Kalvins Szechuan - Vancouver

My god, so delicious! Everything I've ever had at Kalvin's has been straight up amazing.

Been coming here for years and the food, although oily, is classic taiwanese and szechuan.

One of the best Taiwanese restaurant in Canada for over 20 yearsAll the food is as good as you can get in TaiwanFriendly service.

We (a threesome) arrived at Kalvin's at 10:55 am, the 'open' sign was not on, but the door was open, we were told to come in, and were seated and being served tea, along with menus, before it's opening time of 11 am. A nice start. Other diners arrived shortly after, and during our time there, six tables were occupied, along with one person waiting at a small table near the service counter for a take-out order, leaving only a couple of large tables unoccupied.Service: was great - remaining prompt, helpful, and very friendly throughout our stay. Our young server was a delight - always smiling, and returning often to ensure our tea pot was full. Food: the dishes we ordered, listed in the order they came to our table, along with corresponding menu numbers, and the restaurant's descriptions of each dish:-- #224 - special fried noodle with seafood, pork and vegetable - was the first dish to come to our table and it came very quickly (my immediate thought, too quick, how was this possible?) - on the menu, it was called a 'special' noodle dish, I found very little "special" about the preparation or presentation. The long and wide noodles though cooked fine, were rather tasteless - the seafood, consisted of two small pieces of squid body, a few tiny pieces of squid tentacle, and two tiny shrimp - the vegetable, a few small pieces of mushrooms - I did not see any pork or other vegetables. The dish lacked a distinctive, flavourful taste, and aroma. The presentation was so visually unappealing - just a large, white/brown/greyish mass, laying on a white plate, with no other colours to add some visual 'excitement'. A few colourful veggies within the dish (as described), or as a garnish, would have helped. -- #79 - squid in special sauce (a cold dish) - the squid (body) pieces were laid on a small bed of shredded cabbage, and the whole thing covered over with a quite thick brown sauce - the squid was very tender, the sauce quite spicy and flavourful. The presentation though, was just a pile of brown and white, on a white plate. Though it tasted quite good, it looked 'yuck', and unappealing. A little more colour as a garnish to overcome all that brown would have helped generate some visual appeal.-- #179 - pan fried chop suey (mixed vegetable) - the vegetables, mostly broccoli, with a few small, and very thin 'slivers' of carrot, celery, and bamboo shoot, and some small pieces of mushroom. Prepared well, but the portion size was small, and it sure seemed lacking in ingredients. -- #129 - pork bellies in brown sauce with pea tips - the dish consisted of a good sized portion of pork belly, with red sauce, and garnished by a few pea leaves - the server, when she brought the plate to our table, sliced the piece into six square pieces - the pork was 'melt-in-your-mouth' tender, the sauce flavourful, and the presentation colourful. A nice, 'rich-tasting' treat.-- #198 - five spice beef in Chinese pan cake - one of their dim sum offerings - the 'stuffing' of beef and green onion was tender, and flavourful, the pan cake covering sweet, and tasty, but a little 'tough' to chew, possibly because the preparation was no longer very warm when served to us. Overall, we ended up being disappointed with our recent lunch dining experience at Kalvin's. Heh, the restaurant itself was perfectly fine (it's a small, in the neighbourhood place, our kind of place!), the staff and service were great, but the food was lacking - some dishes just looked and tasted hurried, seeming to lack real care and attention to detail, in both their preparations and presentations. In some dishes, ingredients, and distinctive, flavourful tastes and aromas were not there - and in most, presentations were just not very appealing to the senses. I had looked forward to more when I picked Kalvin's for our lunch that day.

Not having gone to Kalvins in a few years, my expectations weren't that high as I didn't want to be disappointed.Ordered the same dishes that we normally ate and everything was decent. Food came fast and the quality was a over average.Only thing I didn't like was the Xiao Long Bao. I find the skin too thick.