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!

Rating:

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

Rating:

467 Bloor St. W.
Toronto, ON
(416) 840-9988
Website

Ingredients:
1 pound of beef (chunks, like for a stew)
2 tsp of salt
2 tbsp of madras curry powder
4 mini-potatoes or 2 small potatoes cut into chunks
1/4 white onion, cut into chunks
1 tomato, cut into chunks
1 red bell pepper cut into chunks
4 tsp of sugar
3 bay leaves

Steps:

1. Bring a pot of water to a boil. Add the beef. Cover and let boil.
2. When the water boils again, dump the water out and rinse the beef (to get rid of the foamy stuff). Add water up to 1in above beef and let boil.
3. Add 1 tsp of salt, and cook on low for 30min.
4. Remove beef from pot and add to wok or pan (high power). Strain 3 cups of water from pot. Add 1 tsp of salt and all the curry powder, and mix well.
5. When the liquid in the pan starts bubbling, add onions, tomatoes, bay leaves, and sugar.
6. Wait 10min, then add the red bell peppers.
7. Cook on medium heat for 15min, or until tomatoes have basically melted.
8. Remove from wok and serve hot with rice.

Serves: 3

Alternatives:
This can be served with fragrant white rice or brown rice. I used the leftover “beef stew” liquid to cook brown rice, so the rice smelled and tasted amazing. If you have coconut milk, you can add half a can to the madras curry (in step 6), and half to white rice.

Notes:

• The tomatoes are meant to disappear, that’s why they are added early on. If you don’t like strains of tomato skin in your final product, you can use tomato sauce instead (1/2 cup should do it).
• Brown sugar is preferable to white granulated sugar, so you can substitute 3tsp of brown sugar if you have it.
• It’s important to cook the beef in the pot before cooking it in the wok. The cooking time in the wok is not long enough for stewing beef to become tender, and also you don’t want the foamy blood stuff to be cooked in.