Ever since we started going to and blogging about Bubble Tea places, we see a name that keeps popping up on comments from our readers. The name is Pearl Castle. I guess lots of people likes Pearl Castle and after our visit, we realize the reason why.

Like most Bubble Tea places, Pearl Castle is very much an Asian youngster’s hangout. These days we actually enjoy going to these Taiwanese Bubble Tea Houses as compared to Hong Kong Style Cafes. For one, Bubble Tea Houses generally have better decor and cleaner.

Pearl Castle is located on 3779 Sexsmith. It is actually on the same strip mall where Ellie is. I can’t remember the name of the strip mall at this moment.

Pearl Castle place always get very crowded at night. We went early as usual (at 4:30PM) when the place is just half full.

There is a certain class to this place and I can see why it is so popular. Pearl Castle is by far the hippest Bubble Tea house we ever been to. But the draw is more of their food.

Pearl Castle have a large drinks menu as expected. Their food menu too has a good variety of food. Arkensen and Nanzaro are beginning to want grown-up drinks … coffee. We’re OK with them getting this once in a while and seeing it’s a weekend too, we guess it’s alright.

They got a Coffee Bubble Tea and a Mocha Bubble Tea. The size they got above is large but it does not look large to us. To us it was expensive at $6 each.

I spotted a dish on the menu marked in RED that says EXTREME Spicy Hot Pot (yeah, with the word EXTREME in all caps). I simply have to get this one. This $9 dish came with rice and dessert and served in a hot pot on top of a little stove to keep the soup warm.

They even have an extra small plate of chili sauce in case you wanted it even more spicy hot!

The soup is EXTREMEly spicy. It’s so spicy it burns the tongue. In the soup are pork slices, sausage, tofu, cabbage and fish cake. The thrill of this is just the spiciness. If you love spicy food, this is it.

Rice came served in this funny looking one side bowl. This dish has a fun factor of 10 out of 10, if you ask me.

All the dishes came with this small bowl of dessert. It is Coffee Jello with beans. I like the Coffee Jello but personally I don’t like the beans.

Suanne ordered the House Special Stew Pork which costs $8.25. It is a big piece of fatty pork … sinfully delicious! (more…)

Updated: 22nd Dec 2014; This restaurant is closed according to Urbanspoon.com.

We found a new place for eating out last weekend which we like a lot.

We had stumbled upon Estea many months before when we were in this strip mall on Alexandra Road. We had forgotten about them until I came across them while researching for new places to go to. We had covered so much of Richmond that we are finding it harder to find new places.

Estea is a really good find. The biggest problem with Estea is the location. Although it is located on Alexandra Rd you do not know it because it is hidden at the back of the strip mall (where Mongolie Grill is). It actually fronts Alderbridge Way but you can only access Estea from Alexandra. I thought Estea would do much better if they have a signboard that fronts the busy Alderbridge Rd.

The dining area in Estea is cavernous and can seat up to 200 people. They have wifi here and we see young teenagers using notebooks. Coupled with the decor and the name of the place (Estea Beverage Club) tells me that this place is intended to be a place for youngsters to hangout.

We were there in the afternoon and the place had just about 10 customers in all. It does look empty but I remember when we first passed by Estea during dinner time, it was absolutely packed.

We love the menu and the way it is laid out. I think you like that too. It is a very big colorful spread with lots of delicious looking pictures of their popular items.

Estea is a Taiwanese style restaurant. I am saying that because the menu has pictures of Taipei and the Taipei 101 Tower.

Let’s start with the simpler dishes. Arkensen chose the Scrambled Egg with Shrimp on Top of Rice. It’s a simple dish and reminds me of “wat darn hor” which is basically the same except that it’s with rice noodle instead of steamed rice. $7.95.

Estea’s individual dishes came with two sides — celery and daikon. We like the combination … the daikon was very soft, warm, spicy while the celery was served cold and crunchy. (more…)

It seems like we Richmondites living south of the City Hall are second class citizens. Until TODAY, the side streets are still a mess … it is passable but we still have our four lane street relegated to a single lane. Despite the warmer air the past two days, the hard packed snow is not really melting at all.

Anyway, we ventured out again for lunch. We wanted to go to Top Shanghai but it was absolutely packed. So, instead, we pop over the new place next door. It’s called Tri-ty Cafe … odd name but it looked good.

Tri-ty is located on the strip mall on Akroyd and No 3 Road. It’s on the side where Safe-On-Food is. Parking was madness that day because of all the snow piles taking up a lot of the parking bays. To add to the madness, everyone is taking the advantage of the break in the weather to venture out.

You know the reason behind the Tri-ty name. Well, it is QualiTY, QuantiTY and TasTY!

