Updated: 14th Nov 2014; This restaurant is closed according to Urbanspoon.com.

Karl (The Friday Lunch) and I are turning out to be regular lunch partners. Which is great because it gives me the chance to check out the restaurants in Burnaby more. If you get a peek at my “to-visit” list, it is the Burnaby list that is the longest. Suanne and I cover Richmond since it’s in our neighborhood and if we go our further, it is to Vancouver mostly.

At the rate things are going, I think with the help of Karl, I will be able to check out the Burnaby restaurants more.

It was Karl’s turn to make the choice. He suggested that we go to the next restaurant along Kingsway called Chill.

I exchanged several emails from Flora of Chill before when she invited Suanne and I to the restaurant. We said we will go one day but we never had the chance. So this would be a great time to go with Karl. Oh … I did not inform Flora ahead of my visit.

Chill is located next door to Pho Hoa (I think). I think at one point it is was a pub or something. I am not sure about this but there is something about this location. Feng Sui or what, not many people seems to gravitate to this place. Maybe it is on this short stretch of Kingsway that people step on the pedal when the road widens a little and hence this does not have the same visibility as the restaurants just 1-2 blocks up and down Kingsway from here.

Stepping into the restaurant, we find that the place looked much better than we thought. Neat clean lines with a decidedly Taiwanese style eatery. LOL! “Decidedly Taiwanese style eatery” refers to the black and red colors chosen in the same scheme of The One restaurant, Beefy Beef Noodles and Estea. See below …

OK, I pretty much made this up. LOL! For some reason, I am beginning to associate red-black color scheme with Taiwanese restaurants. I thought it was kind of sleek.

The Chill is spacious. I really like the way the restaurant is setup. This is so unlike many Chinese/Taiwanese restaurant. There is the normal booth type seatings on one side, a separate bar area and most others are configurable tables with nice high back leather chairs.

Karl and I were seated at the tables located on a raised platform which we reckon doubles as a stage for night performances.

The place was pretty quiet when we were there. I am not surprised. Like I said, it’s something about this location. The whole time we were there there was only 3 tables taken up.

Oh … when Karl and I was there, workers from my company were there too. One of them came over to me and whispered that “lit dow geh yeh hoe larn sek geh” … “the food here is hard to eat”. He he he … Karl and I looked at each other and said … “then why is he here”. LOL!  For a moment we were thinking maybe the food here is not as good as the how it looked.

Chill does not appear to be like many of the Taiwanese restaurants around dishing out standard fare. They try to make themselves different while at the same time serving the popular Taiwanese dishes.

There are live performances on some nights and specials on certain days of the week. They like to call what they serve as tapas which kind of lend itself with the alcohol they also serve inhouse. It sounds to me that they want to make this like a “Taiwanese Cafe-slash-bubble-tea-house”  for the grown ups.

This is what I meant when I said “Taiwanese Cafe-slash-bubble-tea-house”.

This is the first time I had seen Alcoholic Bubble Tea. I really wanted to try this but I had to get back to work. I did not want go back and run a meeting looking like I am half-drunk since I turn red very easily.

How does “Brandy Milk Tea” sound? LOL!

So instead of getting the alcoholic drink, we asked our waitress for recommendations. I went with something called the Hawaiian Holiday ($5.25). It is the one on the right. The Hawaiian Holiday is a mix of banana, coconut and pineapple. Pretty good.

Karl’s choice is the one on the left. I can’t remember now what his is called — Lemon Plum I think.

Onto the food …

When I asked our waitress for a recommendation, she so enthusiastically recommended their Taiwanese Beef Noodles. Oh, I thought that it is quite bold seeing that they are just blocks away from Lao Shang Dong. I wanted to try that but Karl did not. Grrr … since I said I will leave all ordering to him this time, I let it go … I will come back some day to check that out.

The Kong Pow Chicken above is $6. It was quite flavourful. I like it but … six bucks seems to be on the cheap side to me. Not that I am complaining. I also like the chili peppers. Yeah, not many people eat that but I do.

The House special Sizzling Chicken  is $6.25. This dish is quite meaningless without rice for me. Bone-in chicken meat with lots of gravy. It’s something that Suanne makes at home every now and then. Extra rice is $1 a bowl.

While the serving is not particularly large, I was beginning to think the food here is cheaper than I expected.

The Golden Sand Shrimp ($5.25) … now this is what I love best among all the dishes. It has lightly battered shrimp and stir fried with hot chili and green onions. The shrimp is fluffy. I had never had it done this way before. It is not greasy and the chili was not very spicy but does give it a good twist on some part to the other flavours. Simply amazing to me.

The Chili Calamari ($4.50) was also good. Definitely better than the ones I had in the Richmond Public Market or Crystal Mall Food Court. The seasoning has that right level of saltiness.

The Chill Roll was just $4. It is a simple dish being presented in a nice and mouthwatering matter, that’s all. It is steamed pork wrapping cucumber and drizzled with sauce.

There you go … Chill is basically a Taiwanese restaurant but presented in a slightly different manner. The food is more than decent.

I like the prices too considering that both of us could not even finish everything we ordered. It was way too much food for me who does not normally eat a full lunch.

Thanks Karl for organizing this. Am looking forward to the next one.

Here … check out their menu: