Eating @ Yu Garden

12:59 PM

From the world of Instagram postings, there were pictures of a giant dim sum with a straw sticking out. I was curious about where this dish was coming from. Found out that "Yu Garden" was the restaurant supplying these dishes and this place wasn't too far from work. I thought I completely exhausted any new good restaurants in the area ... I was totally wrong. Found out that "Yu Garden" was the first restaurant in Canada from Nanxiang Steamed Bun Restaurant, a famous eatery located in the old Chinese district of Shanghai. I convinced a few colleagues to come and try out this restaurant today. It was located in the same plaza as Loblaws on Hwy 7 and Bayview.

Food Rating: 4/5
Service: 3.5

Atmosphere: The decor was modern with dark leather chairs and black tables but also with chandelier lights and wood decor. Very modern and clean looking restaurant.

Service: Service was standard for a Chinese restaurant. We used a mix of English and Cantonese languages and the servers responded fine. Had no issues flagging the servers for the bill at the end.

Menu Link (got a copy from the restaurant)

Food: Did some initial Yelp research about what dishes to get. In the end, we ordered the following:

Minced Pork Steamed Bun ($7)
Crab Roe Soup in Steamed Bun (with drinking straw) ($8)
Pan Seared Pork Dumpling ($7)
Deep Fried Pastry with Cashew Nut ($7)
Onion Pancake Filled with Beef ($6.5)
Shanghai Fried Soft Rice Cake ($13)

The signature dish of this meal was the Onion Pancake Filled with Beef. I had tried many versions of this across many restaurants and this comes in at #1. The flaky pancake with the oyster sauce with the beef was a great texture combination (not overly sweet or salty). The Shanghai Fried Soft Rice Cake was another stand out dish from the restaurant. The dish was simple by design & ingredients but had complex flavours! The soup dumplings ("xiao long bao") were very good and rivaled the versions found at Northern Dumpling. The skin was thin and had a lot of hot soup inside (so be-careful when eating).

The cashew nut pastry dessert was great with the soft filling of cashew nut, sugar, peanut filling contrasting with the external crispy shell.

The disappointing dish for lunch was the crab roe soup in steam bun. The crab roe soup was pretty bland. There was a lot of soup (which you can use the straw to drink from), but lacked flavour and seasoning. I wouldn't order this again.

Would I come back? Yes.

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