Posted on

Bellagio Cafe 鹿港小镇 – Shanghai, China

We ventured to the Super Brand Mall in Shanghai and found a great place for dinner called Bellagio Cafe and it’s located on the 8th Floor of the mall and relatively easy to find! It’s closer to the IMAX, if it helps! 🙂

We ordered a bunch of dishes and shared it, Asian style! We first started with their Black Pepper Beef on Iron Plate which smelled and tasted absolutely amazing! The amount of pepper used was the perfect amount on beautifully tender pieces of beef!

We also tried Steamed Shrimp with Garlic and I know it doesn’t sound too appetizing, but it was absolutely amazing! The shrimp was really fresh and steamed to perfection. Tons of garlic on top of the shrimp – so luckily we all had at least one piece!

From there, with us being so Asian, we ordered some rice, Taiwanese Fried Rice, and it’s quite different from the fried rice that I’m use to! It is very similar, but different! Usually the main difference between Chinese fried rice and Taiwanese fried rice will be in the egg cooking format. Chinese will basically make scrambled eggs or an omelette first, while the Taiwanese will crack the raw egg into the fried rice and then mix it up.

A very traditional and popular Taiwanese dish is the Three cup chicken (三杯鸡) which is made with 1 cup soy sauce, 1 cup rice wine and 1 cup sesame oil. This recipe will make TONS of chicken, so it’s nice to modify it and Bellagio Cafe definitely modifies it and adds other ingredients such as ginger and basil into the dish to make it extra special!

My husband actually has Hakka ancestors so it was neat to him to find a dish done in this style. When he saw Hakka Stir Fry Dried Squid an Celery he ordered it! It is exactly as it sounds! Most of Taiwanese cooking is derived from 3 simple ingredients, and this dish shows the simplicity of their cooking with rice wine, soy sauce and some sugar! This dish was so simple yet so delicious!

We actually ordered a dessert or 2 for this meal, and the most memorable dessert was their Mango Pancake which was a mango crepe that was really thin around some light cream with some mango inside. It was light and airy and actually kind of refreshing! We really enjoyed this and I ate up my husbands half of the dessert! 🙂

Overall, we loved this place and it’s a place we would recommend for Taiwanese food! It’s neat to see Shanghai has different types of Asian cuisine and it’s actually done properly! The food, service and atmosphere ranks top notch for sure!

Posted on

Lazy Monkey

I was looking for a new place to try for things like Taiwanese bubble tea and other small snacks. I went online and found this place called Lazy Monkey which offered great reviews – but it was located at the other end of town at Norbrent Shopping Centre (across from Churchill High School).

We knew we wanted to have their Milk Tea of some sort. They didn’t have an extensive drink menu, but what they had was pretty good! I had their Jasmine Green Milk Tea which was really good.

We had 5 of us for this evening, so we ordered a bunch of miscellaneous snacks and meals to share. The first that came out was the Salt & Pepper Chicken Wings which was really good. It was really crispy and fried to perfection. A lot of seasoning on each wing, which is always nice.

We also had an order of their Fried Puffy Tofu which really wasn’t anything special. The seasoning tasted like the MSG packages from instant noodles, and the texture was a little chewier than what you’d expect for a puffy tofu. When I think of puffy tofu, I think of it being hollow in the centre. Who knows, maybe that’s how the Taiwanese do it! 🙂

Then, we our order with Fried Squid Tentacles which was fun! They had big pieces of tentacles and they were really soft and tender with lots of flavour. This was a great dish!

Then, we had 2 dishes of their main, one was their Egg wrapped Rice with Curry and I’m not sure what the actual name on their menu was, but it wasn’t bad. It was neat as they made a nice omelette and wrapped it around rice. Then, there was a large section of curry that didn’t carry much flavour or seasoning.

The last thing we ordered was what we think was called Taiwanese Chicken Meal which was a large portion of chicken, with some vegetables and a bowl of rice. It also had a hard boiled egg braised in Chinese soy sauce marinade.

Overall, we had fun and the food wasn’t bad at all. I personally liked their little snacks more than their meals, and I did enjoy their drinks! I’m sure we will be back as we did enjoy it!

Lazy Monkey on Urbanspoon

Lazy Monkey

3616 52 Ave NW, Unit 11
Calgary, AB
(403) 338-2123

Posted on

O’Cup Calgary

There’s this one day, I just went to Chinatown, and noticed a new restaurant/cafe – so I called up a few friends and advised them something called O’Cup was opened. We made the effort to go down. It’s in the former location of Bubble Station (former location of original Dessert House). This little place has really odd hours which doesn’t make me feel like it’s very convenient. We got in at 8pm as a few of us got off work around then, and right away they told us it was last call. Regardless, we asked for a few more minutes as the rest of the party arrives – and they were really accommodating in that aspect! At the end, when we were about to leave, there were a lot of tables that did come in for drinks, so I think it’s okay if you actually make it in before 9PM.

Their menus are really interesting as they put lamination on the menu and you check off what you want with a white pen. We ordered some Milk Tea, and it says it can come “hot”, and we ordered 2 drinks from that section. One of them came hot, and the other was cold. We didn’t specify, as we assumed it would be “cold” unless we asked them for a hot drink. Regardless, it was a very decent. The drinks did come out one at a time, so it was like they only had 1 drink maker. We got the Almond Milk Tea and that came out hot and it tasted quite delicious!

I ordered the Hazelnut Milk Tea and it came out cold. It tasted really good, but there was a ton of ice cubes.

As a little snack, I ordered my favourite Condensed Milk Waffles. I love condensed milk, and I am convinced that if you put it on anything, everything tastes good! The condensed milk was delicious, but the waffles was just a little weird. It was really dry and dense and not my favourite.

We also got another sweet waffle, and we tried the Oreo Cookie Waffle which was good, except for the texture of the waffle – so I think it’s their batter that hasn’t been perfected… otherwise, it’s just a different type which I’m not a fan of! I am sure there are lots out there who would like it. I just like the ones with a crispy exterior and a light and fluffy interior.

We also had some Popcorn Chicken which comes in a little bowl and some mustard mayonnaise as a dip. It was fried to a nice colour with a huge crisp! I really enjoyed their popcorn chicken and I’m sure I’ll get it again!

We all shared another deep fried item called the Taiwanese Fried Chicken which are small pieces of chicken slices, seasoned with a seasoning very much like salt & pepper chicken. Again, it was really crispy and tasty and the chicken wasn’t too dry!

Finally, our last little treat that we ordered was the Curry Fish Balls, and it was interesting as it wasn’t actually all fish balls. They have pieces of lo bak (daikon) in it – and just a few fish balls. So, we were just a little mis-lead, but it tasted good anyway! But again, you really can’t goof up something like this!

Overall, I did enjoy the “deep” fried food and the drinks from here. So, now, we got another little place where we don’t mind going to on a Saturday or Sunday, as the hours work best for us there!

O'Cup on Urbanspoon

O’Cup

2-110 2 Ave SE
Calgary, AB T2G
(403) 452-2606

Hours of Operation:
Mon – Thurs 11AM – 9PM
Fri-Sat 11AM – 11PM
sun 11AM – 6PM