Vancouver Voyage | DAY 15 - Cattle Café + Double Oreo Ice Cream Sandwich

Cattle Café is almost an annual tradition.  And by "almost", I mean that the Hong Kong-style café is gradually levelling up to become one of our favourite casual eateries in Burnaby.

Our family had started out by frequenting the Richmond location after my plea to diverge from our regular Cantonese spots. Unfortunately, it later closed down, prompting us to travel a bit further east to satisfy custom noodle bowl and milk tea cravings.

This most recent visit unveiled a series of menu changes, as well as a spike in price. A major departure from the battered hardcover menus I had the leisure of flipping through last time, the new menu comprises of a sleek monogrammed black cover and laminated pages. Along with the restaurant's revised selection of products was the inclusion of carb-heavy desserts, Japanese-style dry noodle dishes, classic steamed rice dishes, and an expanded assortment of iced beverages.

We took to ordering a Crispy Pork Chop Ramen, Seasonal Veggies with Garlic, Chiu Chow-style Noodles w/ Fish Balls, Ice Bath Hong Kong Milk Tea and Red Bean Ice to share amongst the party.

All of the items arrived relatively quickly, with beverages being delivered first.

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Both drinks varied drastically from our previous experience, and not in a positive manner either.

The Hong Kong Milk Tea was overly strong of a brew and thoroughly lacked ice. Compared to last year's portion, it seemed as if the ice used to float the plastic jug had been completely halved. This was a similar case with the Red Bean Ice, except that in addition to being deprived of ice, it also suffered from shrinkage and a loss of red bean. Needless to say, this resulted in extreme disappointment, especially having had great experiences with the same drinks last summer.

Seasonal Veggies with Garlic is a common dish at many Chinese restaurants, though Cattle Café's approach was a tad different and a great deal more costly. Ten dollars earned us a large platter of tough green twigs with feeble-looking leaves; the pieces had roughly washed and tossed in a heaping amount of vegetable oil and garlic, yielding a slick, shiny finish. It was far from an impressive dish, but sufficient enough to satisfy the need for veggie intake.

​Moving onto the main dishes, I suppose it's safe to say that neither dish was worth ordering twice. Crispy Pork Chop Ramen was, in fact, not ramen-like at all. It was a dry noodle dish with a tiny amount of sesame sauce poured over pale yellow noodles accompanied by a meager portion of baby bok choy and black fungus salad. A partially-cooked "ramen" egg and three unthinkably thin pieces of "katsu" were the remaining elements of the other pathetic-looking plate. (Katsuobushi and mayo were a nice touch, but there wasn't much beyond that.)

​Honestly, at first glance, it was quite appealing to my growling stomach. But upon closer examination, I discovered that the only decent component was the lightly-seasoned blanched salad. The "katsu" pieces were not crispy pork chop slices at all, as they contained little to absolutely no trace of actual meat - the ratio of meat to panko was a very visible 9:1! The ramen noodles were blanched to the right consistency, but bereft of sauce, causing the dish to be largely bland.

The Chiu-Chow Style Noodles was undeniably the better of the two entrees: its fishy broth paired well with thin, flat rice noodles and spongy (supposedly store-bought) fish balls. I only tasted a small amount of the bowl, but found the noodles a tad soggy for my liking. In its defence, I did enjoy the utterly flavourful broth.

A fellow food fanatic friend of mine had the opportunity to try Hong Kong-style French Toast at Deer Garden Signatures a while ago. Seeing that Cattle Café's revamped menu listed French Toast as one of their top five recommendations, I suggested trying the tofu puff-like cubes while we happened to be in the area.

Six rectangular pieces of layered french toast arrived at our table some five minutes after ordering, each measuring about two inches in width/length and one inch in height. I opted to add a scoop of vanilla ice cream for an additional fee, not knowing that the scoop would be smaller than the standard tennis ball-size.

Two tablespoons worth of sugar syrup was drizzled on top of the interesting little pieces. Curiosity took the best of me, and I stabbed the first piece without a second thought.

My first bite was a mixture of crispy sweetness followed by gooey, chewy carbiness. As it turned out, each piece consisted of two layers of crustless white bread with a thin layer of sugar syrup sandwiched between. Extremely delectable and super indulgent, the warm bites were exceptional when consumed with small spoonfuls of ice cream. Thankfully, the French Toast was one of the better dishes of the day, and allowed us to terminate lunch hour on a positive note.

Service has improved slightly, but not by far. Restaurants such as these are expected to have a high staff turnover rate, so I wasn't exactly surprised to see younger, unfamiliar faces. I was amused by the last line of my receipt though.

With the launch of Mister's exclusive Double Oreo Ice Cream Sandwiches at Chachi's and considering our undeniably close proximity to Metrotown, I marched across to the shopping centre to obtain exactly that.

Each was priced at an economic five dollars; I obtained three to store in the freezer until late afternoon hankerings hit.

Uncovering the cocoa-heavy ice cream bar from the depths of its wax paper bag wrapper was a mission. It wasn't that the simplistic packaging was difficult to open; the issue lay with carefully revealing the wrapper's contents such that one could continue to munch while resuming his/her daily Internet-surfing life.

Two excessively filling slabs of Oreo-containing goodness hit my tastebuds first. Next was the cooling sensation of the smooth, frigid ice cream enveloped inside.

While tasty, the ice cream sandwich was a bit larger than my desired portion size. The thickness of the sandwich also contributed to a gradually decreasing consumption rate, partially due to the fact that my mouth isn't so big and partially since I was making my greatest efforts to refuse contemplating the number of calories embedded within the bar.

Sunset soon arrived. I took to enjoying the view after crafting my own Rainbow Bagel Grilled Cheese - multi-coloured goodness courtesy of Rosemary Rocksalt, of course.

How surreal are these clouds?!