Chef Papa Tea & Noodle Bar

Being a fan of affordable noodle soup, this place is a little more reasonable than Deer Garden now. Although I miss their milk tea… The selection of Presto tea at Chef Papa is nice. Soup noodles isn’t as heavy and side dishes are good too. Selection of different types soup noodles along with rice dishes are pretty impressive. I do recommend trying it

Facility: Coming southbound on Kennedy, make the right into the plaza the driveway before the lights. It will be on your immediate right. Chef Papa’s is a clean a spacious establishment, lots of natural light and clean.
Food Quality & Price: Depending on which soup base you get, the cost will vary. You’re looking at spending around $ 10 a bowl. The usual option people go for is the combo.
Pick your soup base.
Pick your noodle.
Pick 2 toppings.
Side dishes optional at extra costs.
Pick a drink (included but you can upgrade to BBT for an additional cost)
What we ordered:
1) Fish soup base with preserved egg, prince mushroom, bok choy, and cilantro + yellow noodles + sliced lamb and deep fried fish cake. Absolutely delicious and a great change from ramen and phở. I loved the soup base and there were plenty of ingredients. They were no stingy and the variety was the highlight of the bowl. The portion of noodles were huge though. I was unable to finish.
Drink: Royal Earl Grey Jelly Family — was fine. Tasted like cold regular «earl grey» with milk and sugar and some assorted jelly at the bottom. Will probably order something else next time.
2) Shoyu (soy sauce) soup base with corn, soft-​boiled egg, and black fungus + Japanese ramen noodle (extra charge) + chashu and deep fried fish cake. It was okay, egg was too soft and runny, falling apart which was probably the worst part. Soup was okay (we were unable to tell or confirm if MSG was present, but soup was fine). The japanese noodles were the highlight of this dish — well executed. Portion size was perfect. But on the grand scheme of things, doesn’t hold a candle to any of the ramen masters (Kinton, Jyuban etc).
Drink: Water with lemon. Exactly what you’d expect. Small cup of warm water with a slice of lemon.
Service: Passable. The waiter did his and her jobs. When we asked a question about a specific type of noodle depicted on the menu, the waiter seemed unsure. Staff should know their noodles working at a noodle house. Seems like a no-​brainer to me.
Overall: The attraction of Chef Papa’s is the incredible variety on the menu and in your bowl. They don’t do any dish AMAZINGLY well, but they do variety really well. Chef Papa is a Jack of all noodles soups but master of none. It’s a great place to go when you can’t agree on what to eat, or if you want something other than ramen or phở. While ramen and phở ARE offered, there is also Singaporean laksa, Tom Yum, Chinese style noodle soups, and rice dishes available. Working in partnership with Preso tea, they have a decent BBT menu to add together as a food combo with the soups.
Don’t know what to order?
— order from the «chef recommended» section y
— flip through photos on Unilocal and see if something looks good.
Will definitely return in the future and looking forward to seeing the staff brush up on their customer service skills!

Overview: An enjoyable noodle place with (too) many options.
My wife and I have been here a couple of times. I love Ramen and my wife loves all noodles except Ramen so we decided to try this place because it allows both of us to have our pick. The first visit the menu was confusing because you have to your soup base, noodle, toppings, side dishes and drink. There are also items you can order off the menu so it can seem overwhelming. I had the ramen combo which is very tasty when compared to other ramen places in Markham. My wife had vermicelli in soup with fried pork cutlet which is also good. The food here is flavourful and bb tea is really good too. The only complains that we have is that the place is very crowded during the weekend and the seating area is tight. The servers are nice in general but they are very busy so may not be attentive. We do plan on returning as we still have many other types of noodles to try!

Had their Tom Yum soup with rice noodles. It tastes more like a Thai coconut curry based soup. It did’t taste bad just not what Tom Yum is.
Friend ordered tomamto and egg soup with ramen noodles sand I was shocked how bad it was. I thought this is like Deer Garden but such a dispointment. My friend asked for no onion twice and they forgot about it. Also messed up our drinks.
For any one that thinks this is like Deer Garden, don’t bother.

