Suburban Chinese Food

Many people think that Chinatown is the best place to get authentic Chinese food, with Lee Garden representing the pinnacle of the cuisine. This may have been the case a hundred or even twenty years ago, but in the past few decades ethnic Chinese have moved out to the suburbs - Scarborough, Richmond Hill, and Markham in particular. (This phenomenon isn't restricted to Chinese. For example, it turns out that the best Italian food in the city isn't in Little Italy, but in Woodbine.) In the meantime, (west) Chinatown seems more like Vietnamese town nowadays. While Spadina and Dundas are not completely devoid of decent Chinese food - Asian Legend, New Sky, and Swatow come to mind - the spring rolls and black bean sauce can get a bit overwhelming, even if you manage to avoid General Tso. So in this post I'll introduce a couple of restaurants that I've been to in the past couple of weeks, one which has a permanent spot on the rotation, and one which I just walked into after dropping off my badminton racquet to get strung.

First up is Congee Wong, a restaurant of pretty high standing amongst the people I know here (one guy complained about the grease, but he's just being a Vancouver food snob). It's what's commonly known as a "Congee, Rice Noodle, Noodle, Rice" place (jook fun mein fan) - basically the equivalent of a burger joint or diner maybe. There are several Congee Wong's around the GTA and its environs; we went to the one at Finch and Leslie. We ordered 5 dishes for three of us (clockwise starting from the left):Thai fried rice, Singapore-style Fried Turnip Cake (Sing Chow Chow Lo Bak Goh), Shredded pork Lo Mein (Jah Jeung Lo Mein), Bamboo Fungus and White Fungus Congee (Jook Shun Shuet Yee Jook), and Spicy Squid (Jew Yim Seen Yau). It was way too much food, but the price was right: about $28 before taxes for what ended up being two meals.
The one dish which we almost always get when we go to Congee Wong is the Fried Turnip Cake, especially when we're introducing the place to someone. The turnip cake is cubed and stir fried with egg, shrimp, pork, and some spicy sauce. It's addictive - when Karen's mom ate it, the next day she suggested that we go back for more (we didn't). Naturally, the congee is pretty good here. Bamboo "fungus" is actually the soft interior of a bamboo shoot. It's kind of spongy with a nice crunchy texture. The white fungus is a thin springy mushroom. This congee is pretty light tasting - skip it and go for the pork and preserved egg if you want something more substantial. Thai fried rice is one of these undefined dishes which varies by restaurant. This version was lightly curried with some chicken and chili flakes. Kind of like a fried rice version of Singapore style vermicelli. The lo mein was quite tasty. The sauce is kind of sweet and the pork is almost stewed. It's a standard dish Lo mein is basically the noodles from wonton noodle soup cooked and then taken out of the soup. The fried squid was greasy, salty, and good. Of course, this meal was a grease bomb, but that was expected. We still left very happy.

There's a plaza at the Southeast corner of Hwy 7 and Woodbine called First Markham Place which is lined full of Chinese restaurants. Recently we decided to try a Shanghainese restaurant there called Ding Tai Fung (wonder if it's related to the Din Tai Fung we went to in HK?). We ordered two baskets of soup-filled dumplings, Shanghainese fried noodles, two noodle soup dishes, some spicy tendon, and a roll of fried bread. Here's everything but the noodle soups (I guess you can figure out what's what):
We also had hot and sour noodle soup
and peanut sauce noodle soup (tam tam mein).
We started with the spicy beef tendon and the fried bread. The tendon was cut into little bite-sized pieces and was covered in chili oil and some cilantro. Pretty addictive, but it could have used a bit more spice. The fried bread (ngun see guen) was not the best I've had - it was a bit too greasy. It comes with sweetened, condensed milk for dipping. We had one order of normal soup-filled pork dumplings, and one order of soup-filled crab and pork dumplings. The dumplings were really good, with nice thin skin and lots of liquid. I liked the cheaper normal dumplings than the crab dumplings. With the latter, I felt like the crab kind of overwhelmed everything else about the dumpling. But the others liked it, and I didn't mind. Maybe my tastes run more to the cheap. The noodle dishes, on the other hand, were kind of mediocre. There was nothing wrong with the Shanghainese fried noodles, but they didn't blow my mind either. Shanghainese fried noodles consists of thick noodles which are stir fried with some pork and cabbage. The hot and sour soup was quite tasty, with depth of flavour not usually found in the Chinatown places. As an aside, hot and sour soup is actually a Sichuanese (I think) dish which made its way north to the capitals over the years. Shanghainese places often serve it because to Cantonese people, it's all Northern. In any case, it seems more "right" to be having hot and sour soup here than at a Cantonese restaurant. Anyway, the noodles didn't live up to the standard set by the soup. They were limp and lacked chewiness. The same noodles plagued the peanut noodle soup, but in that case, the soup wasn't up to snuff either. It lacked spice and tasted more like peanut butter mixed with water - kind of boring. I guess the story is to stick to the dumplings and tendon at this place.