I stopped by Monark Asian Bistro on a Sunday afternoon to eat lunch with a few friends. This restaurant is located in the Canyon Crest Town Centre and is easy to get to by RTA bus (Route 51 {the Crest Cruiser near the Bannockburn Village bus stop}, on weekdays or Route 16 {Campus Dr bus stop} on weekdays/weekends).
The restaurant host seated us as soon as we walked through the door. Since it was in later stage for lunchtime, the restaurant was pretty much empty, except for a couple tables being filled prior to our arrival. The restaurant’s ambience is quiet and there is classical music playing moderately loud through the speakers. In addition, the dining decor and the dishware/silverware are quite fancy for a casual attire type of restaurant, which is kind of ironic, right?
I opted to order something from the lunch special menu, which is served 11:30am to 3:00pm daily and all include one egg roll with a side of fried or white rice. It took me about 10 minutes to decide what to order because everything sounded so darn good! I settled for the broccoli with beef dish, which was quite filling despite the given portion amount. The beef was lean and tender, the broccoli and carrots were flavorful and succulent, the veggie egg roll tasted great with the sweet n’ sour dipping sauce, and the white rice was as per usual.
Even though it is a pricey restaurant, the food quality is substantially higher than say Panda Express. In retrospect, the dish I ordered wasn’t worth $8.95. However, compared to the normal menu prices in the Featured Items section (ranging from $12.95 to $16.95), the lunch specials here give you the most “bang for your buck”. So, if you want to get the most value out of your meal, you should come during lunchtime for the restaurant’s lunch specials.
So long for now!
* Stay tuned for new food adventures to appear in [Part 5].
– Sincerely your HCUCR food critic,
Anna
{The featured food dish was photographed and edited by the writer via iPhone 5c}