Congee Noodle King (Kingsway)

Located on Kingsway and Joyce, Congee Noodle King is one of a handful of Chinese restaurants in the Burnaby/Vancouver boundary. Better known for it’s soups and (duh) congee, they also have dinner specials from 5:30-9:30pm. Depending on how many items you get vs. how many people with you, you’re looking to spend about 15-25 per person. There was about 8 of us and we ordered 5 dishes.

The first “dish” is soup. It’s a sweet beef broth with some bits and pieces of stewed beef. Not entirely the best I’ve had, but definitely not the worst.

The meal also comes with “complimentary” appetizers – ours came with chilled jellyfish and a plate of BBQ duck. The plates are rather small for a 5-8 person meal, but I guess they are because they’re only appetizers. The jellyfish was cut thicker than most places but had that same pickled taste. While I was chomping away on it, I felt like I was getting revenge for all those jellyfish that scared me when we went parasailing in Hawaii not too long ago! I know, I’m weird.

I didn’t get to try the BBQ duck, mostly because I’m a mess when it comes to eating things with bones and chopsticks…I need a knife and a fork! I’m so useless without them! =p

Brian ordered minced pork with soft tofu, this was probably the best dish ordered (Good job Brian!). The portion was big, there was the right amount of sauce so that it wasn’t soaking in it and the crispy green onions gave it a fresh taste.

Next up is usually one of my favourites – eggplant with minced pork. There was a lot of garlic and ginger in this version, also the eggplant was pretty overcooked. Although you can see there is a lot of garlic and spice in the dish, it was fairly bland compared to other restaurants you can order this dish from.

Garlic fried prawns, they were big prawns but they gave us a little portion. The prawns however were really over cooked so although they were big, it felt like I was chewing on rubber.

Honey Garlic Spare Ribs – okay so maybe this is neck in neck with the best dish ordered. It was crispy with not a lot of batter and served hot. The only thing is they put very little honey sauce over it so it was quite dry.

Spicy Thai Seafood with Vermicelli – I didn’t get to try this because namely I’m allergic to shellfish, but everyone was saying it was really spicy! There was a lot of clams in the dish and some shrimp and scallop as well.

Our dessert was red bean soup (which is also one of my favourite things to have when I go for Chinese food!) but look at it! It doesn’t look so appetizing right? I don’t really care because I do like the dish. The people we were eating with said that it was too sweet but, I kinda like this dessert on the sweeter side.

Food:
While not the best Chinese food you can get in Vancouver, it is decent. In a Honolulu Cafe kind of decent.

Ambiance:
It’s your typical Chinese dive, it kind of reminds me of New Town and Honolulu.

Service:
While I don’t expect fabulous service when I come to places like this, our server was particularly sloppy in the way she placed down the dishes and even served our soup. I would say a good portion of our soup ended up being a lake on our table.