I know this is a bold statement, but my dinner at Liang's Village may have been one of the best, if not THE best, Chinese dinner I have had in Ottawa. I had put off writing this post because of the amount of food I had to write about, but after reading Ron Eade's mention of Liang's Village in his blog, I figured it was a sign for me to get off my butt and get writing about the wonderful Chinese meal I had there.
I'll start by talking about my mom. She is a woman who loves to be around people. She is a social butterfly, and her philosophy in life is "the more the merrier" (which has become mine as well). A small, intimate dinner with my mom is nearly impossible to organize. One of her favorite things to do is gather a big group of people for dinner so that they can try literally everything off the restaurant menu. I tagged along to one of her dinners a little while back, and enjoyed a 10 course meal (not including dessert) at Liang's Village.
Liang's Village is a very unassuming place. It is wedged inside a small strip mall on the East end of Ottawa, and most people in the area know them for serving a mediocre lunch buffet during the week. If you go in the evening, and order the right dishes, you won't be disappointed.
Our first course was deep fried shrimp balls. They were coated with rice noodles for texture, and were served with a sweet and sour sauce.
Deep Fried Shrimp Balls
Next was a duck soup with Chinese veggies. This was a thick soup cooked with bamboo shoots, carrots, and cloud ear fungus.
Duck Soup
The third course was a whole deep fried chicken with shrimp chips. The skin of the chicken is crispy, and the chicken is dipped in salt + pepper befor eating.
Whole Deep Fried Chicken
The fourth course was something I had never seen before. It was pork stuffed winter melon braised in an Oyster sauce. The presentation was beautiful, and I was amazed at how cool it looked. Accompanying the winter melon was bok choy pieces.
Braised Winter Melon and Pork
Another not-so-common dish was the pork shank braised in a dark soy sauce. This is not something one would normally order during a multi-course Chinese meal, and I was glad we tried it for that reason. The sauce was flavorful and the meat was extremely tender. This dish was garnished with broccoli florets.
Braised Pork Shank
Part way through our meal, the chef came out to greet us. He talked a bit about the food, but mainly came to shoot the breeze. Unfortunately, he was camera shy.
The sixth course was a seafood stir fry. It was shrimp, scallop, squid, Chinese broccoli, and carrots stir fried in a light garlic sauce. The seafood was cooked very nicely.
Seafood Stir Fry
The next course was a stir fried fish dish. The fish is whatever white fish is available and fresh that day. The bones of the fish were deep fried and ready to eat.
Stir Fried Fish
Lucky number 8 was twin lobsters stir fried in a garlic scallion sauce. This dish is good but can be messy if you're not skilled with chopsticks.
Twin lobsters
Traditional at the end of a multi-course Chinese meal is a noodle and/or rice dish. We had noodles stir fried with snow peas, mushrooms, and carrots.
Stir Fried Noodles
We saved the best for last. This is the chef's specialty, and it is spectacular!!! It is a Szechuan-style dish that involves boiling sole fillets in a flavorful broth, and then accenting it with hot chili peppers and hot chili oil. As you can see, this dish is spicy! All I can say is yum, yum, yum, yum, yum. This was no doubt my favorite, and everyone else's favorite, of the night.
Szechuan-style Sole Fillets with Hot Chili Peppers
For dessert, we ended with a classic: red bean soup. This is my favorite Chinese dessert, and I was glad to see that they didn't skimp on the beans.
Red Bean Soup
This restaurant is a little jewel in East end Ottawa. The prices are moderate, the selection is good, and the ingredients are fresh.
I've also heard that they have a very good Peking duck dinner, which is on my list to try.
Liang's Village
1755 St. Laurent Blvd.
Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
Telephone: 613-733-2889
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6 comments:
Your photos are great...can't even imagine how great the food must have been! I especially like the twin lobsters....maybe b/c I'm a twin :)
Your photos are EXQUISITE!!!
This place looks great! I'm going to tell my parents about it since they live only about 15 minutes away and sometimes, especially during the winter they don't want to have to deal with finding parking in Chinatown!
I read Ron Eade's comments and yours and was pretty enthused to give this place a try, however after seeing the link below, now I am not so sure.
http://ottawa.ca/cgi-bin/search/inspections/q.pl?ss=details_en&sq_fs_fdid=ADF8CFF0-36B5-48C0-922E-DDBBFF7ED322
While I do believe that the Food Premis Inspections are very important, and help to protect people from harmful practices, there is a fine line.
The latest report in your link shows one non-compliant item that is non-critical. It is important to fix these issues, but I personally would not panic if there are one or two non-critical items. My 2 cents.
I visited this establishment based solely on your review. They even printed out this blog and taped it onto the front door. What was majorly confusing was that they did not offer any of what Nooschi posted on their menu. I believe this is the type of establishment, where there are 2 menus. If you don't speak Chinese, don't think you'll be able to order what Nooschi writes. Very disappointed in both the blog and the restaurant menu being very misconceiving.
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