For over 25 years, Fortune House Restaurant has been a staple in the Burnaby area. Located inside Metropolis at Metrotown mall, this award-winning restaurant is well-known for its dim sum dishes and traditional Chinese cooking techniques.

I attended a nine-course meal courtesy of the group YVR Foodies, a Meetup Group and monthly event series for food lovers in Vancouver. This is a good way to meet new friends and try out new restaurants.

Our nine-course menu tasting included the following:

• Assorted vegetable tempura with homemade garlic chili sauce. Quite nice presentation for tempura. I liked the slight spiciness of the batter – however the chilli sauce was nowhere to be seen.

• Dim sum trio: shrimp dumpling, deep fried meat dumpling, sticky rice wrapped in bamboo leaf. The shrimp dumplings at Fortune House are some of my favourites in the city.  The deep fried meat dumpling, I’ve never tried before, but yum! This will be one of my dim sum staples from now on.

• XO sauce stir fry beef tenderloin, mixed peppers, deep fried milk, birds nest.  The presentation alone on this dish was worth ordering. The meat was perfectly tender. I’ve never tried deep fried milk before, it was a tad chewy but it made for a good pairing with the meat, and both textures were quite pleasant together.

• Deep fried tilapia in house sweet and sour sauce and crispy rice. My dining companions were quite amused at the fact that I had a bit of trouble eating this dish. I’ll be perfectly honest here: I’m not the biggest fan of dishes that serve the whole animal. Something about them staring at me as I eat them. I know it’s silly, but there it is. I did however tried the fish and I found it flaky and flavourful. The crispy rice had a good texture, and I quite enjoy the sauce. I should mention that in Chinese tradition it’s important that the fish is served with the head and tail intact, specially during the Lunar New Year period, to avoid bad luck throughout the year.

• Garlic steam fresh scallop served in shell, vermicelli, infused oil. This was my least favourite dish. I’m not a fan of steamed scallops, I simply don’t like the texture. That’s my opinion. The presentation however, was lovely. Presentation is something this restaurant does very well.

• Marinated tender pork ribs, coconut curry drizzle, seasonal greens. The sauce was very light for a curry, but it only allowed the meat flavours to be the prominent ones. These were eaten with gusto at my table.

• Traditional soy sauce chicken – This is a well-loved Cantonese dish. This particular recipe, we were told, has been passed down from generations.

• Fried rice – near the end of our meal we were presented with a simple bowl of rice, and I think it was broccoli stems? It was good, but by then everyone was pretty full.

• Mango pudding – I always order this when I come to Fortune House. I love the shape of the fish (no, I didn’t have ANY issue eating THIS fish). The pudding comes with a condense milk sauce. It’s a lovely way to end a meal.

During our meal, we had several speakers come in and speak to us about several topics, such as Kevin Huang from the Hua Foundation, Sherry Strong, Co-Founder of the World Wellness Project, Justine from Vancouver’s Neglected and Sophia Rizos from Zomato amongst others.

My favourite speaker was Derek Juno from Mealshare. Mealshare partners with restaurants for its “buy one, give one” model. Fortune House has a Mealshare logo on certain menu items. For every one of those dishes, the restaurant donates a meal to Mealshare to feed the neediest in our community. It’s a fantastic concept – and another reason to visit Fortune House again in the near future.