Mr. Beggar Grill: Chinese BBQ in Burnaby
Mr. Beggar Grill is a Chinese barbeque restaurant located in South Burnaby, offering a really large menu of bbq skewers, grilled meats, and Korean dishes. I came here with a group of friends for dinner and as usual (for this group), we almost ordered the entire menu!
Here is how our experience went and what I would recommend.
Mr. Beggar Grill
4992 Newton St, Burnaby, BC V5H 2E3
The vibe
The inside of Mr. Beggar Grill is larger than I thought, although still not a huge space. The aesthetics are pretty cool with wooden tables and stools and these cement blocks everywhere – looks kind of old school China outdoor eating areas.
The tables are large and spacious, but I am not a big fan of stools due to lack of back support 👵🏻. It also felt slightly cramped in our table of 6 as we were sitting very close to the wall or the cement blocks. I also noticed that some tables were on a higher platform/step, making the stool and table seating even more uncomfortable because you will have to hunch your back more.
Every table has one circular grill and a hovering filter fan that generally did its job.
Food review
This is everything we ordered for 6 adults and we had a hard time finishing everything we ordered. Prices are in CAD and rounded to the nearest dollar for simplicity.
Grilled meats – fatty beef ($17) + Beef tongue ($23) + Chicken wings ($8)
We ordered a variety of meats and I actually have a hard time remembering everything because their mobile app ordering counts each item as 1 item so we had over 60 items in our “shopping cart” 😅.
In general, I felt the raw meats were fine and it really just depends on how you like to cook them on your grill.
BBQ skewers ($3 each)
We ordered a lot of skewers – chicken skin, pork belly, beef, and lamb! They all range from $2.30-$2.50 each. My favourites were the beef and the chicken skin, although I felt like the chicken skin could have been crunchier.
I found all the meat skewers to be on the larger portion size 👍 compared to other Chinese bbq places like Happy Tree House.
Smashed cucumber ($10) + Mixed broccoli ($12)
The cucumber salad is a must at Chinese BBQ places for something light and refreshing and very garlicky!
What surprised me was this mixed broccoli salad, actually. We saw another table order it and it looked really good but I think the menu translation of mixed broccoli really threw us off because there was no broccoli in this dish at all 😂. Pardon the blurry photo, but this salad was really yummy! It was spicy and refreshing.
Japanese style shrimp pancake ($14)
Here we have the Japanese shrimp pancake, which is more like an okonomiyaki. One order came with 6 so it was perfect, and it generally tasted pretty good with the batter and sauces, but it did fall apart easily when picked at with chopsticks.
Fried pork in scoop ($23)
I mean… I think Mr. Beggar Grill can definitely improve on the English translations of their menu because we had no idea what was pork in scoop 😂. It turned out to be this very yummy fried pork, kind of like a tangsuyuk or sweet & sour pork.
Out of all the warm non-BBQ dishes, I liked this one the most!
Old-fashioned mixed rice ($11)
We weren’t really sure what the mixed rice would be but it turns out to be rice with some soy sauce and 3 little fried eggs. This is a pretty retro Korean-style dish but I just don’t think it’s worth $11.
Grilled oysters ($7)
We ordered grilled scallops and oysters and customized our order (some wanted cheese, some wanted chopped chilli, etc.) but when the food came, all of them had all the toppings so I’m not sure why they asked us to customize it in our order (ex. I didn’t want cheese on mine).
We all felt the grilled scallop and oysters were way too salty and didn’t like it 🙁.
Tofu soup ($11)
We also ordered a Korean spicy tofu soup and also a large cold noodle, but both of them tasted kind of weird. Essentially, they didn’t taste like Korean soups at all and lacked a depth in flavour (more watered down) and it wasn’t spicy. It tasted more like a Chinese version of a Korean tofu soup and fell flat 🙁.
Final thoughts
Loewe’s rating: ⭐️⭐️
I hover between a 2-3 star rating for Mr. Beggar Grill.
I think the grilled meat, BBQ skewers, cold veggie salads and the fried pork were all tasty and I wouldn’t mind coming back to eat here again.
But some dishes were definitely misses for me like the grilled scallop and oysters and the Korean soups. I kind of felt like their menu tried to be more fusion or incorporate Korean dishes, but they just aren’t authentic and should stick with what they are good at like the regular Chinese BBQ dishes.
The ordering system was also kind of weird. Service was generally pretty good as we had a lot of questions about the English menu and didn’t know what certain items were. But the ordering system was annoying in the sense we would have to put down quantify each item and also if they run out of an item, they just tried to give us something random. For example, we ordered specific drinks but they ran out, and they just randomly brought an unrelated tea drink for us but none of us ordered it 😵.
Because of these issues with the ordering system, we had to carefully check our bill as we know we ended up cancelling or not ordering some of our original items.
I think in comparison to other Chinese BBQ places, Mr. Beggar Grill is average and it may be a more smooth experience if you can speak or read Chinese for their regular menu.
Sincerely, Loewe