Chinese Halal Restaurant

lamb, lamb, lamb... Chinese Halal Restaurant is the place to go if you want to try some delicious chinese halal food traditional to regions of North West China.  You can enjoy traditional spicy kebobs/skewers here, along with many different Beef and Lamb dishes, but you won't find any pork in this restaurant.  This is a nice place to come with friends to explore and tastes some of their tasty food.  The Beef Noodle Soup pictured above consists of handmade noodles that taste delicious ($5.99 + tax on the lunch special menu!). They specialize in making Lamb and there are many must-try items incuding: Lamb skewers, Mini Spicy Lamb Chops, Lamb Noodle Soup and Fried Sesame Lamb Chops (my favourite)!  With all this meat, its nice to choose one of their delicious chinese veggie dishes to share.  Chinese Halal Restaurant has lots of seats, and getting a table for large groups is usually not a problem.  It is located at the plaza at Leslie & Finch in North York and the prices are pretty cheap for the amount of yummy food you get.

Chinese Halal Restaurant

101 Ravel Road 

North York, ON M2H 1T1

(416) 498-9800

Fickle Viet Chinese Cuisine.

pho in the downtown core!... Fickle is a Viet/Chinese restaurant downtown Toronto that has been open for about a year.  I was quite ecstatic when I heard about a pho place opening up around Yonge and College, where fast food joints are a dime a dozen. If you walk or drive by, their crazy interior lighting/ decor will really draw your attention.  The restaurant looks kind of like a club with colour changing walls and ceiling.  The entire place slowly changes colours while you are eating, which is kinda trippy (reminded me a bit of the mood lighting they use in planes during a long flight to HK).

When I first tried this restaurant, they definitely had their share of problems, especially slow/ inadequate service (waited 45 mins for food, clearly understaffed, no water refills, missing orders), but I recently went again and things have definitely improved.  Fickle has an extensive menu of chinese, viet and asian fusion type items, but I was here strictly to eat some Beef Noodle Soup aka Pho close to where I live.  The Pho comes in 2 sizes, Regular ($7.99 + tax/tip) and Large ($8.99 + tax/tip).  It is served with slices of lean beef and 2 out of the following items: Brisket, Soft Tendon, Beef Balls, Tripe. There isn't much variety in the pho- especially with the absence of chicken, seafood and curry pho choices! Aside from the inflated prices (the Regular and Large sizes are more like Small and Medium bowls at other places), the Pho is decent and comes with the usual tray of beansprouts/ lime.  For $9.99 + tax/tip, you can have the Fickle Special pho, which comes with a mix of all the meats listed above (kinda like #101 at Pho 88).  I also tried their viet Spring Rolls, which they call Fickle Spring Rolls ($4.99 + tax/tip).  These were good deep fried viet spring rolls that came with 2 rolls cut up. 

In terms of pho, there are definitely better places across the city (and cheaper), but the convenient location just north of College TTC station will keep my coming back when I don't want to travel far to get my fix of Pho.  They have lots of items I haven't tried and any feedback would be great if you have been to this place. The service at Fickle recently was pretty good and it seems that things are running much smoother than half a year ago.  Alcohol is served here, so you can get wasted and jam out to the colour changing walls! haha.

Fickle Viet Chinese Cuisine

507 Yonge St

Toronto, ON 

M4Y 1Y3

(647) 351-3529

Congee Star.

