Ellie Tropical Cuisine in Richmond

Update 26-Apr-2009: Ellie had closed. Seems like this place will re-open as a vegetarian place.

Saturday came around again. Suanne does not cook on weekends. She always insisted it’s her day off. This time we decided to check out one of the Malaysian-slash-Taiwanese “cuisine” restaurants in Richmond.

No, no … Ellie is not one of those fusion restaurants. When they say that they are a Malaysian-Taiwanese restaurant, it’s just that they serve food from both Malaysia and Taiwan (beef noodles). Anyway, it’s located at 3779 Sexsmith Road in Richmond.

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We stuck with the simple Malaysian food this visit. Nanzaro is addicted to fried rice. You know, everytime he gets the menu in the restaurant, he will flip the pages and scan if they have fried rice on it.

He ordered a Belacan Fried Rice. The belacan gives a distinctive pungent smell and taste to the rice. It was pretty good, I must say. Cost: $8.95.

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It has been a while since I had Hokkien Mee — real Hokkien mee and not Shanghai Noodles. I ordered that and was extremely pleased that it actually looks and tastes like the real deal I had in Malaysia. The only thing that is missing is the crispy fried pork fat (“jee yau jar” to those who know what I mean).

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For Hokkien Mee fans, this is it … you got to try this out in Ellie. Why they even had the all important Hokkien Mee sambal chilli for that little extra spiciness.

Arkensen ordered from a set menu, “3-spice chicken combination”. This came with a green or black ice tea, rice, few sides like fried egg, stir fry lettuces, peanuts and cold tofu with thousand year egg. This is a pretty good deal I must say. I always like dishes with so many varieties heaped on it.

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Cost $7.95

Well, Suanne did not order a dish of her own … instead she ended up taxing a portion from everyone’s dishes, as she usually does.

The restaurant is small and could get very crowded during lunch time. You could end up having a long wait for tables. Moreover, they seem very short staffed. When we were there, they have only two seemingly unexperienced girls waiting on the tables. They had this busy hurried look dashing from a table to the next. Other than that, the food is great and the prices were good too.

OK, total bill came up to $29 including tips. You should check this place out, if not already.

Ellie on Urbanspoon

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  1. Chubbypanda

    Woot! Taiwan pride! Hokkien pride!

    Ahem! I will try the restaurant when I make my yearly visit to Vancouver next year.

    – Chubbypanda

  2. pablopabla

    The food looks authentically Malaysian 🙂

    and the service too! LOL!

  3. Lauren

    The Taiwanese restaurant on the left of the picture is my favourite in Vancouver. You should try it too …. 🙂

  4. Ben

    Hi Lauren: We will most certainly check out that Taiwanese restaurant. What’s your favourite dish there?

  5. Lauren

    I love their pork chop rice, deep fried bean curd, fried beehoon etc. Pretty much the regular street food from Taiwan …. yummy 🙂

  6. Wendy

    Nice to know that they’re a good (authentic?) Malaysian restaurant serving good food! You like spicy food right Ben? Try the “Crazy Spicy Noodle”!!

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