PaiGu

Zen Gardens is the first vegetarian restaurant I’ve been to, and it made a surprisingly excellent first impression on my taste buds. Located on Dundas a block east of Wellington, the small, unassuming Asian restaurant is serenely decorated, with bamboo on the walls and tea sets on display.

My friend and I took a long time to decide what to order, since everything on the menu was quite new and different to us. Kung Po Soy Chicken or Thai (Soy) Steak? Enoki Mushroom Balls or Curry Fried Rice?
We ended up settling on ordering one dim sum and one entree each. She ordered the BBQ pork-stuffed bun, a classic dim sum item, except the pork was of course a soy substitute, and I ordered a sticky rice wrap (zong zi). I used to love sticky rice wraps when I was a kid, especially the ones filled with aged sausage and marinated pork (called “savoury” sticky rice wraps, as opposed to the “sweet” variety where the filling is usually red bean paste), but I can’t often find authentic sticky rice wraps here in Canada. Most of the time, they are the Vietnamese or Cantonese variety, both of which have different fillings that I tend not to like as much. I could spend a whole day talking about zong zi, but suffice to say, they are not easy to prepare, take a long time to cook, and thus, good zong zi in Canada are an endangered species.
I was a little skeptical of the dim sum menu to begin with, which only included three items and seemed out of place in this Asian zen restaurant filled with non-Asian customers. To me, dim sum conjured an image of a banquet hall filled with the ever-increasing volume of Asians fighting over the bill in Cantonese as waitresses whizzed by with trolleys of steamed goodies stacked five-feet high. Not to mention dim sum without real meat? Blasphemy!

Out of place though it was, the dim sum was surprisingly authentic, which made me curious as to who the chefs were. My friend’s BBQ-pork bun came out fantastic, with a perfectly soft and fragrant bun (the bun is actually where the skill-level of the chef is deduced) that I never in a million years thought I’d find in London. The filling was sweet and saucy, and although not real pork, tasted incredibly similar.


My zong zi was also incredibly authentic. It had a savoury mushroom filling, but the real treat was the sticky rice, which was cooked to perfection. Because zong zi is cooked very slowly, a lot of things can go wrong in the cooking process, and the most difficult aspect is determining when it is done. I really wish they could introduce a sweet variation as well, with the red bean paste, because then I’d be back here every day! But if they were to make that from scratch, it would be much more time-consuming than making the savoury version.

For the entree, I ordered a curry vegetable dish and my friend ordered a fried rice (what kind exactly I forget). Both our dishes had a surprising taste, the kind of surprise that makes your eyes go wide with delight as your taste buds start to react to the first spoonful. For her, it was the sweet pineapple, for me it was the curry sauce.

I didn’t expect my dish to come out looking like it did. I thought it would be a curry vegetable stir-fry or something, but it came out looking more like a stew, in a heavy pot with a thick sauce. The sauce was an absolute delight, and I have no idea what kind of curry they used. It wasn’t quite like any curry sauce I’ve ever had, and I’ve had many¹. There was no hint of your typical Thai ingredients in the curry (coconut, lemongrass, kaffir lime leaves, bay leaves, lime juice), so it was strictly its own brand of Chinese curry. It tasted closely like Japanese curry but less thick, more spicy, and more orange-coloured rather than brown. The mushrooms made it especially savoury, and I loved the subtle spicy taste that developed over time as I consumed more of the dish. One of the ingredients that also surprised me was okra, something I’ve never had before but found quite interesting. Now that I’ve looked it up, I guess it was used as a thickening agent in the stew. The other ingredients were potato, soy chunks, soy meatballs, and carrots, which all complimented each other well. Maybe it’s because there was no real meat, maybe it was because the potatoes were cut in small chunks, but either way, the meal did not feel heavy at all.

Our server was attentive and accommodating, and the atmosphere was quiet and very serene, perfect for conversation. The dessert menu was disappointingly short, so we decided to go elsewhere for dessert, but the tea menu was was quite varied and extensive.
The whole experience was a pleasant surprise, and I made it a point to meet the chef(s) after our meal. It turned out they were Cantonese, although the chef that came out to greet us spoke Mandarin, so I thanked him in my native tongue and he grinned from ear to ear.

Will I be back? Most definitely!

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1. Madras curry; green, red, and yellow Thai curries; Japanese curry. [↩]

This past Sunday, my friend hosted a baking party for the two of us and we spent no less than 5.5 hours in the kitchen. We were quite the domestic goddesses decked out in brightly coloured aprons with caramel sauce in between our fingers and flour in our hair. For all our hard work, we managed to make three delicious desserts (as well as a small healthy lunch to balance all that sugar, butter, and cream):

• Chocolate chip oatmeal cookies, based on her mother’s coworker’s friend’s secret recipe
• Caramel custard with whipped cream, based on the recipe from Classic Stars Desserts by Emily Luchetti
• Banana napoleons with warm caramel walnut sauce, based on the recipe from Classic Stars Desserts by Emily Luchetti

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Jambalaya is a cozy, Bohemian restaurant that stands uniquely apart from its counterparts on Richmond Row in London Ontario. While the rest of the street is lined with such fancy bistros and restaurants as the Black Trumpet, The Tasting Room, and its next-door neighbour, Blue Ginger, Jambalaya has its own style and is not shy to flaunt it. Jambalaya’s menu is a mix of Carribean, Cajun, and Thai, with the three culinary flavours sometimes overlapping in its dishes. For example, their well-known pad thai is also available with jerk sauce.

The outside of the restaurant looks like an old, run-down house from the 60s, with a small elevated porch facing the street. Once inside however, the atmosphere immediately changes. I have never felt so distinctly transported to a different time and place as I have at Jambalaya.

With the late afternoon light streaming through the stained glass windows, the painted walls turned into various shades of gay green-yellow. Although the restaurant is quite small, the quiet conversation of nearby tables did not distract me once. The wall was also sparsely decorated with African crafts, which was a nice touch. They obviously put a lot of thought into the atmosphere, and I’d say they were successful.

I ordered a Mango Loco to drink, which is a cocktail blend of vodka, triple sec, and guava juice. It tasted (and looked) exactly like mango, but there was no mango in it. Intuitively interesting, but if I hadn’t known it, it would’ve just been an ordinary mango and vodka concoction.
To start, I had Carribean fried plantains, which I didn’t take a picture of because I was so hungry when they finally came out that I dug in right away. They were extremely oily, so I kind of wished the chef blotted them with a paper towel before bringing them out, but the oil was fresh so it didn’t feel greasy. There was nothing special about them – I’m quite certain if I fried plantains at home, they would taste exactly the same.
For the main, I settled on their famous chicken pad thai.

At first, I was put off by the presentation – I mean, a metal pot, really? But I suppose it suited the flair of the restaurant, so I quelled my critic and tasted the food. The glass noodles could’ve used a bit more oil so they weren’t sticking together in lumps, and a telling indication was the lumps of burnt noodle. Moreover, the chicken pieces were cut in large chunks instead of strips, and not surprisingly they were overcooked and extremely bland. Despite my reservations about the cooking skill, the pad thai sauce was excellent. Just the right hint of sweetness with a spiciness that increased as I ate more. It’s really a shame that the dish was not cooked better, since the sauce was so good. Such amateur mistakes really, that could’ve been easily remedied with a bit more oil and better timing.

There was no dessert menu, much to my dismay, but I was nonetheless satisfied with the meal. To say that it is the “best pad thai in southwestern Ontario” requires quite a stretch of imagination, but they certainly have a great sauce. I may come back again to try a different entree, but as for pad thai, the best I’ve had in London still comes from my own kitchen.

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