Colour See See

We are always on an adventure to find delicious xiao long baos. And recently, my friend told us about this Shanghainese restaurant on Kingsway, across Superstore in Metrotown. The restaurant has a funny name, Colour See See. We always pass by this place, but we never tried it. Unlike other restaurants, they only serve buns and dumplings. It is fairly spacious, with an open-kitchen concept. You can watch them making the dumplings fresh from outside. But I have to warn you all that I highly DO NOT recommend to visit during busy hours.

I'm sure that we all agree that freshly, hand made in front of you dumplings are one of the great luxuries of life. Coordinating and making this to serve in a restaurant would be no small deal, but it has been done before and will be done again. On Sunday, we wanted to find out how ColourSeeSee took on this challenge. After risking my life stepping out onto Kingsway to take a photo of the front of the restaurant, we went inside and were quickly seated in this new small dining room across from Metrotown. OK, I had read the review that said it took an hour and a half to get dumplings but I chose to view that as an anomaly. Ninety minutes for food is not how a restaurant succeeds and they would not last long without correcting the process. Sure enough, they had by the time we arrived. This is a sharply decorated little room with a comfortable banquette seating along the wall with chairs and tables. Admittedly, things started a little bit on the wrong foot and I attribute this to a rush of people leaving and arriving at the same time. I am not making an excuse but the stumble in service was certainly not intentional (We were not provided with cards for ordering or offered tea. Fortunately, I am not shy and made a couple of trips to the counter to get things right. After that, partly at least in the effort to demonstrate their good intentions, service was attentive and friendly). We ordered a couple of combos which basically allowed us to taste much of what was on the menu. One combo started with a small won ton soup. The broth itself was maybe on the too subtle side but seaweed gave it a fresh light taste. The won tons (part of their handiwork here) were delicate and tasty. Very good! The other combo started with Curry Beef Vermicelli Soup. Also not a strong soup but very nicely flavoured complete with tender beef, tofu puffs and greens! We came for the dumplings though! With the combos came 4 pan fried buns or 4 pan fried dumplings. This is where ColourSeeSee truly began to shine. Wonderfully created by hand and then beautifully browned these were so tasty and tender. Both were pork filled and we loved them! Finally came the Soup Dumplings (this was a separate order and not part of a combo). These were pork and shrimp filled and excellent. Our hostess came to demonstrate and make sure that we understood the process of eating soup dumplings without scalding yourself. She seemed pleased at our enthusiastic response to these very good dumplings! Total wait for the dumplings was 30 minutes but we had started with soup so there was certainly no hungry waiting. You can watch the folks creating if you choose. So conveniently located steps away from the madness of the mall and even just a short walk from the skytrain this is a place to check out. We will be back!