Rad on Denman serves up Taiwanese dishes from individual hot pots, rice and noodle dishes, and bubble tea. You may know them from their first cafe inside Granville Skytrain Station serving up delicious bubble tea. With this Denman location, you can still get their bubble tea, but there is a wider offering of dishes.
I came here with a few friends to check it out to see how it compares to other Taiwanese cafes and hot pot restaurants around town.
Interior
It wasn’t very busy on a weekday night and on all the tables, you can see the hot pot equipment on the tables. Most people come here for that. We also noticed a decent amount of takeout orders too.
Menu
Taiwanese Hot Pot
You essentially build your own hot pot by selection your broth, protein, any extra toppings, sides and sauce.
Some of the bone broth flavours are:
- Clear chicken broth
- Tonkotsu
- Sukiyaki
- Kimchi
- Thai
- Satay
- Spicy
You can choose your choice of protein:
- Alberta Beef
- Premium Lamb
- Pork
- Chicken
- Shrimp
All hot pots come with free rice, but I upgraded to glass noodles for $2.50 extra. They give you a very generous portion.
My friends and I got Satay, sukiyaki and Tonkotsu for our bone broths. All of them were good and not too salty. Price was good for what you get.
There’s only a few places around town that do individual hot pots, but in the Denman area, there aren’t other options. They light the pot from underneath so it reminds me of another hot pot restaurant with a similar concept
Roasted Oolong Bubble Milk Tea
You get a free drink with your hot pot but you can add $2.99 to upgrade it to a bubble tea. I went with the Roasted Oolong Bubble Milk Tea and got it less sweet. It’s normally not very sweet to begin with, so getting it less sweet barely has any sweetness at all. Just a personal preference, but I know some people are thrown off by it.
Final Thoughts
Overall, the food was good but the service was very subpar. Even though the restaurant was pretty much empty, getting the staff’s attention was hard and when we asked for more sauce for our hot pots, it was forgotten. It would have been good if they checked up on us to see if we needed anything else.
Address:
774 Denman St, Vancouver, BC
Website:
https://www.radeatery.com/
