ChineseBites #5: Grand Dynasty Seafood Restaurant 金殿皇朝海鮮料理

It's been a while since the last ChineseBites dinner (which was conveniently at the same time as one of my final exam).  That also meant I hadn't seen a table of Asians shamelessly take pictures of food for a while (prime example below.) We made our way to Burnaby's Grand Dynasty, which is a part of Grand Villa Casino. 

We made our way out to Burnaby to Grand Dynasty, which is a part of Grand Villa Casino.  Along with Sherman and Grace, new to ChineseBites were Dave and Ann of MePlusFood.

To start the evening, we each had a prawn topped with either egg yolk sauce or house spicy sauce.  I preferred the salted duck yolk, and it reminded me of a saucier and better version of the dungeness crab we had at Ken's Chinese Restaurant two dinners ago.  The house spicy sauce prawn was not that spicy, but both prawns were fairly large and pan fried just right.

Next up was the boiled live lobster in superior broth.  The servers first showed us the lobster sashimi that was going to be cooked in a clay pot at the serving table next to us.

While the lobster was fresh, I didn't find it entirely special.  Then again, I like prawn more then shrimp.  The broth was rich in flavour, especially with the Chinese chives and bean sprouts.

We were then served a whole chicken served in a clay pot, which looked really beautiful since it was perfectly golden brown.

Surprise! It was stuffed with sea cucumbers. Although it did indeed sound more impressive than the usual glutinous rice, it was merely alright.  The piece of sea cucumber I had was not as soft as I would have liked.  Although I do appreciate the restaurant for going out of its ways to stuff a chicken with this, I prefer the traditional oyster sauce method more.

The live jumbo ling cod fish hot pot was decent.  Although a tad dangerous with all the hidden bones, the fish was fresh.  The sautéed green vegetables with wild mushroom (right) was overly salty, but the wintermelon and squash it was served with cleansed my palate a bit.

The deep fried crispy chicken with sticky rice looked very nice and looked like a lot of work had to be done to make this.  I didn't really enjoy the exterior layer of skin since it was a bit too dense for my liking, but the rice was good.  The live lobster and seafood with crispy rice in soup (right) was made using the remaining broth from the lobster. I liked the soup, but I was disappointed in the fizz the crispy rice produced when dropped in the soup, since the onomatopoeia the manager used was much more exciting.  It kind of felt like eating rice krispies in soup.

We ended dinner with shredded coconut creamy tarts which were delectable and not overly sweet.

All in all, this ChineseBites dinner was not bad but not impressive either.  I don't think they did anything wrong, as the dishes were all decent, but there weren't any dishes that blew us away.

More: ChineseBites / Rick Chung / Grace Cheung / KueC / MePlusFood


More ChineseBites.com's Signature Dishes Tour:

#1: Golden Swan Restaurant

#2: Fatty Cow Seafood Hot Pot
#2.5: KiBo Restaurant and Lounge

#3: Ken's Chinese Restaurant
#4: Western Lake Chinese Seafood Restaurant
#5: Grand Dynasty Seafood Restaurant
#6: Golden Ocean Seafood Restaurant
#7: Nong Chinese Restaurant
#8: Cindys Palace
#9: Shanghai Élan

Grand Dynasty Seafood Restaurant 金殿皇朝海鮮料理

4331 Dominion St   

Burnaby, BC

(604) 432-6002