June 30, 2011

Mui (not worth the tweet) Garden

Review Snippet
Overall: Miss; Not recommended
Food: Sub- standard Chinese/ HK food
Ambience: Gruby
Service: Short-handed


Mui Garden
4327 North Road
Burnaby, BC
Tel:(604)421-8838



Attending a new church close to North Road and the Coquitlam- Burnaby border, presents us with the perfect opportunity to try a new food spot after service every Sunday. First Stop- Mui Garden (Burnaby). I was a little apprehensive about the quality of this place given that it is part of the Mui Garden chain of restaurants. A Hong Kong- Style Cafe, serving Malaysian style cuisine was another red flag. However, we decided to give it a chance. Sad to say, our first revival post after a long food blogging hiatus, will be a little lacklustre.


Half Hainanese Chicken
The first dish we had was the Hainanese Chicken. Served chilled, this was actually one of the best versions we have had in Vancouver, although it pales in comparison to the local versions in Singapore. Accompanied by a side of "Chicken Rice" chilli and ginger, it added authenticity to the dish.


Beef Brisket Curry
The next dish was the beef brisket curry. We ordered it based on reviews touting it as Mui's " signature" dish. It was more "lemak" (smooth and creamy) than the typical Indian and Malaysian/ Singaporean curries, probably due to the copious amounts of coconut milk thrown in. It was decent.


Century egg congee
I had none of this dish, but my parents and Isabel claimed that it was somewhat bland and lacked heavily in the necessary ingredients. It wasn't particularly satisfying.


Seafood Hor Fun
Saving the best for last, my favourite dish was the seafood hor fun. It was not anything spectacular, but mostly because I missed hor fun so much, I thought it was pretty good. It is worth mentioning though, that the dish was pretty well endowed with scallops, mushroom, squid, imitation crab and some pretty delicious fish pieces!


Food was sub-par and service, even worse. The place was relatively empty yet the staff were short and curt in taking our orders. However, the upside was that they often came by to top up our cups of tea. Ambience was nothing to rave about as it resembled every other HK diner out there- a little gruby and uninspiring . Last but not least, one of the most bittersweet items was the "zhen zhu nai cha" (milktea with pearls), the milktea itself was good, but the black pearls were definitely too starchy and stale for my liking (not enough QQ ,"kiu kiu ").


A forgettable hole-in-the-wall restaurant.- Sara