All Entries in the "Hong Kong" Category

Cafe Gloucester on Cambie and West 17th, Vancouver

Quick. Show of hands those who had never been to Cafe Gloucester before?

I would have thought that a lot of people who have known of this old time HK Style Cafe. I heard of them before I even first used the words HK Style Cafe on chowtimes.

But it was only recently that we went.

BTW. What do you think is the proper way to pronounce the name of Cafe Gloucester? Is it “Glos-ter” or “Glow-chest-ter”?

Located on Cambie, Cafe Gloucester was one of the businesses that had survived the carnage during the Canada Line construction. A restaurant like this will definitely survive because they are very popular particularly with the Chinese community. This is because their prices are cheap, service is fast and food are not bad.

I remember reading that the Copa Cafe located a few blocks down Cambie, is an off shoot of Cafe Gloucester — like a rouge off shoot. Is that right?

Cafe Gloucester can brag that they had won the award for being the Best HKSC. I am not sure which year though but maybe last year.

You know, of all the restaurant awards, I follow the Chinese Restaurant Awards closely. The coveted Critics Awards for 2010 will be announced on April 7th and you can bet that who ever wins these awards will receive instant recognition. He he he … to think that I had dinner with some of the critics at S&W Pepper House just recently.

We were there for lunch. The dining area is large and yet they are able to fill the restaurant in most times of the day. Cafe Gloucester is one of the few HK Style Cafe where service to us is polite. The workers are even well dressed with matching uniforms. It’s a sign to us that they care about good service rather than dishing out cheap food and be done with that.

Their menu is lovely. There are enticing pictures spread over eight pages with some very good selection on each section.

This is the type of menu that we take a long time reading because it is hard to decide what we want. We needed a more sophisticated way to keep track of our shortlisted dishes than keeping a finger at the relevant pages. We actually have to list it down on paper and then do our elimination from there.

I went with the Laksa Chicken Vermicelli Soup ($8). This is just so that I can contrast this with Bo’s Laksa that I had recently where I can see why his is so good compared to those you find around town.

Nope. The laksa in Cafe Gloucester is too watery and it is only a little spicy. So yeah, it was hard to finish this because it’s not as I expected. It is not that it is inedible mind you. In the most part, it is decent.

But the chicken meat are boned in and quite meaty and well done. That kind of save this bowl of noodles.

Normally I would finish the laksa soup down to the very last drop. Here I just had the chicken and the vermicelli. They need to make the laksa thicker.

Nanzaro took the longest to decide what to order. Strange considering that he still end up with fried rice.

The reason was he tried to be fancy and wanted something better than everyone else. He took so long and the waiter was waiting for his order that he felt pressured. So he had the Gloucester House Special Fried Rice ($7).

The fried rice was … More on following page. Click here to continue reading

Excelsior Restaurant on No 3 Road, Richmond

Excelsior had always been there for as long as I remember. Or at least I think it had always been there for a long time. I don’t really know.

For some reason we had not gone to the Brighouse Square strip mall for anything other than the rare trip to Staples or pickup some pastries from the New Town Bakery.

I could be wrong but I assumed that Excelsior is a long timer in Richmond. It opened in the days when there were more HK immigrants.

What I find strange is that there is only ONE review on Excelsior (by Yum-O-Rama) and nothing on Dinehere.ca, Urbanspoon or Yelp. And yet when we stand in front of the door, we see impressive age-faded newspaper reviews showing high-end food. Those must have came from their glory days.

The place was absolutely full. It was so unexpected. The first thing they asked is if we had a reservation. When we said no, they hesitated for a moment and then showed us to the crappiest three-seater table by the corridor which connects two separate dining areas.

We were not unhappy about it really. Just glad that they gave us a table. Boy, was this restaurant popular!

A lot of their customers are families. Many of them are multi-generation families out for a family dinner.

Excelsior is decidedly Cantonese. I just can’t classify them properly. The decor, tables, chairs and even the bowls shows their age and had seen better days. At a glance, they are like any HK Style Cafe. But they don’t serve the normal HK Style Cafe fare.

Their menu was exciting. At least to us it was. There were so many new things that we had a hard time deciding. Looking at the variety on menu, Suanne said that it looks like we are going to come here several more times. The prices are on the higher side compared but quite affordable.

