston was the center of British Columbia’s fish cannery activity (at one point there were 15 canneries here). One of those facilities, the Gulf of Georgia Cannery, which was built in 1894, has been converted into a national museum to commemorate the West Coast fishing industry.

Rule Six: If you drop some fish on the floor, "recondition" it before you stick it back in the can.

Go through it, like I did, and you’re bound to come to two conclusions: Working in a fish cannery was a nasty job and you’ll never eat canned fish again.

They don’t pull any punches here. You see exactly how the fish—mostly salmon—came into the cannery and how it was quickly skinned, gutted, boned, and stuffed in a can. If you’re not grossed out by what was called “the sliming table,” where mostly Chinese and Japanese women, many with babies on their backs (hey, there was no daycare center for cannery workers) would clean the blood and guts from butchered salmon all day long, then just check out the super-duper mechanical wonder that, in mere seconds, could chop the head and tail off a salmon, scale it with a series of spinning brushes, and spit it out on a conveyor belt like a box of chocolates.

And what happened to all those fish heads and guts? Well, there’s a big hole near the sliming table where all the blood and guts were flushed back down to the Fraser River. Just upriver from where the locals pulled out their water for drinking, cooking, and cleaning purposes.

Think how easy it must have been for the locals to make fish soup every night since most of the ingredients came straight out of the tap.

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Buddha, Thrangu Monastery

The gold leafed Buddha at the Thrangu Monastery in Richmond. Photos by David Lansing.

Another drive down Richmond’s “Highway to Heaven” today, this time to the Thrangu Monastery, the first traditional Tibetan monastery in Canada.

I tiptoed in to the temple to have a look at their famed gold leafed, 12-foot-tall Buddha (flanked by some 34 smaller buddhas). There was some chanting going on, which made walking around the temple a bit awkward for me. I’d been told that it was perfectly okay to take photos inside the temple, but when you have people sitting around on the floor cross-legged and chanting, you do tend to feel like a bit of a pervert for snapping photos.

Thrangu Monastery, Richmond, BC

The Prayer Wheel at the Thrangu Monastery in Richmond. Photo by David Lansing.

A cheerful monk came over and welcomed me. That helped. He asked if I wanted to join in. I told him I was actually here just to have a look at the temple. “Please,” he said, smiling and waving his arm, “be our guest.”

I asked him what was going on.

It was, he said, a Chenrizika Practice. “The master chants to generate love and compassion.”

Well, that’s always good. We could use a bit more of that around, couldn’t we.

The monk offered to give me a tour. He pointed out the 1,000 Medicine Buddhas in the temple (not each and every one, of course) and then took me outside to show me the temple’s prayer wheel. Each prayer wheel contained mantras written on strips of paper—thousands of copies of Om Mani Padne Hum. “When you spin the prayer wheel, it is like saying the mantra repeatedly,” he said. “Would you like to try it?”

I spun the prayer wheel. I mumbled Om Mani Padne Hum. Sadly, I didn’t really feel any holier afterwards. Not that I ever feel holy to begin with.

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The Richmond Public Market. Photo by David Lansing.

My favorite thing to do in any city is make a pilgrimage to the public market. This is the way to really get a sense of a city’s culinary aspirations. So I talked Mijune into taking me to the RPM—Richmond Public Market.

She tried to lower my expectations as we walked in. “It’s very small,” she said. “And, really, the market part isn’t all that great.”

She was right. There were a couple of relatively small produce markets on the ground floor but I didn’t see anything there that I hadn’t seen at one of the local Asian supermarkets like T&T or the Osaka Market. Plus the whole thing seemed kind of dingy and tired. It reminded me a bit of the night markets you see in poorer sections of Hong Kong.

Upstairs was a food court and that looked a lot more interesting. There were stalls selling Hong Kong-style milk tea, coconut buns, beef soup, lamb skewers. Nice. But neither Mijune or I really had a desire to chow down. Something about the place just didn’t feel right. So we left.

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Mijune porks out

Parker Place Meat & BBQ

Soy duck at Parker Place Meat & BBQ. Photo by David Lansing.

I don’t know where Mijune puts all the food she eats. I really don’t. I mean, she can’t weigh more than 80 pounds yet she eats more than me. Way more. There was this time when she took me to the Richmond night market and we ate at ten different vendor stalls. Afterwards, I just wanted to find a patch of lawn where I could pass out. But then Mijune says, “Do you want to go to dinner with me?”

Whatthehell? I thought she was joking. But, no, she said she actually had two more dinners to go to that night. Unbelievable.

So yesterday after a huge lunch and then a stop at the Parker Place Mall for some dragon’s beard candy, we’re headed for the door when Mijune spots one of her favorite BBQ places.

“I know this place,” she said. “Great roasted pork.”

I told her just looking at the pigs hanging in the window was making me ill.

“Don’t be a baby,” she said. “They’ll just give you a little bite to taste.”

So we stand in line with a half dozen other people outside Parker Place Meat & BBQ and when we finally make it inside the little store she starts yacking to the guy chopping up a roasted pig in Cantonese and the next thing you know, he’s scooping up a container full of crispy skin pork…and then another container of char siu…and then another container of soy bbq duck. Mijune must have at least three pounds of food in her arms.

“Let me pay for this,” I say, grabbing my wallet. But the guy won’t take my money. Seems Pork Boy has a thing for Mijune. It’s all on the house.

Now, I assume that Mijune is going to take all this food home and share it with eight or nine people for dinner. But Mijune grabs some napkins and forks and heads for an empty table in the food court and soon we are munching away on the crispy skin roasted pork, which has that nice crackling on the outside and is all moist and sweet on the inside, and the sweet, honey-tasting char siu, as well as the salty succulent duck. I can’t even believe I’m sitting there eating it. But I am.
Parker Place Meat & BBQ on Urbanspoon

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Noodle heaven at T&T

T&T supermarket, Richmond BC

Amy finds the noodle aisle at T&T. Photo by David Lansing.

Yesterday morning I skipped breakfast and headed for the Asian supermarket next to our hotel, T&T. I was looking for XO sauce. Frank was dying to buy some sort of Asian malted milk balls you can’t buy in the U.S. And Amy—well Amy wanted to check out the noodles.

There are people who think of noodles the way others think of certain vintages of Bordeaux wine. I think Amy is like that. She found the noodle aisle and it was like looking at a kid who’s stumbled into FAO Schwarz a week before Christmas.

She started to do a little dance right in the middle of the aisle. And then she started skating up and down the aisle pointing out the rice sticks and slippery noodles, noodles for chow mein and ramen, mung bean noodles and cellophane noodles.

How many types of noodles do they carry at T&T? I have no idea. But you see the photo above of Amy? Those are all noodles she’s looking at. On both sides of the aisle. This place is noodle heaven.

And they had four or five different types of XO sauce. Oh yes, and Frank found his malted milk balls. Everybody scored.

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