Actually, Tri-Ty is a hip place that caters mainly for the younger crowd. The decor has really clean lines but not spotlessly clean. It seems like a great place to hang out for youngsters because they pasted a cheap looking sign that says something like you gotta spend a minimum of $3 to hangout here … something like that. I thought that the sign kind of cheapens the place!

From the looks of it, this seems like a Taiwanese style restaurant.

What I like about this place is that a lot of thought outside-the-box in placed on the little details. They even have one of those fadish electronic picture frames which flashes the delicious looking food and drinks. I think it is an awesome idea. We couldn’t help but kept on looking for what is shown next. I bet this draws a few extra orders … it is like a more modern version of “would you like fries with that?”.

I have seen chopstick stands quite commonly but the one above beats the rest. It is both a soup spoon and a chopstick stand. Pretty neat. I wonder where I could find one of these.

For appetizers, we ordered the Marinated Intestines because I know my boys had taken to a liking of this. The intestines were served warm which contrasted very nicely with the cold sourish pickled cabbage. It came with two types of sauces too (also one hot and one cold). We expected the texture to be chewy but instead it is soft. It is simply good. $4.50. (more…)

This restaurant has closed according to Urbanspoon; updated on 15th June 2010.

The four of us, we don’t normally go to Bubble Tea Houses. It is not that we don’t like Bubble Tea. As a matter of fact, our boys absolutely like it but they told us they will not be caught dead in a Bubble Tea House. I think they are associating it with places where girls hangout … LOL!

We would not had gone in if not for the fact that we have absolutely no idea where to go. You know, it was one of those days when we needed some place to blog about but simply cannot think of one … until we drove past the Cosmos Plaza on Garden City and McKim (in Richmond that is). That is when Suanne said that Gogo Tea Cafe had at sometime ran commercials on the TV.

It is located a floor above the street level. Almost all restaurants in Richmond simply had no views at all and is dark. Well, the view here was not that great but at least it had a lot of light here. It was still winter when we visited Gogo Tea. When spring comes round, there will be more color.

Talking about spring, I just can’t get enough of spring … it is simply the best season of the year for me. It does cheer me up with the longer days. Even driving to work is interesting observing how there are more colors every day.

Gogo Tea is bright … with ceiling to wall windows and white furnishings. On a bright day it could be blinding. Oh yeah, it is a youngster hangout alright but there are a couple of families there too.

Milk Teas are Gogo Tea’s specialties. Ordered as an individual items, the Milk Teas are $4 and above. However, if you order from their lunch menu, you just need to add $1 for regular milk tea and an additional 50 cents if you want pearls (or coconut jelly, pudding or grass jelly) too.

We love the milk teas. They are absolutely fabulous and I am sure you will like them too. They are uniquely served in really tall glasses. They are so tall that we can’t even drink from the straws without taking it off below the table level to reach the straws!

I had the Gogo Milk Tea which came with coffee flavoured chewy jelly and whipped cream. Suanne had the Matcha Milk Tea which was more green tea and not at all sweet. Arkensen had the Chocolate Milk Tea and Nanzaro the Mocha flavoured one.

The best among all had to be the Gogo Milk Tea … it’s rich, creamy, chewy, sweet. They have a huge milk tea selection and if you don’t know what to order, then go for the Gogo Milk Tea. You won’t be disappointed.

For food, Arkensen ordered the Deep Fried Pork Chop on Rice which costs $7.25. (more…)

Updated: 2nd Jan 2015; This restaurant is closed.

We met up with Angie’s family for lunch on a Saturday. We actually got to know each other through chowtimes. We are still amazed even today how we had gotten to know so many people through the blog.

We decided to go to Vogue for lunch. Vogue is a popular Taiwanese restaurant located in the Continental Mall in Richmond. That mall, located on Cambie and Sexsmith, has quite a lot of eateries.

We were early that day. Vogue opens at 11:30AM but we were already there about 15 minutes early. They were nice and asked that we come in and allow them some time to setup. Needless to say, the place were empty at that time. By lunch time, the place were absolutely packed.

They have one of the more trendy and modern decor among Richmond restaurants. Not too fancy but really neat.

For me, I like places where they pay attention to the details. The bowls, plates, cups and chopsticks were logo’d. This is the kind of place where you are better off ordering dishes for sharing.

You know what I hated most eating out with people who knows I am the Ben behind chowtimes? They think I know so much about food that everyone leaves the ordering to me! Frankly, I did not really know what I was ordering and went by just the name. It turned out that all the dishes I ordered came out to be almost the same stuff. 🙂

The Ma Po Tofu above was $8.25. (more…)