We discarded the main menu and focused on the two that says “Chef Recommendations” and “Special Stylish Dishes”. That is their more popular dishes. We took an awfully long time to decide what we wanted. We shortlisted EIGHT dishes but forced to narrow it down to three since it was just three of us at this dinner.

Service was OK. It was fast … rushed and somewhat impatient. After all, it is a HK restaurant. What do you expect. At least they were not rude. They are not really good with English for sure. We ordered with the English names and they had to cross check it with the Chinese name at the back of the menu.

They came by with free soup. I am not sure how it works and if everyone gets this regardless of what is ordered. I see every table getting this.

It was a nice touch. Not many restaurants does this anymore. The soup was flavourful. It even had boney pork pieces in it.

Most tables ordered this. We figured this must be their specialty.

This is called Steamed Chicken with Soy Sauce. We had the smaller portioned half-chicken ($13). The whole chicken is $24.

It was simply the best we had ever tried. Bar none. Such simplicity … such simplicity that they don’t even care to … More on following page. Click here to continue reading

Ho Yuen Restaurant on Hazelbridge Way and Capstan Way, Richmond

Let me share with you an invaluable a tip.

This is particularly for those of you who are not conversant in Cantonese.

I remember a discussion on chowtimes on why non-Chinese customers felt that they do not get equal treatment in Chinese restaurants, particularly HK Style Cafes. I think it is more because of the waitresses inability to communicate effectively in English as the root cause more than anything else.

Here is the tip. You just need to learn two simple phrases. The two phrases are “Lang Jai” and “Lang Looi”. If you need anything, just say “Lang Jai” and pause for a second before you ask. This is only valid if the waiter is a he. To a waitress, just say “Lang Looi”.

It works all the time. Trust me. It even works in any settings — you can even use it on your Cantonese colleagues and they will do anything you ask of them.

Try it the next time you go to a HK Style Cafe and I am very sure you will be very pleased with the response. Just remember you learn this on chowtimes.com.

Let me repeat … “Lang Jai” for the he-server and “Lang Looi” for the she-server.

Last weekend Suanne suggested we go check out that restaurant in the Union Square on Capstan Way. She can’t remember the name of the restaurant but just that one that has the big portraits of the owners on the window.

I don’t know if there is a story behind the portraits or if they are famous or something. We can’t help but feel that doing this will just open themselves to ridicule. But then on the flip side, this makes the restaurant easy to remember. When Suanne said the restaurant with the husband and wife portrait, I immediately know which one she is saying.

The restaurant is called Ho Yuen. I think they had just changed ownership or something. The name remained the same.

The restaurant is large and takes up two shop lots. There is a sign that this place can take a maximum of 96 customers.

The interior is very typical HK Style Cafe with no frills decor. To lend to that Hongkong’ish feel, they have black and white photos of the famous urban areas in HK.

It appears Ho Yuen is popular. It was already half full of customers even though we were there before peak dinner time.

Service was very fast. They set us up with drinks and menu instantly. We did not have to use the “Lang Jai” / “Lang Looi” technique.

Like in all HK Style Cafes, they have a large selection which came in several menus — with a variety of combinations. Everyone in our family like this because there is always something that each of us will like.

Like in all HK Style Cafe, there is the Iced Milk Tea which normally comes along free with the combo. Ho Yuen uses exactly the same type of mug that Kingspark uses (we hate Kingspark because they not only have bad service, it is also rude!).

You know, I find that more and more HKSC is charging these beverages. It used to be free but they now charge $1 if you want it with ice. That part I don’t understand because it is not like you get more tea/coffee if you just add ice cubes in it.

I ordered from their Make Your Own Favourite Combo. With this you could pick two main items for $8.75 or three items for a dollar more. The three items is the better deal and so I got that.

My three choices were the steak, short ribs and deep fried chicken wings. I went with spaghetti over the other choices of rice or fries.

The meat were really greasy but I must say that they are not bad. That is sort of saying it is not great but certainly more than edible.

The short rib tasted good but I find it a bit too tough. I am not complaining because after all this is … More on following page. Click here to continue reading

Copa Cafe on Cambie and W 23rd, Vancouver

Before you read the rest of this post, just hit the PLAY button and sing along to the lyrics below.

