Lu Lu Cafe

If you live in the Lower Mainland, you’ll have noticed that November was a particularly wet month...as in days and days of darkness and rain. So far December has been grand—cold days with a brightness people haven’t experienced in weeks. Saturday was beautiful and sunny. We started off with some yoga at home, and went for a walk along the river, where we glimpsed a blue heron hunching on a branch above the water.

For lunch we opted for one of those places we’ve walked past but never visited, Lu Lu Cafe. It’s on the corner of Lougheed and North road, at a little mini complex that also houses one of our regular eats, Sushi California. I suppose the reason we’d never been to Lu Lu is that everytime we’d walk past there, then walked past Sushi California, we’d always see so many more people at the Japanese place than at Lu Lu’s, and that would tip our feet in the direction of the Sushi place.

We decided to go there that Saturday afternoon, around 4pm. Being quite a weird eating time, the restaurant was entirely empty and we ended up being the only customers at the restaurant. The interior is comfortably basic, with warm pumpkin coloured walls and orange light fixtures. Needless to say, we were served right away.

We weren't particularly hungry, so we opted for a couple of lighter dishes. One was the spicy green bean (around 8 bucks); we'd actually ordered the kind with pork, but the vegetarian one was served to us instead. Despite the wrong order, the beans were tasty, with tiny pieces of garlic coating the bean, which were cooked but still crunchy. It wasn't at all spicy, however.

We also shared the fried rice with diced chicken and salted fish (around 8 bucks), a choice which was inspired by a blog I read, Chowtimes (regular readers of this blog will know what I'm talking about). Shane isn't a big fan of salted fish, but he still found the fried rice to be pretty good. The rice wasn't too greasy, and every grain of rice was nice and distict. There were big pieces of chicken, and tiny bits of salted fish, which I particularly enjoyed. The salted fish reminded me so much of my childhood, because every once in a while my dad would bake one of those things and stink up the whole house! Something that salty is so good with rice.

So that's it, a little nibble of the menu. This was our first time at Lu Lu, but we will surely return. The food is decent, portions generous, and the prices are really good.