Ningbo Seafood Restaurant

We ended up here for lunch because every other place around the area was packed on a Friday lunch. I was surprised Ningbo had a lot of empty tables considering it’s not a big place.
They offer a different set of lunch specials daily and they’re reasonably priced. The service was decent. The food, for the most part, wasn’t very good. The xiao long baos tasted like they were from the frozen aisle. The Chinese donut was cold and soggy. The noodle soups were bland. The Ningbo Pork were just little pieces of pork fat that’s covered in sweet and sour sauce. And the beef pie wrap was also pretty sad.
Overall, not worth the very high probability of road rage getting to Parker Place and looking for parking. I almost had road rage today and I wasn’t even driving. Twice.

This place was not that easy to find for non local. We had to circle around the mall many times to find it. Finally, we arrived at 9:20 pm — 40 minutes before closing on a cold rainy Monday night. The restaurant was completely empty. The kitchen had already prepared to close. The kitchen was reopened for just two of us. I didn’t know that Ningbo Seafood Restaurant was named after a real place. Ningbo is one of China’s oldest city. This was our first time to experience this style of Chinese cuisine. Also it was a surprise to find that literally every menu item was accompanied by a full color photo with English descriptions. We ordered the house special — live Jumbo Crab and fresh homemade Rice Cake with the Ningbo sauce ($ 85) and Chinese PeaTips with garlic sauce ($ 18). Both dishes were very tasty. The owner Evan and our server Simon were very friendly. They kept the restaurant open and patiently waited for us to finish our food at 10:30 pm.

The food here isn’t bad. A bit greasy.
My main complaint is the poor service. My family has come here several times, so it absolutely isn’t a one-​off. Our most recent visit is the last straw. We came with my grandmother, whose dexterity doesn’t allow her to use chopsticks with ease. We asked for a fork, then we also asked for some hot sauce.
After these items were delivered to our table, the waitress walked past us, muttering within earshot, «first they ask for a fork, then they ask for hot sauce». We asked politely, and no finger-​snapping was involved.
We mentioned this little incident to the floor manager, who brushed aside our concerns. His response? «Maybe she’s worked to a point of annoyance.» Had he acknowledged the issue, we would’ve been mollified.
To cap off this dining experience, as we were settling the bill, another waitress asked us about gratuity as she punched in info into the debit machine.
We would come here because the space more easily accommodated a wheelchair. After this, we’ll seek out other dining options.

Tang yuan in the end is very authentic. Service is very attentive. They even remove the fish bones for you! We ordered the king crab last week, not the best season, but they still managed to find a very big one for us. Everyone was satisfied. A little bit pricy but their service makes you feel like it’s worth it. Will come back, a very decent place to treat important guests

The servers were very terrible. I treat my friends for dinner .I ordered king crab and a lot of seafood. Suddenly, the restaurant the power went out. Almost guest left the restaurant and a lot of guest didn’t pay the money, but I with my friends didn’t leave. The restaurant ‘s boss told us will give discount. When I will pay the bill, the boss disappear. The bill include the tax total is 465 dollars. I gave them 500 dollars because they didn’t give discount. After the severs fell off the chairs and said a lot if bad words. I am feel so angry. As a result, the waitress was so rude we ended up yelling at each other. Just cause I didn’t give enough tips for them. The restaurant has been a power outage. We only used candles for dinner. I spent a lot of money, but I feel very unhappy. I am English is not good. Thank you read my review.

Ningbo seafood is the most authentic Zhejiang cuisine in Vancouver. Zhejiang is a province along southeast coast of China, beside East Sea with lost of delicious sea food, such as sea belt fish, yellow croaker. Ningbo cook these two meal very well. Also, Ningbo seafood’s XLB & SJB (Shen Jian Bao), pan steam and fry bun, are the best in Vancouver.

