Hidden gem in Vancouver’s West End for excellent sweet-and-sour pork, Hong Kong Café classics, dim sum, cocktails and so much more
Kin’s Food & Bistro
792 Denman St.
Vancouver, BC
236-477-0277
Sweet and sour pork is one of my favourite Chinese dishes. Unfortunately, it’s also a dish that is too often associated with the gloopy, cloyingly sweet, neon-orange travesties found in shopping mall food courts.
The authentic version—juicy, crunchy and roundly tart—is an absolute treat made with a medley of fresh fruit. In Hong Kong, sweet and sour pork is a litmus test for a skilled chef. Sadly, I haven’t tasted a rendition worth raving about since Richmond’s legendary Hoi Tong Seafood Restaurant closed in 2019.
So, when I heard from a reliable foodie friend that Kin’s Food & Bistro on Denman Street was serving “the BEST sweet and sour pork” in Downtown Vancouver, I raced over (and have gone back several times since).
Much to my delight, this humble hole-in-the-wall does make fantastic sweet and sour pork—and so much more, including dim sum, homemade pineapple buns, innovative cocktails and special-order Cantonese classics that are normally only found in big, banquet-style seafood restaurants.
Opened just over a year ago on Denman Street north of Robson, Kin’s is squeezed between the illustrious Kintaro Ramen and a kooky, Korean hotdog-on-a-stick joint for undiscerning TikTokers. It’s a tricky location that should get a lot of foot traffic from tourists, but has seen about five restaurants come and go in as many years.
At first glance, Kin’s looks like any old Vancouver-style tapas bar with its dark walls, velvet dining chairs and small open-galley kitchen. The bright lighting and giant flat-screen TV playing an endless loop of The Food Ranger YouTube videos hint at something more adventurous.
The restaurant is owned by chef Ken Wong and general manager Terrence Tou. They’re cousins, both charming and well-experienced in hospitality. They’re also a bit of a mystery and still won’t tell me where they worked previously. All I know is that their résumés include both Western and Chinese restaurants. And that Kin’s is an intentional hybrid, which is still evolving.
In the beginning, the menu was way too big and all over the map. It is still fairly sizeable, but more manageable and largely comprised of Hong Kong Café staples, such as crispy pork chops served over egg-fried rice, all smothered in a chunky, cheesy tomato sauce. (Hong Kong Cafés are kind of like greasy spoons that serve affordable, westernized comfort foods.)
But Kin’s is far better than any Hong Kong Café I’ve tried in Metro Vancouver. Almost everything is made in-house from scratch, including the fluffy pineapple buns with craquelin crusts, which can be ordered with a big slab of butter or a fried chicken cutlet sandwiched in between.
They also have homemade cha siu—meltingly tender barbecue pork bathed in Canadian honey. This is a specialty item, not normally found in HK Cafés. And this version ranks right up there with the better Cantonese full-service restaurants that offer barbecue (I’m thinking of places like Red Star and Fortune Terrace).
A limited dim sum selection is available during the day. Chef Wong makes his own siu mai—another litmus-test dish. This one passes with bouncy, hand-chopped pork and flying colours.
A full dim sum repertoire would, however, require dedication and a huge kitchen. Most of these items (har gow, sticky wild rice in lotus leaf, beef balls, wife cake, etc.) are brought in from Wong’s uncle’s restaurant, which he declines to name. Still, it’s extremely rare to find dumplings of this quality in a small neighbourhood place, especially on the west side of town.
Last but not least, the sweet and sour pork. Wong makes his sauce with hawthorn berries, plums, lemons, pineapple and orange. Tangy and bright, thick and satiny, it slips into all the crunchy crevices of the double-deep-fried pork and clings tight. But it doesn’t weigh down the juicy, bite-sized morsels or make the batter soggy—not even if you’re taking the dish to-go and eating it at home an hour later.
I returned last fall with friends who had wanted to go to Dinesty around the corner for xiao long bao. I steered them away–because I find the food at Dinesty too greasy.
In some ways, Kin’s is the new Dinesty (before the Taiwainese-Shangainese independent became a mini-chain). It’s a good entry point for people who aren’t familiar with Chinese food and find themselves intimidated by the 20-page menus at bigger restaurants.
The service is extremely welcoming. The tables are small and the dishes are easy to share if you’re dining as a couple. (It appears to be a popular date-night spot.)
The menu offers a little bit of everything, including well-balanced cocktails like Green Citrus (a riff on the Last Word with osmanthus tea and fresh grapefruit) and Blue Coaster (a blue curacao and tequila ice cream float).
But Kin’s is also a serious restaurant for discerning Chinese diners. The food quality is excellent. Wong can handle a wok like nobody’s business. And a big draw for regular guests are the new special-menu items (roast pork, shredded chicken, whole fish) which can be ordered with advance notice. Check their Instagram account for more details.
Last month, when dropping in for takeout, I noticed a black tureen on the kitchen counter. Double-boiled soup? Sure enough, Tou began scooping out a plate of spent meat, carrots, goji berries, mustard greens and all the other good stuff that goes into this slow-cooked, gently simmered Cantonese specialty. As is done in better restaurants, he presented it to the table (in this case, a family of nine) for inspection and optional nibbling before the soup was strained and served. Impressive!
Just as I was about to head home with my sweet and sour pork and Malay-style wok-fried beef (in a beautiful, lightly spiced sauce deepened with dried shrimp and scallop), Tou suggested I stick around to see the geoduck.
Geoduck? As I wrote in another post this week, geoduck is the king of clams—a luxury shellfish, harvested in local waters and revered in China. You do not normally find geoduck in Hong Kong Cafes or small, neighbourhood dim sum spots.
Nor do you normally get to watch the chef carve the siphon into paper-thin slices, blanch them ever so lightly, heap them onto a platter with bean sprouts and green onion and drizzle it all with sizzling hot oil.
These are the benefits of an open kitchen (rare in Cantonese restaurants) and this was a Saturday night show worth braving the atmospheric rains for.
Kin’s is not cheap. My takeout order (two dishes and two side orders of rice) came to $71 with tax and tip. But it was worth it.
And once you’ve savoured Kin’s sweet and sour pork, I promise that you too will be spoiled and will never go back to the gloopy, soggy food-court version again.
