Honolulu Cafe

This restaurant has been around for a very long time and still has a decent number of customers -- which is generally a good sign that it's got something going for it.

Overall, price for portion is really good and it's not just filler. Even the smaller "Mini-Set Meal" available from 12pm-6pm and 9pm-1am are of a decent, filling portion though at a couple dollars less than the regular menu. That's what we ordered from for lunch.

Taste is around slightly better than mediocre but on the salty side.

For a Chinese restaurant where the servers weren't good at English, service was really decent. Not brusque like it can be in Chinese restaurants.

CASH ONLY.


CASH ONLY.

25. Curry Chicken or Beef Brisket with Rice ($10.75)

• My friend went with the Curry Chicken. Chicken not at all overdone so I suspect it might have been freshly boiled and then added to the soup. Same with the vegetables, which were still on the crisp side instead of having sat in curry all day and softened.
• Even without the rice the portion of curry was good and they weren't skimpy on the chicken.
• Really salty. And not really spicy either. The saltiness really ruined it but otherwise it tasted like a passable Asian curry.

93. Fried Chicken Wings with Tan Tan Noodle in Soup ($10.95)
Something was lost in translation here but the server tried to tell me (I think) that they were out of the proper noodle. So I think I got less noodle and/or watered down soup. They did offer me instead one extra chicken wing.

• Chicken wings were not really seasoned. But not at all oily, came hot, still quite juicy on the inside and crispy on the outside. Overall, nicely done, just not seasoned.
• The soup tasted like instant noodle broth mixed with peanut butter. Slightly on the salty side but otherwise an interesting and tasty combo.
• Nothing too special here but price for portion is definitely there and you'll walk out full.
• Comes with choice of drink -- for no extra charge, it's coffee, milk tea, or lemon tea (tea with fat slices of lemon).

Hunnybee Bruncheonette

Hunnybee is a pretty busy little brunch place with rather limited seating. There's seating outside, but the tables are on the low side and given the neighbourhood I wouldn't really recommend the counter.

Price for portion is good! And that's hard to find these days.
It's diner style so you order at the counter and pay first, and the credit card machine prompts you to tip first, which is sort of weird as you end up with really not much service except they bring the stuff to your table. So if that irks you, look around the interface for how to skip it, especially as the first tip option is 15%.

Shakshuka ($12) red pepper & tomato stew, two poached eggs, lentils, labneh, toast

• Tasty, and given the portion and price, it's a win. Spicing might be slightly on the tame side, however.
• Lacking in some of the more traditional aspects, chief of which is not being in a skillet. This means it can get cold really fast, so dig in right away.
• Based on the presentation my guess is they scoop it out of a huge vat like soup and add in the separately prepared too-perfectly-beautiful poached eggs.
• Veggies on top a bit too long to be convenient but not a big deal.

My friend got the rather largish sized ricotta pancake, which I didn't get to try.

J&G Fried Chicken (Robson)

DISCLAIMER: I got a Yelper discount e-coupon for J&G Fried Chicken as an incentive to try the place. I dragged along a couple of friends who live downtown and who happily turned out to have already been curious about it so that between the three of us we could try many things.

The place is tiny. Basically it's a take-out joint, except you probably don't want to take home freshly deep fried food because it'll be horrid by the time you get it home, especially with the current low temperatures.
Seating is minimal, but since people generally walk out with their purchases, you could just eat it right there.

Price-wise there are a couple of meal options but mostly it's snack-sized. So if you try to put together a dinner with the various snacks, it's gonna end badly dollar-wise, just as if you were to try to put together a dinner with just appetizer portions of, well, appetizers.
KFC coupons will probably get you more bang for your buck and comparable tastiness IF you focus on the chicken pieces at KFC -- What J&G does really well is show you the chicken. Their "popcorn chicken" is sized like Chicken McNuggets and uses real chunks of chicken instead of pink paste. When you bite into it, there's no mystery how much chicken there is instead of trying to discern it from the layer of seasoned batter. KFC doesn't have quite the same sort of snacking portion products however, and their "popcorn chicken" snack seems more batter than anything else.

As fried chicken goes, it's juicy and the seasoning is good. But if you demand crispiness, look elsewhere: There's no real crunch to any of it unless you get the deep fried chicken cartilage.



They may ask if you want chili powder on your stuff. I'd go with it on the side until you've had a chance to know what it is. Basically it's chili powder and you do need quite a bit of it to get any real heat going.

The spicy chicken isn't spicy-hot per se. It's spiced but with no heat on the tongue. Also there's a bitterness to the spicing that might not be for everyone.

The custard filled taro balls are worth mentioning for the rather liquid "custard" inside. If you don't pop the whole thing in your mouth, watch out for possible splat.

Overall I felt that taste and value is mediocre. But as snacks go, it's hard to beat deep fried fun.
There are meal options (which we didn't try) as well as some kind of "chicken pizza" (which wasn't available at the time).