Congee Noodle House

So yesterday I talked quite a bit about congee, and how I had an awful experience at Congee Noodle House. Well, I think I would talk about that today since Leek is busy reviewing away for his diagnostic tests. True, but I am also editing this post, so...yeah.

In the past, I have frequented Congee Noodle House on 141 E Broadway with my family, Leek, friends, etc. But I think it was around the end of last year when I had a sudden craving for congee and Leek for wonton noodles that we stopped by. Unfortunately, at that time the windows and door were all taped up with newspapers and a note saying that they were renovating and should be open again by the end of the month. The funny thing was that it was wayyy past the end of the month they had written on the note and was already well into the following month -.-" Tamato forgot to take into account that most things never go by the plan.

Anyways, some time near the beginning of this year, Leek and I paid a visit to them again after busing by one day and noticing that they were finally done renovating! So in we went, when we should have turned around to go to Kwong Chow instead.

Right when we stepped into the restaurant, we noticed several waitresses, some serving, others just standing by the kitchen window. No one bothered to greet us or even turn around when we arrived. Fine, I can help myself to a table. But right when we moved to a table, they finally decided to pay attention to us, directing us to the table a few feet in front of the kitchen window and next to some other customers. The restaurant only had a few tables occupied at that time so I do not understand why I could not get a little more privacy.

"Shortly" after being seated, we were given the menus and cups of tea, as customary with Chinese restaurants. Not one minute after being given the menus, a waitress came back to take our order, when we barely had a chance to figure out what dishes we wanted to share between us. If only they were this quick to greet us and to serve us. Because after this, no one paid attention to us again.

I flagged down a waitress when we were ready to order, and she said she'd be back in a second. The second dragged to minutes before she came back. But that was not it, she decided to come back without a pad of paper to take our order. It was then I knew everything about this meal was about to go wrong. She figured she could memorize the few dishes we were going to order and just run to the window and write it down and tada, that is all there is to it! We ordered their Wonton with Noodle Soup (of course), BBQ Duck with Noodle Soup, and Beef Rice Rolls. She repeated it exactly back to me, very good, and then I watched as she walked to the window, hunch over to scribble a few words, hesitate in between writing something, scribbled some more, and then passed the papers over to the kitchen.

So began the long wait for our food. Minutes and minutes passed before we got our noodles, separately. I do not know what took the two chefs in the kitchen so long, but Leek got his noodles and finished them before I got my noodles. It was good wonton noodles! Seriously, both of them should have taken only 5 minutes to come out from the kitchen.

But wait, get this, even till after I finished eating my noodles, our third dish still had not come. Thus I flagged another waitress down, and told her we were still missing a dish. She later came back with a dish of some kind of fried rice which we did NOT order. I told her again what we ordered, and she ran back told the kitchen, and guess what? The plate came out in a jiffy! The rice rolls was pretty good too! Of course, Tamato was too focused on the service (or lack thereof) to rate the food.

While we polished off the last dish, some waitress plunked down a tray of change and the receipt at our table. Leek and I stared at it for a while until the waitress took it back, apologized and plunked it on our neighbour's table. At this time I asked her to bring our bill as well, and she said 'okay'. 'Okay' turned out to be a waitress's way of refusing to do so. We waited and waited, flagged another waitress an asked for the bill, received another 'okay', and continued to wait. Eventually we resorted to staring down the manager and another employee at the cash register. Manager took the hint after a minute, and instead of asking US if we wanted our bill, asked one of the waitress who we flagged for the bill if we wanted the bill. And guess what this waitress said? "NO." Wow, just wow. I was so in awe at their desire to give us the world's worst customer service ever that I was actually turning red and heating up. Meanwhile I was trying to calm Tamato down. So again, for the third time, and thankfully, the last time, I asked them for the bill.

The bill came, and, not wanting to wait another 10 minutes for some waitress to take our money and refuse to give us back change, I went up to the cash register to pay. Ding, cash register opened, in went our money, out came our change, and my hands went ALL of the change AND the receipt, and out the store we went. This was the first time ever (and only time so far) that I had NOT tipped a single penny after receiving service. Since I was paying, that saved me a bit of change. Still, I was a bit shocked. This was absolutely the worst service I can imagine and had me soo mad it took me a while to cool off even after we were out of the restaurant. So since that experience, I refuse to step foot inside that restaurant again. I agreed that the service was horrible, but the wonton noodles was excellent! Good food and crappy service pretty much sums this place up.

Ken's Restaurant

Earlier before, in our first post I believe, I mentioned how I had my wisdom teeth pulled out and thus we did not go all out to celebrate our 1.5 years together. Well, because of that and that I had to work that day. But nonetheless, we decided to do at least something, and ended up just planning to have a simple dinner of congee and wonton noodles.

I actually do not know of many congee and noodle restaurants in Vancouver. Whenever I want congee, I instantly think of Hon's, Kwong Chow, and Congee Noodle House (never going back, after a really bad experience there... I will tell another day). Aside from those, I really have to scratch my brain to remember where they would serve congee and what type of restaurants would. My friend had recommended me to try Congee Noodle King, but it was way too out of the way for us, it being all the way along Joyce Street. After some minimal research, I found out that Ken's Restaurant serves both congee and noodles and is very close to home as they are located at 1097 Kingsway.


I have eaten at Ken's several times before due to the convenience of the location. However, I have never had their congee before, so this was a new experience. Ken's Restaurant is a Hong Kong style restaurant with a lot of Chinese people eating there throughout the day. Auntie prefers this place over Sun Fat's, which is just across the street, because of the high turnover of customers, and thus conclude they have fresh ingredients all the time even though it is a little more expensive. To me, it would not have made much of a difference because a restaurant with a higher number of customers means that they just order in much larger quantities. So overall, it is the same thing if they do not end up using all of their ingredients "in time." I usually don't consider this at all...way too much thinking.


Anyways, on to the food. Leek ordered the Wonton with Noodle Soup. I think the dish was $5.50. The dish came in a really large bowl, but it was just full of soup. There were maybe about 6 pieces of regular sized wontons and just a handful of noodles. The rest of the bowl was laddled high with soup. I do not think this was worth $5.50, and Leek agrees, he still prefers the wonton noodles at Nancy's (his favorite restaurant for wonton so far). Actually, I prefer the noodles at Nancy's more. The wonton is about the same. Oh, Leek LOVES wonton noodles. Whenever we go out to eat, and wonton noodles is on the menu, there is a 99% chance he will be ordering that dish! True, very true, but its more like 99.9999%.


I, on the other hand, the one with only half a jaw, ordered their Minced Beef Congee for $4.50 a bowl. This came in the same size bowl as the noodles did and there were actually quite a few pieces of beef in it. But because they did not mince up the beef evenly, there were still some rather large pieces in it, so I just gave those to Leek to polish off. The taste of the congee was alright at the beginning, but as I ate more and more of it, it started getting more and more bland! That was weird, first time I have experienced that before. I found the congee a bit watery, and the beef was ok. Overall, it was pretty decent. Definitely, it wasn't the best congee I ever had.

Overall, I think we paid $11.00 with tax and tips. The food was just okay, nothing to wow about, but I will definitely continue to come here out of convenience. Some of their other dishes are fairly nice though, and their restaurant is fairly clean with a nice ambience.