chinese food!... I recently finished a placement as a Physiotherapy student at a private physio clinic in North York, where Dennis (the Physiotherapist there) also shared my love for going out to eat (he's even started his own food blog... check it out!).  He took me out for dinner at the end of my placement, recommending a close by chinese restaurant called Congee Star, which is located near the science centre.  Congee Star is your similar chinese Congee restaurant (see Congee Queen) that serves all kinds of congee (aka chinese rice porridge) and also a large selection of Chinese dishes (ie rice, noodle, meat, etc.). We went with 4 people, including one who did not eat meat, so we tried our best to order a variety of dishes for all of us to enjoy.
The four of us shared a whole bunch of dishes and this being a congee restaurant of course we ordered their House Special Congee (regular size $5.50 + tax/tip), which mainly had different types of seafood in it including salmon, surf clam, squid, etc.. We also ordered a Yin Yang fried rice ($10.50 + tax/tip), which is a shrimp and chicken fried rice, where half of it was covered in cream sauce and the other half covered in tomato sauce (the sauce is poured on so that it looks like a Yin Yang symbol). This was pretty tasty, and I personally like to mix the ketchupy flavoured tomato sauce with the cream sauce. In order to cater for our non meat eating friend Ilinica, we ordered a Baby Bok Choi with garlic ($8.50 + tax/tip), and Stir Fried Vegetables with Seafood ($15.25 + tax/tip). Both of these dishes were a bit oily but decent for these typical congee places. To cater for the rest of our meat loving cravings, we also ordered Black Pepper stir fry Beef Ribs ($9.95 + tax/tip). Black pepper, beef, stirfy...there is no way to go wrong with this dish. lol. 
We also ordered specialty drinks called "Halo Halo" ($3.75 + tax/tip).  These were quite large filled with different fruits (mostly canned fruits and some cut up bananas), grassy jelly, red bean, and coconut milk.  If you like dessert, these drinks both sufficiently sweet and generously sized. At the end of the meal the waitress even came by to offer us a complimentary chinese dessert (a large bowl of chinese Taro Sago Coconut milk dessert soup to share). Make sure you ask for the free dessert if you go!

Overall, the food at Congee Star is quite tasty and affordable, but also a bit oily. The portions are pretty good as we packed up some of the leftovers to go.  It was also pretty busy on the Thursday night that we went, and it's a decent option for affordable chinese food in this area of North York.


Congee Star
900 Don Mills Road, Unit 12
North York, Ontario
416-385-8822

Kom Jug Yuen.

cheap, dirty, tasty... After a crazy weekend of partying, my friend Shiang and I went to Kom Jug Yuen in china town to grab some cheap chinese food. Shiang was craving for some BBQ pork (aka Cha Siu) and considering the cheap prices here, it would definitely help his wallet out after ballin out at the clubs. I've actually been to this place a couple times and I have friends who religiously come here because of how cheap it is. It is not your typical chinese restaurant, but more like a "hole in the wall" type place. Throughout your meal, it is no surprise to see random staff walking through with giant plastic tubs full of barbecued pork or mopping up the floor as you eat.



To fulfill his craving, Shiang ordered a BBQ pork on rice ($4 + tax/tip). In a sign on their store front, they actually claim to have the "Best BBQ Pork in North America!" This is a pretty big claim especially in Toronto, where you can get Chinese barbecued meats in any of the many Chinese restaurants, food courts, plazas or malls. Fortunately, the BBQ pork lives up to their claim as it is really good- each piece has lots of flavour and the perfect texture balance of juiciness and chewiness. The best part is the charred edges that make Chinese BBQ pork so good. As for the dish itself, it was literally just BBQ pork on a giant plate of rice, and they brought us some Bok Choy (chinese vegetable) on the side as well. It also came with a soup; can't really complain about this meal for $4.
I ordered a rice noodle soup with BBQ Pork and BBQ duck ($6 + tax/tip). Again, this was pretty standard, but what makes it is definitely the BBQ pork which is awesome. They gave me the leg piece of the duck and I'm guessing they use the same type of technique to grill the duck as the skin is nice and crispy as well. This also came with some Bok Choy on the side. We also grabbed 2 Nesteas to complete the meal ($1.25/ can).

