Mini-Review: Ridge Garden Restaurant

The Ridge Garden Restaurant is in the same strip mall as the Ridge Theatre in Kits and is a very near where I live. A five minute walk to be precise!

At first glance it appears to be the usual "Chinese Canadian Restaurant". Looking at the menu and the various stereotypical "Dinner for X" posted on the menus outside complete with Chop Suey and Chow Mein appears to confirm these impressions. For this reason, this restaurant initially did not appeal to us.

However, after repeatedly observing a fair amount of Chinese people eating in there, we changed our minds!

We were pleasantly surprised! The hot and sour soup that we tried while not outstanding was decent! And the "rice with salty fish" that we tried was good!

Tonight we went and the restaurant had a special which is definitely worth a try. Three dishes (from a menu in both Chinese and English of at least 30) and soup for $29. The soup was very down home with soup bones with meat, orange peel and dates. Delicious and revitalizing. For our three dishes we picked, pea shoots with garlic, baby ribs with black pepper sauce and salty fish with steamed pork (a dish which reminded Barb of the down home delicious cooking of her late "poh poh" which I believe means your mother's mother).

All the dishes were good! And there were more lots more to choose for on this deal that sounded good such as crab in cream sauce, spicy smelt. and they gave us dessert! Mung beans in a sweet broth mmmm.

I've walked by on the way to Buy Lo (next to the Ridge) many times and have seen lots of birthday parties and people eating the tell tale "chicken balls"! I bet that they are prepared as competently as the "real" Chinese food that we have enjoyed.

So this is is a fun place to take all the people you know who like both "real" and "Canadian" Chinese food. before or after going to the Ridge (or to Buy-Lo). No pretensions just decent food at a decent price. Our first impressions were wrong!

Our meal was $29 for 3 dishes, soup and $2 for rice before tax and tip! We had plenty of left overs so we could have easily fed 3 people for the same price. The Ridge Garden, 3113 Arbutus Street (at 16th in the same mini mall as the Ridge and Buy-Lo), 736-5231

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