Golden Swan Restaurant

On the few past occasions that we’ve been to Golden Swan Restaurant located on Victoria Drive, it was always super busy.  We found ourselves here on a weeknight a little while ago and it was practically dead (which I didn’t mind because the service wasn’t too bad since we practically had the whole restaurant to ourselves).

We started out with an order of Peking Duck.  My only complaint about this dish is that the wrappers tore too easily when we tried to pick them up.  Having a holey wrapper is definitely not what you want when you’re eating finger food.

Our cold appetizer platter came with a generous amount of slippery and crunchy jellyfish.  It also came with rolled up smoked salmon (something I’ve never had on a Chinese cold platter dish), shrimp, sliced mushrooms in beancurd wrappers, and a sliced meat (I’m guessing knuckle meat?).

Instead of the usual stuffed crab claw, our meal came with Deep Fried Fish/Shrimp Paste Balls.  I honestly didn’t miss the small crab claw that this usually comes with.

Our next dish was a very saucy mixture of sliced mushrooms, shredded chicken, and snow pea tips.  This probably would have been really good with rice but our rice dish didn’t come out until the end of the meal.

Okay, I know that these look like twinkies (actually, they kind of tasted like deep fried twinkies) but I think they were actually Deep Fried Condensed Milk accompanying Honey-Coated Spare Ribs.  The ribs were very sweet… a little too sweet for my tastes.

Along with the Peking Duck that we had earlier, we also had the Duck Lettuce Wrap.  I was surprised at how meaty the duck filling was – usually you just get small leftover pieces of duck that wasn’t used in the Peking Duck dish but there were lots of tasty duck pieces in this lettuce wrap.

Our soup dish was a Seafood Fish Maw Soup that was a little bland but filled with seafood.  I suppose that’s why they give you white pepper to season your soup.

I was a little disappointed with the Fried Lobster dish that we had.  It was a little bit like jiu yim with soy sauce but not as tasty.    While I really like jiu yim crab, I think I prefer lobster prepared with a cream sauce.

The Free Range Chicken dish is served cold with a yellow skin – by this point, I was getting a bit full.

Our fish dish was interesting… the boneless fish slices were stir-fried with veggies and served with the fish bones deep fried.

The Fried Rice dish was pretty good… too bad it came out at the end of our meal.

Our dessert started out with Tapioca and Taro soup (which I prefer over the usual red bean soup).

And finally, we ended our meal with a Lychee-flavoured Jello (or should I say “gelatin”?).

Food:  3.5 / 5
Service:  3.5 / 5

5380 Victoria Drive
Vancouver, BC

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