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Her name was Suanne, she was a housewife
With yellow apron on her hips and a dress cut down to there
She make d’meringue and make bo-bo-cha
And while she tried to be a star, Ben always want to eat out
Across a crowded blog, they worked from 7 till 10
They were young and they had each other
Who could ask for more?

At the Copa, Copacabana
The hottest spot north of Havana
At the Copa, Copacabana
Milk Tea and Fried Rice were always the fashion
At the Copa … they fell in love

So we went to the Copa Cafe, finally. You all probably know that our boys like Hongkong Style Cafes (HKSC for short, shall we?). That is because they know HKSC always have salted fish and chicken fried rice.

For Suanne and I, we wanted to check out the Prawn and Avocado Croissant that iPanda wrote about. Moreover, we did not even mind the long drive because we wanted to check for ourselves how good Copa is. You see, they had just won the 2009 Chinese Restaurant Award under the Diners’ Choice category of 2009 Best Hongkong Style Cafe.

Copa Cafe is located on Cambie by West 23rd. It is just a few doors away from Corner 23, a Taiwanese eatery.

Unlike many older CCT, Copa is visibly cleaner and bright colors. I don’t know but I think they are new, maybe been in operation only the past year or so.

Having thought that this is a new school HKSC, we would have thought the service will be a refreshing change. But no. The service is aloof and fast … or should I say rushed. I guess they pride themselves as being efficient. After all, Copa is a really busy restaurant.

Moment after we sat down, the menu and the drinks landed on the table.

We were taking our own sweet time pouring over the menus. Yeah, like most HKSC, they have several menus.

But the serious-faced waitress kept coming over with the pen poking the notepad asking us what we wanted to eat when we were still reading the menu. Maybe many of their customers are regulars and already know what they wanted. For us, we need time. You see, there is always a negotiation process we had to go through with the boys who always wanted the same time. Suanne and I kept telling them they cannot have the same fried rice. And they will keep asking why not. And we always say that we are bloggers and we must have different things. We go through this all the time and Copa need to understand that we need time to resolve this amicably.

The waitresses and waiters are well dressed and well groomed. So this is a difference compared with many HKSC.

We like the menu, as bewildering as it seems. They have lots of combos to choose from. What we like especially is that they have both expensive and cheap items. You could find $6 pork chop up to combos that is $13.

The drinks above came with the food we ordered. I notice we all always ordered the same thing. Suanne will always go for the hot milk tea. Arkensen will stick with the simple and predictable cold milk tea. Nanzaro will opt for something different from everyone, lemon tea. The boys almost always never finish their drinks. Suanne almost always will end up drinking all of them because she hate it to be wasted.

This is it … the Prawn and Avocado Croissant that Suanne read about and wanted so much to try. This is $7 and came with a side of mayo-drenched salad of fruits. In that salad there are potatoes, melon, cantaloupe and pineapple. If only their hands is a bit lighter with the mayo, it would have been a perfect feel-good meal.

The croissant is toasted and is unbelievably … More on following page. Click here to continue reading

Ming Tak Hongkong Style Restaurant on Granville and West 67th Ave, Vancouver

If you yearn for your comfort food, what type of restaurant do you normally head to?

For us it has to be Hong Kong Style Cafes. With large menus, free beverage and cheap prices, these restaurants do not require much planning.

I know that each time I suggest going to a Hong Kong Style Cafe, both Arkensen and Nanzaro would agree instantly. I know what goes on in their mind. To them, Hong Kong Style Cafes means that they have Salted Fish and Chicken Fried Rice. They can eat this fried rice everyday but Suanne just refuses to stir fry salted fish at home.

A couple of weeks ago, Marvin facebooked me out of the blue. I used to work with him when I was in Best Buy. Although I thought we had already went on our own way when we both left Best Buy, it was a pleasant surprise to learn from him that he had been reading chowtimes faithfully and silently the past few years. Chowtimes get 5000-6000 pageviews everyday and we often wonder who all our readers are. For every reader who comments or emails us, there are at least dozens who are just contended lurking on the site. Seriously, Suanne and I love to interact with and learn from our readers as we got a lot of great tips.

One of the things Marvin wrote about is comfort food and that his favourite is Ming Tak which is located on Granville and 67th in Vancouver. I must have driven past this restaurant hundreds of times already and yet I am not aware of this place.

