Bamboo Grove

I had a dinner with friends on July 1^st, 2015, and got the following experiences:
1) This merchant was unwilling to issue an itemized bill.
2) The price is over-​charged.
If you like an honest place to eat, this is not the one recommended.

Had the pork stomach ginkgo berry soul which was the highlight of the meal. Everything else was really just mediocre.

Had the pork stomach ginko berry soup. Highlight of the meal. The rest of the dishes were pretty bad. Taro duck breast had a few slivers of duck breast. The taro crust wasn’t even crunchy. The deep fried spicy squid was also not even crunchy/​deep fried enough. Even the steamed rice we had was like eating hot rice pudding.
Won’t be back.

It is a cramped restaurant and parking is not the easiest to find. On the other hand it speaks to its popularity. We had the ginkgo soup, eggplant and tiger prawn, both are dishes that won award for, and deserving too. Other dishes came out very good, service was a little disoriented.

Great local restaurant that I used to go to every week for family dinners. I haven’t been here for over 20 years, but since it was recently rated as the top Cantonese restaurant in Vancouver, I decided to go back and give it a try.
Aside from their signature dishes everything else is overpriced and average. They cater mostly to mainland Chinese customers and give them great service, but for everyone else you have to really get your servers’ attention!

I grew up in Richmond, and this is still the only establishment I get my Chinese take out from. This establishment sets the bar for me. I now live in the South Granville area and have not found a replacement for them yet. There are lots of great Chinese restaurants in Richmond, but this place is sort of tradition now. They have been around forever, and are always great!

If you absolutely don’t care about the customer service then this is not a bad place to dine…

For the past week, 6 of us foodies (4 from Los Angeles, 2 from Hong Kong have been eating at many Chinese restaurants in the Richmond area. Some are excellent, some are bad but, Bamboo Grove is definitely the worst of the worst !!!
Their signature soup (OMG…talk about MSG!!!) was warm, but not hot! Their signature «clay pot» rice was tasteless! Worst of all, the crab (for which they claimed it was 2.5lbs, it was 1.5lbs at best!) was fresh but, definitely NOT live !!! For that little crab, they charged us $ 50.00!
We can’t & WON’T recommend this restaurant to anyone !

Pretty average Chinese food in Richmond.
The Peking Duck wasn’t bad, the Scallop dish was decent and I honestly can’t remember what else I ate that night. Nothing really stood out in my opinion.
We sat in one of the private back rooms, but kept smelling cigarettes/​smoke. Not sure where that was coming from, but it bothered me a little since I’m pregnant and very sensitive to smell right now.
There’s parking in the back of the restaurant. The odd thing was, the back of the restaurant looked a lot nicer than the front. The front made the restaurant looked like a hole in the wall.

I remember this place used to be quite good… so we decided to re-​visit with our out of town visitors
Décor – much better than before. Very modern décor, evidently they had a renovation.
Service — good for a Chinese restaurant, close to being attentive
Parking — lot at the back alley. We went early enough to get a space so it was not a problem; however when we left at around 8pm we had a difficult time leaving our parking spot as there was a pile up of cars around the alley… yikes Richmond parking.
Food — not so good. I would say below average. We had the set dinner. Soup was complementary tasted ok and from this course forward everything went downhill. The best course we had was the panfried black cod with soya glaze. 2 thin slices of cod which tasted quite fresh, deep fried sitting on a puddle of soya sauce. Ok, next was deep fried taro duck, honestly it was very hard to find duck meat under the fried taro paste (by the way this used to be my favorite dish) We also had the cold salty chicken which was also a specialty dish, the chicken was supposed to be boneless, now it’s really salty water chicken, you can’t taste the chicken, just the salt. The veggie we had was gai lan, thick pieces (look like tree trunks) which again was salty and quite oily.
Dessert was the best, best course. We had coconut pudding.
Again they used to be quite good. Maybe just an off night?

