Rhino’s Kitchen

This place was closed for good. I don’t know when must be 2, 3 months now. With so many negative reviews especially located in Richmond, I know it’s gonna happen!

Was over at Landsdown to pick up a few items and had a craving for HK style food so I thought I’d give this place a try. Yes, as a few others commented, the décor is, well, interesting. Let’s just say I wouldn’t hire the interior designer to do my home ;-)
The food is OK. I ordered some pretty typical HK fare… HK tea, fried noodles, soup noodles, etc. Nothing really remarkable but passable. Two stars for the food.
What did stand out was the excellent service I received. The staff there were a smiley, checked up on me several times filling up my tea and asking me how was my food (unheard of in a HK style restaurant… let alone any Chinese restaurant). Because of that, I might return to here just for the service.
Now about those silly stuffed animals…

Rhino’s Kitchen is a Hong Kong style café restaurant that has taken over the previous location for California Café. The style of the food is largely the same — meaning that you get the typical Hong Kong style /​Cantonese style foods. One feature in the menu that was surprising is the trendy fish soup noodle that allows for build-​it-​yourself selection.
We visited as a rather large party of 15. The staff had a bit difficult time seating us as they don’t have tables larger than for 4 – 6 people. The staff was accommodating to put together several tables for us along a row to seat our party together. The staff was very efficient and courteous. Their service was certain quick.
We ordered quite a variety of dishes being a large party. Our orders were served quite quickly even for our large party. The slowest dishes served were some of the baked pasta and baked rice dishes which were understandable as they are normally slower in most HK style café restaurants.
Rhino’s Kitchen is part of the Top Gun Group, so I had some higher expectation of their food quality. In fact, I was a bit disappointed with the quality of the foods. Perhaps it is because I have been used to many similar Hong Kong style café restaurants. This type of cuisine is rather competitive particularly in Richmond where there are several choices within 5 minutes of driving. I felt all the dishes I tried were a bit plain or unimpressive. I am not saying that the dishes tasted bad, but I have tried better.
I would recommend Cattle Café, Elephant Castle, Deer Garden Signature or Mui Garden over Rhino Café. Your mileage may vary.

Had breakfast here yesterday and found staff to be friendly, service prompt and food good value (generous portions). Décor was inviting and I would come back for breakfast again, especially if I was planning to do some shopping in Lansdowne.

A 3.5 stars review round up to 4 from a non-​local. Being the visitors from SFO bay area we were quite happy with the service and quality of food, prices were reasonable too. Needless to say, I’m more then a little surprised to see the many low ratings.
For six of us we had 2 fish soup rice noodles, a pickled cabbage/​ground pork over rice, curry beef, curry seafood and a rib eye special which offers a coupon for a free meal to be used in June. The waitress was very sharp and attentive, all the orders came in large portions and tasted pretty good. I enjoyed my rice noodles a lot especially the fish broth, others thought favorably of their meals as well.
Since I don’t really know enough about the HK style café in the area, I can’t really compare. I do know that our lunch experience last week was a good one. Will be back if we are in the neighborhood.

wow.
fake ramen (or horrible),
gives me the wrong noodle,
rushes us to order when it’s NOT busy,
serves food and drinks randomly without asking,
random items (not part of the soup base) that we didn’t order,
small rice portions,
I’m easy to please but u pissed me off srsly. eff off.
heart ur hot pot chain tho

Bad value hk café food. Meh, nothing special and you’re not missing anything.

Not much to offer. It bandwagons on the «choose ur own noodle soup» trend, the quality of the noodle soups is just so-​so. They also offer some typical HK café foods, but overall, the menu is quite limited and the quality of the food was mediocre.

