Currently, here in the GTA, finding restaurants that offer authentic and great tasting Taiwanese food are few and far between.
Nevertheless, nestled inside an obscure strip plaza at the corner of Yonge and Elgin Mills, one would find the welcoming addition of this new kid on the block that might fill the void. Offering a parade of simple, well made, tasty and authentic Taiwanese fare. These creations are not the elaborate dishes normally found in elegant upscale eateries. But rather, comforting, humble and rustic types pseudo street-food….highlighting bold and intense flavour and texture profile commonly found insideTaiwan cities’ family owned hole-in-the-wall places or night-markets.
Our party of 4 settled in the brightly lit and casual front-of-house and was then welcomed by a couple smiling, friendly, multi-lingual lady servers. Attentive, helpful and easy to communicate with, their warm and cordial demeanor was a pleasing beacon of hospitality, a scarcity in this age of bad service!
Focusing mainly on tapas like small portion dishes for sharing. Our choices of dishes were simple, well made, delectable, good value and cannot be flawed…..except….!
To our surprise, we were un-expectedly let-down by their week-end-only, limited edition, Xia Long Bao special! Perfectly formed wrappers were sadly spoiled by a dense, overly lean and underseasoned pork filling. The broth is also a touch underwhelming. Otherwise, the rest of our meal was genuinely enjoyable and commendable.
We had:
Traditional braised minced pork rice ( authentic, well seasoned and flavourful )
Red braised beef with noodles ( amazingly tender beef, delicate, complex soup! )
Pickled Mustard greens ( sweet, zesty and spicy; a Taiwanese specialty )
Fried minced fish sticks ( chewy and addictive )
Deep fried Taiwanese style pork chop ( crispy, moist, tender and greaseless )
Fried Oyster Omelette ( Delightful night market specialty. Gooey texture)
Braised minced pork sticky rice ( interesting texture and homey taste )
Xiao Long Bao ( disappointing! See above )
On our way out, we also noticed a few unique and attractive Taiwanese/House specialties ( Tea smoked duck; Smoked fried Conger Eel… ) posted on a stealthy positioned black board located behind the bar counter. Definitely worth checking out for!
With so many attractive sounding dishes being paraded on a diverse menu and yearning to be tried, this is one place definitely worthy of a few more exploratory return visits!
