Po Kong Vegetarian Restaurant

Rating: 4 stars
I was only able to order takeout during my short time in NYC, but I ordered 5 dishes for just me to make it worthwhile (haha):
— Honey walnut prawns
— Yee mein
— Yang chow friend rice
— beef and broccoli
— egg rolls
I have never found a restaurant that serves a vegetarian version of the popular honey walnut prawns dish, so it was obviously a must try for me. It also didn’t disappoint. Crispy deep fried «prawns» with lots of freshly blanched broccoli in delectable honey-​mayo sauce – all in my to go containers! The mein was pretty oily, so I would not order that again, but everything else was good. The prawn dish was really the stand out, however.
I really wanted to try their dim sum because vegetarians always miss out at most dim sum restaurants. But alas, I will never know…

Holy Hell Yes. I thought the pure ecstasy of Chinese food was lost forever when I went vegan. Most of those juicy dishes are pure meat but Po Kong rekindled my passionate love affair with all things Chinese. It was like Bruce Lee kicked my taste buds in the face. Go there. Go there now.

Solid veggie Chinese food! We only ordered take out and the Enoki mushroom dish was great. I have to try their dim sum though, veggie dim sum sounds awesome.

Dim sum was amazing! We have tried vegetarian dim sum all over the place. Only comparable ones are in NYC. And this one is still the best.
Their 豆苗肠粉 are the best 肠粉 (rice rolls) I ever had… and 肠粉 is my favorite, most important dim sum dish. Get items filled with vegetables, not doughy bready or very protein-​y dishes. Because their vegetables are great.
Lots of buddhists eating there. They know where to find the best wonderful chinese vegetarian food…

So I made a reservation to go for Dim Sum lunch at 1:00 yesterday. When I arrived at 12:50, the host was surprised I was there. The thing about a reservation is, when you make a reservation for 1:00, you expect to be seated at 1:00. We got a table around 1:25. And when you make a reservation for Dim Sum, you expect they will have Dim Sum. I was told they did not have any Dim Sum, and I needed to order off the dinner menu. So we ordered 3 dishes and rice off the dinner menu. Generally, you expect your dishes to come together. We received the first dish, and no rice. We had to ask them for the rice. Then it was around 10 minutes between each dish arriving. So that means when the last dish arrived, the first had been sitting around 20 minutes. Service was terrible. Took forever for them to take our order, and even longer for them to give us our bill.
Was a really disappointing lunch. I was really looking forward to trying their vegetarian dim sum, and in the end, they did not deliver in any way. Don’t think I will be giving these guys another shot.

This is a great, unpretentious fully-​vegetarian Chinese restaurant about a 15-​minute drive from downtown Vancouver. The service is consistently friendly and attentive, the space is always kept clean (though it is in an older building and the furnishings are a bit outdated and tacky) and the food is both comforting and tasty.
They have a good dim sum menu from 10:30−2pm featuring about 40 items priced between $ 3 – 5 per item. Meanwhile, sizzling vegetarian pepper steak on the regular menu is a must-​try: a hearty entrée that’s made with what seems like a combination of veggie meat and mushrooms.
Will definitely keep coming back as the food also never leaves me feeling heavy like at some Chinese restaurants. A healthy and satisfying experience overall.

Amazing dim sum in the mornings, and delicious evening menu as well. Everything is kept very clean and the staff are always smiling and helpful.
Some of the dishes on the bland side but I personally prefer clean eats. Black bean curd rolls, sizzling pepper steak, and wonton soup all delicious. For dim sum I recommend the fungus dumpling, spinach dumpling, fried taro, and sticky rice rolls.
Always impressed here! Give it a try!

After 8+ years of not having ordered sweet and sour chicken, I decided to try a vegetarian version here. Pleased to know this place serves North American style and authentic Chinese dishes… But I think we completely ordered the wrong item. I remember sweet and sour fondly but my tastes have since changed! We didn’t like the hot and sour soup either (consistency was too thick and contents rather slimy) but we are ready to come and try other items on the menu, particularly the dim sum brunch items. One extra star for fast service and friendly owner!

This place is hands down the best vegetarian Chinese food restaurant in Greater Vancouver. Pretty much everything on the menu is delicious and worth ordering. They have a great selection of soups, appetizers, main dishes, hot pots, sizzling plates, noodle soups, and a great dim sum menu for lunch. Portion sizes are quite large and a good value for the prices (about $ 12 per dish). The service is super friendly, well above the typical standard in many Asian restaurants. The food is 100% vegan, except for the cookies they give you with the bill. Absolutely recommended.

Noodle soup is not recommend cause it’s plain no flavor! Other dishes are probably good to try

Great family oriented restaurant. They have fast and friendly service and can easily host large parties. This is one of my regulars and I have never been disappointed with their dishes. The beancurd skin rolls with black bean sauce is one my favorites along with the hot and sour soup.

Very family oriented restaurant. Great selection of veggie dim sum. Lots of space for big parties. I really enjoy visiting this place as they have a good selection of non deep fried veggie dishes. Ample parking either on Kingsway or around the vicinity. I recommend this place!

a bit conflicted about this place since i’m not a vegetarian that craves meat. great vegetarian beat great imitation meat, any day of the week man!
having said that, it’s a great place to take your meat-​loving friends and family because they will approve. we had the hot and sour soup, sizzling pepper steak, kung pao chicken, spicy green beans, and a chow mein noodles dish. the first four dishes were very, very good. i would avoid the chow mein.
this place has TV’s set up and the hockey game was on, so it was the only occasion in the restaurant when the Ducks were getting killed (ha ha!). lame joke aside, my favourite dish was the green beans while the carnviores enthusiastically approved of the steak and chicken dishes.
i would go back.

