Updated 9th Oct 2014; This restaurant is closed.

We had always thought that U Good is a hot pot restaurant. That is why we had never quite had the desire to give them a second glance unless we want to go for hot pot.

Yeah, they started off as a hot pot restaurant and indeed they are known to be one. The other thing that we did not take a closer look was that, this being a hot pot restaurant, their windows are often misted up. So we could not even take a look as we drive past.

I don’t know when this happened but U Good had stealthily changed their name by dropping the words “Hot Pot” from their sign. I knew they were closed for a bit sometime last year. Maybe that was when it happened.

That day when we visited, Suanne and I were unsure of where we wanted to go for dinner since the boys were away again for their extra curricula activities. We thought we just go to the Union Square in Richmond and walk around to see if there is anything that will pique our interest. There are quite a few restaurants in Union Square that we have never blogged about before anyway.

We were not interested in having hot pot but we happened to park right in front of the restaurant. What we saw was … wow, this is not a hot pot restaurant only. As a matter of fact, they are now a HK Style Cafe AND a Hot Pot restaurant. We were not aware of that transformation and so I am thinking here that there could be a number of people who are not aware of another HK Style Cafe in their midst.

The restaurant is quite big. If I am not mistaken, they had expanded to take up two shop lots. It is like a two-in-one place. On one side is still set up as a hot pot place with built in burners and sprinkler systems. On the other side it is like what you see in a HK Style Cafe — booth tables and all.

When we were there, there were more customers having hot pot than there were on the HK Style Cafe side.

This is not a AYCE (all you can eat) hot pot restaurant. Click on the menu pages above and you will see what I mean. The hot pot is individual plate orders and they serve the plates in a nice gold multi-tier serving platters.

We did not have the hot pot but they do look like a higher end, better quality kind of hot pot. The soup base is $5.00 to $10.00. The meats are mostly in the $4.00 to $5.00 range. There are also more expensive (“current price”) meats on the menu too like … geoduck, lobster, king crab if they are up your alley.

If you don’t want to select your own plates orders, they have set hot pot. This is on the third page above. Take a look at it. There is a wide range … from $20 a person to $55 a person. I would want to try the set hot pot one day.

The menu pages above are for the HK Style Cafe side. It has basically everything you would expect to see from a HK Style Cafe.

They also have the Cattle Cafe style mix-and-match noodle soup for $7.25. This is getting to be quite popular these days and we are seeing some restaurants taking this approach.

Suanne and I thought that the congee combo which is available from  from 11:00 AM to 3:00 PM is something we would want to try some day. Especially the specialty ones.

The normal set meals are around $9.00 which includes a drink.

Anyway, we find the huge menu exciting and am sure we will be back again to check out their other offerings. Anyway, we had been going to Lido and Kam Do a lot already these days.

AYCE Drinks? Not quite. But close.

For $1.00 extra you will get one refill of cold drinks. Hot drinks refill will be 50 cents extra. Yeah, just ONE refill but for the thirsty one this is great. So yeah, I asked for a free refill for my drink. Anyway, two cups is more than enough caffeine and moreover, it makes me gee-gee more too.

Suanne got the hot Hong Kong Milk Tea and mine was the Iced Coffee and Tea Mix. We like the drinks. They are strong and not watered down.

BTW, between milk tea and coffee, milk tea has more caffeine, does it not?

This is our “appetizer”. I just couldn’t resists getting this. It is the Curry Pork Skin and Fish Balls ($6.25).

There is all there is. Just the plate above. No rice or noodles to go along with it.

Lovely. The pork skin is very tender. When I was growing up in Malaysia, I often get this from the market for my breakfast. In my trips back, this is what I would go get for breakfast too. Back there, this is served with steamed cheong fun.

The curry here is thick and we thought that there are too much thickener. But yeah, otherwise, I like it. Suanne thinks it’s too fat.

We had noodles for our “mains”. For me, I got the Miso Ramen with Japanese style BBQ Eel ($9.00). Actually, although we selected one noodle dish each, we share them all the time. Anyway, this item is from their “set special with drink” section of the menu.

Make no mistake. This is no ramen like Kintaro or Santouka or Benkei. This is the HK Style rendition of the Japanese noodle soup and it is quite good. The ramen was made al-dente. There are just two pieces of tofu puff and a few pieces of suey choy. Nothing much in this.

The Japanese style BBQ Eel was served on the side. We can kind of can feel the tiny bones in them. Otherwise the texture is very tender. A nice simple noodle dish.

Suanne’s pick was the Malay Laksa Vermicelli in Soup ($8.50). She originally wanted to order this with Hainanese Chicken but they ran out of it. So we opted for Pork Chop Cutlet instead.

The bowl of noodle is big. So if you are hungry this will be filling. The curry broth is not creamy and light tasting. Certainly an absence of coconut milk. So this is not a Malay style laksa for sure.

The laksa came with a free soup. We chose the Cream Soup with corn and ham. Very watery. No good.

The Pork Chop Cutlet served on the side was really nice — very crunchy. So crunchy we can hear the crunch when biting into it. It also tasted garlicky.

I did like this. A lot. It is not greasy and oily. I just can’t find a fault with it. For sure, this is something I would order again but maybe with another noodle combination.

U Good is cash only by the way. We like the service. It is friendly and they clear the empty dishes very quickly. We notice because we had a lot of plates, bowls and cups on the table and they de-cluttered the table up. I hate messy tables.

The servers speak both Cantonese and Mandarin. And of course English.

I can’t read the sign above which was pasted on the door but I think some of you would be interested.