New Mandarin Seafood Restaurant: Lunar New Year dinner

New Mandarin Seafood Restaurant is a Chinese restaurant in Vancouver. I came here with my family for a Lunar New Year meal. This review is based on an in-dining experience.

Interior

The interior is actually quite nice. I especially like the giant chandeliers that hang from the ceilings above all the tables. We were seated kind of closer to an exit door so it was a bit chillier than I expected.

Wall partitions are up and they tried to separate the tables but it still felt a little more cramped than I’d like. All staff wore masks AND gloves and I always appreciate the extra addition of gloves for covid reasons.

The restaurant has walls of live seafood and a stage – I believe it is set up to host Chinese weddings because I also saw a door labeled “bride’s room”. So this is an interesting add-on. I also saw an area that was labelled “VIP”.

Parking is free inside the parkade if you follow the purple signs for New Mandarin Seafood Restaurant. Upon entry into the restaurant, you need to give them your drivers license and the parking stall #.

Food

For Lunar New Year, we order one of their special dinner combos, the lobster & crab combo for $168. It comes with 3 dishes of your choice.

Lobster & Crab

Usually when you order lobster or crab, your server will ask you how you want it to be cooked and there are a variety of options. Most families choose the garlic sauce but we wanted something deep fried so we chose the salt & pepper flavour.

Both the lobster and crab are cooked in the same way and they pile it on top like a mountain. They give quite a lot although it is not easy to get the meat out. Prepare to get down and dirty.

Truffle chicken

One of the 3 dishes we choose is their truffle chicken. It is a cold dish and has shredded ranch chicken meat mixed with black truffle and cilantro. They also throw in some pickled vegetables.

The basket they use is pretty cute an the chicken dish is rich but also refreshing due to the pickled vegetables. The truffle flavour is not as strong as some other Chinese places.

Sauteed diced beef and eggplant

This is another one of the 3 dishes we order and it was recommended by my mom’s friend. It is actually one of my favourite stir frys because I love eggplant.

The beef come in big chunks and the eggplants are soft. I love the sauce they sauté it with. This dish pairs really well with a bowl of white rice.

Superior soy sauce haliba

This is the 3rd dish we selected and it is a halibut dish. The halibut is cut into chunks and fried. There are no bones and it has a nice soy sauce flavour. Again, this dish is a nice pairing with a bowl of white rice.

Stir-fried pea tips with garlic

We added on a 4th vegetable dish for $30. The stir-fried pea tips is my mom’s favourite veggie dish. If this was one of your 3 dishes as part of the combo, you only have to pay an additional $3.

The pea tips were yummy with lots of garlic flavour. It was not overcooked and had a nice texture.

Final thoughts

Loewe’s rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐

After tax and tip, we spent over $200 on this meal. We had some leftovers from each dish to take home. Overall, we enjoyed the food and liked how many choices there are for you to choose from when it comes to the dishes as part of the combo. My favourite dish was probably the eggplant stir fry, mostly because I have a hard time de-shelling seafood. Otherwise, I would have enjoyed the lobster and crab dish a lot more.

Service was quite good but my mom was also handing out red pockets so they may have been biased lol. The waitresses and servers were all very nice but the manager didn’t seem to do much except walk around and interrupt our conversation with something irrelevant.

Sincerely, Loewe