Kom Jug Yuen is a great place to grab a quick filling meal, while spending about the same price 3 McDonald's value meal items. This place has been around forever as I remember coming here when I was much younger and it probably looks the same as it does 10 years ago. It is a perfect place for students to eat in or grab takeout (close to UofT as it is just south of College on Spadina), but definitely not a place to bring a date haha. Like I said before, it's more like a hole in the wall type of place, so don't expect the cleanest or nicest place (actually, expect the opposite, but it's still great!).
Kom Jug Yuen Restaurant
371 Spadina Avenue
Toronto, ON, M5T 2G3

616 Restaurant Coupon 2.

hot pot... I previously posted a coupon for 616 Restaurant, which serves Chinese Hot Pot Buffet for dinner. The owners of 616 Restaurant have sent me another coupon for their Hot Pot dinner. If you print out this coupon (or click on the picture), for every 4 people that eat, 1 will be free. This is a pretty good deal and it expires Nov. 30, 2009 (basically 25% if you have four people). I haven't been their recently, but apparently they have made some changes in their food recently, so if anyone goes, please let us all know what you think of this place.

La Grill King.

chinese food court... After spending a day playing tennis and basketball, my friends, David and Perlman wanted to grab some food. We wanted to grab something cheap, quick and tasty and we ended going to the Chinese food court on Silver Star Blvd.. If you've ever been to a Chinese food court, you know that they are awesome for huge portions of quality chinese food for low low prices. We decided to go the La Grill King, which is basically Hong Kong style cafe (aka Cha Chan Tang), but in a food court.
I went with the Baked Pork chop rice with Tomato Sauce (I think it was $5.99 + tax), as it seemed like lots of people were ordering this. This tasted freaking good! The sauce had plenty of flavour and the entire dish was a huge portion. The only downside to this was that they should have put more cheese on the top before they baked it. To make it even better, it even came with a drink and a soup. I got a cold HK style milk tea, which I highly recommend from here. Their milk tea is super creamy and definitely better than most cold HK Style milk teas from other restaurants.
David and Pearlman decided to split the Pork chop + 1/2 Chicken meal for 2 people. This came with a large portion of just baked Pork chop with tomato sauce, 1/2 a chicken, 2 soups, 2 rices, and 2 drinks (the girl working there even let them pick Bubble Tea drinks without extra charge. The entire meal only cost $12.99 + tax. They got this meal because they wanted more variety, but they still wanted the awesome baked pork chop with tomato sauce. We left this place very satisfied and since its a food court, we don't even have to pay tip. lol.
La Grill King is clearly the busiest restaurant at this food court, as all the ones are either shut down or really dead. The Food Court is located in the corner of the same plaza that the Destiny Bubble Tea place is at (633 Silver Star Blvd., Scarborough).

Fantasy Eatery.

late night... For the past month and a half I've been working as a server at the karaoke place, TEN 23. With my late hours, I've been grabbing late night meals after work at Fantasy Eatery. In the early morning (ex. 3-4 am), this Chinese restaurant is an awesome alternative to McDonald's. Fantasy Eatery serves some really good Cantonese style Chinese food and best of all, it is open until past 4 am everyday. I usually come here with my friend Roger (who also works at TEN 23), and we order the same stuff every time.

When we can, we always call in to order a steamed egg with minced pork dish (pictured top left), which takes longer to make. Within the steamed eggs are pieces of minced pork and century egg (aka the thousand year old egg from fear factor), which gives it lots of flavour and tastes amazing when you mix it with rice. Another dish that we regularly order is the Fook Kin Fried Rice (pictured bottom right), which is egg fried rice with a wet sauce poured over it. The sauce gives lots of flavour to the rice and even has tons of shrimp, scallop, barbecue pork and vegetables in it. I don't normally order Manchu Wok style dishes like sweet and sour pork at Chinese restaurants, but Fantasy Eatery makes the best sweet and sour pork in Toronto (pictured top right). The pork is breaded just enough and deep fried to crispiness and then stir fried with vegetables and the sweet and sour sauce.
We usually order about 4 dishes for 3-4 people and it runs us about $10 /person each time (we're more than full each time too!). Other dishes we also get on a regular basis include the pork neck stir fry dish, deep fried large intestine (tastes mad good, if you don't know what it is, you gotta try it!) and some other vegetable dishes. The last time we went there, it was my friend, Karen's birthday and she wanted lobster, so we had a giant lobster stir fried on top of a bed of E-Fu noodles... where else can you eat lobster at 4 am in the morning?!
Fantasy Eatery is located in Scarborough just north of Finch on Midland (in the 3rd plaza north of Finch on the west side). Late nights, it is especially busy on the weekends when lots of people make the trek here to grab food after clubbing and partying. They also have a location in Times Square that closes earlier at 2 am, and I prefer the Midland location.

