81Big Mouth Kee

This is one of those Chinese restaurants where the waitstaff are worried that if they serve the real Chinese food to the white folks, we'll have an anxiety attack and never come back. You'll need to be insistent with the waiter about bringing you the food from the Chinese menu, not the English menu (which is from the won ton soup school of Chinese-Canadian cuisine). Who wants that when they do winter melon soup, a melon holding wonderful chicken stock with shrimps, lotus seeds, Chinese mushrooms, bok choy and sweet BBQ pork? They keep live Vancouver crabs in the tank, and deep fry them just enough with a fragrant mountain of crisp garlic in contrast with the hot of chilli and the sweet of minced pork. My soul can also be bought cheap with their pork that has been braised long and slow with onions and five spice for sweetness, complexity and tenderness. Who cares that it ain't the Ritz?