One star for ambience, one star for the Presotea drink.
One star was taken off before we even sat down for our meal. When we walked in there was a little bit of a wait. As we waited, a second waitress came to ask how many people, then she looked around the restaurant and walked to an empty table with menus in her hand and started wiping the table down. There was only one group of people in front of us, and they were just standing there, so we thought they were waiting for a larger table or something. So we walked down to the table where the waitress was at, as soon as I got there, the waitress literally yelled in my ear «this table isn’t for you, get back to the entrance and wait». She was loud and rude! I mean she could have asked nicely since she is the one who didn’t communicate in the first place!!!
As I sat down and looked at the menu, it looked like Deer Garden but with more options. We were a party of three, ordered a laksa rice noodle, fish soup rice noodle, pork tonkatsu don, and on the side Taiwanese Popcorn Chicken, Fried squid balls, fried fish fillet, fried pork ribs, and some drinks. All dishes came out picture worthy, however: laksa was tasteless, the sliced lamb topping was all bunched together and had no flavour. The other rice noodle dish was over cooked to the point where the noodles were almost melting. Pork Tonkasu don was like rice porridge at the bottom of the bowl. Fried squid balls was also tasteless, fried fish had a weird chemical/​unfresh taste. In the end, only the fried pork ribs and popcorn chicken was okay. My drink was pretty good because it’s from Presotea.
The food was still edible, just not very good food. It’s the type of food that makes me regret not having a home cooked meal instead.

A wonderfully nice and unpretentious ramen place held slightly back by confusing menu options. Located in a rather nondescript corner of the Peachtree Plaza (bet you never knew that name!) at Kennedy and Highway 7 is Chef Papa, basically a place which offers customizable soup noodle dishes and mixes them with a respectable assortment of Presotea drinks.
Almost EVERY dish here is a combo, which can be confusing for some, because the excessive number of options and wordings in the menu. We remarked that it felt a bit like taking an exam, because for first-​timers, looking at the menu (which had «steps» in its instructions — it was THAT confusing) felt a bit mesmerizing. But essentially you choose your broth base, then you choose your noodle type, then your two toppings, and your drink.
Some of the notable ones we ordered were the Hokkaido Chashu Ramen (the ONLY ramen in the menu that doesn’t require a million different permutations — choose this if you don’t want to bother picking and choosing), the Szechuan Dan Dan Mian, and the Red Miso Chashu Ramen.
Firstly, the broths were ALL tasty and quite distinguishable from one another. I was a big fan of all of them. They were all very flavourful without going overboard on the saltiness. The Szechuan one was particularly good, it was spicy but far from overwhelming, and unlike the one at T&T (I know, I know), this one didn’t taste like someone kicked my jaw open and filled it with a spoonful of peanut sauce. Nice balance, something which I appreciated.
Secondly, I liked the ramen noodles here. They felt a bit more «factory-​made» rather than the ones you get at fancier places like Kinton, but to me they were still excellent, and felt a little al dente. Good stuff.
Finally, the ingredients were all of very good quality. Nothing was too dry or overcooked. Nice balance of fat and meat on the chashu.
The service was mostly decent. The servers were nice, but some of the people who brought us the food just basically dropped the dishes on our table and hurriedly left, leaving us to sort out whose dish is which. It was pretty crowded though so maybe service would be better when it’s not peak mealtimes. But overall, no big complaints.
I like this place and plan to go back. It’s an interesting experience, and we always love our Presotea (which is interestingly making a habit of appearing in partnerships with random Chinese restaurants instead of having its own locations a la Chatime — an interesting business decision). It can feel a bit cramped though, so expect a rather uncomfortable wait time if you come on weekend mealtimes.

Been here a few times for lunch and dinner!
I like the food here and the service is not bad. I come here usually because it’s a convenient location but if I really wanted to go eat vermicelli then Phoenix is still the best!
I love how you get to customize your own noodles and also how you get Presto Tea! Bubble tea ftw~^^
I also really like their soup bases~ my personal favourite is the tomato and egg super yum~^^
The service is ok, nothing special but some staff only speak mandarin so I had a little trouble communicating :$
Their prices are actually quite high compared to other restaurants, it was over $ 30 plus tips for 2 which is expensive for just two bowls of noodles :(
Anyways, this place has 3.5 stars from me and its not bad so give it a try! Will probably only come when I’m too lazy to go anywhere far: P

the food at first looked pretty good, but the taste is horrible we could not finish our noodles or rice (even tho we were starving)
the chicken wings should be called deformed chicken bones with a bit of meat?
the drinks even with the presotea name did not taste very good and presotea is usually pretty good (the ones from pmall at least)
lacking in many ways. don’t judge food by the pictures.
prices are very fair but not worth it for this kind of taste.