Fantasy Eatery
3320 Midland Avenue
Scarborough, ON M1V 5E6
(416) 332-0288

Ming's Noodle Cafe.

fusion... My friend Roger decided to go to Ming's Noodle Cafe for lunch because we were both craving some Hong Kong Style Cafe type food (aka Cha Chan Tang). It was a little out of the way but it was worth going especially since they had their tea time specials and deals during this time (~2:30 pm- 5pm I think). We woke up pretty late and I still had that afternoon craving for breakfast food when you wake up and eat your first meal in the PM.

The perfect solution to these afternoon breakfast cravings is cheap breakfast items at these HK style Cafes. I ordered the Omelette Combo ($3.95 + tax/ tip), which comes with a pretty basic omelette filled with hot dog weiners, toast and a drink (+ 0.75 for a cold drink). This was pretty simple breakfast food that I could probably make at home, but it's cheap enough and good enough to fulfill my afternoon breakfast craving. I was still hungry since it was already like 3 pm, so I also got their BBQ chicken leg + salad + drink combo ($4.25 + tax/tip). Roger recommended this to me and it was definitely a good choice as the chicken leg was a little sweet and tasted awesome. Roger ordered some ham and vegetable pasta in cream sauce ($4.50 + tax/tip). I didn't think there was anything special about this, but for the price, the portion was huge.
Ming's Noodle Cafe is a pretty good restaurant out of the many HK Style Cafes scattered around Toronto and their tea time deals are what drew us there. It is located on the East side of Kennedy just South of Steeles (by Pacific Mall).

Ming's Noodle Cafe
3447 Kennedy Road
Scarborough, Ontario
(416)291-6088

South China Noodles Delight.

noodles... I went with my parents to South China Noodles Delight, which mainly serves Southern China style Noodle in Soup dishes (aka Guilin Rice Noodles). The restaurant is pretty small and even their wooden chairs seem to be smaller (maybe I'm just fat after all this eating lol). They have lots of different types of combinations for the noodle soups including shredded chicken, shrimp and fish balls, ox tail, beef brisket and and more uncommon things such as deer and ox offals.

I went with the Beef/ Ox Offals with Vermicelli in Soup (Large- $5.99 + Tax/Tip; small- $4.99 + Tax/Tip). Some people don't like beef offals (aka Ngau Chap in cantonese) because they are usually turned off by the fact that beef offas are basically a mix of the "weird" parts of the beef including lungs, kindey, liver, tripe, etc.. I love this stuff and I also get this every time I go to dim sum. The bowl of noodles was huge and was loaded with lots of beef parts and pickled Chinese vegetables. I was definitely satisfied after this tasty and flavourful bowl of noodles.
My parents went with the Ox Tender and Brisket with Vermicelli in Soup (Large- $5.99 + Tax/Tip; small- $4.99 + Tax/Tip). There was tons of beef brisket in the bowl as you can see in the top picture. The soup base for all the noodle soups were the same (a unique flavour that seemed both salty and sour, probably because of the pickled vegetables that are also thrown in).

