Cha Kee: HK style breakfast in Richmond food court

As the years go by I see myself slowly turning into my parents 👵🏻. And I really felt this as I ate a HK style breakfast in a Richmond food court at 8am in the morning after dropping off my parents at the YVR airport.

I don’t really have a childhood of eating HK breakfast, but this is a meal my parents often enjoy to eat at HK cafes. The essence of HK breakfast is that it has to be cheap, simple and yummy.

In this post, I will be reviewing a popular HK food court stall, Cha Kee, on their breakfast menu to see if they hit all 3 points.

Cha Kee
8181 Cambie Rd., Richmond, BC V6X 1J8

The vibe

Cha Kee is located in the food court inside Richmond President Plaza. To find the food court, you go up the escalator and it’s right there. Overall, it’s a pretty small food court and when we arrived early in the morning, not all of the food stalls were open.

All the stalls are Asian/Chinese and there are not that many tables and chairs (the space isn’t that large compared to other food courts I’ve been to).

Cha Kee is kind of hidden behind a corner but it was the only stall that had a small line (the line moved very quickly). They are just a food court stall so essentially you order and pay at the counter and then you go back to pick up your tray of food when your buzzer is ready.

Like most Asian food courts, the vibe is authentic, colourful and plastered with different ads and posters. The menu had Chinese and English and simple descriptions (not a lot of photos).

Food and drinks review

Prices are in CAD and rounded to the nearest dollar for simplicity.

HK style satay beef with macaroni ($13)

Cha Kee offers all day breakfast and one of their most popular breakfast items is this satay beef dish. You can choose different noodles – macaroni, rice noodle, instant noodle +$1 – but the classic would be the macaroni if you want to eat like a true Honger.

All breakfast sets come with eggs, toast and a hot drink. You must must must choose scrambled egg and for our hot drink, we got a HK style milk tea to wake us up.

I really liked the satay beef 😚. It wasn’t dry, quite tender and had great satay flavour that seeped into the macaroni broth. If you are not familiar with HK breakfast, you may think this is weird – macaroni soup? But yeah, it’s legit. The warm soup settled well in my stomach.

Needless to say, the scrambled egg was delicious despite its humble appearance 😳. It was so soft, buttery and great to pair with a simple slice of toast. The milk tea was also quite strong and exactly what we were looking for.

Pan fried chicken thigh with egg sausage and toast ($13+$1.50)

Honestly we weren’t sure what to get for our second breakfast set and we were getting rushed by the worker because things move fast here so we just ended up getting the pan fried chicken thigh set because it was highlighted on the menu.

It came with a pretty big chicken thigh that had nice crispy skin and a long sausage. As with the other breakfast combos, it also came with egg and toast and we added an extra $1.50 for our drink to be cold – we chose a cold milk tea.

Again, eggs and toast, splendid.

The chicken thigh was juicy and it was quite a lot of meat, although I did wonder if it is a little heavy for a breakfast meal. The sausage was a classic compliment to the eggs and toast, but nothing special about it.

Final thoughts

Loewe’s rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

In total, we spent under $30 for our breakfast at Cha Kee. This makes it a pretty cheap meal although while I was ordering, I asked myself if these sets are worth even $13.

Out of the 2 sets, I preferred the satay beef macaroni and I think that was definitely worth $13. Everything about this set was just perfection – the flavour, simplicity and price. It is exactly what HK breakfast is all about 🙌!

The chicken thigh is super reasonable for the amount of food/protein you are getting. I just liked the flavours of the satay beef more.

The eggs here are simply amazing and definitely the underdogs. I just don’t know what they are doing to make these scrambled eggs so fluffy and delicious! I would be interested in trying just their egg and ham sandwich, which would be less than $10.

Cha Kee is one of the best and OG HK cafe spots in Richmond and I highly recommend you to live your auntie life and check them out if you are craving a simple, homey and cheap breakfast.

Sincerely, Loewe