Kick S Good Restaurant Review (Burnaby)

As the largest shopping mall in British Columbia and the third largest in the country, Metropolis at Metrotown attracts a lot of people every day. Some people are there to pick up some groceries at Superstore, other people are looking for a new wardrobe, and some folks might be catching a movie at Silvercity. Despite having all these shops and services, Metrotown doesn’t have too many great options for food. The good news is that you can find better food within quick walking distance of this mega-mall.

One of our “go to” places has been Cattle Cafe, located on the corner of Nelson and Kingsway. Some time back, this location shut down because they were moving to a different space a few doors over in the same building. After the “new” Cattle Cafe re-opened (and we’ve already been back a handful of times), Kick S Good Restaurant took over its old spot on the corner.

The somewhat cheekily-named Taiwanese restaurant (the “S” is replaced by a crude colloquialism for your derriere in some listings) hardly re-invents the wheel, but it does offer a decent variety of food on its menu. Like so many other Taiwanese restaurants in the Metro Vancouver area, Kick S Good borrows some inspiration from other Asian cultures and cuisines. There’s Korean bibimbap, for instance, as well as Japanese omurice and Taiwanese bubble tea.

Shown at the top of the page is the sour mango slush ($4.50), a massive beverage without the pearls typical of most bubble tea. The sheer size of this drink immediately reminded me of The One Restaurant a little further down Kingsway. While this version isn’t quite as epic in size, it’s also slightly cheaper and it’s more than enough for two people to share. The slush was full of flavor without tasting like it was watered down.

Taiwanese style chicken nuggets omelette fried rice: $9.25

For one of our mains, we opted for the Japanese style “omurice” (omelette rice), accompanied by Taiwanese style fried chicken nuggets. The picture is a little deceptive as the portion size was massive. It certainly felt bigger than the equivalent dish at Ali Shan Restaurant in Crystal Mall. The chicken nuggets, while not overly seasoned, also weren’t quite as crispy as I would have liked. They were just fine.

The fried rice underneath the ketchup-topped omelette wasn’t anything special either, with next to nothing other than rice under the hood. If anything, it tasted like a standard Cantonese-style fried rice without the toppings. The accompanying steamed broccoli was similarly boring.

Pan fried pork chop sizzling plate: $11.95

As I understand it, the series of sizzling plates is meant to be a signature dish at Kick S Good. You can choose between beef, pork (as shown), fried fish or chicken. The meat is then topped with your choice of peppercorn sauce (as shown) or mushroom sauce, and it’s all served with rice or noodles. If this were a standard Hong Kong style cafe, the “noodles” would’ve been spaghetti. What we got here was closer to a thick ramen in consistency. A single fried egg lays to one side with the same steamed broccoli lays on the other.

The flavorless noodles stuck together in ungainly clumps, making them difficult to consume. As with the omelette rice, this dish was also very large in terms of portion size. The two or three healthily-sized pork chops were also drowning in a peppercorn sauce that has a surprising amount of bite to it. Not pictured was the small glass of iced black tea that accompanied this sizzling plate.

On paper, Kick S Good held some promise. In practice, while the food is hardly horrible and portion sizes are impressive, this restaurant lacks the redeeming qualities that would make me pick it over other options in the area. I’d rather walk over to Cattle Cafe, get some Korean at Morak next door, or make my way back to Crystal Mall on the other side.

To survive in this culinary landscape, you need to be better than just okay. Our total bill, including tax and gratuity, came to $30.