Cheung’s Chiu Chow Restaurant

Taste was okay, but way too little for the money = rip-​off.
Ordered three dishes.
The Sichuan chili chicken. Despite the name, the dish is not spicy. The chicken was a bit bland because it was not marinated. The sauce was okay but not enough flavor. And it was a bit on the oily side. For $ 15, you only get 7 to 8 pieces of chicken.
The bean with mince meat was tastier. The minced meat might be too savory for some, but when you eat it with the beans, it balances it out. Once again the portion is small and a bit on the oily side. This is also $ 15.
The XO sauce stir fried scallop is the big rip-​off. It was supposed to come with asparagus, but they «ran-​out» and substituted with snow peas. I am okay with the substitution because I was warned when I placed my order; however, I am not fine with getting 6 scallops for $ 25. Also there were two different kinds of scallops. There were two big scallops, which tasted fine. The other 4 pieces were of a lower grade. For $ 25, you don’t even get 6 good pieces. The dish was spicy and the flavor was okay. Oily once again.
This dish irked me the most. For a small little Chinese restaurant where service is minimal (cause the waitress seems to be washing dishes and helping the cook at the same time) to charge this much for so little is ridiculous. I used to get take-​out from Lok’s on 41^st and for $ 16 it was stuffed with scallops. At least 3 times as much as this place. And recently, I had a tasting menu lunch at Hakkasan in Richmond for $ 24. It was a 4 course meal with a dessert and included ½ a lobster.
So based on the outrageous pricing, the okay taste and the lack of service, I would not go back and would not recommend anyone else to go there.

If you can speak Chinese the service is great. Definitely get the marinated duck and try it with a bit of vinegar!

I love the food. The pepper soup, cold crab, the duck and the the taro dessert was soooo good.

Everyone who wrote reviews before me are absolutely correct, the boss lady is rude (even by Chinese hole in the wall restaurants standard) If you are craving HK style Chiu Chow dishes this is the place to be. Famous dishes:
1. Marinated/​Brined duck with soya sauce, peppercorn and Chinese star anise. Don’t know if this will gross you out but famous restaurants never dump their marinate, they just keep adding water and spices to the same old pot. Sauce is not as strong as you would imagine for re-​cycled marinate duck. Strong star anise taste. Authentic chiu chow. It is supposed to be served luke warm
2. Omelette with oyster bits. A bit too starchy for my taste. BTW this dish calls for fresh duck eggs and baby oysters but at this restaurant it’s made with chicken eggs and chopped up oysters.
3. Sour cabbage and pork stomach soup with loads of peppercorn. Yes another gross sounding soup but it is suppose to warm your stomach. The pork stomach are quite good to eat, chewy and tender at the same time
4. Chilled crab. Traditionally made with blue crab but here it is made with dungeness crab. Very simple dish that brings out the crab taste.
5. Noodle crisp on both sides. Crispy noodles served with vinegar and sugar
6. Fried taro for dessert.

Horrible service, so so food.
The service is the real story here. Half the group had arrived and they decided to start serving food. When the table was full, the owner insisted on finding a way to squeeze one more plate onto the edge of the turntable rather than transferring food to a smaller plate. Refused to change used plates when they were full. Never checked in and when close, completely avoided contact.
The lemon fish (cat fish I believe) as quite dry and not particularly good. The fried rice was ok, duck decent, oyster pancake so-​so, pepper stomach soup not my cup of tea, cold crab pretty good.

This place is literally a hole in the wall among the strip of restuarants. Be sure to bring a Chinese-​speaking friend or two.
Parking here sucks, so I wish you the best.
The inside had lots of red and black, and looked quite trendy. The clientele were mostly middle-​aged. A bit of a head-​scratcher, but no problem there.
As all of the other reviewers have mentioned, beware the sassy waitress.
1) Yes she is definitely quite rude by Western standards. Be sure to have a thick skin. Some would say she was being «authentic Asian», but if you’re not Asian yourself, you’re probably going to get pissed at her. I’m not going to fault the restaurant for this though, as this is about as authentic Asian as it gets. You have to bust her chops back (aka be a wiseass) to get anywhere.
2) Hopefully someone in your group can read Chinese well. The menu she brought out had 0 English. None. Not even on the cover. After explaining that none of us could read well enough, she heckled us on why our Chinese wasn’t up to snuff. Guess we were bad Asians. Fortunately she did pull out a (peculiarly unused) bi-​lingual (English + Chinese) menu after that. It didn’t have any embarrassing typos either.
3) The waitress actually knows her stuff, and the dishes she recommended were actually quite good. Hey, this is the important part. I’d take this waitress over a pretty + dumb one any day.
As for the food:
Soy duck — nice lean pieces. Surprisingly not too much fat. Nice sweet soy sauce.
Sour cabbage pork bits soup — oh this is good. Special mention. I really liked the nice large pieces of pickled cabbage. The random pig bits create a nice base for the soup too.
Stir-​fried gai lan — also done well, but honestly the portion was a bit on the small side. The plate was big enough. But the pile wasn’t.
Stir-​fried noodles — again, large plate with small portion. Reminded me of a western chain like Cactus Club. Flavour was decent but nothing special.
The reason why I’m giving it 3 stars is value value value. The 4 dishes there were already $ 60. This place is definitely expensive for Chinese food. Other places would charge $ 40 or so. Drop the price, and I’d give the place 4. Because of this, I’m slightly hesitant to recommend the place. But don’t get me wrong — the quality of the food is up there.
Lastly, they take MC/​Visa, but not Amex. But the lady doesn’t want to split the bill onto multiple cards. Something to keep in mind, especially if your group wishes to play credit card roulette.

