The family dined out at the Lucky Joy BBQ Restaurant a couple of weekends ago. Lucky Joy is located near the intersection of Cambie and No 5 in Richmond. It’s on a little strip mall where Panago Pizza is, across the road from Fruiticana.

We would not have found this place if not for the recommendation of Steve Lum. Steve and his family had always been someone we look up to a lot because we felt that their live journey is so similar to ours. We have always admired how they brought up his two boys and how committed they are in the Lord’s work.

You know what we like about this place? It’s that the restaurant throws in free soup, free dessert and all-you-can-eat rice. We ordered the Dinner-for-Three option — costs about $33 not including tips. We get to choose three dishes from their menu of, oh, about 50 items?

For starters, we were given their soup-of-the-day, some mixed vegetable/meat soup.

Since the rice is all-you-can-eat, we wanted to order dishes that has lots of gravy. Our first selection was the Fried Squid with Preserved Vegetable. It was good — liked the gravy and the “springiness” of the squid.

Here’s another one with lots of gravy and goes very well with rice. The Salted Fish, Chicken and Bean Curd in Hot Pot. This was really piping hot and is served in a metal hot pot. It came to the table still boiling and bubbling. The salted fish were very fragrant — we can even smell it even before it landed on our table. Lots of tofu too — perfecto!

The last selection was the Crispy Chicken (half chicken). This is always the favourite with Arkensen and Nanzaro. They like the crispy prawn crackers in particular. The skin were crispy and well done and the white meat was cooked just right. We would like to make this at home but don’t have the recipe. We think there is a particular technique to crisping the skin but not over cooking the meat underneath. Anyone know how this is done?

For dessert, we had the red bean soup. It’s sweet and thick with mashed up read bean. Suanne digs this stuff but the boys can’t stand it at all. Works out best for Suanne because she gets to eat all three bowls of it.

I recommend this place … go try it out. The address is 150-11780 Thorpe Rd, Richmond.