Happy Day Cafe

Hello friends! It’s been a while since I’ve gone out for Hong Kong cafe eats since it’s not my favourite thing to go out for but there’s been a huge line outside the new location of Happy Day Cafe ever since it opened so I figured that I should give it a go. Happy Day Cafe in Richmond is located at Central at Garden City.

The prices there were pretty typical of Hong Kong cafes in Richmond with dishes ranging from $13-18. They had a variety of fried noodles dishes, protein entrees, veg, fried rice, baked pasta/rice casseroles as well as higher end eats like lobster or duck.

Mother deer, Old bean, lil’ bun and I decided to order 3 items because Hong Kong cafe dishes tend to be quite generous with their portions.

Pineapple fried rice

★★★

The first thing we got was the pineapple fried rice. It had bits of chicken and huge chunks of pineapple in it. The dish was $15 and quite worth it because there was literally a mountain of fried rice on that plate! The dish was a bit on the salty side but the sweet and sour pineapple chunks helped balance it out.

Enoki mushroom and beef fried udon

★★★★

Next up was the enoki mushroom and beef fried udon. The whole dish was stir-fried in a soy based sauce but it wasn’t enough to make it salty. Mother deer liked it quite a bit because not only were there lots of beef chunks in it but it wasn’t as oily as most of the stir-fried noodle dishes you find at other Chinese restaurants. The portion of this plate was quite large as well and we actually ended up packing half of this dish and half of the rice home because the 4 of us couldn’t finish all the food.

Happy Day Cafe noodle menu

Last but not least was the fish noodle soup. They usually have this at Hong Kong cafe restaurants like Deer garden or Cattle Cafe but the choices at Happy day were much more limited in terms of soup base and topping options.

Pumpkin and tomato noodle soup

★★★

We decided to go with the pumpkin and tomato soup base with fish and beef. The beef slices were terrible cuts. They were a strange pink in colour and very stringy. We didn’t end up eating any of it because it was such a bad quality meat. The fish on the other hand was okay as far as basa fish fillets go. Portion wise, the bowl of noodles were pretty large and up to par with other HK cafes in the area.

Quick bites:

1. Huge selection on the menu
2. Large portions
3. Good location at Central at Garden City