With a couple of Dim-Sum loving foodie friends visiting me from ‘sans good Chinese food’ Austria. Based on pre-Covid experiences and recent pointers from relatives, I took them to one of GTA’s supposedly top tier Dim Sum house for a much anticipated and long overdue DS lunch.
We arrived at the restaurant on time, stunned to see waiting, would-be patrons, forming an outside line spilling out onto the car park! Even with connection to the front-of-house manager and armed with advanced reservation, wait time for our table was still a whopping half hour!
After some long and eye-popping perusal of the huge and varied menu, we greedily ended up with the following selection:
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Prawns and Greens Cheung-Fun Rice Roll…decent, transparent wrapper, not too thick. Crunchy prawns. Acceptable.
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Baked Pineapple BBQ Pork Bun…Disappointing! Tasted fine but too much bread dough and too stingy filling.
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Fried Taro Croquette…long anticipated. Slowly disappearing from most menus due to labour intensive preparation. Crunchy, crispy and pillowy Taro shell encasing delicious, juicy filling. Nice!
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Pan fried Turnip Cake…A decent product.
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Dan-Dan spicy soup noodle…Chewy, al-dente noodle. Sadly, broth
was too watery and under-seasoned. Borderline pass! -
Miniature ‘Harm-Sui-Gork’ chewy dumpling…Too greasy for my
liking. Tasty but stingy filling. Again, too much dough! -
Steamed giant ‘Har-Gow’ on ‘Sheung-Tong’ broth…Gimmicky but
pretty delicious. Crunchy prawn filling. Skin wrapper thick and
easily disintegrated! A no-no in my book! -
Pan fried Beef short-ribs in honey-pepper glaze…Tough, over-
cooked, inedible! Total failure! -
Fried Squid Tentacles in 5 spice salt seasoning…Passable but
under-seasoned! -
’ CUTE Little Chicks '…a trio of gimmicky lotus seed, red bean cookies and Coconut/Mango desserts. Just Okay! Not worth the price tag!
Overall, considering this popular restaurant is ranked as one of the top-tier Dim Sum establishment in town. Our luncheon experience was a disappointment with ’ nothing to write home about ’ offerings. Residing in a neighbourhood that is surrounded by top-quality Dim sum places…Yu_Seafood, O’Mei, My Wonderful Kitchen, Yang’s, Oriental Bistro, Kingsfield Fine Cuisine…to name a few…not to mention Skyview fusion, Providential 9 and Casa Victoria, a short drive down the road. In light of their inconsistent and sub-par offering, I guess for Dim sum, I will be giving ‘The One’ a pass for the foreseeable future!
PS: In closing, the most impressive part of our visit happened to be our noticing a tank full of rare LIVE Floridian strawberry Grouper…Great steamed whole with premium top-soy sauce, julienne ginger and scallions. But, at a price-tag of over $120 a pound, guess they will be savoured by Tycoons and not commoner like myself?! Ha!