If you like places like Deer Garden, you will love Chef Papa as well.
Pros:
Unique set of soups for noodles
You pick what goes into your noodles
Presotea partnership
Cons:
Service gets a little slow when busy
I personally like Deer Garden so I had to come here and give this place a try. It’s the same set up where you pick your broth, noodles, toppings etc. Chef Papa though, has your traditional soups as well as two other sub categories. They also have a Hokkaido pork bone base and Vietnamese soup base. Each base also has several variations to choose from as well. The toppings are pretty much the same with a few differences and you can choose side dishes and a drink as well with your meal.
I got the Hokkaido pork bone base with yellow think noodles and my GF got the original fish soup with udon noodles. We got a side order of lemongrass chicken steak for our little one as well. We came on a Saturday for lunch so it was pretty busy. The food definitely came out a lot slower than Deer Garden. The noodles were both pretty good. I love having even more soup bases to choose from and I’m already thinking about coming back to try the laksa soup base. The chicken steak was great, my little one gobbled it all up on her own.
For all you tea lovers our there, Presotea is also located here in a partnership. I like the idea of these tea places teaming up with restaurants, I hope to see more of it in the future.
When it came time to paying the bill, I had to ask 3 different servers before we eventually got our bill. It was very busy at the time so be prepared to for this if you come at a time it’s busy as well.
I’m definitely a fan of this place. This offer up even more selection than Deer Garden. If you are as well, give this a try!

Came here with my boyfriend for lunch. This is my second time here, as I came here during opening week. I can see that they made some changes, as the menu used to be on paper like deer garden, but it looks as if they went the environmental way with dry eraser marker menus!
There’s so many choices on the menu, the soup base, the type of noodles, the toppings, side dishes, and drinks. I like the fact that they paired up with presotea.
Arrived here at 1pm, there was a short wait ahead of us, but was seated within 5 minutes. The tables are a little close as I was practically sitting beside the person from the next table.
I got the tomato and egg soup base with Japanese udon with Japanese char siu ans Taiwanese cuttlefish ball, and Taiwanese popcorn chicken as a side. My boyfriend got the Taiwanese minced meat rice.
The side was pretty good considering it was only 1.99. They were fresh and hot, not too much spices, but at least like 8 pieces!
The noodles were nice and chewy! Soup base had a nice tomato flavour and both toppings were really good and flavourful. The Japanese char siu was soft and had a good split of fat and meat.
My boyfriend said the rice really hit the spot. I tried the egg, and it was really good, nice and oozy in the middle, and the meat had a lot of flavour.
The service was okay, although the table next to us, 2 of the orders had toppings missing in their noodles and had to be sent back. They were complaining about the service.
Overall I enjoy this place more than deer garden, although it was packed with people, I didn’t find the atmosphere as noisy as Scarborough deer garden. Would come back, especially for the happy hour 3−6pm presotea buy one get one free!

Finally got to come here after hearing so much about it.
Chef Papa is a pretty cool concept, where you get to choose your soup base, noodle, and toppings. All meals come with a basic drink with the option to upgrade for an additional cost ($ 1.00 for cold drinks and $ 2.50 for their specialty teas). My fiancé chose the tom yum and coconut soup base and we flagged someone down to ask which noodles are the phở noodles. The guy we asked had no idea. It’s the dried rice vermicelli, FYI. I got their ramen combo with cha siu and a basic soup base. We also ordered their Taiwanese chicken nuggets, honey garlic chicken wings, and lemon grass chicken as additions.
My fiancé’s meal came almost instantly with our side orders trailing behind. His dish was super delicious. The tom yum soup was the perfect amount of spicy, sour, and thickness. Noodles were your standard phở noodles. He ordered beef and egg as his two toppings, but his meal only came with the beef. He flagged someone down to ask about the missing egg and she said she would check to see if his dish was wrong. We watched as she walked away, did a circle around the restaurant, and then stood by the tea bar. She avoided us for the remainder of our meal.
My fiancé’s meal came 20 minutes before mine and we were still waiting on the lemon grass chicken. He was almost done his meal when we asked someone about my meal. They apologized, ran off to the kitchen, and returned with my dish and the lemon grass chicken. My dish was good, but nothing to write home about. Noodles were tastier than your average ramen noodle and the pork was tender and fatty, but the soup base was underwhelming. All the side dishes were really good and you can’t go wrong with the price tag.
Our drinks came as we were finishing our meal. Thankfully, our bubble tea came in a take out cup, so we could just bring it with us on our way out.
This place would be a 4 star to me, but I took away one star because their service sits somewhere between nonexistent and incompetent.

