VanFoodies.com

Even though I live in Coquitlam, quite honestly I don’t eat out in the area a lot. If I had to pick a restaurant, it will likely be somewhere in Vancouver. One, I’m more familiar with what’s in town; two, there aren’t many to choose from (or I’m just being picky). We heard that there’s a new Korean grill restaurant near Henderson Place in Coquitlam, so my parents and I decided to give it a try.

Food

The menu isn’t very big. A few items each in categories such as grill, appetizer, skewer and mini hotpot. It’s only until recently that I realized Korean restaurants make great fried chicken — I had to order some here. The Vesta Fried Chicken comes with 3 options: mild, Korean spicy sauce or soy sauce. And you can order 1/2 chicken or whole chicken. We ordered 1/2 chicken with the spicy sauce, but only medium spicy. It was some great fried chicken! The meat was moist (even the white meat), the skin was crispy while each piece was covered/well-tossed in the spicy, garlicky sauce. For me, the spice level at medium was just right. It had a good amount of heat without killing your taste buds or burning your lips.

Vesta Fried Chicken – with Korean style spicy sauce

The skewer section also caught our attention. There are 5 kinds of grilled skewers to choose from, along with hot oden skewers. You can either order a particular kind in 3’s or 6’s, or do what we did: order the Grilled House Skewer. Essentially it’s an assortment of 12 grilled skewers, but the best part is that you get to choose which ones you want. Overall you would save a few bucks with this option. So, we order 3 each of the following kinds:

• Grilled Beef
• Grilled Bacon
• Grilled Prawn Scallop
• Grilled Rice Cake

The grilled rice cake was a nice surprise. It’s the chewy Korean type, but after being grilled, it has a nice sear on the outside so it’s slightly crispy. Of course, the rice cake went well with the  brushed-on spicy sauce. The other three kinds were also quite good. I like how they skewer the shrimps and the little bay scallops together. The bacon and rice cake was an interesting, tasty combination, although they could fill you up quickly. Beef skewers often run the risk of being overcooked; these were cooked nicely, still tender and not dry. I would prefer them grilled with different sauces, but the standard sweet garlic soy sauce gave the right amount of seasoning without making them salty.

Assorted House Skewers – Grilled Bacon, Grilled Prawn Scallop, Grilled Beef and Grilled Rice Cake

Lastly, as if we didn’t have enough carbs with the amount of rice cake we got, we ordered the Nagasaki Ramen. It reminds me of Shin Ramyun, the popular Korean instant noodles, only with lots of seafood and vegetable in the soup. I think I was expecting it to be a different kind of noodles, something fancier, so I was a bit disappointed by the reminiscence of instant noodles. A $9 bowl of instant noodles. That being said, it’s a decent soup base, and it did have lots of ingredients.

Nagasaki Ramen – Spicy ramen soup with seafood and vegetable

Service

It’s quite clear that they are more focused on Korean customers. The menu is bilingual, but written menu boards inside the restaurant was only in Korean. I would have no idea what the specials are, if it’s the specials that are listed on the board. The server understands English and communicates quite good in it, but he kept on re-confirming our order and by doing so, it made me nervous and wonder if he actually got the right items. And he did, no hiccups really.

Final Thoughts

Vesta Grill is tucked away on a side street near Henderson Place, probably not an area where you would wander around for good eats. Therefore, I suggest you to take a trip out to that area and stop by for a visit. I think their food was quite good and the price was reasonable. It would also make a good drinking place while snacking on the grilled skewers.

Vesta Grill
#104-3025 Anson Avenue, Coquitlam
604-552-1255
www.toktokvan.com/vestagrill/