To accompany our noodles, we also had one order of Pan Fried Sweet Corn Cake ($2.99). This tasted pretty good and you'll like it for sure if you like the taste of corn. It isn't really sweet though, just lots of corn flavour. The pancake also comes in lotus root and water chestnut flavours.
South China Noodles is a pretty unique restaurant as I haven't been to many other places in Toronto that serve these types of noodles. The portions are big and the prices are pretty cheap for a quick lunch or dinner. They are located in Scarborough just north of Finch on the west side of Midland.

South China Noodles Delight Inc.

3380 Midland Ave.
Toronto, ON M1V 5B5

(416) 293-1880‎

Mom's Gourmet Coffee N' Things.

moms... While working as a student teacher at both Danforth CI and Eastern Commerce, I would often go to Mom's Gourmet Coffee N'things for a quick cheap lunch or snack. I first found out about this place when teachers I worked with came here to grab coffee (which is supposed to be really good, although I don't drink coffee). What really attracted me to this place was their stuffed beef patties ($2), which they cut open and fill with toppings like tomatoes, lettuce, hot sauce, mozzarella cheese and hot peppers. The cheese is especially good as it melts once placed inside the hot beef patty.

After coming here more often for the stuffed patties, I also discovered that they serve other things including Cheeseburgers (~$3), 8 inch subs (~$3) and even chinese rice dishes like green curry chicken on rice or black bean chicken on rice ($3.99 each, +$0.50 for a pop). I love that I can come to this place anytime and be really full for around $5 flat (ex. Cheeseburger + Stuffed Patty definitely fills me up for lunch). Mom's has all kinds of other really cheap deals like 10 chicken nuggets for $2 or all day breakfasts for around $3-$4. When it started getting hot out, I hit up Mom's for Jumbo Freezies ($0.50) as well.
Mom's is a great local spot to grab a coffee or some cheap food. The people who work there are really nice as well, although the only drawback is that they take a little long in making some of the food items, but that definitely never stopped me from going back. Mom's Gourmet Coffee N'Things is located at 1096 Danforth Ave., just west of Greenwood Ave.

616 Restaurant Coupon.

hot pot... 616 Restaurant serves Chinese Hot Pot buffet in Markham (previous post about DIY Hot Pot). They recently opened in the past year and after talking with the owner, Good Food Toronto has collaborated with 616 in presenting a 10% off coupon exclusive to readers of Good Food Toronto. You can print this coupon (or click the picture above) and get 10% off the bill for their hot pot dinner buffet (cash only, expires August 1, 2009). I will try this place soon and write a review as well. Please leave any comments about this place if you've been or heard of it.

Congee Queen.

congee queen... 3 friends and I were super hungry, so we went to close by Congee Queen by Don Mills Centre. It is always pretty busy during dinner time and we had to wait to get a table for about 15 minutes. This place has decent food and we usually get pretty similar things each time that we come. We ordered a "Spiced Soya Sauce Duck" ($5.99), which is a popular dish, with the duck placed on top of tofu that soaks up all the sauce. Since this is Congee Queen, we got a "Seafood Super Bowl Congee" ($8.75), which came in a giant bowl and was loaded with lots of seafood including shrimp, scallop, salmon, sliced fish, squid and fake crab meat. We also ordered one of their most popular dishes (at least for me.lol), the "Seafood with Dried Garlic Fried Rice" ($9.95). This was good but would be even better if it was just a little bit more salty (and I don't usually like salty foods). To complete this meal, we had one more seafood dish, the "Spice and Pepper Salt Squid" ($6.75). This was basically deep fried squid with salt and hot peppers, although it is not spicy at all, the peppers definitely add to the flavour.
Congee Queen is also owned by the same people who run Congee Wong, but from my experience, Congee Queen is more clean and a little better. It is a great place to go with a bunch of people to share a variety of dishes that come in big portions at pretty cheap prices. The location that I usually go to is in North York at 895 Lawrence Ave. E., Unit 8 (across the street from LCBO at Don Mills Centre). They also have another location at Don Mills and Steeles, although I haven't been to that location before.