Where to Eat: Gee! Taste Good, inside the Pacific Plaza Food Court on the second floor, 8888 Odlin Crescent, Richmond (Corner of Cambie and Garden City)
Hours of Operation: 10:30 am – 5:30 pm, Closed Mondays
What to Eat: Prawn Laksa $6.75, Indonesian Fried Noodle (Kwetiau Goreng) $6.50, Coconut pudding, around $2
Do you love Southeast Asian cuisine? Frankly, there aren’t many great spots in the Greater Vancouver for Indonesian, Malaysian and Thai food. When it comes to laksa, a curry soup noodle that’s hugely popular in Indonesia and Malaysia, my go to places are Bo Laksa King and Gee! Taste Good. If you follow the food scene in Vancouver, you’ll probably have heard of Bo Laksa King. They were all the rage a couple years back. I seeked them out when they were still located inside a super dingy supermarket in East Vancouver, and the laksa the owners made was superb. Everything about the place was so basic that I really did feel like I was sitting on the streets of Malaysia (or in this case Burma, one of the owner is Burmese), and eating alongside a street food cart. But the quality of the laksa quickly deteriorated when they opened up a second location on East Hastings.
Nowadays, I think the best place for laksa is inside a little-known Chinese food court in North Richmond. Very few people have been to this food court hidden inside Pacific Plaza at the corner of Garden City and Cambie, but it’s got a real gem inside, that’s for sure. My foodie friend Edmond has been telling me about this place for a while now, but it wasn’t until recently that I finally paid a visit.
Gee! Taste Good is run by a father and daughter team. The father’s mostly in charge of cooking and I think he actually does a better job than the daughter.
You can ask for the laksa to come with prawns, beef, chicken or fish ball. I haven’t tried all the different toppings, but just by instinct, I’d go with prawns. (Let me know if you have tried other toppings) The laksa is meant to be served spicy, and they always add a spoonful of the spicy sauce on the side to give it that umami taste. They are quite generous with their spicy sauce, so feel free to ask for more if you like. However, I sometimes have the laksa non-spicy and really love that the sweet coconut flavor shines through in the absence of the heat.
Another dish that I would highly recommend is their Indonesian Fried Noodle (Kwetiau Goreng). What really sets this dish apart from all others is how incredibly chewy they make the rice noodles.
They do a good job with their layered coconut pudding as well. I always get it to end the meal on a sweet note!
