桂 Osmanthus Chinese Restaurant Richmond BC – [Review]

Osmanthus is a new Chinese restaurant which has opened up in Richmond’s Aberdeen Centre 2nd level (BC Canada). They specialize in cuisine from the Jiang Nan 江南 region of China which includes major cities Shanghai; Zhejiang; Nanjing etc.

Osmanthus Menu

The restaurant is open for lunch and on their menu are Jiangnan specialties like meat dumplings and buns. They also have noodle soups (like fish soup and fish wonton); congees; and desserts (like rice cakes). They also offer Malaysian Premium Bird’s Nest dishes.

On their dinner menu, they offer appetizers (like jellyfish with smoked vinegar and Shanghai-style smoked fish); soups (like crab meat & fish maw soup and minced beef soup); fresh seafood (like King Crab and Lobster); premium seafood (like braised eel and pan-fried Chilean seabass); mains (like braised meat ball and spring water beef); classic dishes (like fresh meat pork soup dumplings); and more.

Interior

The well-appointed interior exudes an upscale environment.

What We Tried

We visited the restaurant for lunch and ordered 7 dishes to try.

Qianlong’ San Ding Buns (4 pcs) $10.95

Chicken, pork, and bamboo shoot

Su’s Steam Pork Bun (6pcs) $11.95

Soup-Filled Pan-Fried Buns (5 pcs) $11.95

Beef Pan Fried Dumplings (6 pcs) $11.95

Roast Duck Moon cake (3 pcs) $11.95

Fish Soup Wontons (8 pcs) $18.99

Handmade Pine Cake (4 pcs) $11.99

Purple Sweet Potato Jujube / Pumpkin Red Bean Paste

Tea charge – $1.80 per person.

Review

In general, I thought the food was generally well-executed and tasted pretty good. The fillings for the buns & dumplings were flavourful and had a good ratio of bun/dumpling to filling.

The Pork Soup Dumplings were on point but they are a bit more expensive compared to other places at $2 per dumpling.

The Soup-Filled Pan-Fried Buns had a nice, crispy bottom and the bun was nicely fluffy.

I enjoyed the Shanghai-style wontons in a flavourful fish soup. The Beef Pan-Fried Dumplings could have been a bit crispier on the outside but the filling was good.

The Roasted Duck mooncake was a unique savoury, mooncake option and had a nice flaky interior and tasty roast duck filling.

To finish off, the rice cakes in Purple Sweet Potato Jujube and Pumpkin Red Bean Paste flavours were perfect.

That being said, the service was subpar in my opinion and did not match the elevated atmosphere and menu offerings. To start, they just brought us a tea pot and didn’t bring water for my two kids. The restaurant wasn’t all that busy but the staff nor the manager who served our table checked in to see if we were happy with the food. The staff weren’t very attentive to the tables. In fact, I saw guests from two separate tables get up to get the attention from the staff. While I didn’t think the service was very good, the tip prompt on the machine did only start at 12% so I guess there was a silver lining to all of this.

All in all, the food was good but with the service the way it was I wouldn’t want to pay for the somewhat higher prices to dine there without some better service.

Osmanthus is located at 4151 Hazelbridge Way #2788, Richmond, BC.

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