Top gun: Richmond

It was that time again…time for a family dinner and this time it was at Top Gun in Richmond. Top gun is a Chinese restaurant that offers dim sum, traditional Chinese dishes and all-you-can-eat hot pot meals.

Appetizer platter

★★★

It had baby chili octopus, wood ear mushrooms, pork belly, tofu skin stuffed with shiitake mushrooms, imitation jelly fish and beef.

Almond shrimp balls

★★★★

Unlike most of the crab/shrimp balls we’ve had in the past, these weren’t battered with bread crumbs. They were actually battered with slivered almonds instead which added a unique nutty crunch to them.

Hainanese chicken

★★

Instead of having the green onion sauce on the side, it was put on top in the form of a roux. Although the chicken wasn’t over cooked, I didn’t have much of this because I couldn’t get over the fact that it was cold chicken?

Steamed fish

★★★★

This was definitely my favorite dish of the night. The fish was so big and the meat was so flakey and tender.

Sweet and sour pork

★

Not a good dish. The flavours in the dish was just a mess. Too sweet, too sour, too soft. We didn’t really end up eating it.

Crispy chow mien

★★★

These noodles were topped with shrimp, scallop, shiitake mushrooms, gai lan and chicken. I was too full at this point to try any of it but lil bun and brother deer both highly approved of this dish. They liked how the sauce made some of the noodles soft but since the sauce didn’t touch all the noodles, some pieces were still crispy so it was a nice contrast of textures.

Fried rice

★★

It had egg, Chinese sausage, green onion and dried shrimp in it. I didn’t have any of it but lil’ bun said it was quite dry and there wasn’t much flavor to it.

Sauteed squid, chicken, celery and snap peas

★★

Nothing special here. There wasn’t a soy based seasoning to it or anything…it sort of just tasted like MSG?

Lobster

★★★

I found it interesting that the lobster wasn’t as “deep fried” as I was used to since normally there is lots of gooey roux on top and you can see the fry batter on top. Since there wasn’t any of that this time, you could really taste the lobster for what it was. Brother deer ate a good 1/3 of it!

Imitation abalone, wrapped tofu skin and greens

★★

There was a thick soy based roux on top which made it difficult to taste the veggies but that’s no surprise when it comes to Chinese dishes.