Chau Veggie Express — Restaurant in Vancouver

This was so good! I had the #8 Rice Fields Bowl and a Coconut Shake. Pictures and menu description do not do justice to how flavourful the bowl was. Besides the delicious sauce and noodles, I really liked what a wide variety of fresh vegetables the bowl contained. I'm not sure if the included cup of broth was meant to be added to the bowl or drank on its own, but I thought it was nice to sip on as a warm side. It was very fragrant. The coconut shake was also very tasty even though my personal preference would have been for it to be a little less sweet. It's still not as sweet as a lot of commercially available drinks, I just like things with minimal sugar. The shake is made with natural, minimally processed ingredients and it shows in the fresh coconut taste. It was cool that it contained big chunks of coconut meat even though some of them were hard to drink directly from the bottle - I had to use my chopsticks on some of them, but I was able to get everything out. The price is quite good for the value. The portions for the bowls are big (I finished the whole thing without feeling like I was stuffing myself, but was totally satisfied after), and the food is really fresh and high quality. I paid less for the bowl than I've paid for many smaller and less impressive meals at sit-down restaurants. The staff here were very pleasant as well. I notice a lot of vendors in the market will try to get me to order when I'm just browsing, even from a distance, but these people gave me space until I actually walked up to the register and made eye contact which I really...

I ordered delivery and we got the Golden Temple Soup, Midnight Swim Bowl, and a coconut shake. I’d been hearing rave reviews of Chau over the years so I was pretty excited to finally try it.

Sadly overall it was a disappointing experience. While the Golden Temple Soup itself was tasty, the topping were not. I was not expecting to just have a bunch of giant blanched vegetables tossed in with no seasoning at all. There was no seasoning on my vegetables, not even salt or pepper! I’ve had other vegan or vegetarian dishes and even if it was coming with a nice soup base, other places have put in more effort to season their veggies and provide more textural variation than just boiled vegetables. The amount of noodles included was also rather small and disappointing.

For the Midnight Swim Bowl, same situation. There was no seasoning on ANYTHING (rice, vegetables) and nothing was done aside from boiling all the ingredients. The sauce itself was meh and the tofu was another big disappointment- it tasted like they had just cut off a few chunks and tossed it in without even rinsing. You couldn’t even pan fry the tofu for a bit of textural variety? Add a bit of salt to the vegetables? Maybe cook the veggies with the sauce? If I wanted to just eat a bowl of boiled rice and vegetables and pour on some spicy hoisin sauce, I can do that...

4 stars for the flavour and taste of the food, but would rate the service lower. Ordered the Midnight Swim Bowl ($14.75) and Golden Temple Soup ($16). No complaints about the bowl, good mixture of textures and the spicy peanut garlic soy mushroom sauce had a nice kick. The Golden Temple Soup had a rich flavour that didn't taste diluted. The quality of the veg included was good (kale, broccoli, cauliflower, lotus root), it only included 1 yam and 1 taro piece.

Due to a mild allergy and dietary restrictions, I had asked if mushrooms, tofu and bean curd could be substituted for a bit more yam and taro (also included in the item description). They had mentioned they could take the items out but not add more of others, it would be an extra charge if selected. I would understand if it was pre-packaged, but if it was built to order, could it not be possible to substitute even a bit of yam/taro for the left out ingredients? Especially at a higher price point and with the number of tofu included (4+ pieces), to allow a substitution would have been appreciated. I ended up getting the regular order and picked out the ingredients before pouring the soup in. It was nice to try and I do like the GF/V options but wouldn't go out of my way unless I'm...