Reincarnated from previous Bo KOng vegetarian restaurant, im a meat lover not vegetarian and will never be, just for the record i want to try and satisfy my curiosity why theres always a line up… im completely ignorant on what to order, i got fried cashew nuts as my appetizer, chef fried rice and the famous seaweed bean curd roll (fried actually) noise level high, service is typical chinese restaurant. fast but mostly language barrier, ambience is very ordinary, credit/​debit friendly. group ok, pricey place to eat… if you are not a vegetarian, bring your money to otherplace where your taste buds will be happy and satisfied… im not coming back —-

Try the Sizzling Steak and Hot&Sour Soup, its amazing! great staff, interior is decent looking fairly priced good location

Looking for a place to host your next gathering? Look no further. My friends and I have booked a total of four large gatherings at Po Kong in the last year, with groups ranging between 12 to 16. We found that the magical number of chairs that will fit their largest table to be 12, and if people show up last minute — 14, and that’s a tight squeeze.
The waitress or waiter usually starts off by asking what type of tea we’d like at the table, and we usually have no idea what we want so we get whatever they recommend — so far it’s always been good.
There’s dim sum during lunch hours, which is great if you’re with a large group, but seeing as our most recent visit was for dinner I will be discussing how that went.
We ended up ordering a total of about 10 dishes and appetizers. We began with some hot & sour soup (B1), and then ordered four dishes of rice and noodles — fried noodles with home made sauce (G9), sticky rice (G7), pan fried broad rice noodles with chili black bean (G19) and the chef’s special fried rice (G1).
We found the chef’s fried rice to be absolutely delicious! The sticky rice was a bit of a let down, but both the noodles were quite good. As sides, we had ordered spicy eggplant (D7), sweet and sour pineapple (C3), spicy kung po vegetables (C29), spring rolls and deep fried salt & pepper konjac (E14).
The eggplant and pineapple were dishes that we ordered regularly as they’ve always been consistently great. The spicy vegetables were okay this time, and spring rolls were pretty good. What ended up getting fought over was the deep fried salt & pepper konjac, and I wish we had ordered two dishes cause mmm… it was that good, and it went that quickly.
We realized part way through ordering that we hadn’t ordered enough so we ended up adding two tubs of white rice, as well as some spicy green beans and monkey head mushrooms (didn’t write down the codes and exact dish names, someone else ordered). The food came incredibly quickly and the spicy green beans were very good. The mushrooms were okay, considering they cost nearly $ 18 for the dish. We had an interesting conversation over the name of the dish, if anything.
The restaurant typically provides desert on the house at the end. During our visit, they brought out green bean soup, which rounded the meal off for us.
All in all, great experience. We got in at 6:30pm, sat and chatted for about an hour as the rest of our party wandered in. Ordered food at 7:33pm, started getting our food in under ten minutes, and devoured everything by 8:10pm.
Would definitely return, especially since we actually kept track of what we ordered and can decide faster at our next visit.

I’ve been here a few times for dinner. I like Chinese vegetarian restaurants because I’m a sucker for imitation meat — sweet and sour «pork» without the guilt of having a pig on my plate? I’m down.
However, other places are a bit greasier. I find Po Kong to be less greasy. It’s a weird compliment, but it’s a bonus.
The food is overall tasty, and even my red meat-​loving family are fans of this place.
Service is pleasant.
Favourite dishes: fried taro + soy milk combo; taro + vegetarian meat hot pot (really filling); sweet and sour «pork» (a bit greasy, but good to satisfy cravings).
The only problems I have are that the portions can be a bit small, and that there isn’t a set menu (for 4 people, 6 people, etc) like at Bodhi Choi Heung (another good Chinese vegetarian restaurant).

They serve cheese which is not only disappointing but downright strange. In spite of this weird and unethical ingredient in what is meant to be an authentic and buddhist restaurant, I still love Po Kong and it’s one of my favourite vegetarian places in Vancouver, though of course vegan places which don’t profit on suffering are top on my list.

The food here is pretty flavourful, would have to agree with the other reviews I’ve read about the greasiness of the food here. I’ve been to a couple other vegetarian restaurants in Vancouver and this one is probably slightly better.
I was impressed with the cleanliness and service though! Most chinese restaurants are not very big on smiles or manners but Po Kong was actually pretty good.
We came here for a Mother’s Day dinner with grandparents and parents and they all thought the food was pretty tasty. I would recommend doing vegetable stir fry dishes, or noodles. I don’t really like artificial meat but we had a plate and it wasn’t horrible!

Aside from the fact the food is on the oily side, overall it’s not bad.
Me, and my three other dining mates came here for lunch. We ordered a bunch of dim sum dishes such as spinach dumpling with tapioca skin, another kind of dumpling with tapioca skin but with white fungus bits, rice roll with pea shoots, rice roll wrapping deep fried Chinese donuts, tofu skin wrapping julienne turnip, pan fried pumpkin sticky rice with red bean paste, gogi berry jello and a spinach/​mushroom fried noodles.
The tapioca skin wrapped dumplings can be over steamed to the point they lose their bouncy-​ness but the stuffings are quite pleasant. I didn’t think I would enjoy the one with the white fungus bits but that turned out to be my favourite. Got to love the crunch. Seasoning was just a tad on the salty side, but overall it’s not too bad.
Menu is very extensive. Dining pace is roomy and confortable. There are portraits and figure of buddha and faint smells of temple incense. Speaking of zen-​like space, It’s intersting that the chopsticks, chairs, and parts of the wall mouldings are all painted the same apple green color. How harmonious (pun intended).
Everything came to $ 40 after taxes and tip. Pretty darn good plus there were left overs.