Historicist: Life in Wartime
Elsewhere in the Ist-a-Verse
If there's one defining quality of being a major metropolis, a "world class city" if you will, it is undoubtedly having a hockey team that despite having tons of money and a psychotically loyal fanbase can never win the championship. CORRECTION! It is undoubtedly having heaps of access to cheap Chinese food, preferably of the all-you-can-eat dinner buffet variety.
Sure, you can go to any old strip mall and there's even odds there will be a Pick-N-Mix inside it. But going to a Pick-N-Mix is like going to a McDonald's for a hamburger - there is no adventure to be found! There is never the thrill of eating Shanghai noodles that may or may not have been shoelaces, there is never the occasional thought popping into your head of whether the spicy BBQ pork is, in fact, actually pork, and there is most certainly never the thrill of eating a dish that actually turns out to be tasty and delicious. This is because in addition to being boring, Pick-N-Mix also sucks the bag.
One such establishment I recently tried out is the imaginatively named Yonge Street Chinese Restaurant, located at 1290 Yonge Street (north of Davisville). The YSCR, in addition to being a cheap buffet place, also does freshly made dim sum and makes all their own desserts fresh - but I'm not here for that. I'm here for the buffet, baby.
The only real way to grade a cheap Chinese buffet is to try as many of the dishes served as possible and then go pass/fail on each. If the restaurant serves up more winners than losers - congratulations! You may actually want to eat here again, possibly even when sober!
So:
Black Bean Beef: Solid black bean sauce. Veggies nicely cooked - still firm and crunchy but not too raw. Beef not amazing, but not objectionable either. PASS.
General Tso Chicken: Passable chicken. Sauce a bit too sweet, not spicy enough. Vegetables overdone. FAIL.
Spring Rolls: Unfortunately, like most cheap buffet places, the YSCR alternates daily between egg rolls and spring rolls - and egg rolls hold up a lot better underneath heat-lamps than spring rolls do. Spring rolls get mushy and limp. Like these spring rolls. They're not bad tasting, implying that originally they probably would have been quite okay before put under the heat lamp for two hours, but... FAIL.
Spicy BBQ Pork: Absolutely horrible. Bland sauce, gristly, unappetizing pork, vegetables limp and soggy. FAIL.
Chicken Balls: I know, I know - how can you grade chicken balls? But you can - these chicken balls, unlike some, have decent-quality chicken in them. And the batter's okay. PASS.
Steamed Rice: Nice and sticky. PASS.
Spicy Eggplant: I hate eggplant, but the sauce is really nice. PASS, if you like eggplant. I hope you people appreciate that I am SUFFERING FOR JOURNALISM here!
Sweet And Sour Pork: Pleasantly caramelized sauce on the pork, which for some reason is much better than the pork in the spicy BBQ dish. Veggies nicely done too. PASS.
Curry Chicken: A mix of unboned chicken and boneless chicken is not something I enjoy discovering on my third bite. Furthermore, the curry sauce is wimpy and does not even make me shed a single tear in spicy pain. FAIL.
"Golden Fried Potatoes": Alternately known as "hash browns fried in sesame oil." Which actually is just as good as it sounds. Delicious, cooked just right, and the sesame flavouring is fantastic with the potato. Probably very bad for me though. PASS.
Shanghai Noodles: Rubbery and overcooked. Lots of onions, though. I like onions. But those noodles - man. FAIL.
Steamed Vegetable Medley: It's a steamed vegetable dish. What do you want me to say? They put vegetables in a steamer and steam them. There is literally no skill involved in making steamed vegetables. PASS.
Lemon Chicken: Excellent chicken, nice breading, good sweet lemon sauce that isn't overpowering, and the vegetables are just right. PASS.
My free fortune cookie: "A friend is a soul shared with another body." First off, that's mangling the popular cliche, and second, it did not tell me my future even slightly! What a gyp! FAIL.
So, by my count that's 8 good and 5 bad, so the Yonge Street Chinese Restaurant wins! I celebrate their win with a package of their homemade sesame cookies, which are excellent (they also make butter and peanut cookies, as well as a very sweet mango pudding). And I am alive, for I have tasted adventure. Admittedly, adventure in the form of cheap Chinese food. But adventure nonetheless.
Other stuff you should know: Open seven days a week. Small buffet dinner $4.99, large $5.99, all-you-can-eat $7.99. Dim sum meals range from $8-12. Licensed.
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Interesting. I live just up the street from this place and never see anyone in there. I've contemplated checking it out, but was too afraid. Thanks to your fearlessness, I may give it a go. But if I die, I'm coming after you!
Erm, by 'if I die', I mean, if I get really sick. You'd be home-free if I actually died. ;)
this is such a fun review - thanks! exactly the kind of light-hearted stuff that makes going to a blog worthwhile. sanctimony-free! wait..i can hear the tappy-tap of people pointing out that this isn't authentic chinese food. really? and mars bars aren't authentic martian food you say?.....
Yeah, Chinese buffet has definitely become its own culinary genre.
I've never even heard of Pick-n-Mix.
"Pick-n-mix" I love it! There's good "Pick-n-mix" but they're all in Chinatown I believe. I'm trying to remember this Taiwanese bakery that has the best lunch boxes....
Okay, the best of the disturbingly-cheap Chinese buffets in the downtown is Asean (or Asian, depending on which sign you go by) Restaurant, at the southeast corner of College and Spadina. It's $6.95 all day Monday through Saturday, and only $6 on Sunday (it used to be $5, but they raised it in the past few months). The food is better than you'd expect, and the marinated tofu in particular is delicious, as are the "Chinese pancakes." Over the past couple of years, they've also been rotating through an interesting selection of chili oils placed on each table. Plus, they're licensed to sell disturbingly-cheap beer.
Another insanely cheap, and possibly better, Chinese restaurant (albeit not a buffet) is Happy Valley on Cumberland, just west of Yonge. They're only open on weekdays at lunch and in the afternoon, but there is no other Chinese place in this city in which you get more food for $5 flat, including tax. The $5 lunch combo includes rice or noodles plus three items of your choice and a soup, the portions of all of which are crazy. The selection's not bad, and they have good dumplings and suprisingly solid hot and sour soup. The greatest thing of all about the place, however, is that they let you garnish your own meal with as much Chinese parsley (aka fresh coriander) as you want, although they tend to run out after lunchtime.
I had my first, and last, Chinese pancake in Japan. Gack.
mmm, cheap chinese. Why do I even cook?
Gack...t?
Where is this Taiwanese bakery that you speak of Boy Reporter?