Kevin: Happy Family. Does that not just sound like the most ridiculous name for a restaurant? It’s obviously a Chinese restaurant with guaranteed funny Engrish on their menu. After another night of dodgeball we were driving along Kingsway looking for a place to eat. This is just after 10pm, so there should be plenty of options. Apparently not because the two places we tried before this were closed at 10 as well. BOO!
Jeff: This is where I pretend to be a food critic. “These muffins taste bad.” – Andy Bernard
It looks super sketchy, and even the hours seem sketchy. 5pm-4am? What the heck is a restaurant going to be doing at 4am.. sure sounds like those “all you can drink” establishments. We were handed one menu, the late night one which is from 9PM-4AM. The deal here is if you order over $18, you get a bowl of congee. With 4 of us hungry boys, we were sure to order more than enough… most of the items on this two sided menu are $6-7 bucks.
The restaurant actually doesn’t look very sketchy from the inside for a Chinese restaurant anyways. Their fish coffin tank is pretty bad though. The menu Kevin is talking about is their “da lang” menu, which is basically Chinese version of late-night snacks to go along with some congee.
The problem we sometimes have when we each pick our own dish is the lack of diversity. This was definitely the case here.
Clams with Black Bean Sauce.
A pretty decent serving. Not the best I’ve had but still good. This was the most expensive item we ordered.
Congee with unidentified items such as bones, meat, grains, oat, etc..
Decent, but a bigger bowl would be nice as we only got 4 bowls out of this.
I didn’t like this type of congee. It was a little too fishy for my personal taste. I would have preferred some plain congee instead.
Deep Fried Prawns…
mmmm I love this method of preparation because it means I don’t have to peel anything. I can just eat everything! Normally I avoid food that requires work…and yes, this means food with shells & bones, which effectively rules out most seafood (crabs, lobster, prawns, fish). Yes, I am a lazy eater but I’m better now, I’ve learned that good food is worth working for!
Shredded Chicken with Jellyfish.
Ah..this was refreshing, a nice change from the hot fried food onslaught that we were about to receive.
Deep Fried Silver Fish.
Deep fried silver fish is amazing with congee. By itself, it can be too greasy and half the time there’s too much batter, but in congee, it’s like the perfect marriage. This dish had a very generous portion but it would have been better had they used smaller fishes.
The bowl of congee wasn’t enough filler for us, so we ordered a bucket of rice. $5! From this bucket we each had two bowls of rice. Awesome.
On the main menu, one bowl of rice comes out to $1.25. Definitely worth getting the bucket if you’re eating in a group.
Deep Fried Spicy Eggplant.
This was our attempt at getting some vegetables into our meal, but as you can obviously see it wasn’t a very healthy attempt as it was FRIED. Also it came with the same spicy/garlic fried stuff that was seen in two of the other dishes above.
All we read was eggplant and everyone of us immediately thought of “healthy.” These came out steaming hot and were very good. The fried garlic accompanying it was excellent on rice but by the end, it was borderline overkill for us.
The food was definitely cheap and edible, but it was a little too greasy. Not sure about the other dishes though. Service was very friendly but trying to get the bill or some much needed tea took longer than watching Avatar. By the time we were leaving, there were only two other tables occupied (friends) so it’s not like they needed a large attention span. It’s a good choice for cheap food late at night, but Nancy’s is a better choice and only a two minute drive away.
For the 5 dishes we ordered + the bucket of rice, the bill was only $40. I’m a lot happier coming here to eat than going to No. 9. I don’t know if it’s any cleaner, but to me it just felt better. The restaurant staff came out to have their meal while we were finishing up, and it seems like people there were also good friends as well. Our server and the “lao ban” (boss) was also really friendly and attentive. I still can’t think of many reasons why they would be open till 4am though..probably gamble and drink I guess.
Good for:
-A safe bet for late night eats!
-After a night of drinking!
Bad for:
-People who are sensitive to greasy foods.