Ming Tak is a small family run Hong Kong Style Cafe. It is just OK kind of clean but does look very cluttered. The picture above says it all. Obviously neatness and organizing is not one of Ming Tak’s strength and that is not good.

But besides that, service was genuine, polite, patient and soft-spoken.

Like the rest of the restaurant, the menu was rather disorganized too. While we had the normal printed menu, we quickly put it down and tried to figure out the ones that had been haphazardly pasted on the wall. Some of them are computer printed with lamination while some are just hand written on a piece of coloured paper. The unfortunate thing is that they are all in Chinese although some with pictures do help.

As in all HK Style Cafes, most of the dishes came with a beverage. However, Ming Tak beats all others in size by far. Needless to say, our boys were very happy to see drinks this size. They tasted good too. We had thought that they might water the Iced Milk Tea down but nope, they are good.

Just as Marvin told us, his favourite dish here is the hot pot, particularly the Sea Cucumber and Chicken with Vermicelli Hot Pot. A lot of their customers were eating hot pot too as we noticed. So I ordered that — it is $10.

The hot pot is a large serving and could easily be shared between two people.

It is a Chinese herbal soup with … More on following page. Click here to continue reading

Sensus Bistro on Capstan Way, Richmond

We had passed by Sensus Bistro many times before.

But the thing is that we had never had the urge to go in and check it out … until now. You know what I think? I think it is because they have dark windows throughout the frontage that firstly you cannot see what’s in it. For us, we were a bit hesitant too because we were not sure what this place is. With a name like Sensus, who knows it’s like a bar or something which we do not normally go.

Sensus Bistro is located in Union Square on Capstan Way in Richmond. This is the place where Liu’s Taiwanese, Han Ju Hot Pot, Pho Queen and Richmond Sushi is, to name a few.

When we walk past this time on the way to @Ease, we notice the poster above pasted on the entrance. It looks like it is a Hongkong Style Cafe in the likes of Bauhinia … an upscale, more expensive type of HK Style Cafe. We thought this would be a much better idea than @Ease and decided to lunch here instead.

Don’t be misled by the empty looking restaurant above. We were there early for lunch as we normally do (i.e. it was just after 11AM). So they had just opened and the lunch crowd had not started trickling in. By noon, the place was packed. Sensus is obviously a popular restaurant and we had not heard of anyone talking about them before.

The decor is modern … OK, relative to all other HK Style Cafes. It is clean and well maintained. We had a good feeling about this place. If we had not pushed opened the door and walked in, we will have never discovered this place. If you ask me, the dark windows should go.

They have a relatively large menu with the same kind of offerings you find in Bauhinia. It is in color and have selected dishes pictured on it too. I had taken a few pictures of their menu and put them way down this post. Check that out.

On the table was this thingy above showing their special. I already know what I wanted. I had always wanted to try this (at Bauhinia). It is expensive though … $18 but on Thursday it is a special of the day at $14.

It sure is a mouthwatering chunk of meat isn’t it?

I ordered this with spaghetti on the side. The spaghetti is very well made … not too soft and firm to the bite.

While it is really nicely deep fried and crispy on the outside and the meat is tender and juicy inside, the pinkishness of the meat really puts me off. As for the taste … More on following page. Click here to continue reading

Lido Restaurant in Richmond, Revisited

This is going to be a quickie post.  Am posting this since we got pictures taken and did not want it to go to “waste”.

We had been to Lido numerous times ever since we first discovered this place almost two years ago.  As a matter of fact, this is our favourite restaurant if we do not need to go eat at a new place for this blog.

We like Lido because it is cheap and serves good food too.  So, the day after we returned from our Spain vacation, we went to Lido for good old comfort food.

Lido is always busy.  There is always a line during peak dining hours.  You gotta leave your name with the waiters who doesn’t even issue you a number.  So, you gotta have your ears peeled in case they call you.

Lido’s specialty is their Pineapple Bun (known as Bolo Bau in Cantonese).  If you have never tried this before you must order this.  This is so popular that you gotta order this when you leave your name for a table.  This is because they are almost always taken the moment they take it out of the oven — serious, I am not kidding.

And the Bolo Bau is best eaten hot out of the oven.  I dare to swear that they have the best Bolo Bau in Metro Vancouver … and maybe even the best outside of Hongkong too.

Lido is a Hongkong Style Cafe and that means … More on following page. Click here to continue reading