3.5 stars
Chef Papa is a noodle restaurant where you can customize your meal by choosing a soup base, type of noodle, two toppings, a drink and a snack (for an additional charge).
The Singapore laksa soup base was creamy and flavourful, but didn’t taste overly salty at the same time. Pairing this with the white fish balls and tofu puffs was perfect!
Szechuan dan dan sesame ramen was just as delicious but the sesame taste could have been stronger.
Took off 0.5 stars for the $ 1.00 surcharge for the Chef Papa cold milk tea and for not having a hot option. Milk tea was good but I felt like I was forced to pay an extra $ 1 because they didn’t even have a hot option for me to choose from.
Would come back to try other soup bases!

I had to come here a second time to try other soup bases as they all sounded delicious… no bueno.
We ordered both the tom yum and the laksa soup base and neither of them were that great… stick to the hokkaido pork bone or classic fish broths!
The tom yum flavour was there but it was too sweet… additionally, it comes with no toppings! Only a few slices of mushrooms and limes.
One word for the laksa soup… salty. Way too salty. There was no flavour other than saltiness… with a huge glob of chili oil over the top. One plus is that this soup base does come with an entire runny egg and some tofu puffs (ontop of your choice of two toppings).
The $ 1.99 popcorn chicken is a delicious snack as well as the roasted oolong milk tea. I will be sticking to what I know is good rather than trying other options next time!

Very similar to deer garden (pick and choose 1. Soup base 2. Type of noodles 3. Toppings 4. Snacks 5. Drinks
First time here, so glad we made a reservation! When we arrived the front door was packed! Came at 6:50pm for my reservation for 8 for 7pm and they seated me quickly at our reserved table.
I opted for their laksa udon with pork intestines and beef tendon. It was $ 8.99 included a drink like a hot milk tea, I opted to add $ 2.5 extra to make it into a presotea bubble tea. Got the matcha with white pearls.
The food arrived quite fast, they arrived at different times whenever it was ready (unlike western restaurant where all entrees would arrive together).
Luckily some of us had snacks and it was with family so I dug in first.
The laksa was so red, it stained my white pants since I am a messy eater! Lol
It was VERY flavourful, so much that I think it was too rich for me. It was so filling. I was forcing myself to finish. Also I think it was extra filling because of my drink, it’s quite big and filling with the pearls! Luckily the drink they give you in a takeout up so you do not have to finish if you didn’t have to.
The pork intestines was yummy! Not a lot of places have this, and i like how you get to pick and choose your toppings.
My hubby had a curry pork cutlet don, he said it was good and it sure was filling for him! I believe it was around $ 10.95.

This is the new ramen place that got my ramen-​lover friend visiting it many times a week! I think he just loves making as many different types of noodle bowls as he can! This restaurant lets you customize your bowl of noodles by choosing the broth, noodles, toppings and extras. They have a wide selection of broth including Singapore Laksa! The customized order is a combo that comes with a drink. For $ 2.50 more, you can choose from a limited range of Presotea drinks. The drinks can be customized too — no milk, less sugar, less ice etc!
If you’re not in the mood for making decisions, opt for one of the Chef’s Recommendations. There’s rice and noodle dishes. We had the Hokkaido Chasu Ramen, Vietnamese Lemongrass Chicken Steak Rice and Royal Earl Grey tea with tapioca, jelly and no milk. The ramen was quite good with springy noodles, an egg and 3 pieces of Chasu that’s not too dry. The best part was the egg — it was a marinated egg and had a creamy yolk, yum! The Lemongrass chicken wasn’t that tasty. If you really want to Vietnamese lemongrass pork or chicken, it’s better to go to a phở shop. The Earl Grey was bitter from over-​steeping or too much tea leaves. Ten Ren makes a good Earl Grey bubble tea with no milk so I know it’s possible!
Finally, the washroom. What a big change from the former Congee Wong washroom! I wasn’t sure what I would find and was relieved to find it new and clean :)
P. S. They do not accept credit cards.

October update: officially have to update my review to 5 stars as it being my favourite restaurant for laksa noodle soup.
I would have given the review 4 stars but as of yesterday’s visit it has lowered 1 star because we noticed they started to reduce their portion of soup. Since its opening my family and I have been here about 13 times because it tasted very good. Markham needed another different noodle customization restaurant aside from Deer Garden. I loved this restaurant and have been eating their Laksa noodle soup every time that I’ve visited.
The staff is friendly but this restaurant can get quite busy especially on Fridays and weekends. I really like the fried cuttlefish balls (side dish) and five spice chicken wings.
I will be visiting again and hope that they don’t continue to reduce their soup portions because sometimes a little goes a long way. The owner is nice and takes the time to explain if he sees you’re new to the restaurant and need a little guiding when ordering.

