Bak Hauk Orient Delight – Sherwood Park, Alberta

We were driving across Edmonton when we ventured into Sherwood Park and found ourselves hungry. We stumbled upon Bak Hauk Orient Delight kind of in a strip plaza. There’s tons of parking here and the restaurant is very spacious in size.

I love places with Hokkigai which is surf clams, so I had to order some, kind of like an appetizer. I know it’s werid, but it was decent!

For the actual meal, I ordered their Pineapple Chicken & Beef on Rice which wasn’t bad! It was a large plate of rice with chicken and beef stir fried with pineapples.

My husband had their Malaysian Laksa which looked and smelled delicious. The soup was actually kind of watered down and the shrimp was actually soggy.

Overall, it was a decent experience although I do not recommend their laksa.

Bak Hauk Orient Delight on Urbanspoon

Bak Hauk Orient Delight

120 – 270 Baseline Rd
Sherwood Park, AB
(780) 449-5462

Pad Thai – Banff

I never really make reservations while I’m in Banff as I never know where and when I am going to be anywhere. We stumbled into the Clock Tower Mall right on Banff Ave and found this Thai food place called Pad Thai. There were tables inside and outside of the restaurant (all indoors of the clock tower mall) which is kind of dingy, but that’s okay with me!

We were one of the first tables to arrive and we were allowed to sit anywhere. We chose a corner inside and by the window and it was nice! You are still “in” the restaurant and you can watch people go by and other customers! We started our lunch with a plate of their Thai Dumplings which they call “Saw Moing”. It came on a plate with 4 purple flowers. It tasted a lot like some other Vietnamese “snacks” I’ve had as it has minced pork inside and you dip it in a sauce which is kind of a mix of plum sauce and Nước chấm.

In Las Vegas, I fell in love with a dish of curry with BBQ Duck, so to my excitement, they had Red Curry with BBQ Duck and I knew immediately that it was what I wanted, with coconut rice! The portions was quite large for a lunch but it was jammed pack with thinly sliced BBQ duck in this great Thai curry sauce. Over the coconut rice, I was really satisfied.

To top everything off, I ordered one of my favourite fried dishes, which is Pad Sa Hew which has tons of different spelling for. I commonly see it spelled as “Pad Si Ew”, but regardless, it’s the same thing – my favourite thing! Basically it’s fried rice noodles with soy sauce and they make it exceptionally good here. They use nice high heat in a wok – you can taste it (there’s actually a Chinese term to describe this) but it’s one of the reasons why I love this dish from here. Tons of smoke flavour, tons of seasoning flavour, tons of goodness and the noodles weren’t all broken into little pieces.

Thai food has always had a special place in my heart as it’s food I just love as regular daily food. This little place make it quite accessible and it’s delicious! The portions are huge and the price is a tad on the high side but it sure is delicious. This make it totally worth it in my books! I’m sure I will be back sometime soon!

Pad Thai

110 banff av
Banff, AB
(403) 762-4911

Bugis Street Brasserie – London, England

This restaurant is located inside the Copthorne Tara Hotel in Kensington, London and this was the hotel we checked into. After a long walk to the hotel from Trafalgar Square, we quickly went downstairs after putting our belongings down and headed to Bugis Street Brasserie.

We got seated and the staff here are extremely friendly. The waitress spoke to us in Cantonese through the duration of our evening at Bugis Street, which was probably practice for her, as I don’t think too many Asians would eat Chinese food while on holidays to London.

The Hainanese Chicken Rice – 海南鸡饭 that we ordered was quite a large portion, with a big bowl of rice, probably more than a quarter of the chicken, and some sauces that came with this order (which is typical) was really pleasing to the eye and the stomach. This dish was the most pleasing for me, as I had a cold during this time – and a bowl of rice always satisfies an Asian’s belly. It wasn’t hot and warming though – like my next dish.

We ordered the Singapore laksa 辣沙 which is a spicy noodle soup that really originated more from Malaysia in my opinion, even though it`s called Singapore Laska… but it does have a Chinese name – which always always fun to think about the Asian dishes and their names (“laksa” meaning “spicy sand” in Chinese, and this is from the sandy or gritty texture in the sauce from the ground dried prawns). Anyway, enough with my tangent, this belly warming noodle soup was full of intense Asian flavours such as lemon grass and ginger. A hot and spicy bowl of soup right before bedtime makes for a restful sleep. This dish wasn’t so spicy that you’d need to use the washroom during the entire evening, which was wonderful! This bowl of Laksa wasn’t authentic to me, but it was a very tasty bowl of noodle soup!

Finally, we ordered something much more Chinese which was Fried noodles with shredded chicken 杂菜炒面 and the noodles in this dish was really thin and delicate… which meant a lot of short pieces, but the flavour was plentiful, and the chicken slices was generous in portion sizes and slices.

Overall, I really enjoyed this stop for dinner #2 of the evening at Bugis Street Brasserie, after a long hike from dinner #1. It was extremely satisfying to the tummy, the body and the mind! It was a wonderful way to wind down the evening as everything was so pleasing and satisfying.

Bugis Street Brasserie

Copthorne Tara Hotel London Kensington
Scarsdale Place
Kensington
London
W8 5SR
United Kingdom
44 (0) 20 7937 7211