Liu’s Taiwanese Restaurant- Tastes Like Home-Cooked Taiwanese Food
Liu’s Taiwanese Restaurant is located right next to Richmond Sushi and I honestly am quite surprised that I never heard about this place before! This restaurant specializes in Taiwanese food and bubble tea drinks (although you probably coulda guessed from the name eh 😛).
The decor is quite elaborate, and actually unexpected as it looks nothing like it from the outside! I believe the restaurant is family run because there were only two people working (so one was the cook and one was the server) during the lunch hour.
By the way, something really weird happened, the restaurant suddenly became really busy and the two employees seemed completely overwhelmed and therefore the service was SOOOOOOO slow. They served us wrong drinks, never came by to take our order, and took forever to get the food out.
My friends and I all ordered off the “Combo” menu where you get to choose an entree and a drink (green or jasmine tea) for roughly $9.00.
If you add $0.50, you can have whipped cream served with your tea. I thought it was really weird but apparently it tastes really good. Once you stir the cream in, it looks like….
…THIS. It’s pretty much just a different way of making milk tea? haha I’m not sure 😛
I ordered the regular Iced Jasmine Tea and it was good. Very refreshing and the taste of Jasmine wasn’t too overpowering.
I ordered the Deep Fried Chicken Legs with Noodles in Soup + Iced Tea ($8.95) and boy did it surprise me.
This, ladies and gentlemen, is what surprised me a lot. I can say that this is either on par or better than the fried chicken wings from the Aberdeen food court. The chicken ‘legs’ as they call them, are essentially ‘drumettes’. They were so incredibly crispy and was flavoured with some type of magical sauce that made the chicken taste amazing. They also give you four drumettes! That’s a lot of meat!
The chicken drumette is first cut open and flattened before they flour and fry it. This method gives the chicken so much more surface area to fry in, and therefore made the chicken extra crispy! Again. I have to mention…THE SAUCE. I don’t know what sauce they drizzled on the chicken wings but oh my god… it’s so good! It complemented the chicken SO WELL. *drools*
These are the two types of noodle you can get if you choose the “noodle soup” combo. Top picture is regular Shanghai style noodles, and the bottom picture is Vermicelli. I personally like the Shanghai noodles more but it is just my personal preference. 🙂
This is the Deep Fried Chicken Legs With Rice + Iced Tea ($8.95) and it looked pretty darn delicious as well, right? When I first read that on the menu, I imagined a deep fried chicken leg (the large ones) and a cup of rice on the side. Ugh, that dish sounds so dry. But noooo, it looked like this! It comes with 4 fried chicken drumettes, minced pork on rice, and a side salad.
Even though the food (in my opinion) was amazingly delicious and affordable, it was deeply overshadowed by the utter lack of service we received. My friends and I understood the stress they were under because they obviously were not prepared for such a busy lunch rush. But regardless, we were paying customers, and we were frustrated. I will certainly come back to this place for their food, but let’s hope they have enough staff.
Based on these reasons:
- very affordable prices, the “Combo” menu in particular is a great value
- absolutely delicious chicken leg/drumette- Make sure you get this here!
- large parking area
- tastes likes a home-cooked meal
- overlooking that day of horrible service because my friends who are repeat customers said that has never ever happened before
Overall Rating: 4/5
Happy Eating!
