Chinese Culinary Art Class #3 - Golden Great Wall Szechuan Restaurant

[UPDATE 05 May 2004: One of our readers, Jason, who has an unknown connection with the Golden Great Wall  insists:

1. I take out the the statement that the Golden Great Wall is not an authentic Szechuan resturant
2. I take out the statement that "It's also not a Szechuan restaurant but they serve Szechuan food because it is popular and a good way to make money."

He insists that the Golden Great Wall is both an authentic Beijing and Szechuan style restaurant as well as serving sweet and sour and food suitable to more high class Chinese people (To quote Jason:"my source says it both beijing and szechuan use to be just szechuan but customer around the golden great wall area (company) enjoy casual chinese dinner like sweet and sour pork etc so it bit of both but GGW does specialize in szechuan when more high class chinese people go and eat the waitress would adress them to more suitable taste but during lunch it just both style at night it just different to sum it up").

I am not going to change my writing below but I believe this update gives Jason's side of the story.

My response:

My review of this restaurant is positive and in fact I recommend people go to the Great Wall: first for Beijing, second for Szechuan.

Going where the market is (in other words serving both Szechuan, Beijing and Cantonese style Chinese food which is what the Golden Great Wall appears to be doing) to make money is a good thing, not a bad thing.  I didn't mean to imply that the owners of the Golden Great Wall are money hungry; just that they are pragmatic capitalists who are serving the tastes of the local Vancouver market.

This is my last update to this piece.  Any further comments on this will be deleted.  I encourage anybody out there who disagrees with this piece or any other writing in VanEats to leave non-repetitive, constructive comments on the relevant posts and if you aren't happy with our responses, please write whatever you want on your own blog.  You can start your own free blog at blogspot].

[UPDATE 02 April 2004: No disrespect was meant to the owners of the Golden Great Wall, check out my Golden Great Wall Szechuan Redux post for the details.]

It's funny how a lot of Chinese restaurants call themselves Szechuan even though their food is not! I am told (and it make sense) that this is done to differentiate them from Cantonese food because a lot of people are familiar with Cantonese style Chinese food and Szechuan style food but not the other styles such as Beijing style and Shanghai style.

Golden Great Wall Szechuan Restaurant (B2-525 West Broadway, 604 872-0238) is one such restaurant. It is not a Cantonese restaurant. It's also not a Szechuan restaurant but they serve Szechuan food because it is popular and a good way to make money.

Golden Great Wall is primarily a Northern/Beijing style restaurant and that's what we had for our third Chinese Culinary Arts class last Monday February 23, 2004.

Here's what we had:

• 3 course Peking Duck consisting of the skin, ground duck rolled up in lettuce and duck soup (Beijing Kaoya, san chi)
• Beijing Style Shredded Pork (Jingjiang rousi)
• Sauteed sliced fish with celery (Xiangqin yupian)
• Beijing-styled panacake with pork filling (Jingdu roubing)
• Boiled dumplings with pork and Chinese chives (Jiucai guotie)
• Stir-fried cabbage in vinegar sauce (Cu liu baicai)
• Fried banana in honey (Basi xiangjiao)

My favourite was the duck and the Beijing-style pancake.

The duck skin had no fat! Yes! Crispy, crunchy!

And the duck soup was wholesome warming winter food. A great rustic style treat!

The Beijing style pancake with pork was salty for some but not for me! Filling and wrapper went together nicely. I need to have this again soon! We will be back!

Here's a photo of a half-eaten Beijing style pancake with pork filling: