Established in 1895 by a fisherman who decided to pass the time during the ‘rough weather‘ seasons, by selling his own special recipe noodles. This small venture subsequently morphed into an iconic Taiwanese culinary institution that has expanded to dozens of branches worldwide. However, Toronto is their first offshoot in the western hemisphere! To foodie like myself, this is indeed great news. In order to retain authenticity, they have transferred their entire, unabridged menu from their Tainan flagship shop, all the way across oceans and continents, to this GTA outcrop! Lucky us!
Nowadays, this legendary establishment has also enlarged their original, century old, noodle based menu to incorporate a whole suite of renowned, traditional, rustic delicacies. Based on their offerings, to the uninitiated, I would categorize their style and format as that of ‘Taiwanese influenced Pintxos/Tapas‘.
With so many alluring ‘must-eat‘ and house specialty dishes listed on their comprehensive, attractive and colorfully illustrated menu. Even taking advantage of our party’s big size, our order was nowhere near in covering all the prime menu attractions that we would like to savor! Guess there will be a sequel to this review?!
After settling into the quaint and cozy front-of-house and spending quite a bit of time perusing the menu. We managed to arrive at a challenging and difficult consensus with the following order:
- Slow braised Pork Hocks in house-special sauce.- Stewed minced Pork in special herb & spice marinade on rice
- Iconic House Special Noodles with minced Pork, marinated Egg and Prawn
- Special whole marinated Abalone on shell
- Drunken ShaoXing wine head-on Shrimps
- Traditional ‘3-Cup’ Chicken in sizzling hot-pot
- Fried mince Pork and mashed Taro cubes
- Taiwanese sweet pickled Kim-Chee Salad
- Fried Tofu cubes with Thousand Year Egg dressing
- Taiwanese fried Oyster and Bok-Choy Omelette Pancake
- Tofu, Sweet Red Beans and Tapioca Bubbles in Ginger Syrup Dessert
Overall, to most of us, there is no doubt most of the dishes were very good food but some definitely had acquired taste components! The outcome was also quite a pretty divided one, with dishes raved by my wife and son somehow fell flat when eaten and being judged by me. The minced pork rice, noodles and oyster omelet being prime examples. Conversely, the pork hock and shrimp dishes which I enjoyed and found interesting only got luke-warm receptions from them.
However, we unanimously agreed that the Kim-Chee Salad, Marinated Abalone, Fried Taro Cubes and Tofu dessert were standouts and absolutely delicious.
As for THE dish with the acquired taste, no doubt most of you would have guessed it belongs to the ‘Fried Tofu with Thousand Year Egg dressing’!
In conclusion, this establishment definitely possessed quite a wide range of interesting, unique and exotic offerings worthy of further exploration and return visits.
