Have you every walk hundreds of time past a street but never bothered to try out that cute restaurant on the basement floor? Well… It happened to us and we decided to give it a go! The other day we came across this small little place going home. Little did we know… we discovered our 2 new favourite desserts!
On their Facebook page, Chicha restaurant owners claim themselves to be a “Cozy tea house with delicious food”.
They serve the kind of food you can expect from a bubble tea restaurant which is usually a combination of Taiwanese, Chinese and Japanese food. First things first, we ordered 2 iced bubble teas, one mango rooibos flavoured and the other one was longan honey. Both were very good and not too sweet.
For our main course, we opted for a chicken katsu with Japanese curry and a cheese-stuffed chicken katsu. “Katsu” is basically a meat cutlet that has been breaded and fried. Both dishes were good, and the chicken katsu stuffed with cheese was a very nice combination.
But the stars of this little tea house is not the savoury dishes, but rather the desserts, which is my (Veronique) favourite part! The first time we tried this restaurant we ordered 2 mille crepes and 1 cream puff. Mille crepes are very thin layered crepes with cream custard in between them and they are DELICIOUS! It was our first time trying it out as we believe Chicha is the only restaurant that serves it in Montreal. We weren’t disappointed at all. The thinness of the crepes mix with the whipped cream kind of custard made it so creamy and dreamy! They have different kind of flavours such as chocolate, green tea, original and durian (which we have yet to try, but they are always sold out when we come in! If you didn’t know, it’s one of Alvin’s favourite fruits.). A little thing we would like to point out is that the green tea one, although good, was our least favourite. It had a bit too much matcha powder on top and was filled with red bean paste which was a touch that we found unnecessary. On the other hand, maybe we’re just not the biggest fan of matcha and red bean to begin with. The very nice waitress told us that we can call to reserve a flavour before coming in, which is probably what we’re going to do next time. The cream puff was good, but nothing spectacular.
Another great discovery we made the second time we went is the honey toasts they have on their menu. Curious as we are, we always wanted to try it out and it was amazing! It’s a dessert made out of sweet bread, topped with ice cream. It sounds really simple, but it was oh-so-good! The bread was crunchy but fluffy at the same time, and the ice cream was soft and melted to perfection.
Conclusion: We kind of want to keep this place secret so we can have all the mille crepes to ourselves…
Food: 8.5/10
Price: 7.5/10
Service: 9/10
Ambiance: 8.5/10