Deer Garden Signatures

2015-8580 Alexandra Road

Richmond, BC

604-278-9229

NEWS UPDATE:  We were informed that Deer Garden Signatures and Cattle Cafe are actually operated by the same owners. This explains the similarities between the two restaurants~  HAHA!

Deer Garden Signatures opened recently and was already packed when we visited for dinner on Saturday.  They are in the second level (this is the location of the old E2 Pasta House) and is right next to Dessert Kitchen.  They are open from 10am to 12 midnight 7 days a week.

The first thing I noticed when I walked in was the milk tea that was sitting on most people’s tables.  They didn’t use glass or plastic cups.  Instead, they used the plastic sealed take out cups you normally have with bubble tea.  Interesting how many Hong Kong style cafes are gravitating towards this trend.  I wonder why they would make the switch to these sealed cups.

And here it is.  It’s the same size as most places.  It was mixed fairly well with a good proportion of tea, milk and sugar.  This drink came with my combo.  You have to pay an extra dollar to have a cold drink.  Similar to Cattle, you can get a specialty drink (like a bubble tea) by adding 2 more dollars to the meal.

Rockia had the hot horlick.  He didn’t comment much on this because it is the same everywhere.  Horlick is made from powder and it’s pretty easy to make at home.

And here is the reason we visited….the noodle bowl ($7.50).  I was very surprised by how similar they are to Cattle Cafe (just downstairs)!  Their soup base, noodle and toppings were the same as the ones at Cattle Cafe.  The only difference is that they had a couple more things that Cattle didn’t offer.  For example, they have a greater selection of soup base.  Take a look at the menu below. I think that the soup base was reasonably good.  I tried the Chaochou style dried fish and minced pork fish soup. The fish soup here seems to have more msg than at Cattle.  As well, their bowls are definitely smaller.

The weird thing is that they have almost the same toppings as Cattle Cafe.  I was hopping that they would have more unique toppings.  Their topping choices are very basic and a lot of the choices are processed meats like vietnamese-style pork, ham, luncheon, pork sausages, beef balls, chicken balls.  The choices weren’t very surprising though.  I decided to order the fish filet and the home-made cuttlefish balls.  I think I was drawn by the words “home-made”.  The cuttlefish balls were very good.  They had crunchy bits of chufa.  This was better.

As for noodles, I chose vermicelli.  I thought that Vietnamese flat rice noodles and korean style sweet potatoes crystal noodle sounded kind of interesting so I will try it next time.  Sorry that the pictures of the menus are a bit blurry.  The glare of the sunlight shining in made it difficult for me to focus my camera on the small words.

And here it is!  The vermicelli turned out to be a good choice.  It’s smooth and soft.

I also noticed that you can add an additional side order to your noodle combo.  I had a craving for desert wings with ginger so I was super happy to see this.  And for $1.50 more, I felt like it was worth it.  You get three desert ginger wings in total. Yum!

These wings were the best part of the meal for me.  I liked it because of the large amount of ginger that they coated the wings with.  I could actually see strips of ginger all around the fried wings.  Compared with Cattle, I think Deer Garden makes them slightly bit better.  The reason is because Cattle’s desert ginger wings are heavily coated on the outside with batter whereas Deer Garden’s wings have less batter and more ginger.

Our second choice was from the authentic Malaysian curry combos section.  We decided to go with curry beef brisket on rice because we love beef briskets.  This was $8.95.

The curry beef brisket was bigger (this is the dinner combo).  In terms of the curry sauce, we noticed that it was very similar to the ones served at Mui Garden.  The only difference is that the curry is a bit more sour.  I think it all depends on the proportion of spices they use.  The beef brisket soaked up the curry very well.  Each piece was surrounded by a thin layer of fat.  It was reasonable.  The thing that ponders me is why Deer Garden reminds of lots of different restaurants, but doesn’t seem to surprise me with anything that is signature to them.

The curry came with a mound of rice on a plate.  We ended up not having enough rice because there was so much curry beef.

Their other menu choices consist of western style dishes.  They are around $9.95 per combo.

They also offered steamed rice combos.  I’m not sure about the quality of these yet.  I will probably come back and try it again later.

Overall, I think that Deer Garden is a combination of many different restaurants.  I think it is worth two paws because the staff here are ok.  Everything from food to dish sizes are merely passable.  However, I find that the prices of many Hong Kong style cafes are getting too high.  I understand the effects of inflation, but going out to eat (even at casual cafes) is starting to be too expensive.