Nice lunch spot.
The menu looks complicated to me at first sight, yet I like having choices from Viet to Chinese to Japanese to South East Asian. I like I can create unusual combination of noodle and soup broth. This was exactly what I ordered: laksa broth with Korean transparent noodle. Laksa broth tasted rich and sufficiently spicy to me. It was very creamy. I liked how it overwhelmed the transparent noodle. The portion of noodle was very generous. For toppings, I selected pork and wontons ($ 1 extra). Pork was good and fresh. Wontons weren’t so great. I didn’t think they were worthy of paying extra, so I wouldn’t order it again.
Decoration is nice and clean. I like that there are bar seats for solo diners. Services is efficient and effective.
My co-​workers like the selections and the bubble tea. We will return for lunch.

Newly opened so everything is nice and new. I was too lazy to look over the build it yourself noodle section so ordered from the chef recommendation section.
Hokkido chashu ramen $ 9.99 — noodles had great chew, soup was flavourful and not overly salty. Pork was soft and tasted great. Came with a runny egg just the way I like it. Added $ 1 for an iced milk tea.
Curry chicken cutlet udon $ 9.50 — the chicken flavourful with the curry sauce and had nice crunch to it even though it was sitting in the soup. Even though the curry sauce was put in the soup I liked how they put it on the one side of the bowl. So it was still a fish based soup with a curry dip for the chicken. Another great bowl of noodle.
Service was pretty good but I think they should try to serve the noodles for each table at the same time. I had finished half my bowl and my mom didn’t even get her bowl yet. Other than that I think they have a good thing going here.

3.5÷5, +.5 for service
Chef Papa is owned by the same management as Blue Ocean Café, as the owner wanted to focus more on noodles and less on…“everything else”. They don’t do breakfast specials, so don’t expect a decrease in business for New City. It was previously Congee Wong before it closed down a couple of months ago.
The menu setup is similar to Deer Garden, as many reviewers have already mentioned. However, I find the prices to be a bit on the high side, and honestly for the prices I expect excellent food quality. My shoyu ramen was $ 10.50, which is running awfully close to the standards I expect in Kinton/​Sansotei/​Santouka downtown.
I added chashu and cuttlefish balls to my shoyu ramen. Overall I was very impressed with the broth and chashu, as it was quite close to the standards you’d expect downtown. The cuttlefish balls and the ramen are the exact same as the ones in Blue Ocean, so if you’ve eaten either of the two across the plaza… don’t expect much.
Service was excellent, and not surprisingly some of the Blue Ocean staff is manning this restaurant as well.
The high prices will prevent me from going as often, but overall I was very satisfied with my meal, and am especially glad a legit noodle place is now open at New Kennedy Square.

3.5 Star + 0.5 Star for able to upgrade to Presotea Drinks for $ 2.50
Self Choice Combination Noodle Combo sounds familiar? With the success of Deer Garden, a lot of restaurants with the similar concept has been popping up all around Markham. And Chef Papa Tea & Noodle Bar is another new comer to this concept.
I do like how there is more than just noodle or fish noodle based option. Aside from fish broth, there are also Hakkaido style pork bone, Szechuan Dan Dan, Tom Yum, Laksa, Szechuan Spicy and even Vietnamese.
And if you rather has a rice dish: Vietnamese Lemongrass Pork Chop/​Chicken, Taiwanese Stewed Pork, Japanese Curry Pork Chop and more.
I think the selling point is really the option of upgrading the free hot drink that comes with any meal to Presotea drinks for $ 2.50 if you like drinking Taiwanese tea. There are 10 different options to choose from.
Hakkaido Cha Siu Ramen ($ 9.99) + Passion Green Tea (w/​Pearl and Coconut Jelly) $ 2.50
— Cha Siu was a little bit dry but the ramen was well cooked with a little chewiness. The Pork Bone Soup was quite flavoured and rich without being overly salty
Japanese Curry Cutlet with Rice ($ 9.99) + Royal Earl Grey Milk Tea Family (w/​Tapioca, Grass Jelly & Pudding) $ 2.50
— Nice crispy crunchy batter for the pork cutlet. Curry sauce was really rich too
Of course we were such a happy camper taking our drinks to go and enjoying that as dessert later. I love pearl, grass jelly, tapioca… and more.
I will come back and try their fish soup based option next time but Chef Papa seems to be off to a good start.
Pro Tip: request your Presotea Drink less sweet or less ice when putting in your order.
Cash Only!