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

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Deer Garden Signatures

I love a hot bowl of noodles on a chilly day. A great place in Richmond to get a giant bowl of noodles is at Deer Garden Signatures. The restaurant is known for their build-your-own bowl of noodles and the price is right! For $7.95, you pick your soup base, 2 toppings, the type of noodles and drink. It's an additional $1.25 if you want extra toppings, $1 for a cold drink and $1.75 if you want to add a fried pork cutlet, chicken wings, fish puffs, or fried fish on the side.  If you don't feel like having noodles, they also have a variety of rice combo dishes available too.

What I like about this restaurant is that they use no MSG in their fish broth, there is a lot of options to choose from and the bowls of noodles are huge! I can never finish a bowl there! All of the noodles here automatically comes with fresh bean curd, mushrooms, and cilantro toppings. If you don't want any of these, you can mark it off on the order sheet.

 Watercress & Almonds Fish Soup, Flat Rice Nodles with Beef Brisket and Fish Tofu

The soup was really flavourful and all the ingredients were fresh. Noodles were cooked just right and was not mushy. The beef brisket is a bit fatty here, but has a good taste.

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Motomachi Shokudo Ramen

We love ramen.  There's nothing better on a cold day than I nice hot bowl of noodles, soup, and pork.  Typically we alternate between our favourites, Santouka and Kintaro.  But last week we decided to hit up a ramen joint we hadn't been to in awhile (and hadn't blogged about yet), Motomachi.  Owned by the same people as Kintaro, Motomachi uses chicken broth instead of pork broth for their noodles which makes them quite unique.  It also makes their bowls a bit lighter than a normal ramen place.

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The Noodle Box

After hearing my co-workers rave about how good Noodle Box is and how good the Spicy Peanut Box is, we all decided to go there for lunch. When we arrived, the restaurant was relatively busy so we ordered our food to go. Noodle Box is the type of restaurant where you would order at a counter and then sit down while they make the food and bring it out to you. After looking through all the options on the menu board, I decided to listen to my co-workers recommendation and got the Spicy Peanut Box with Tofu. The Spicy Peanut Box cost about $13. The Noodle Box is a bit pricier than most noodle places. Average prices here are about $12.

Menu

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Hokkaido Ramen Santouka

I realized that I've been eating a lot of noodles and going on a noodle craze lately.

The next noodle/ramen shop is Santouka on Robson. I've been to Santouka a couple of times but never really think about going there since I always default to Kintaro for ramen. But this time, I didn't feel like anything too heavy and thought about Santouka since their broth there is lighter and less greasy than Kintaro.

Another reason why I don't frequent Santouka is that the prices for their ramen there is slightly higher than most ramen places. It ranges about $10 to $13 for a bowl of ramen, $5 for gyoza and they also charge about $2 extra for corn, an egg or seaweed. The good thing about this place is that there are rice combos where you can add a bowl of salmon, ikura (fish eggs) or cha shu (BBQ Pork) rice to your ramen. The rice combos will run you about $15 per set. And also for $1 more, you can upgrade your ramen to a large size.

We ordered Gyoza, Toroniku Miso Ramen and Cha Shu Miso Ramen.

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Chef Hung Taiwanese Beef Noodle

I remember walking by this restaurant last year in Aberdeen and seeing the hoards of people lined up outside. I thought to myself that this must be a good Taiwanese beef noodle house. I've been wanting to try this place and finally decided to eat there with a few of my friends. The great thing about going a year later is that I get to avoid the lines!

Chef Hung's noodle restaurants was established in 1995 and he has also won the National Beef Noodle Contest award for 3 consecutive years. The restaurant in Aberdeen is his first North American location to open.

And again.... I forgot my camera. I should always remember to carry my camera with me. But I sometimes forget... So, again, we had to use the Iphone4's camera.

Open kitchen! You can watch the chefs make noodles.

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Kintaro

On a cloudy, cold, rainy Vancouver day, the best thing to eat is a bowl of ramen! In my opinion, Kintaro is the best place to get ramen. The soup there is made from pork and is rich and flavourful. The noodles are just the right consistency and the BBQ pork there is tasty.

Tucked away on Denman street, Kintaro is a relatively small restaurant and going in large groups is not recommended. Arrive early for dinner, before 7pm, to avoid the lines. If you are in line, expect to wait about 15 - 25 minutes.

There are 6 different types of ramen available at Kintaro: Miso, Shio (sea salt), Shoyu (soy sauce), Cheese, BBQ Pork (extra pork!) and Vegetable. First you choose your ramen, second you choose the richness of the broth (rich, medium or light) and then lastly, if you got BBQ pork, you can choose the cut, lean or fat. And the great thing about Kintaro is that everything is made in house. The noodles, broth and pork!

Vats of pork broth simmering away

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