Today is a special guest entry from one of my friends, Jeff! My comments will be in green text within brackets.
Thanks a lot Jeff for somewhat offering to write this up.

Kevin first proposed the idea of me doing a guest blog a couple of months ago when I was telling him about Pho Nhaun. (Which I have not gone to yet!) And while I would consider myself very passionate about food, I wouldn’t know what to write about.  It kind of reminds me of the scene in ‘The Office’ where Ed Helms’ character Andy Bernard goes, “I am not insightful enough to be a movie critic. Hmm… maybe I could be a food critic. These muffins taste bad. Hmm, or an art critic. That painting is bad.” (this seriously cracks me up, even though I’ve never watched the show.)

Anyways back on topic.  A few weeks ago after a dragon boat practice, a group of us had decided on going to Ho Yuen Kee, located on Fraser at 46th, for a late dinner.  Kevin didn’t bring his camera (I know, shame on me) so he used my phone to take the pictures and because I had the pictures, he thought it would be a great idea for me to write the post.

Ho Yuen Kee is mostly known for their noodles, congee and wontons, but they also have a dinner menu.  They also offer a late night menu for ‘da lang’ which consists of smaller plates (Chinese tapas?) normally ordered alongside some congee.

We arrived at the restaurant close to 10 on a Thursday night and were seated quickly. I’ve been here several times in the past and if you’re looking for a table during the lunch or dinner rushes, especially on the weekends, be prepared to stand in line. Reservations are accepted but even with those, you still may need to wait a while.

Kevin 2 first noticed something was different with the tea… but in a good way. It was sweeter than most conventional teas but we couldn’t quite figure out what was. It was a few days later after looking online that I found out the tea was supposed to be lychee flavoured.

Ha, a picture of the condiments… just like from another familiar blog?

As we were looking over the menus deciding what to eat, the waiter came to inform us that it would be best to order relatively soon as the servers (or cooks?) were about to go on their dinner break.  Normally, many people would consider this to be rude, but for some reason it didn’t seem like it.  Maybe it’s something about being Chinese myself that it didn’t bother me too much… or because I’ve seen it happen so many times before at other restaurants.  At least our server was also really helpful in trying to help us figure out the name of a plate we wanted.  When that plate came back, he referred to it as “our favourite dish.”  Overall the service was decent.

Three of us had ordered the Wonton Noodle Soup.  Soup wise, it was a bit salty but it wasn’t too bad.  The noodles were your typical egg noodles but the wontons!  Oh the wontons are what make this dish better than other noodle houses.

They’re huge! And even with their size, the quality of taste is still there.

Our “favourite dish”

Kevin and I split the Hot and Salty Silverfish.  It’s fish small enough where you can just eat them whole without worrying about bones. There was just enough batter and it wasn’t too heavy.  It comes with jalapeno peppers as well.  If you can’t handle them, make sure that’s really a green onion you’re about to eat. (This is a dig at me, when I was about 5yo, my uncle told me the green pepper that comes with the plate of bean sprouts when you order pho was really a green onion, so I ate it.  And cried.  A lot.)

Kevin ordered this bowl of congee.  It was on special for $4.95 and it has century egg, shredded pork and oysters.

I don’t remember how this was. (It was good, lots of ingredients within it and was very satisfying!)

D ordered this, the Deep Fried Tofu in Spicy Salt. This is one of the more popular dishes on late night menus and here you can see all the peppers then put on it.

This was the Pan-Fried Chow Mein with Black Peppered Beef. It also comes with green and red bell peppers and onions in the dish. It was good, but at times the pepper overwhelmed the rest of the flavours. Thank you to the girls for sharing this dish with the guys. At least it got us to stop staring right?

The girls had also ordered the Love Bird Fried Rice aka Yin-Yang Chow Fan/Fried Rice.  For any of you that don’t know, it’s fried rice with two different types of sauces. In the white sauce, there’s mostly shrimp whereas in the red sauce, it’s shredded chicken. The guys were staring at this dish as well and the girls were still kind enough to give us some. I only tried the red sauce and having only one side doesn’t give this dish enough justice.

The ambiance and decor are fine. The dining area isn’t cramped but the waiting area is.