I’ve been to this place for two times and I must say I can see it being a staple place for many… especially in Richmond.
This place isn’t going to be one for books in regards to looks or atmosphere. What does make it into a niche itself is that the price point and quality of food in a somewhat decent looking restaurant is few and far between… especially in Richmond. A majority of the restaurants usually try and cater to the willing to lay down over hundreds of dollars for a dinner or fast food.
A total of 6 dishes were ordered with a wide assortment from fish, to snow peas to crispy skin chicken etc. None were disappointing but many were very good. I had at least 5 bowls of rice to accompany these dishes. Service was great. Staff was on the ball for tea refills and other requests.
Last but not least… for a weekend night and the place to be jam packed goes to show that I’m not the only one in thinking this.

service — average (only one waiter said thank you as we leave)
but food came out very fast !! — yes they changed dirty plates often.
food — slightly above average for some dishes — average for some
price is definitely too high $ 75 for a pick your menu of 4 dishes + one crab included (whether you wanted or not); rice extra.
décor — excellent but only if you come in from the back parking lot …
overall — not a bad place but not a good one either. a going back for me? probably not at this price. Plus staff were smoking in the kitchen and the smell came straight out into the dinning area.

I had dinner here with a group of 13 people, and unfortunately the only table big enough to accommodate us was right beside the door, which is not the greatest spot on a chilly night. They did have a screen set up to block some of the draft and a heater, which was appreciated.
The restaurant looks a bit sketchy from the outside, but inside it has been recently renovated and is very clean and modern. Even the back entrance has been redone and looks quite appealing.
Some of the dishes we ordered were salty fish and tofu hotpot, deep fried salted pork chops, chicken with black bean sauce and vegetables, sticky rice, and shrimp with vegetables, just to name a few. The pork chops were tender enough to be able to bite into, and so tasty that we ordered another plate! They were quite salty though, due to the liberal seasoning covering the meat.
The tofu hotpot did not have a lot of salty fish, which disappointed some of my family members, but it had enough to give the dish some flavour. The sticky rice was a huge hit, and is definitely recommended.
I thought I had seen and tried it all when it comes to Cantonese food, but the food at Bamboo Grove was probably some of the best I have had, at least in a really long time. I would recommend trying this restaurant.

This used to be one of the best Chinese restaurants to go to if you wanted some of the most authentic and expensive Chinese cuisine. You can get a $ 70 to $ 100 per-​person of shark fin soup or abalone, or a dish of fresh steamed fish. The flavor is still there, but the service has gone downhill and far from its peak. On December 28^th, 2011, we ordered a custom ordered fish maw black chicken soup. The taste was good, but the serving size was much smaller than our previous dining experience here. Everything else was okay, except, the lobster with noodles was served *without* any noodles. What was worse was, when the owner, who also waits tables, came by and was told about it, he did not apologize. He did offer to remake the noodles, which was an absolute insult as the noodles would not be the same as noodles served with the lobster and its sauce. With a few other more mainstream dishes, the final bill was $ 625 for 8 people.
Bamboo Grove used to be a small, cozy restaurant with a humble beginning. Although Bamboo Grove has earned a few accolades, their successes have gone over their big, giant heads. There are plenty of great restaurants around Richmond and the greater Vancouver area. There is no reason to go to Bamboo Grove again.

I was expecting better than average Chinese food, especially when signs were posted all over the restaurant which mentioned, «Top 100 Chinese Restaurant in Canada».
This is a small/​medium sized Chinese restaurant which offers your typical Cantonese style cuisine found in Richmond. I found the seating area to be really cramped and the air conditioning system to be extremely weak. It was much warmer indoors, than outdoors.
The food was really a hit and a miss. Most of the items had a little too much salt.
I did like their stir fried crab with green onions, as the sauce used was very flavourful. The deep fried shrimp didn’t taste like fresh shrimp, but more like frozen — portion size was extremely small. Their beef and pork dishes had quality cuts of meat with little fat which was a plus. The fish and tofu hotpot had very few pieces of fish. I never had the opportunity eat a single piece of fish.
I was happy that the scallops dish with bok choy was sand free. Normally, I would bite into some sand when I eat scallops, but it didn’t happen.
The meal came with complimentary a gelatin style coconut dessert, which was a tad too sweet, but it was nice as it cooled me down from their failing air conditioning system.

