Starchiva Cuisine, E Beaver Creek, Richmond Hill “ - Another day, another out-of-town guest, another venue!
Our original preferred venues for this event were either ‘ The One Fusion ‘ or ‘ Skyview Fusion ‘. Unfortunately, they were both fully booked for a private wedding banquet function as well as being a busy Saturday evening. Based on past history, food quality and convenience of location, we decided to give ‘ Starchiva ‘ a courageous try.
The overall dining experience package of food, service and decor was decent and satisfactory. However, when compared to our experience at ‘The One‘ a few days ago, a point-by-point comparison clearly reflects Starchiva’s slight weakness and shortcomings, both in terms of food and service execution. The most glaring deficiency was clearly in the area of stir fry related dishes, where the desired, prerequisite Maillard reaction ( aka Wok-Hay ) was sadly lacking.
Another ‘mysterious‘ incident also occurred to one of our pre-ordered dishes - ‘ Sha-Tin style Roasted Pigeon ‘. Specific instruction was given to serve the two pigeons in ‘ halve ‘ - 4 segments! As such, we expect the size of all 4 halves to be fairly close and identical. However, for some unknown reason, three of the halves were plump and perfectly cooked whilst one of the halves was clearly way smaller and overcooked! The chef doing a ‘ switcheroo ‘ on us?
Menu for our party of 5 consisted of the following dishes:
- Stir fried Razor Clams with yellowing chives and mixed greens
- Stir fried Floridian Yellow Fin Grouper filet with wild mushrooms
- Sweet and Sour Pork
- Sha-Tin style Roasted Pigeons ( per-ordered )
- Stir fried Morning Glory with julienne chilli and fermented bean curd.
Complimentary desserts of Sago dessert soup, Mango pudding and Cookies
To be fair, a few dishes were quite exemplary, both in taste and finish. The Razor clams were cooked perfectly. The ultra crispy Sweet and Sour Pork nicely seasoned and balanced with just the correct sweet and tanginess ratio. Besides my ‘dwarf‘ pigeon half, the rest of the birds were all tasty, plump and juicy with crispy skin!
