Happy Tree House BBQ Kingsway木屋炭烤(溫哥華店) — Restaurant in Vancouver

Happy Tree House BBQ recently opened up a location in Vancouver (they have another location in Richmond). Known for their BBQ skewers and whole fish dishes.

We arrived for an early dinner on a Friday and were surprised at how busy this place got. The interior is quite bright, open, and airy with large tvs hanging from one wall and loud music blaring throughout the restaurant. There are a few private rooms in the back but the main dining area is comprised of tables and benches.

You order by marking your preferences on an order sheet. The thing to know about their skewers is that they have minimum orders for each type of skewer so you can’t just order 1 skewer of this and 1 skewer of that. Most of the skewers have a minimum order of 5 so things can get expensive quickly. This is probably a better place to go if you have more people in your group. We looked at the price of the whole fish dishes but didn’t think we’d be able to finish it by ourselves.

Instead, we wound up ordering a few different things… such as the Pickled Cucumbers ($4.95) which were coated in a spicy sauce and had a mildly sour taste.

One of the dishes that I really liked was the Eggplant ($4.95) which were thinly sliced and super tender.

The Squid Tentacles ($7.95) came with a pleasant and not too spicy marinade.

Next up were the Prawns ($2.95 each, min 2). As expected, most of the flavour is on the shell so you have to suck on these before you deshell them. That also helps to keep your fingers from getting too messy. The prawns were fairly large and meaty.

The Sweet Corn ($1.50 each) is something that I’d probably pass on.

Now, on to the skewers… The Special Lamb Kebabs ($1.50 each, min 5) were the first to arrive and were brought out on metal skewers. I thought they were pretty good… they weren’t overly dry but they did have some fatty bits to it. Their skewers are served dry (ie. without sauce) but they have a couple of jars of spices at the table that you can use (cumin and chili powder I think).

We also ordered their Angus Beef Skewers ($1.99 each, min 5) and Chicken Wings ($2.50 per skewer, min 2). The beef, served on wooden skewers, proved to be a bit more difficult to pull off the skewer as the meat was drier and harder.

We wound up ordering some Scallops as well ($4.50 each, min 2). They were dusted with some salt and pepper seasoning which I wasn’t a fan of.

We decided to come back for a revisit a couple of months later and made sure to show up early as it fills up quick in here. As expected, the parking lot was already full when we showed up but we managed to find street parking nearby. We started off our meal with a watermelon juice ($3) and an iced red tea ($2.50) to go along with our plate of Spicy Pickled Cucumbers ($4.95), Grilled Eggplant ($4.95), and Yam Chips ($4.95). We’ve enjoyed the cucumber and eggplant here before and were pleased that they were still on point. The yam chips turned out to be a larger dish than we expected and we wound up having to take some of them home. The chips were mainly crispy with a few pieces that turned a bit soggy due to the drizzle on top.

The slightly sweet and spicy Prawns here ($2.95 each, min 2) are large and in charge so we made sure to order 4 of them. Yes, they’re messy to eat but well worth the sticky fingers.

We added a big pot of Spicy Fish Balls ($15) which included 15 skewers of double-stacked fish balls in a deliciously spicy broth.

For our skewers, we picked up some Angus Beef ($1.99 each, min 5), Fish Tofu ($1.75 each), Sausage ($1.99 each and which was basically a hot dog), and Steamed Buns ($1.50 each, min 2).

I was pleasantly surprised that they grilled the steamed buns but these don’t hold up well as leftovers. Overall, another happy meal at Happy Tree House… just wish that it wasn’t...

Extremely bad service at this place, twice!

Back in April, 2022 when I first visited this place, my friends almost got into fight with the servers at this place. I was not feeling so well and had to use the bathroom for a longer time after they were closed. I felt so sorry to hold all the staff there and they couldn’t close the store but I didn’t have a choice. The servers constantly came in and rush me out when I was so sick. Then one server’s husband who does not even work there started to act so rude like he wants to pick up a fight with us.

Second time happened on Sep 18, 2022. When my friend told me we were coming here I was worried due to previous bad experience. But still gave it a chance. But now I regret so much because they just don’t want to serve us by playing some dirty little games. Maybe one of the servers remember one of our friends from last time arguments and purposely want to ruin our night. As we tried to refill our pitchers, we ordered 5 more pitchers of beer(we have 13 people). The server who took our order, instantly tells us ‘No I can’t give you 5, I can only give you 3, I don’t think you can finish 5”. We have 13 sober guest and I have no idea if this server knows what he’s doing. Also, he’s tone was not welcoming like he should have been as a server. At 11:50 p.m. when we finished the 3 pitchers and tried to order 3 more, they refused to serve us anymore and told us they doing last call at 12:30 am and don’t think we could drink anymore. As myself who licensed in SmartService I knew at this point they were just playing dirty games because by law if they observe you to be too drunk they could refuse to serve you alcohol anymore. But that time were not drunk, also still 40 mins to last call.

We were so upset getting our night ruined by this place and wish we have not come. We will never step back in this place anymore. A business who employees take customers base on their personal feeling instead of professional.

Very unreasonable and...

BBQ’ing in the woods?

Been coming to this place for almost a dozen times now. It’s one of those late night BBQ place you hang with your friends for a couple of drinks

Inside is pretty spacious and well lit, given the facts that with all the BBQ’ing inside, the ventilation is pretty good.

Here were the food I ordered this time around;

Bbq chicken gizzards, chicken hearts, chicken skin, pork intestine skewers. Pretty standard, but could be less dry and the pork intestine less gamey. Angus beef and chicken wing skewers. The chicken wings okay, the beef could be chunkier. Grilled oysters. The outside looked good until I putted It into my mouth. It was still raw at the bottom and had a weird taste. Spitted it out and the boss lady took them off the bill. Failed almost possible food poisoning. Grilled scallops. Can someone please tell me where or what happened to the rest of the scallops? Lol wth!?! I swear they used to be different? (Facepalm) failed for serving an incomplete live scallop on shell. Grilled tiger prawns. Okay pretty basic, not worth $9 for 2 prawns. Pan fried spicy clams. Pretty tasty and generous portion. Great drinking dish! Grilled codfish with spicy pepper (added quail eggs, bamboo shoots, luncheon meat, bean curd skins). Wish the flame didn’t ran out after 5mins, would’ve been nice to get the whole dish come to a complete boil to fuse the taste and ingredients together. Bowl of rice. Rice is rice lo

Overall, it’s an okay late night place to hang out with friends for a few drinks and some Chinese BBQ food. But definitely there are better BBQ places during the early evening time. The service here is decently okay most of the time. A tiny bit better than most Chinese restaurants. As for the food, it’s a bit different than last the time I been here. The food quality took a step downhill this time around. Better food quality control is necessary especially when it was...