Yan’s Garden Chinese Restaurant: Push Cart Dim Sum in Burnaby

So, Yan’s Garden has been on my list of places to try for a number of years (I suppose it’s partly because I used to watch “Wok with Yan” back in the 80’s). I’ve been hesitant to stop by here in the past mainly because parking always looked difficult here as the parking lot is generally always full.

We stopped by in early February (during the snowy weather) so we managed to grab one of the available parking spaces. A good thing too because the lot filled up rather quickly afterwards. We were surprised at how large this restaurant is because, from the outside, it appears to be a small location. However, despite the large footprint, the seating seemed a bit cramped… especially since they offer push-cart dim sum.

First up was the Steamed Beef Rice Rolls ($5.28) and Pork Siu Mai ($5.28) topped with fish roe – staples for our dim sum outings.

Two other classic Cantonese dim sum dishes followed quickly thereafter… Steamed Beef Balls ($5.58) and Steamed Chicken Feet ($5.28) in black bean sauce. The chicken feet were fairly tender but the dish seemed to be missing the black beans.

The thing with push-cart style dim sum is that you have to wait sometimes for the dish you’re looking for to show up. I also find that we tend to over order with push-cart dim sum. Our next dishes were the Pan-Fried Turnip Cake ($6.99) and Honeycomb Tripe ($5.28). I know that tripe (and chicken feet) can be a bit of an acquired taste for some people but you should really give it a try. By themselves, they don’t have much flavour but they do take on the flavour of the sauce and the texture is quite different than other dishes.

Their Stuffed Eggplant $5.58) turned out really nice with the perfect amount of light crispness to the bite and a generous filling.

For dessert, we picked up these amazingly cute Mango and Lychee Bunnies ($5.58). They were almost too cute to eat… almost. The mango was really good with a perfectly smooth and velvety texture.

Overall, the food here is pretty good. Service is a bit haphazard (they mistakenly marked a dish down twice for us and we had to flag them down to correct it).

9948 Lougheed Hwy
Burnaby, BC V3J 1N3

www.yansgardenrestaurant.com