We came here for lunch and came away really disappointed at the service and the food.
We ordered Staple Shanghainese Food — if you claim to be a Shanghaiese restaurant, you cannot get this wrong.
We ordered:
Sweet Hot Soy Milk — it came out nice and white with the spoonful of sugar not even mixed in, we saw the server dish it out behind the bar from a Thermos Heating Pot. Once you try to drink it, you can smell the burnt smell, somewhere along the cooking process, the soy milk was burnt. I told the staff member it was burnt and she passed it off as if I did not know that Fresh Cooked Soy Milk should smell like this. I told her I have made fresh Soy Milk and it does not smell burnt. Eventually, she took it back.
We also ordered the Beef Roll, for the size of the wrap, the beef to roll ratio was off, there were 4 small slices of beef in the roll slathered with sauce and cucumber and cilantro.
The Sticky Rice Pork Floss Roll was not sticky and not very tasty at all. They really limit the use of ingredients essential to the roll.
Beef Noodle — It was ok but the broth was filled with MSG.
The XLB was ok, I still prefer the XLB down the street.
With so many choices of Shanghaiese food in the 4 block area in Richmond, I will not come back here.
They did take the charge off the Sweet Soy Milk after I reminded them that I sent it back.

It seems like every block of Chinese Richmond has one of these Shanghainese delicacy type restaurants, and if you are looking for this type of food and you are already at Parker Place and do not want to eat food court Shanghainese, here is your close go-​to. Taking a few people here, who are Shanghainese, they just had a craving for this type of food, and didn’t want to do regular Cantonese dim-​sum anymore.
We came at around 11:30 AM on a Sunday. usually primetime for any dim-​sum restaurant in Richmond… but this place had seats, so no waiting for us. It’s a fair sized place, big tables, and big comfortable chairs with all the tv’s playing sports, so if your looking to eat, and need to watch the ‘game’ this place has you covered.
We ordered a variety of items, including their XLB, sweet hot soy milk, deep fried ribbon fish, fried shrimp, cucumber with jellyfish, sticky rice with donut (chi fan) and dried tofu with veggie (ma lan tou). A good selection, each one well presented coming to the table in their small serving’s. nothing is too massive here. The dried tofu with veggie came out first, finely cut, something that my brother is a fan of, for me it’s a dish that sticks between the gaps of my back teeth, but done quite well. The jellyfish, albeit small, but as the manager on the floor said. what more can you expect for under $ 10 for that dish. An easy dish of pan fried shrimp. nothing special here… but it was something someone on the table was craving for. The sweet hot soy milk was not too sweet. just a hint of sugar to make it right. The ‘chi fan’ was done right. where there was minimal moisture in the sticky rice where it was gooping up your fingers if you decided to eat with your hands, and the donut inside was not overly crispy with good chew. combined with some pork fluff. All the other dishes were quite standard… except for one… the XLB.
I may have been here on an off day… reading other people’s take on the Xiao Long Bao were amazing. mine were middle of the line. They looked right, coming from the steamer being brought from the kitchen… placed on a piece of light paper so to not stick onto the wooden steamer bottom. They weren’t massive by any means in size, perfect folds on the top of these small golf ball sized dumplings and you can see a hint of the soup cooking within. The wrapping, or skin, wasn’t too thick. but wasn’t as delicate thin like some places I have been to, and in turn makes these things easy to handle without breaking… not much liquid in these XLB’s. and the meat… a little to solid, where every bite was almost like biting into a ‘Siu Mai’ (look that up if you don’t understand!). Not one of the best, in my opinion. on this dish. but definitely not one of the worse.
It is an ok place to come have a meal, but it gets hidden away as there is so much selection in Richmond for this type of cuisine, luckily for them… in this area there is none unless you jump into your car and go somewhere else.

