Mui Garden: Excellent Hainanese Chicken But The Curry Chicken Is Supposed To Be Good?

I am sitting here trying to figure out if MUI Garden should be categorized as a HK Style Cafe or not. Which brings to an interesting point ? what characteristics defines a HK Style Cafe?

The brand is reportedly from Hong Kong but they are known more for their Malaysian dishes. Yet at  the same time you can?t really call them a Malaysian restaurant, not when you scan their menu.

There are four Mui Garden locations with two in Vancouver, one in Richmond and the other in Burnaby. The main one is located on Victoria Drive and 43rd Avenue in Vancouver. This is the first of the four Mui Gardens.

On their website, Mui Garden also claim that they were an established restaurant in Hong Kong prior to opening in Vancouver. I tried googling this but I can?t find anything with Mui Garden in Hong Kong at all. Does anyone from Hong Kong knows about their original operations in Hong Kong?

Anyway, Mui Garden is well known for their two Malaysian dishes: the Hainanese Chicken Rice and Malaysian Curry Chicken. These are the two dishes we wanted to try.

Mui Garden had been in the local restaurant scene for a long time having started in 1992. They do brand themselves as a HK Style Cafe according to their website. After almost 20 years, they are still going strong but it does seems like they are in the dire need to rebrand themselves.

The restaurant was running at capacity for lunch the day we were there. There is even a short wait for tables for people who came after. Most of the customers looked like they are regulars and they are from the neighborhood.

How can I tell?

A few weeks ago, Suanne and I had dinner with Grayelf, JS and TS. We had an interesting conversation about ?home clothes?. It simply dawned on me that the concept of ?home clothes? is quite foreign in the western world. You see, for Asians, we have clothes which we wear at home and those that we wear when we go out. The shabbier worn-out ones are for home. When we go out, we take a shower and out on go-out clothes. The further we go, well, the better we dress. So if it is to the restaurant around the corner from our home, it is simpler than say, we go all the way out to Vancouver.

So the clothes that the customers wear in Mui Garden are the ones we would wear if we were going to the restaurant around the block. Hehehe ? what say you? Is that how you would tell if the customers were from the neighborhood?

Service was quick and efficient but really nothing remarkable. They are well staffed and most of the waitresses looked like they are lifelong employees. How can I tell? I?ll let you figure that out.

The restaurant is obviously showing its age and pretty seasoned. I am not surprised that Mui Garden is no longer a destination restaurant drawing new customers. They are on cruise mode. They have steady, regular customers and they have made a name for themselves based on two main dishes.

I don?t recall that they have a combo menu like the ones you see in all HK Style Cafes. I am talking about the ones that has a main, drink and soup for a low price. I did not notice because we were here for their two main dishes.

Other than the two main dishes, the rest of the menu are unexciting. You may click on the menu above to show larger. Take a look at the first page above, items #20 to #22. Yeah, they have that too.

What they touting was their ?Authentic Malaysian Curry?. They are called out right under the logo of the restaurant. You can see that everywhere ? on the menu, on the sandwich board outside and on their website. You can?t miss it coming here. I just can?t wait to try it again (last time we were here was way before chowtimes days).

One of their two signature dishes is the Hainanese Chicken. This is $10.50 for a half-bird which is … More after the jump. Click to read the rest of Mui Garden: Excellent Hainanese Chicken But The Curry Chicken Is Supposed To Be Good? (1,380 words)

© ben for Chow Times, 2011. |
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Post tags: Malaysian, Restaurant Review, Vancouver