Firebird Cafe

Chinese Bites is launching a new VIP program soon that involves various discounts for loyal diners at certain restaurants. I was invited to try out Firebird Cafe, a Hong Kong style cafe located at Continental Centre in Richmond, along with Mashed Thoughts, The restaurant is pretty spacious and we had plenty of seats to choose from when we arrived at 6:30, though they did get a lot busier later on in the evening.

Firebird Cafe serves a mixture of Asian and Western food, and has customizable menus, particularly for noodle soups and sizzling grills.

Most of the meal sets came with a drink. For a small upgrade, you could get a specialty drink like bubbletea, so that's what most of us ordered. I had the coconut smoothie, which I thought was very refreshing. It was a lot more like a slushy than a smoothie but there was a good coconut flavour. The others got passionfruit calpis, milk tea and horlicks. 

E decided on a noodle soup. You choose your own soup base, noodles and two toppings (additional toppings with extra charge) and a drink. She went with the gingko and pepper fish soup with egg noodles, bok choy, sliced pumpkin and fresh bean curd. The soup was SPICY. It was actually quite good, but I couldn't take the heat! E loved it so much she ended up drinking all the soup and had dry noodles left.

I ordered a custom sizzling grill - it comes with 2 items, a side, sauce, soup of the day and a drink. There was no choice for the soup (some restaurants usually have the option of a cream soup or borscht) so I had borscht. I went with beef shortribs and chicken wings with a side of fries and garlic sauce. The short ribs were very tender and the chicken wings plump and crispy. I rarely get to eat chicken wings so I was in heaven. The fries were similar to Costco fries, with the extra crispy outside. I'm drooling just thinking about it! 

V ordered the Baked Chicken Spaghetti in Meat Sauce. I normally don't order pasta at Asian restaurants, but this was actually very good and everyone agreed it was the best dish of the night. The chicken was very flavourful and tender. Mmm!

Mashed Thoughts ordered the custom steamed rice with free range chicken and pork liver with an egg ($1 charge). The dish was one of the last to arrived, probably because it took time to steam everything. The egg looked like it was microwaved though, so I probably wouldn't add the egg in next time. The liver and chicken were good, and the rice was very flavouful from the ingredients that were cooked on top of it. 

We ordered several appetizers to share, however, they were the last dishes to come out!

First we had Takoyaki, which seemed to be a hit or miss because some were very mushy on the inside but some were dryer. It came on a bed of fried onions which E couldn't stop eating (she actually took the onions home after).

Next was deep fried squid. They were nice and crispy but the batter did not seemed to be seasoned. There was a sweet chili dipping sauce on the side which made it better. The squid sat on a bed of fried onions again.

Last we had a giant bowl of Taiwanese Chicken Nuggets. They were really good and seasoned well. I ate so many even though I was so full! 

Overall, the food was decent at Firebird Cafe and the selection was typical of these type of cafes. Most of the customers seemed to be ordering the fish soup noodles so I would definitely go back when I'm craving noodles!

Disclaimer: The food mentioned above were provided free of charge by Firebird Cafe and ChineseBites. The opinions expressed in this post are those of Savvy Shopping, Deals and Reviews and have not been influenced in any other way.