We were thinking of where to eat for dinner before heading to a movie, and we thought of this restaurant that was recommended to us by a friend who had dined here recently. Since I had to go NCIX at Aberdeen anyways, dining here made perfect sense!
Now Sugarholic Cafe is probably like the 4th or 5th (or more) business that has occupied this space in the last 5 years or so, so I was a little skeptical of how good it really was. The decor of the restaurant looked very fancy and comfortable, and since our friend recommended it, we thought we might as well try it out (and blog about it)!
Our first question before being seated was if they accept credit cards, and the hostess responded with, "We accept ALL cards!" Whether or not they take credit card payments is a crucial factor in our decision of where we eat, as more often than not, we carry zero cash on us.
We saw that they had a pretty good selection of waffles, and I love waffles, so I definitely had to try them! We saw that they had a new item called the Seafood Waffle Pizza $11.95 as pictured above. Now pizza on a waffle sounded like an awesome idea to me, so we had to try this one. From the picture, it doesn't look like it'd be big enough for us to share by itself, so we ordered an appy and a dessert!
The appetizer we ordered was the A01 Home-made Shrimp Balls with Passion Fruit mayo sauce $7.95. As you can see in the picture, we were given 6 shrimp balls, when the menu says it only comes with 5 pieces, so we got hooked up! The shrimp balls were pretty good, although I'd be lying if I said I could taste the passion fruit mayo. It definitely wasn't something that would pop out and make you say, OH there's the passion fruit flavour! It may have been a bit too subtle and got lost within the mayo and shrimp flavours. It's a deep fried ball of shrimp and it's pretty tasty. The middle is a cabbage salad with shredded seaweed. Not bad if you love these two ingredients, although I didn't think much about it.
Next was a surprise. Our dessert order came first, well ahead of the pizza waffle, which we were expecting would be our first meal.
We ordrered the W04 Waffle with Strawberry $9.95. We dug into this anyways, even though it arrived before our pizza waffle. I personally love waffles, and I order it whenever it's available on a dessert menu, and these are one of the best waffles I've had! They're light, fluffy, warm, and are just delicious overall. They're not the toaster waffles that some dessert places might serve you, as they're far from the toasted Eggo waffles that some places use. As you can see from the picture, they drizzle the waffles with maple syrup, sprinkle sugar frosting on the entire dish, paired with sliced strawberries, almonds, strawberry icecream, and fresh cream on top of this crispy crepe-like base. When you stack a bit of each item together into one bite, it is just uber delicious! These are definitely one of the best waffles I've had thus far, although I haven't been to Nero's yet, but this place would definitely give Nero's worthy challenge. You definitely have to give their waffles a try!
So our pizza waffle arrived after the appy and the dessert, so we started digging in on it right away. This pizza waffle is topped with shrimp and scallops, along with the usual pizza toppings such as tomato sauce and cheese. There may or may not have been additional seafood ingredients on there but it was just so good that it was hard to notice other flavours when eating it. They top off the pizza with shredded seaweed as seen in the photo. When you are eating this pizza waffle, you hardly notice that it's on a waffle unless you're actually looking at it. The waffle flavour is very subtle as the pizza toppings are quite prevalent. As with the strawberry waffle, the waffle here is the same type and is very fluffy. The thickness of the waffles makes this a lot more filling than it would seem, so it could actually serve two people well if paired with one other dish. We had two other dishes, so this turned out to be quite filling for us. Jess said she actually preferred eating this over an actual pizza! I would still rather eat a real pizza but this is a very good alternative!
Their service was ok, very friendly, quite prompt on clearing plates, but a few things to note here. Water refill was not very prompt, as my glass was empty for a while, despite several servers coming by to clear plates but neglected to notice my empty glass of water. It wasn't until we were paying the bill that they finally came by to refill my glass of water. Their water has slices of lemon in the main pitcher, so the water is quite refreshing!
One major thing that really bothered me was that back when we just walked into the restaurant, we were told that they accept "all cards". When it came time to pay the bill, I wanted to pay with AMEX, but was told by the server that they do not accept AMEX! I told her that we were told they accept all cards, but she said, "Oh sorry....haha..." I'm not sure why the lady who seated us told us they accept call cards, when clearly they do not accept one of the major 3 credit card types. What if all I had on me was an AMEX card and nothing more? I wonder if they would have comped the entire meal if that was all we had, because it was entirely their fault for stating that they accept all cards, which was a qualifying question prior to us making the final decision to dine at this restaurant. Because of this incident, their service rating took a major hit, despite any good service they may have done during the dining period.
Overall this restaurant serves very good food from the dishes that we ordered, and their service overall isn't too bad, but as noted above, that one incident will knock down the service rating as that really annoyed me. It's hard to find a good dessert place in Richmond as there are only a few options that we would choose from, but this is a welcoming new option that isn't always busy like Berry Good! I would still recommend that you come here to try the waffles, but just make sure you bring a method of payment other than AMEX!
Food:
4/5
Service:
2/5 not that they barely served, but only because of the AMEX incident.
Price:
$-$$
Overall:
3/5
Thanks for reading everyone, and happy eating!
- Phil
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