Bamboo Grove Chinese Restaurant, Richmond, BC 1÷27÷2011
We have a wonderful meal and a lot of left over to take home
We heard this restaurant serve «Pork Stomach and Gingko Long Boiled Soup» Pork Stomach and Gingko Long Boiled Soup”, is my favor soup when I was a kid eating at home. This is very common family type of cheap soup served from time to time in an average family dinner. It’s tasty and cheap to make. It always with Gingko; dry soy bean curd; ginger (lot of ginger to take away the smell and taste of the pig stomach aroma) and if you want it tasty better and look more expensive, add some dry mushroom, boiled it 1 – 2 hours, you will have a wonderful dinner soup. There is no secrete and nothing to it, except for the labor to clean up the pig stomach before cooking it. I wonder why the CRA awarded them a GOLD WITH DISTINCTION AWARD for this dish. The CRA judgment is questionable. What DISTINCTION? This type of soup is being served in family in South China for hundred of years!
Since I haven’t had this soup for long time, (it appears that no restaurant in the Greater Vancouver area served this soup) I must order one to day. The waiter tells me we have to order ahead of time for this soup. Luckily the manager say they still have a small order and we can have. I was so happy to order it without ask the price and how small is the small size. And we also pick up a combo dinner for 2 for $ 29.95. The menu indicated we can choice 2 items from almost 30 items from the menu. We didn’t really look at menu, because we were so happy that they give us the last small bowl of
Pork Stomach and Gingko Long Boiled Soup”. We causally pick 2 items from the menu for the combo dinner.
They serve the soup first, to my surprise, the small size of the Pork Stomach and Ginkgo Long Boiled Soup” is very big, bigger than the big served in other restaurant. It consists of a big plate of ingredients (pig stomach; ginkgo nuts; soybean curd; lean pork meat and ginger) a big bowl of soup. After we ate the ingredients and soup, we almost full and still have a lot of ingredients and soup left. When the 2 item combo dinner come up, we have no room to eat any more but I taste them and it all looks very good and taste very good. As mentioned earlier, I didn’t know the price of the soup and the size of the small size. It turn out the soup cost $ 30. In my opinion $ 30 for that soup is too expensive even it’s very big for small size. I would like they served half of the small size for half of price $ 15. Since I know now the size and price of that dish, I will not order that again. Because you don’t just have soup for dinner, you like other dishes too. Other than that, this is a very good restaurant, service is excellent.
They have good food and good price. Highly recommended.

Let me first start off by saying I love chinese food…
I often seek out the authentic style of chinese cooking that makes chinese people agree that they are experiencing a treat.
On our visit to this restaurant we experienced a traditional 11 course meal. every course was delightful, but when the Deep fried Rock Cod was served, my mouth watered and my taste buds went to food heaven.
Some of the best seafood on the planet comes from the traditional chinese restaurants in Manila Philippines. This is usually my measuring stick when comparing how well a chinese restaurant may fare. Even the Chinese from mainland China who have business in Manila, love the treat when visiting the Philippines because they know that the food will be good.
I have to say that this restaurant beat the socks off any of the places I have tried in Hong Kong, Manila, or all of Southeast Asia.
Really a delicious treat!

Bamboo Grove always had me wondering about its quality seeing I had only heard of them via a delivery menu I received once.
It wasn’t until family friends suggested we go there I discovered how delicious their food was. Tucked amongst the various mom and pop shops across from City Hall this corner is easily missed.
However I would definitely recommend making a stop here. The seafood is a must here. Fish is prepared to a smooth just perfectly cooked and tender texture.
Flavouring on all dishes are done to perfection without being overpowering.