And let’s hope this one charges the prices on the menu! The Gerrard one overcharged me on 3 different items (yes, I’m obsessive and check my Bill).
2 Likes
The owners of Congee Queen is opening up a new restaurant at Don Mills & Barber Greene Rd., called The Queen Seafood Cuisine. It’s in the same plaza where Pho Anh Vu recently opened. They expect to open this week, maybe as soon as tomorrow. Expect it to be a higher end restaurant than Congee Queen.
4 Likes
Sammarco opens May 7 - menu prices are eye watering ($78 fettuccine!)
https://sammarco.ca/
2 Likes
There’s also a risotto for $78.
3 Likes
Fettuccine with parm and butter for 78 is quite funny. My family has eaten thousands of dollars worth of the stuff over the past year if that’s the going rate.
2 Likes
Italian food must have some great marketing behind it and Toronto seems to eat it all up seeing the popularity of Italian restaurants (even sub-par ones). Other cuisines have some more labour-intensive dishes but are relegated as cheap eats by a lot of diners. Personally I find it hard to justify choosing Italian nowadays when eating out seeing I can easily buy some premium ingredients and make it myself at home.
2 Likes
What?!? What kind of premium products included? LOL
1 Like
Eh, you get a Michelin star, you get to charge what you like. Some people actually use that guide like its a bible.
Radici Project is an Italian-Japanese restaurant that recently opened in Little Italy. Italian-Japanese is to my knowledge not a common fusion (at least not as common as, say, French-Japanese), so we found this to be an interesting try. The husband (Emiliano) is the Italian chef and wife Kayo is Japanese who manages the front of the house.
They have both à la carte and 9-course tasting menus. We ordered from the former since we weren’t too hungry. I have uploaded the à la carte menu (see attached).
The appetizer we ordered was the Karaange which was fried chicken stuffed with potato. Interesting, pretty good. Second course was the Pappardelle which was not that inspiring but solidly good pasta.
Our main was the Pickerel Crispy Skin fish which was the best dish of the night. Emiliano said this was cooked using Japanese technique that allowed for the skin to be super crispy but the fish meat to be soft & tender. We thought that was accomplished.
Dessert was the Mild Honey Pollen Chamomile. It was quite unique, good and not very sweet, which my wife liked but I would’ve preferred a little sweeter.
Overall, it was a good experience worth trying. On our next visit, we will try the tasting menu.
4 Likes
Radici sounds great.
There had been an Italian Japanese brunch café on Harbord Street in the space where Dreyfus is now located, in 2019. I really enjoyed it. I went 3 or 4 times.
1 Like
Ooh veg options. Nice!
2 Likes
Quick update: we went to The Queen (Don Mills / Lawrence) for dim sum. Business was good, it 12:30pm on Thursday, it was full. Inside decor was spacious and modern, quite nice and pleasant.
Apparently, some of the staff (including chefs) were from Casa Imperial (which is currently renovating). We stopped going to Casa Imperial about a decade ago because the food had deteriorated, but the dim sum at The Queen was worse. For example, the siu mai (which is about as typical dim sum as you can get) tasted not authentic. It didn’t taste like siu mai. Also, I note the food arrived within about 5 min after we put the order in, hence clearly was prepared in advance. Not uncommon but this is supposedly high end.
We have not been there for dinner but we have 2 friends/family who did go and in both cases they reported in the negative. Not good.
Congee Wong had always been unremarkable but solid, so we were hoping for much better from The Queen which is supposedly targeted more upmarket. Maybe it’s because it’s too new (opened only a few weeks). Maybe it was a bad day for them. Maybe the head chef was off. Regardless, there are better options elsewhere.
2 Likes
Sad to say! After a couple of disastrous meals at ’ Congee Queen ', with some badly executed cooked and BBQ meat dishes that were nothing like its former self… as well some lousy service from some ’ green ’ staffs, I have decided to stop visiting this chain.
’ Mr, Congee ’ …both Hwy#7 & Kennedy and Yonge & Weldrick are both WAY BETTER!!
1 Like
Stevey was writing about “The Queen” … not Congee Queen …
Bad food but good business and full? LOL
The dim sum service that was at this location during Covid for takeout was quite good. To bad this new restaurant does not measure up.
Oh! My bad! I saw he mentioned ’ Congee Wong ’ in the same sentence and subconsciously assumed that.
Anyways, my comment on Congee Queen still stands!
ME South East Asian Cuisine.…East Wilmort & Leslie, Richmond Hill.
Very good ‘Beef Randang’ - Authentic tasting, melt-in-the-mouth tender.
Singapore Laksa - Again excellent, very authentic tasting…similar to what I had in Singapore.
Could be the effect of soft opening? During my lunch time visit, even with two large tables ( total 10 patrons ) and one small table ( 2 patrons ) occupied, the three front-of-house staff were in panic mode!!..leaving out orders and dashing in and out of kitchen looking lost!
Better to give them a week or two to settle down and work out
the kinks?!
2 Likes
Thanks cakumadesu, yes this is a review of The Queen, which is newly opened by the owners of Congee Queen (but more upscale than Congee Queen), thus my bad too since I should’ve said Congee Queen, not Congee Wong!
1 Like
