Sherman's Food Adventures: BT Cafe

BT Cafe

Due to the location of our Monday night softball games, it is often convenient for us to travel South for food.  Yes, that means Richmond!  However, this time around, I got some moans and groans when I could barely get the words "Rich..." out.  I lost them at "hello"...  er...  I mean "Rich...".  So still wanting something along the lines of a Hong Kong-style cafe, but staying in Vancouver, I had to think hard.  That hurt my brain, but I was able to spit out BT Cafe out on Kingsway.  We ended up making it just in time for last call...  Now if we had gone to Richmond...  the places would've been open late!  Yikes!  I'm saying nice things about Richmond!

For myself, I couldn't get out of there only ordering one dish, so I went for two beginning with the Fish Soup with Vermicelli accompanied by fish slices and ox tongue.  This was a fairly good portion of chewy noodles in a unmistakable broth.  It had the essence of fish with a whole lot of seasoning.  I think they were a bit heavy with the MSG though. As for the fish slices, they were nicely tenderized.  I found the ox tongue to be well-prepared as it was tender without loosing its meatiness.  For my second dish, I tried the Salted Fish & Chicken Fried Rice.  There was a decent amount of wok heat as the rice was chewy and nutty.  For some odd reason, the rice was not dry though as it retained some moisture (could be the abundance of lettuce).  There was no shortage of tender julienned chicken and small bits of salted fish.  As a result, there was no absence of flavour either.

To my complete horror, Milhouse, Bam Bam, Bear and Judes all had the "choose your own items" meals.  Bam Bam went for the rib eye steak, German sausage and chicken steak with black pepper sauce.  I'm not sure if the sauce was actually black pepper as I couldn't see any and taste any for all that mattered.  It was thick and flavourful though.  Nothing was amiss with the proteins as the chicken was juicy and the steak being somewhat tender.  Boss Woman had her usual Scrambled Eggs and Prawns atop flat rice noodles.  When the dish hit the table, it made a big thud as it was huge.  There was a eye-popping amount of crunchy large shrimp in a flavourful starch-thicken sauce on top of rice noodles. "Not bad", was the consensus from the table as the food hit the spot without costing an arm and a leg.  I guess we didn't have to go to Richmond after all...

The Good:
- Decent eats
- Large portions

The Bad:
- It wasn't busy when we were there, but lack of servers might be a problem when its busy
- Food came out a bit slow

BT Cafe 大拇指餐廳 on Urbanspoon

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

This is my go-to HK cafe in Vancouver as there isn't much competition and it's kind of close to my house. Food is decent and usually hit's the spot, so no complaints.

I just wish there were more choices in the area. There's Gloucester and Copa on Cambie, but their price points are higher and it's harder to find free parking.

During the day, there's also Kingspark at Crystal Mall.

LotusRapper said...

Agree with Holly. There's really no HK-style cafes in that area other than the said Gloucester and Copa (and i-Cafe on Broadway). BT's prices are low, quality is pretty good and consistent, overall value is high.

But I rarely go there because maybe I have bad luck, I always end up having to wait in line. And that's a TINY restaurant with an awkward front entrance to wait in. Once I was standing in line by the door and accidentally leaned against the wall, and hit the light switch to "Off" (controls the lights for most of the room) and managed to get everyone to stare at me. OK, it was my dumb-dumb moment.



Anthony said...

Hi LotusRapper, I think I was in the restaurant that day when you hit the light switch haha! It was on September 4th right?

LotusRapper said...

LOL Anthony ! No, that incident was around 2 years ago. On your day it was probably a different "dim"wit who did it ...... ;-)

LotusRapper said...

Forgot about this one:

http://chowtimes.com/2011/01/10/bt-cafe-more-than-likeable/

LotusRapper said...

Blame it on Sherman, a late evening shopping trip made me hungry so as I passed by BT on my way home I was like "hey !". Had the Yeung Chow Fried Rice + coffee combo for $7.50. Rice came quick, hot and lots of "wok hey". But the shrimp and BBQ pork was "skimped" in lieu of more egg and green onion. The rice was nutty and toothsome, no complaints there.

Next table had a delish-looking hot stone rice bowl, maybe I'll try that next time.

The place was actually packed with 3 people waiting outside when I was done at 9:15pm on a Sunday evening.

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