I came here with a few relatives, we needed to satisfy our XLB craving, so we came here on the recommendation of another family friend.
The XLB was actually pretty damn good, I could have ordered another rack for myself! Thin skin, but held together well, and it was really nice and juicy on the inside!
We also tried their dumplings (meat & veg), but the cool thing is that the veg is watercress, which has a completely different taste when cooked (compared to raw). So we’re now adding watercress to our own homemade dumplings, its awesome!
So yes, they are a bit of a dumpling king here, but the other items we ordered were a bit of a disappointment. Yao Tiu (fried Chinese donut) with sweetened soy milk arrived separately. The soy milk came out right away, and even though we kept reminding the waitress that we would like to have the donut come out right away, we had to wait another 25 minutes for it. the donut was fresh, but the milk was cold. I do prefer sweetened milk in general, but they definitely added too much.
We also tried their fried daikon pastry, and while the inside was fresh, piping hot and tasty, it was incredibly incredibly oily compared to other places I’ve tried.
The biggest disappointment were the Shanghainese noodles. it was really soggy. It looked like it was cooked with light watered down soy sauce, and definitely not enough wok hei!
Overall, the dumplings were amazingly good! Everything else: the service, the noodles, definitely needs improvement. 2.5 stars, but I’m rounding it up to 3.

Came for lunch a few times before and have been fairly impressed. Tried dinner once but didn’t work out as they were understaffed and the table was right up against the cashier counter which irritated us so we decided to skip dinner.
Group of 5 for brunch today. Ordered the following (everything was special price except for the congee which was regular price)
Xiaolongbao $ 3.99÷6 (ordered 2, so well done with thin skin but strong enough to hold the huge amount of soup, EXCELLENT)
Chinese doughnut $ 1.80 (warm and crispy)
Salty sticky rice $ 3.43 (very good)
Seafood congee $ 6.99 (not bad)
Dumpling $ 4.50 (skin breaks too easily)
Mini Wonton in soup $ 4.99 (not bad)
Beef wrap $ 4.99 (excellent)
Overall very good meal. Could not finish all the food. Ample parking at Parker Place
Mall. Restaurant opens at 10:30am
Andy
Richmond BC

Services: Inferior. I would love to give ZERO star if Unilocal had such function. The waitresses are rude and very poor service. They would stand their until you move the dishes to make room for the new one. Otherwise they would just drop off the dishes on top of your other dishes. In addition, the waitresses would ignore you if you want to add any additional orders and not refill hour water for tea.
Food: Quality of food is not bad. Taste fairly good to decent and temperatures is hot.

just for the xiaolongbao–
amazing! the best i’ve had since, umm. i don’t know. but better than din tai fung. they are big, they don’t break when you pick them up by the stem, and the juice is amazingly delicious! i only wish they had the standard sized chinese soup spoons, as they have fancy smaller spoons that don’t hold all the soup (and i’m not good at hot soup going into my mouth, so didn’t stuff them in my mouth all at once)

Ningbo is now my family’s favourite restaurant for shanghai dumplings. Perfectly juicy and flavourful.
Their menu is great with photos accompanied each dish so you know exactly what you’re getting. I also recommend the Chinese doughnut, tomato and seafood with rice crust, and this seaweed-​sticky-​chewy rice item (I can’t remember the actual dish’s name lol) l

Did you know that Ningbo is one of China’s oldest cities? I didn’t, until I read it on Wikipedia just now. In fact, when I ate at Ningbo Seafood Restaurant last week, I didn’t even know that it was named after a real place.
From this place that I never knew of, the food was notably different (from that of Cantonese, at least). Seeing as it was my first time with this cuisine and in consideration of the size of the menu, it was quite a pleasant and helpful surprise that literally every menu item was accompanied by a full colour photo and English description.
By basically pointing to the pictures, our party of three ventured to sample an assortment of dishes (see photos) that were all very tasty. Everything from the stringy mushrooms braised with bamboo and fatty pork to the perennial favourite xiao long bao, (which we ordered double of for good measure), arrived obviously freshly made to order and tasted great. My grandmother was especially pleased with the large size of the fabulously greasy Chinese doughnut and rich bean flavour of the warm, sweetened soy milk that she dunked with.
Décor-​wise, Ningbo somehow does the previously unimaginable and successfully avoids falling into the two usual categories of «gaudy» and «less than impressive» like almost all other Chinese restaurants (in my humble opinion). The high ceilings and bright lighting give the patterned wall décor, carpets, and furnishings a nice balance. The large built in fish tanks are squeaky clean and full of lively Alaska King Crab. The servers (including the owner who was dressed in a gorgeous teal qipao) were all very friendly.
Until I get a chance to visit Ningbo for real, the restaurant will do more than fine.