Hawker’s Delight and a Day in QE Park

After 6 years of blogging, we had written over 2,200 blog posts. There are so many posts that s0metimes we can’t quite remember some of the places and recipes that we had bloged about before.

However, there is one post we always remember. It was the first post where we received the first negative comments. That first negative comment did bite. It was over 4 years ago and I still remember the words clearly. Someone left a remark saying:

“you sound like an arrogant fool for some reason. no. more like a petty-bourgeois douchebag.  meh.”

It was at this post where I blogged about Hawkers Delight. I thought it was a balanced and honest review. I said the food is cheap and tasty. I also said that the place is also not exactly clean.  The first time we got a comment like that, it did hurt a lot. Since then, we did get more such comments. The bigger chowtimes got, the more comments we get and along with it not all comments were positive. I guess this all came with the territory.

It is quite alright for people to disagree with chowtimes … but it is better to do so respectfully. One thing Suanne and I have always done is to make sure that we publish every comment even if it is negative. After six years, we have only thrashed six comments that we thought had grossly crossed the line and if we did that, we do announce that we had deleted comments. You can rest assure that we will never delete any comments even if it criticised chowtimes.

Hawkers is one of those restaurants that we had been back many times. It is just that we did not blog about it. We like it because it is cheap and most often than not, it is also good.

A few weeks ago, Suanne and I decided to have lunch in Hawker’s Delight and blog about it. After all, it was four years already since we last wrote about them. Time to refresh the content.

Hawker’s Delight is located on Main Street near the intersection with King Edward.

Hawker’s Delight is small. It seats less than 30 people and it is really cramped. The place had not changed much over the years.

Hawker’s is known for their … cheap and tasty food. This place is always packed during meal times and you gotta wait for a table. You are quite on your own as they don’t really help you getting a table. Most of the time I came here and encounter a line, I would just order “tar-pau” (take away).

Hawker’s is also known for their catering business. You can order their dishes by the trays for parties and gatherings. Hey, this could be a good idea to order a mee goreng for the Stanley Cup Playoffs.

Their food are cheap. So cheap it is sometimes unbelievable. Click on the above to read their dishes and prices.

Most of their dishes are $5.00 or less. The most expensive dish is only $5.50.

These are Malaysian food with a few Indonesian ones. Anyway, there are similarities between Malaysian and Indonesian food but the biggest differentiator is in the name. By and large, Hawker’s Delight is a Malaysian restaurant.

For that price and the fact that this place is called HAWKER’S Delight, you can expect minimal service. You are left on your own to secure a table for yourself. You then go to the counter to order what you want. You get your own drink (water only) and your own cutleries. The only table service is when they bring the food to your table (sometimes they will call you to collect from the counter). While they will come to clear the table, often for us, we just bring the finished plates to them before we leave.

So, if you are bothered with greasy tables and you have issues getting the serviette to clean it yourself, this is not a place for you. Let me forewarn you, lest you go and come back and tell me how atrocious this place is.

We tried to order something light. So we ordered a Tofu Goreng and another Indonesian sounding one called Gado Gado.

Cheh! They both looked exactly the same! LOL!

The pictures on the wall shows a vastly different dish. Oh well.

The Tofu Goreng has tofu, cucumber and a lot of bean sprouts. The Gado Gado is a little different in that it has a hard boiled egg.

I was wondering if the hard boiled egg is over a day old. When I was young, my mum forbade me to eat day old eggs. You see, the superstition is that if a boy eats day old eggs his thing will get very big. Yeah, that scared me and until today every time I see hard boiled egg, I am very careful.

Since Suanne does not like eggs, I ate it.

And no. Nothing happened. Guess it was freshly made that day.

In the dish are cucumber, carrot, tofu, beansprouts, jicama, boiled potato and long bean … and all covered in a nice peanut sauce. Wish it was spicy though.

My all time favourite in Hawker’s is their Mee Goreng ($4.90). I have not come across any other place which makes it this way. It is fried dry, not like many other places which is just too saucey and moist.

You get to choose how spicy you want it made. We of course said make it as spicy as they can. There are no meat here. Just tofu, tomato, potato, onion and celery.

For some reason, the mee goreng that day was bland. It had always been really good but this time it was close to being tasteless.

One thing to note is that their noodle is too broken up. So it is quite hard to eat with chopsticks. The best is to use spoon and fork. Yeah, spoon and fork … and not fork and knife. Most South East Asians uses spoon and fork as eating utensils.

As you can expect, they accept cash only.

It was a nice sunny day on that day. Since the QE Park is nearby and we had nothing planned for the day, we decided to just go to the QE Park to while some time there.

I know Suanne likes to take pictures of flowers and plants. She takes it and post it in her Facebook. Yeah, when she goes around taking pictures, she doesn’t talk. She’ll ignore me and walk all over taking dozens of photograph.

And she doesn’t want to use the SLR too. Too heavy she said and she said it is easier to reach closer to the flowers.

By this time of the year, QE Park should have been more colorful. Not so this year. It is still somewhat cold even in May.

BUSINESS HOUR

Closed on Sunday

• Malaysian
• Restaurant Review
• Vancouver