* Bad value HK café *
What happens when you cross Top Gun, African safaris, Saddam, a bland mall, and the city of Richmond’s large Chinese population?
Rhino’s Kitchen.
This new offering from the Top Gun group (the local restaurant chain, not the movie) has a Rhino theme — complete with bad stereotypical non-​African perceptions of Africa. Look at this picture from a local blog:
Oy…
And could someone tell me what the Saddam pork chop on the menu is? I didn’t order it — but I’m curious what THAT is a translation of? Photo:
In any case I ordered my standard HK café test dish of Baked Pork Chop Rice with a cold milk tea. It came with a borscht soup.
— The borscht was that very sweet variety. It had a bit more in terms of fillings than at many other HK cafes, including some actual meat too. As this style of soup goes, it was pretty good. Photo:
— The cold milk tea was a bit weak, as they had loaded it down with crushed ice. The glass was mostly crushed ice with a little milk tea flavouring. It actually reminded me of one of the shaved ice desserts instead of a drink, or a bad 7 – 11 milk tea slushy!!! Photo:
— The baked pork chop rice was nicely plated including a sprinkle of parsley for decoration. The cheese was nicely melted. Photo:
Digging into it, the rice was disappointing as it had no flavour. It was as if it hadn’t seen a wok at all before being put in the dish. The tomato sauce was also extremely bland — a bad canned sauce flavour with nothing to pick it up. The pork chop was thick-​cut but waaaay overcooked and chewy with a thicker layer of breading than I prefer. Overall not a good rendition at all:
Combine that with the pricing as the combo was $ 10. That is a bit much for this simple staple dish, but would be worth it if there was higher quality. Sadly there wasn’t, so this is just a bad value spot. I don’t think I’ll be back anytime soon.
But I’m dying to know what that Saddam chop is? Anyone? Anyone?
Update: Herman E. to the rescue. «A bad phonetic Cantonese translation of the Chinese characters for a pork chop that has been floured, egg washed, breaded, fried and served with ham and a fried egg.» Go figure!

Very pricey menu! Went there for late dinner and the menu starts out at $ 8.25. Add hot drink +$ 0.75, add cold drink +$ 1.70, add soup +$ 2.50, etc. and so the meal ends up to be $ 10+ when the dishes are quite small.

First time I visited was for lunch and was told we needed reservations otherwise it would be a 30min wait. Seriously!!! So we left.
2^nd time we made reservations 1hr before and we still waited 10 minutes. The likes is the cream of mushroom soup. Everything else was HORRIBLE. Okay they did just open but this group has several places already so you’d think they’d do a better job.
Ordered the minced beef on rice. Hated hated hated it. Didn’t even touch a ¼ of it. Was told it was minced beef mixed with the rice with a tomato based sauce. Not the case at all! It was a beef patty and the flavor was the same as the beef balls you get during dim sum and I never order that cuz I hate the flavor. It came with a teeny tiny bit of soy sauce and I has to ask for another because the rice was so dry. Omg! The bowl it was served in drove me nuts! I was cutting up the patty and the bowl kept tipping! The entrée was supposed to come with poached veggies… I thought it was an assortment of veggies but it was a choice between baby bok choy or «dow mew». The veggies came first with a touch of oyster sauce. I would have preferred hoisin or even chili paste. My dish took so long, I finished the veggies waaaaaay before I got my horrible dish.
The side of deep fried chicken wings…3pc. What did you expect for $ 1.50!
My pops ordered the salted fish with rice and it looked and tasted like my dish, except saltier. HORRIBLE. My poor hungry dad didn’t even finish half if it cuz it was so bad.
Don’t bother asking for drinks before they serve you water or tea. You’ll just confuse them even more. We had 3 managers come up to us and ask us if we ordered a hot drink.
My mom got the pork chop with rice. That came with the tomato sauce and strangely cheese. It was pretty good. But we has to share her plate among 4 of us because our plates were taking so long. In fact she already finished her food before we even got our veggie dishes.
Service is something to be desired. Pretty people, not so smart though. English is questionable, so bring a Chinese translator. The hot drinks are served in the smallest cups. No free refills, so keep the water or tea handy.
The place just opened so I’ll cut them some slack but seriously… wait at least 2 months so they can work out the kinks and maybe even get a new chef. Lastly, not sure if maybe they’re just waiting for the machines to come in, but its a cash only. So save your cash and hit the food court in the mall instead.

So busy on sat afternoon! Long wait over 25 mins! May be we should make the rsvn before we come.
The lunch menu was quite limited and they didn’t provide regular menu when we were seated.
I guessed this is Chinese style café’s trend — it has fish soup noodles on lunch order sheet and only some other dishes could choose but drink not included.
The service was excellent, most of the waitress and manager were so polite and friendly.
Overall, the food just ok.