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.
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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.
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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
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.
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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.
congee... We decided to hit up Congee Time at Yonge and Finch because we were not sure where to eat and just happen to drive past it. There were three of us and it was our group's second dinner of the night and we decided that we needed to save money so Congee places are usually a good bet for value. The menu is very much like the popular Congee Wong and Congee Queen Restaurants. If you don't know what congee is, it is a type of rice porridge that is often flavoured and mixed with other types of vegetables, meat or seafood for flavour. We had a large bowl (it might have been called super bowl like at Congee Wong, lol, I can't remember) of "Seafood with Wintermelon and Chicken Congee" (~$10). Honestly, this was the blandest congee ever. I put like half a bottle of white pepper in it jus to get some flavour. For a place called Congee Time, their congee should be better.
We were deciding between a noodle or rice dish, and randomly chose a dish that consisted of shrimp, eggs and rice noodles (~$10). The sauce on this had a very slimy texture but this was pretty good and tasty. Since it was our second dinner, we decided to just get one more dish and went with the deep fried porkchop as we wanted some meat and it was pretty cheap at ~$5. This was nothing special, but did the job to fill us up.
Quick Notes: Congee Time is located in North York, in the plaza at Yonge and Cummer (same plaza as Food Basics and Canada Computers). It is North of Yonge and Finch. The place is quite nice inside compared to Congee Wong and there are plenty of seats, but the food could be better for sure. There is a huge parking lot in the front and back of the plaza, so parking is definitely not an issue here.
