Cattle Cafe (Richmond)

Flowerbunny and I had decided to try some of the smaller cheap Chinese restaurants near us, so one night after work, we took a walk down Alexander road and ended up at Cattle Cafe.  Flowerbunny already reviewed the Burnaby location, but I'd never been and I love noodles, so we decided to give it a shot.  They were fairly busy when we entered, but we were seated pretty quickly and given tea.

Tea

Like most of these types of restaurants, our food came with drinks included, though it costs an extra $1 to get a cold one.  I got my usual Cold Lemon Tea.  This was fine but nothing special.  Tastes like all the others.

Flowerbunny got a Hot Milk Tea.  Again, this was nothing special, but this was expected as the quality of these beverages does not vary much from location to location.

For my main, I of course went for their Noodle Combo.  I chose peanut sauce and chili soup, sliced beef brisket, fresh bean curd, and vermicelli.  For $7.50, this was a great deal as it was a huge bowl of noodles!  The soup base was a bit too creamy for me; it had a texture like liquid peanut butter which was a bit off-putting.  Mixing in the chili sauce helped a lot though.  The actual flavour was really good, and just what I was looking for, but given the off-putting nature of the texture, I think I would probably stick with their other soup bases.  The fresh bean curd was great.  They just give you a giant rolled up sheet of it, and it was super tender and soaked up the sauce.  The brisket was pretty meaty, with a bit of fat, but not too much.  The vermicelli was cooked well as the noodles still had a slight bite to them.  One thing though is that this was served to me long before Flowerbunny got her entree which creates a very awkward situation at the table.  I of course won't eat until her dish arrives, so my food starts cooling down.  As this was a big bowl of very hot broth, this wasn't a huge issue, but it's a bit annoying and an easy problem to fix if they cared.

I also added a  Deep Fried Pork Chop to my meal for an extra $1.75 so I could compare it to Deer Garden's version.  In this case, Deer Garden won hands down.  This was good, but I missed the tartar sauce, and besides that, it wasn't fried or trimmed as well.

Flowerbunny had the Spareribs in Black Bean Sauce on Rice.  Again, for $6.25 this was a lot of food. However, the ribs were dry, small, and had little meat.  Flowerbunny also ordered a fried radish cake but it never showed up.  We decided to forget it as we'd been sitting for awhile and wanted to leave so we asked for the bill.  The radish cake wasn't on there, so the waitress obviously forgot to punch it in.  That was a bit disappointing.

Overall Impressions:

- Good Value for combo, but extras can add up

- Really good bowl of noodles, other items not so good

- Service is pretty bad (forgot an item, others took awhile)

- If you drive you have to park in Richmond which is always an adventure

Cattle Cafe (Richmond)

1020-8580 Alexandra Road

Richmond, BC

604.276.2800

http://www.cattlecafe.ca/