Cattle Cafe - Saint Ives Australia

I didn’t expect great service but staff were very attentive and friendly! I enjoyed my favorite laksa noodle soup- i chose fish fillet and tofu toppings. The toppings were fresh and good quality too. <br/

January 7th, 2018<br/ It's been a while since coming to Cattle Cafe, but a friend wanted to catch up so we decided to drop by here for some quick fix. Fish noodles is usually my go to when I'm here. I always find that getting the fish noodle soup options cheaper than the combo+drink options. With the combo+drink option, it is extra $4 on top for fish noodles, making it around $15, whereas the regular fish noodle soup plus a $1 cold drink only comes out to $10. Doesn't make sense to me at all. Anyways, I got the satay fish noodle option today with an cold iced lemon tea. Honestly, it wasn't that memorable.<br/ <br/ January 8th, 2018<br/ <br/ I was temping at a dental office nearby, so I dropped by for lunch today. I got the Beef Brisket with rice noodle. When it came out it actually look quite delicious. The beef brisket was juicy and full of flavour. Even the soup tasted the beef brisket! There are times where I got this at other places, the brisket were always dry and just tasted like beef and the soup was just chicken flavoured. Definitely, will be coming here for my beef brisket rice noodle fix!

I find it good to scan the menu ahead of time or I would spend an hour making up my mind. There is a great deal to chose from. To make it worse, while waiting, you can watch photos of the choices rotate through on a TV screen and everything looks good! My partner and I shared a signature noodle combo. The price is a couple of bucks more that the menu posted on Zomato but still a nice deal at $11.49. We had the Malay Laksa soup base with ramen noodles, baby bok choy and fish balls. It is a big serving. I'm not sure how one person would finish it. And it was very tasty. On the side (you can add on up to two sides), we tried the deep fried fish filet (very nice with a tasty tarter sauce) and deep fried chicken wings (only 3 sections to an order; very tasty but not a smoking deal at $3). My partner had a Green apple slush with pearls, which was great! We finished with a black bean desert which was on the forgettable side...reminded me more of Mexican restaurant black beans with some sugar added. We won't order that again. $30 for two for lunch including tax and tips is a pretty good deal. Sleek comfortable place with decent if somewhat distracted service.

Decent Hong Kong style restaurant with a huge menu selection with full colour pages with photos. It always takes me a while to decide what to eat. If you get some of their meal combos you can also order a specialty drink for $2.<br/ <br/ They have a happy hour menu from 3pm 6? where you can order mini set meals that are smaller versions of the regular menu with lots of snacky options. <br/ <br/ There are usually lineups for weekend lunch but if you're a table of 4 its a short wait. <br/ <br/ Service is fast and prompt with bilingual staff.

The menu is pretty extensive, but we always seem to gravitate towards the same few selections.<br/ <br/ Japanese style takoyaki $5.99): These were golden and crisp on the outside while soft, warm and fluffy on the inside. A tender piece of tako octopus) was in the center of each ball. They were generously drizzled with mayo and takoyaki sauce and sprinkled with dried bonito flakes. They’re a delicious savoury treat, pretty similar to the ones you’ll find at the Richmond Night Market.<br/ <br/ I highly recommend the signature noodle combo $9.95). This is something we always order. You get to pick the soup base/sauce, type of noodle, 2 toppings additional toppings are $1.59 each) and a drink that comes with it. I love their Malay laksa soup with rice noodle and slice beef brisket. The laksa soup was creamy, and full of coconut and curry flavour. The noodles were al dente and the slices of brisket were tender and delicious. The meat was neither too lean nor fatty. Baby-Paca picked beef tripe for our other topping on this visit, they only gave us a few pieces, and they were pretty standard. The following few times we ordered this, we just got double the brisket because they were so yummy. The bowl of noodle soup was also chocked full of Chinese cabbage with a few slices of abalone mushroom as well. We always get a hot milk tea alongside. The milk tea is alright, strong tea flavour like the way HK milk tea should taste.<br/ <br/ The pan fried rice cakes with yaki pork in X.O. sauce $10.59) isn’t one of our frequently ordered dishes, but it was pretty good as well. The rice cakes were soft and pleasantly chewy, taking on the flavour of the sauce it was pan fried with. The pork slices were flavourful and supple.<br/ <br/ Bubble waffles appertain to the category of foods that Baby-Paca and I will never tire of. The bubble waffles $4.59) at Cattle Cafe are definitely well executed, but rather pricey compared to other places. They’re lightly crisp with a soft chewy center and they’re full of sweet eggy goodness.<br/ <br/ We were curious about the ice cream with black glutinous rice $3.99) so we decided to give it a try. The scoop of ice cream tasted like generic store bought vanilla ice cream, and not the particularly good kind. The glutinous rice was a bit course and grainy. It didn’t have enough of that glutinous-ness.<br/ <br/ Service was quick and to the point, but don’t expect much else. The portions are to the smaller side for the price you pay at an HK style cafe, but most of the food I’ve tried here was decent. I just gotta say that finding parking may be a slight hassle though.