Bubble Waffle Cafe (not related to Bubble Fruity) just opened up their fourth location next to the London Drugs on Kingsway near Joyce. Not destination dining by any means, but a cheap, surprisingly tasty, filling meal of soup noodles and Asian waffles. And butt stuff.

I think they opened up back in March, but we only noticed it recently.

They have this promotion running until Sunday, July 13, 2014 where if you spend more than $15, you get a free original flavour bubble waffle. Hope they scratch out the “13” and extend the offer even longer 😛

I haven’t had one of these paper hot pots in years.

Specials! Maybe I don’t go to these kinds of Asian places enough because I find some of these dry noodle combos really fucked-up…like the “Marble Cheese Dry Noodle” (marble cheese?!) and the “Indonesia Dry Noodle” with spam, corn and a hot dog (?)…it’s like college student cuisine meets FOBs. “Spicy Minced Pork Dry Noodle” seems familiar and might be good though…

Holy moly, look at the options! We spent a good 10 minutes with our eyes glazed over, going through the mind-boggling options available.

They also do “teppanyaki” which is a sizzling hot plate with stuff on it, not a guy in a white hat and knife juggling skills.

They have Asian-style bubble waffles. Reminds me of that guy at Richmond Night Market about 10 years ago (?) who made these while dancing around, shouting…I think he was from Singapore or Malaysia?? Anyone know who I’m talking about? This was around the same time as when Dragon’s Beard Candy was introduced to the Richmond Night Market.

Anyways, the girl working there likes the Oreo one but Wicca went for the Green Tea one.

They also have more conventional-looking waffles, but still a crazy HK version with butter, peanut butter, condensed milk and “suger”.

This is the order form. Feels like I’m in high school again! Arggg!!

Once we calmed down, it’s actually simple: Choose whether you want a bowl of noodles OR a bowl of noodles with a hot drink; choose what kind of noodles you want; choose what kind of soup; and choose your two toppings (already comes with cabbage and tofu skin). I like how you can check off “No Green Onion”, “No Parsley”, etc. in the top right corner.

The Engrish/spelling mistakes/odd word choices are quite entertaining if you zoom in. For the record:

• “Brassica juncea” are mustard greens
• “Pepper & Pickled Fish Soup” is actually a mistake. It should say “Pepper & Pickles”, which you can get in either fish broth or chicken broth form. There is no “pickled fish”. Wicca ordered this one thinking it WAS pickled fish. I describe it below.
• “Luncheon Meat” is actually SPAM, but I think most people are aware of this. Not sure if they actually use SPAM brand or some Asian knockoff. When we used to eat spam, we actually prefered Asian brands over the real thing.
• “Tampura” is, well, you know…
• “Mooli” is daikon (Chinese radish).
• “Fat-Choi Mashed Fish” is…I give up.
• Actually, “fat choi” is “hair vegetable”, which is a bit of a delicacy in Chinese cuisine and (for me) is usually seen around Chinese New Year in stewed/simmered dishes. It really does look like silky black hair. The pleasure is all in the texture. It’s like eating fine vermicelli noodles except it’s a vegetable. The last part of the phrase “Gung Hay Fat Choy” (Happy New Year) refers to this vegetable. BUT, I have no frikkin’ idea what “Fat Choi Mashed Fish” is.

Addendum: Wicca says that “Fat-Choi Mashed Fish” is probably fish cake or fish balls with fat choi worked into it. Makes sense to me now! You might’ve seen these kinds of fish balls at specialty fish ball stores, like at Crystal Mall or T&T.

More fun on the other side. They even have those Korean Tornado Potato things here.

Red Bean Ice with Desert Wing with Ginger. Never heard of “Desert Wing” before…maybe these are like “Wind Sand” wings?

Drink contains red bean, ice and evaporated milk. No complaints.

Closeup of the Desert Wing with Ginger. Nice fry on the outside but…

…bit too dry on the inside. Flavour was good though…not salty…touch of ginger.

My 2 Toppings + Noodle: “Malay Laksa Sauce” soup base, oil noodle & vermicelli, sliced lamb and pork intestine.

Bung, rectum, intestine, it’s all the same word for the same funky, chewy, heavenly experience 😛 Soft yet chewy, like the stinkiest, juiciest rubber band you’ve ever eaten. I actually love these. You have to be ok with the “essence”…embrace it, really. I think they also sell these as a snack, deep-fried 🙂

(Want more disgusting meats? Eater Vancouver just published a list of Top 20 WTF Meat Dishes.)

I chose the one option that gives you two kinds of noodles: oil noodle and vermicelli. Oil noodles are a wheat-based egg noodle. You can get a similar noodle combo sometimes in real Singaporean Laksa. Since I went with the “Malay Laksa Sauce” soup, I thought I’d stick with the theme and get these noodles too.

The soup was big on coconut milk but surprisingly had a punch of laksa-ish flavours. My guess is that they make their base fish and chicken broths in-house then add pre-made pastes to create the various soups (like Tom Yum, Satay, Laksa, Szechuan, etc). While nowhere near as good as a real laksa, it was quite tasty — especially for the price!

Wicca’s soup noodle with “Pepper & Pickles” fish soup, beef tendon ball, sliced beef brisket and “ramen”. “Pickles” actually means pickled mustard greens, not cucumber or whatever pickles. AND “pepper” is white pepper, which this soup contained A LOT of. If you hate the taste and funky smell of white pepper, stay away. But for us it was an eye-opening experience. Huge, funky white pepper smell and taste, with a great fish broth base. If they use MSG here, it’s only a little bit to help things along. No complaints about the beef tendon balls or the brisket. The “ramen” tasted like soft instant noodles, which were actually good, but they also list “instant noodles” on the menu too, so I’m not sure what the difference is.

I think their base broths are pretty good. I’d totally come back here to try their other broth variations.

We spent more than $15 so we got a free bubble waffle! Hurry before this offer ends on Sunday, July 13!

We also ordered a green tea bubble waffle.

A bit hard to see in the photo, but about 60% of the space inside the bubble was hollow. We’re not experts on bubble waffles but it tasted good and was fun to eat. The parts around the balls were crispy, and the balls themselves were softer so you get two textures in one. Not sure if the objective with a bubble waffle is to have a totally hollow inside or filled-up inside, but in any case it was a tasty, sweet-but-not-too-sweet snack.

The matcha flavour was on the subtle side but still good. Wicca was pleasantly surprised that they didn’t substitute matcha with jasmine tea and green food colouring (which we’ve seen occasionally) as a cost-saving measure.

Spend $8 and get a stamp! Asians love lucky 8s.

Just so we’re clear, you’re their bitch now, suckas.