This is a place where the woman owner is the waitress and she has one of the worst service manners I have ever seen. From the beginning she had a mean look on her face, like she had enough of customers. Being a Teo Chiu person from Singapore, I spoke to her in Teo Chiu, she actually said my Teo Chiu was not good, and was impatient and for me to speak something else. The problem is she would not have understood English. I have been to Swatow and family I have not met before there who only spoke Teo Chiu was surprised that I spoke Teo Chiu fluently and clearly. Just because there was one or 2 words that I could not wrap my tongue around restaurant lingo, the lady was over the board rude. Eventually, she accepted that I could speak Teo Chiu but basically, I spent $ 60 with my husband and 2 young kids and I had to try to engage her in conversation to win her over. (Her husband (chef?) was a lot nicer but he came out at the end of the evening). She did ignore us in between and it was only towards the middle of dinner that the lady owner started being a bit nicer. But again, I felt like I had to be super nice to her when I am actually the customer and I still had to tip her for the work I did.
The food was fine but nothing spectacular. I had the 5 spice/​soya duck but it needed more flavoring as i have had better; the oyster omelete and the chinese brocolli with salty fish was good. We need more Chiu Chow restaurant with great pricing and service in this city that is for sure!!! I will trying others in the future, not likely to return to this one unless I am desperate.

* Bizarre service *
The place had only 2 other tables, but when I walked in the waitress looked at me and didn’t say anything. Just ignored me. Ok.
I waited about 2 minutes and then decided it must be seat yourself and started walking towards a table, and then she spoke and said, «Sit there.» Ok.
She brought a menu that had a full page of lunch specials which all said they come with HK milk tea included. I picked out the marinated duck and ordered it. She said, «No.» I felt like I was on a Seinfeld episode ordering soup.
I looked up at her and asked, «Are you out?» And she waved her hand and said, «Ok, ok.» Not sure what that was about.
The duck arrived. The duck itself was served lukewarm, and had a nice ratio of fat to juicy meat. It wasn’t bad. The rice was awful. Tasted stale. There was also a very salty layer of soy on the bottom of the plate that was excessive and made the bottom half of the rice entirely soy soaked. It would have been much better to serve the rice in a separate bowl if the style of presentation has so much soy. Photo:
She never brought my milk tea, and I asked, «May I have my milk tea please?» And she again pulled the Seinfeld crap, «No.» I looked at her a bit in disbelief and asked to see the menu. She then said, «Ok. Ok.» Sheesh.
When I was done, I followed the lead of other diners and went up to the counter to pay. She had my bill already prepared. I paid. Then I started to walk towards the parking lot exit door and the chef said, «No.» I looked in disbelief once again trying to figure out what the hell was going on. Then he said, «Ok. Ok.»
So I am left with one of four conclusions:
1) I’m entirely confused about appropriate restaurant etiquette and violated a bunch of norms.
2) Their service sucks.
3) I was on an episode of Candid Camera/​Punked/​Betty White/​etc.
4) I was on a Chinese remake of Seinfeld.
Considering the previous review by Peter W., and the number of similar types of restaurants I eat at regularly and don’t get that type of treatment, ane the fact that Betty White or some other TV producer didn’t come bouncing out with a television waiver for me to sign, I’m going with #2.

Poor service (faster services if you were in a big group or big spender) and overpriced (charged $ 2 for one small bowl of rice). Family owned.
Had the oyster omelette ($ 13), the chef just dumped the salty water from the fresh oyster container and cooked with the eggs, yes this added the flavour but poor food hygiene, did he cleaned the oyster? The pepper stomach soup ($ 10) was OK to good, the steam fish was less than acceptable $ 18 for a tiny fish.
The only staff that was polite was the daughter, but she could not even recommend what are the restaurant’s famous dishes. so much for asking !