By Sherman Chan,
Special to The Post

The name may sound like a Mexican or Spanish tapas restaurant, but La Amigo Restaurant is in fact an elevated Hong Kong-style cafe. In addition to the usual Hong Kong menu, they offer items like Lobster Thermidor and Filet Mignon. We were a large group and ended up ordering several dishes, allowing us to sample all that La Amigo had to offer.
I decided to try something extravagant and ordered the Lobster Thermidor. Coming in at $35.95, the meal included Lobster Chowder with garlic toast. This chowder was more like a cross between a bisque and a cream soup that featured a few nuggets of lobster. It was somewhat aromatic and mild, but was enjoyable nonetheless. The Lobster Thermidor was served with spaghetti and veggies. This version was more like lobster in a creamy sauce baked with cheese. I didn't taste cognac, but it was still good. The pieces of lobster had a bouncy, chewy texture and the natural flavours stood up to the cream and cheese. The mushrooms offered a nice complimentary flavour.
My friends all tried something different. The Brisket Soup Noodles featured egg noodles that were sufficiently al dente and bathed in a fairly salty broth. Although the chunks of brisket appeared to be rather dry, this was not the case. They were very tender and moist, and I liked the ample amount of baby bak choy to balance out the saltiness. The Curry Shrimp Fried Rice had a mild curry flavour and the rice was dry and nutty, with small shrimp scattered here and there.
We also ordered the Walnut-Crusted Filet Mignon with peppercorn demi. The steak was prepared a beautiful medium-rare and was moist and buttery soft. My friend really liked the aromatic walnuts as well as the mushrooms. The demi was flavourful and impactful. The Homemade Smoked Sablefish with jambalaya rice and veggies had a sweet smokiness, and the sablefish was fatty and flaky. The jambalaya was different, but good with firm rice and a zesty hit of tomato.
The sauce in the Spaghetti Bolognese was far too salty and there was very little meat for a bolognese sauce. On the other hand, the Pork Chop Rice was on the sweeter side, but my friend liked it. The ample amount of pork chop was tender and fried nicely, and as a whole, the dish worked.
Onto some creamier concoctions. The Sauteed Shrimp were cooked well, and although I expected tarragon rather than basil, the flavours worked nicely in the creamy sauce. The Curry Fish with Rice consisted of a pan-fried Basa filet with potatoes in a curry sauce. I found the fish was moist with a crispy brown sear on the bottom. The curry itself was creamy and quite mild.
The Baked Fish with Cream Sauce on Rice had a similar type of preparation as the curry fish. The fish filet was moist with a crispy sear, and it was smothered in a mild creamy mushroom sauce with a hint of cheese. It was decent. The Baked Seafood with Spaghetti in Cream Sauce was also very similar to the aforementioned dish except for the addition of seafood. Most of the seafood were prepared well, except for the squid which was chewy.
Overall, for all the variety of dishes we tried, the food was pretty good at La Amigo. The prices are higher than most competitors in Richmond, but I found that the non-Asian dishes were very good.

Sherman Chan is the #1 ranked food blogger on the Vancouver portal of Urbanspoon.com. Read more of his reviews at www.shermansfoodadventures.com.

La Amigo Restaurant
160 – 8291 Alexandra Road, Richmond
(604) 231-6028

The Good:
• More refined and carefully crafted than other Hong Kong-style cafes
• Non-Asian dishes surprisingly good

The Bad:
• More expensive than other restaurants of this type