Sandy La Chinese Restaurant — Restaurant in Vancouver

Sandy La is one of the many nondescript Chinese restaurants located in Vancouver… in this particular case, serving the Kensington area around Victoria Drive. The reason why we came to visit this restaurant was because they listed an online special where you order 3 dishes and you get a free order of clams in black bean sauce. We were sad when we arrived at the restaurant and saw that they changed their menu to offer Hainan chicken instead of clams (and the price had gone up).

As with many old-school Chinese restaurants, the first thing to arrive at the table was the complimentary soup made with vegetables and some bone-in meat.

Despite not offering clams in their special combo anymore, we did wind up ordering the combo where you pick 3 dishes and you get 1/4 Hainan Chicken for $55.95 (you also get rice and dessert with the combo). Hainan (or Hainanese) Chicken is served cold and with a nice dipping sauce (this version was bone-in chicken).

The Beef Brisket and Radish Hot Pot was quite large with a plentiful amount of daikon radish (but noticeably fewer pieces of beef brisket). The tender beef brisket was good and had plenty of sauce that’s perfect for sopping up with rice.

Similarly, the Seafood and Tofu Hot Pot was a generous portion and contained shrimp, fish, and squid along with the tofu.

Our third dish was the Chinese Mushroom and Veggies. As with all of the other dishes, the ingredients aren’t cut up into bite size pieces (probably to save time). This does make it a bit harder to eat things (especially when you try to take a bite out of a whole Chinese mushroom.

Dessert was a Tapioca soup which was not overly sweet.

Overall, the food itself was pretty good but the pieces were cut large (which makes it difficult to eat) and there’s really nothing which makes this place shine. There is a pretty large menu of items to choose from for the combo dinner but just beware that the items and prices listed online haven’t been updated in a while. Note that they are...

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Had a bad experience here a few years back. It got me angry. And upset. And made me never want to spend another dime at this establishment again. Family dinner- 4 pretty beefy adults, one 5 year old. Arrived right at 5 when they unlocked their doors. Empty joint and they sat us at their tiniest booth imaginable. Lots of spacious empty round tables around us and yet here we are so crammed that I couldn't even lift my arm to drink my tea. We asked for another seat. Got the side eyes from the servers and bad service after that request. We weren't asking too much. We are the type of family that inhales mass quantities of food and for real, the table wouldn't have fit every dish. But after this, I vowed never to return.

Anyways, I like to hold grudges. But not my husband. He said he's been dying to go back. I reminded him of what happened years ago but he didn't care. So we went today. Damnnnnnn!!!! There's a reason why this place fills up at 5pm and there's lineups all night long. The food is absolutely amazing. The dishes are massive. The food is fresh and they perfected the way to cook vegetables so it's still crispy but not raw. It's not oily food either. Why did I even let one little thing like the side eye keep me from this place?!? I've missed out on all these years and they can give me all the glares they want, I will be back! I came for the food. Not the service.

We ordered the set meal - 4 dishes served with free lobster, soup, bucket of rice and dessert for $89. Such...

Came here Friday evening. social distancing protocols for COVID-19 are supposed to be set in place here but that is not evident here. There were probably at least 50 people inside of this medium sized restaurant. We waited over an hour for a table of 4. While we were waiting, we noticed a number of things: 1) They allowed a group of 7 to sit together 2) They let in a party of 10 in (6 in one table, 4 in another), and they customers were going back and forth between the tables, sharing food. 3) They were using the same gloves to clean the tables and serve the food. 4) As soon as a table for 4 opened up, they conveniently told us that they closed the table for 'social distancing' about 40 minutes into our wait. This place is known for giving a lot of food and having fantastic meal sets. When we sat down at 8pm, they told us that they ran out of their complimentary soup. They gave us rice instead. At the end, they also 'ran out of their dessert'. I understand if you are poorly staffed but don't compromise everyone's health especially at this time. By the way, one of the customers we saw go in was coughing like crazy while waiting at the parking lot (he was part of the group of 10). So please stay at home if you're not feeling well. So moral of the story is, if you're looking for a place to eat with proper social distancing measures, I would...