Every summer we always had plans for vacation away from Vancouver. However, this year, it’s difficult to get a week or two off on a stretch. So we decided instead to take a day off here and there and make a long weekend for s short trip nearby.

Last weekend we decided to make a short trip to Kelowna. It’s cherries season at this time of the year. This is the start of the series of our blog on our Kelowna Trip. Hope you enjoy it.

We started off from home early — at 6:30am — because the road trip itself will take about 4 hours non-stop. So, we decided to go out for breakfast. About the only restaurant opened at such time is the #9 Restaurant (a.k.a. Kau Kee in Cantonese) in the Lansdowne Mall in Richmond.

The #9 Restaurant is opened 24 hours and they have a steady stream of customers, even at 2am in the morning. However, when we were there at 6:30am, there were only about 3 tables of customers. The #9 Restaurant is a Cantonese restaurant but they not only make traditional Chinese food but they do also serve western-style food like spaghetti, fries, sandwiches, etc.

Arkensen ordered the breakfast meal consisting of scrambled eggs, toasts, bacon strips and hash browns. The dish costs $5.20.

Cantonese / Hongkong restaurants are famous for their milk tea (lai-char). It’s a creamy and rich black tea served with evaporated milk. Most people like it sweet and add granulated sugar. Not ordering this with chinese breakfast is like not ordering Coke with a Big Mac.

We also had a mid-sized plate of soy sauce fried noodles. Just plain noodles with no meat or garnishing at all. They are thin, stringy not mushy at all — just the way we like it. Surprisingly, it was really tasty even without other ingredients.

We also ordered congee — mixed meat porridge. I had thought that mixed meat means “g jarp”, but it turns out the mixed meat is shredded meat. The bowl was big.

The porridge had a lot of century eggs. Century eggs is one of those chinese food that a lot of non-chinese don’t understand. Century eggs are preserved in clay, ash, rice straw, salt and lime for several months until they turn darkish. When I was young my mum told me that century eggs are made by soaking eggs in horse urine for a long time — that is not true.

The rice rolls are simple rice rolls served only with soya sauce and sesame seeds. It was piping hot when it was served.

The total tab came up to $19 including tips and taxes. We were really stuffed and were ready for the 4 hours drive to Kelowna. We’ll blog about out trip next.