The Lunch Lady: Family sharing menu for 4 people
I’m a birthday month girlie 🥳 and that’s because I feel like every 2 weeks I am celebrating someone else’s birthday so when my birthday comes around, I make sure to spend time with all my lovely friends and family. But people are mostly free on the weekends so it ends up being a “birthday month”.
One of my birthday dinners this month was at The Lunch Lady on Commercial Street. For a long time, I’ve been told by other people that The Lunch Lady has the best Vietnamese food in Vancouver. They are on the Vancouver Michelin bib gourmand list and have been on my list for a long time, so I was excited to finally go 🤩!
You may have heard the recent news that the original “lunch lady” Mrs. Nguyễn Thị Thanh (she is the one who started the original food cart in Vietnam) has passed away. But the recipes and food created and inspired by her are still so amazing and brings friends & family together. This is very evident in the family-style sharing menu I got to try when I dined here this month.
In this blog post, I will review the $55 family sharing menu for 4 people.
The Lunch Lady
1046 Commercial Dr., Vancouver, V5L 3W9, Canada
The vibe
The Lunch Lady has a very cool vibe. It is a little bit industrial with concrete elements, plants and metal tables and hard chairs. They have a small-ish dining area and I would recommend coming here as a group of 4 or less. They also have a pretty nice wrap-around patio – perfect for summer!
Food and drinks review
Everything listed in here was included in the $55 family sharing menu for 4 people, but I have included the al le carte pricing for each item if you want to order al le carte. Prices are listed in CAD and rounded to the nearest dollar for simplicity.
Vietnamese iced coffee ($6) + Vietnamese egg coffee ($8) + Calamansi soda ($6) + Lychee passion ($16)
For drinks, we ordered a regular Viet iced coffee (strong!) and an iced egg coffee with condensed milk sabayon (also strong!).
For my pregnant friend, she ordered a calamansi soda with fresh lime juice and sugar. Calamansi is a type of citrus fruit, so this drink was refreshing and fizzy.
For me the alcoholic 🥴, I ordered the lychee cocktail which is described to be “sweet and tropical” on the menu. It uses gin, dry vermouth, raspberry syrup, lemon, lychee and egg whites. It was a pretty cocktail and easy to drink.
Octopus skewers ($16)
The first dish to arrive were these octopus skewers (4 skewers in total with 2-3 octopus on it). The octopus are char-grilled and served with lemongrass chili sate, Vietnamese coriander and green chili sauce.
The octopus skewer were kinda cute and it had a great smokiness to it from being char-grilled. They were easy to eat, not too chewy or overcooked, and a nice start to our meal.
Beef carpaccio ($24) + Chips & dip ($10)
The next 2 dishes came together and we were recommended to eat them together – the beef carpaccio and the chips & dip.
The beef carpaccio uses thinly sliced filet of beef. It is topped with peanuts, crispy shallots, Thai basil, mint, perilla, and a lime vinaigrette for a nice sour and refreshing taste.
The chips & dip were a fun appetizer. You get a big cup of crispy taro chips and a green chili aioli dip.
The taro chip had more structural integrity than I thought 👍. You can actually put pieces of the beef carpaccio on top of the chip to eat together and with the leftover taro chips, you can use the dip. Together, it was a delicious crunchy and refreshing bite, but I still prefer the butter beef at Phnom Penh more.
Tamarind clams ($24)
The next item were clams and you could choose between 2 flavours: coconut or tamarind. We chose coconut because it sounded more unique!
You get a big plate of Manila clams in this tamarind butter sauce. The sauce was sweet & sour and I liked to dip the Chinese donut in this sauce. I couldn’t really taste much of the pork crackling.
Crispy prawns ($22)
One of my favourite foods is ebi mayo so I really liked this crispy prawn. They use giant tiger prawns and half-detach them from the shells and fries it all together so you can also eat the shell. It is crunchy and juicy with a sour chili lime sauce.
Bone marrow ($24)
I was also quite pleased with this next dish – bone marrow! One order comes with 3 and it’s roasted and topped with this “secret sauce”.
A personal pet peeve of mine is also when they give you like 3 crostinis to eat with 😠, but here the Lunch Lady knows what’s up and provides a reasonable amount of banh mi crostini to go with the bone marrow. It is fatty, savoury and the secret sauce actually balances out some of that fattiness.
Crab fried rice ($32)
The next dish I liked the least/found it the least unique out of the tasting menu. It is crab fried rice with red crab, XO sauce, fish roe and crispy rice.
It is a good portion for 4 people, but al le carte pricing for this is $32 which is a bit too steep for me to order it, especially since it tastes very similar to crab fried rice at Chinese restaurants (that are cheaper and bigger portions). I would say the only thing that stood out to me in this fried rice was the crispy rice – gave it some additional nice texture.
Steak luc lac ($38)
The last main of the tasting menu was the 8oz steak luc lac. The steak here is a beef ribeye, which was tender and pretty soft in this peppercorn sauce and burnt scallion butter. My first piece of the steak luc lac was delicious, but some pieces are more tough/harder to eat even though it is pre-sliced.
We also found the side ingredient to be quite interesting. It’s a crispy cassava (yuca), which kind of tasted like a potato except it had this spicy sauce on it. I wasn’t a big fan of it, but I think it makes sense to pair this with the steak luc lac, kind of a play on steak and potatoes.
Three layer dessert ($12) + Calamansi cheesecake ($12)
In the 4 person tasting menu, you get to choose 2 desserts! We chose the 3 layer dessert (most popular) and the calamansi cheesecake. The third option would have been an ube tiramisu.
You guys… I need you to understand that this 3 layer dessert is one of the best desserts I’ve had in awhile. It was so delicious 😭!! It features pandan sticky rice cake so inside the bread-looking square is green sticky rice. On top they have 2 scoops of coconut condensed milk gelato, a strawberry red bean puree, and mung bean streusel.
It is such a unique dessert that works so perfectly together. The gelato flavour is unique and so is the strawberry red bean puree. Such a perfect dessert!
The calamansi cheesecake was delicious also with one side being brûléed so it has a similar texture to crème brulee. The 3 dots are passionfruit gel (sour and citrus) and the triangles are milk crunch.
Final thoughts
Loewe’s rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Wow, it’s been awhile since I gave out 5 stars!
We had a super delicious dinner at the Lunch Lady. The family tasting menu was a great option to try a bunch of their signature dishes at a fairly reasonable price ($55 per person). I think for this price, the quantity and quality of food definitely matches or exceeds this price point. However, when I do the calculations and ordered everything al le carte, the total would have been $214/4 people = $53.50 per person 😵. So I suppose the family menu is not cheaper, but perhaps the portions are different vs. ordering al le carte.
My favourites and must-order of the night ⭐️ were the octopus skewers, crispy prawn, bone marrow, and the 3 layer dessert. The next time we come, we will probably skip the family member and order our favourites + try some other items that were not in the tasting menu.
Service was excellent. We were celebrating 2 birthdays and they were very accommodating to us bringing our own cake (so yes.. we had more than 2 desserts). For some reason, they also copped our drinks, which was a very pleasant surprise.
We will surely be returning to try the rest of the menu and hope the Lunch Lady continues to operate for many more years to come.
Sincerely, Loewe
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