dim sum... As a Chinese person, the love of dim sum is in my blood! On the weekend, for some reason I woke up pretty early, so I went with my parents to Lucky Season Cuisine to grab some dim sum. This place was pretty busy and we had to wait in line for a couple minutes at about 10 am on a Saturday. If you don't know what dim sum is, it is basically Chinese style brunch where you order and eat a wide range of small dishes and drink Chinese tea along with the meal.
It was only 3 of us, my parents and I and we ended up having about 11 different dishes. There were a lot of variety in food including classic dim sum dishes such as Shrimp Dumplings (蝦餃 har gau) and Steamed Pork and Shrimp Dumplings (燒賣 siu mai). Other popular dim sum dishes we got were Rice Noodle Rolls filled with BBQ pork (腸粉 cheong fun), Chiu Chow style Dumplings (潮州粉果 chiu-chau fun guo) and Egg Tarts (蛋撻 dan tat) made with a milk/cream filling rather than eggs (it was less sweet than usual egg tarts, but very good still). We also got some pineapple buns filled with bbq pork (fresh out of the oven and sooo good), sticky rice, steamed rice with preserved meat and fried noodles. Most of the stuff at this place were really good, especially because the items were less oily than many crappier dim sum places.
To order items here, there is a menu where you tick off what you want. At the same time though, there are special items that waiters carry around once in awhile that anyone can ask for. The best time to come here is on weekdays, where all the dishes (which are classified as Small, Medium and Large) go for $2.20 each. The large steamed rice dishes in the hot pots go for $4.00. Weekends cost a little more. Lucky Season Cuisine is located at the Times Square Plaza (Leslie/Highway 7) in Richmond Hill (same plaza as "Northern Dumpling Kitchen" and "Health Herb and Harmony").
chinese desserts... So, I haven't had chinese desserts (or Tong Sui) in Toronto for awhile. A couple friends and I went to Health Herb and Harmony for some desserts after a pork bone soup dinner. There were three of us, so we ordered a bunch of stuff so that we could each try some of everything. When you get here, the place is pretty spacious and chill. It isn't like a bubble tea place as its more dedicated to Chinese traditional desserts. We ordered a cold almond soup sago thing where you could pick three fruits (choices included mango, honey dew, strawberry, sea coconut, papaya and some other stuff). That was pretty good and very refreshingly tasty. The next dessert we ordered was a hot walnut soup. This was quite thick and not too sweet, both the almond and walnut soup had lots of walnut/almond flavour and it didn't seem like the usual mix type ones at other restaurants. We also decided to grab Tong Yuen (which is a Chinese dessert type dumpling; glutinous rice balls filled with sweet black sesame). These were loaddded with sesame and came in a very pleasant smelling sweet ginger soup. The final dish we ordered took longer to prepare as it was the Steamed Milk with Papaya (ginger juice is an extra $0.50). This dish had a bunch of papaya chunks steamed with it. For a restuarant, I would say that it was pretty high quality. You could taste a bit of egg in it as well. I can make this much better at home but it was pretty good still. Next time I make it at home I'm going to add some fruits in it as well.
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Quick Notes: Don't order the curry fish balls. It is expensive ($4/4) and it didn't taste that good either. Stick with the desserts at this place. If you wanna check it out, its at the Times Square Plaza (Highway 7/Leslie). The restaurant is facing Leslie. The 4 desserts + Curry Fish Balls came to around $25 (after tax/tip).
- the menu is huge! (over 500+ items), take your time with ordering
- when ordering, you check off what you want on a sheet which is in Chinese (ordering takes a while if you can't read Chinese as you need to match the corresponding number on the English menu to the Chinese selection sheet.
yummy... Being a Chinese person, it is almost a given that I love dumplings! I had a request to put up some Chinese food and its a good thing that I just happened to come back from this sick dumpling place for lunch. This place is called the Northern Dumpling Kitchen, and I made the visit with some friends that I met during my summer in Shanghai. To quote one of my friends, who was visiting T.O. from Cali, "These dumplings are HELLA good, I haven't ate dumplings like this since Shanghai!" So there were three of us and of course we ordered the Xiao Long Bao (soup filled dumplings), Steamed Leek and Pork Dumplings, Steamed Cabbage and Pork Dumplings, Steamed Fennel and Pork Dumplings, Silver Roll (a chinese bun you dip in condensed milk) and 3 glasses of sweeeeet cold soy milk. The Xiao Long Bao are HELLA good and come in orders of 6. Their Xiao Long Bao alone have made me a regular at this place over the past couple of months. They are filled with the perfect amount of soup and out of the 100s that I have eaten at this place, not one has ever broken (like they do at other places) as they've perfected the dumpling skin and steamed each order perfectly. The dumplings come in orders of 6 and I would recommend the leek and pork or the cabbage and pork. The fennel and pork ones are alright, but the fennel flavour is a bit strong, and tastes almost like a bag of dill pickle chips.lol. Finally the silver roll comes either steamed or deep fried (I prefer the deep fried) and is cheap and a good addition to the dumplings. We ordered the steamed one because one person at the table was a super health freak (even complaining about oil in pho places!).
Quick Notes: The best part about the Northern Dumpling Kitchen is that it is cheap! It's doesn't' have as nice of a decor as a place like Ding Tai Fung or Asian Legend, but it tastes awesome and has HELLA good value! I normally just order off the first page and get dumplings and appetizer type things, which are all under $5. 1 order of Xiao Long Bao ($4.99/order), 3 orders of Steamed Dumplings ($3.99/order), Silver Roll ($???), 3 Glasses of Soy Milk ($???) came to a total price of around $25 (after tax, before tip). The waitresses/waiters mostly speak Mandarin and a bit of English and there is also one who speaks Canto. Where can you find this awesome place? At the Times Square Plaza (Leslie/Highway 7) in Richmond Hill. It is located at the corner facing the parking lot on the inside of the plaza (not facing Leslie or Highway 7), a couple doors left of the Richmond Court entrance.
