Eating With Gordon

I work around the Hwy 7 and Leslie Street area for many many years ... I have seen a lot of restaurants come and go very quickly. Commerce Gate plaza is such a great example of this model. You only have to look at the corner restaurants at that plaza - remember Dow's Noodles and Little Sheep Hotpot? There are many offices in the area and people always demand the best (taste/cost performance metric). Also, we try to budget 1 hour for lunch and less.

Here are a list of my favourite lunch restaurants in no particular order:

• Haru
• Restoran Malaysia - MONDAY CLOSED - Bring Cash!
• Golden Pheonix 
• Northern Dumpling
• Mei Nung Beef Noodle House
• Loha's Cafe - CLOSED
• Kiku - BUFFET - so order fast!
• Pho 88 - fast meal 

Random Food Photo:

Singapore Laksa from Restoran Malaysia - the best!

I love Taiwanese food including bubble tea and shaved ice. For the longest time, I couldn't find a good shave ice restaurant in Toronto. I found Cha Me Cha long ago on foodie websites and have visited this place a few times. This post is my review/comments of Cha Me Cha.

Food: 3/5
Service: 1/5 (Horrible!)
Pricing: $10-15 per person

Atmosphere:
Located semi on the 2nd floor of the Kennedy T&T shopping plaza. There seems to be always a line up for people to get in. From initial observations, this restaurant can seat about 30-40 max.

Food:
The food here is so so at best. I had better Taiwanese dishes at Papa Chang, Loha's Cafe and Mama Bears. The positions are smaller in comparison to the other restaurants. I'm willing to admit that I adore the shaved ice at this restaurant and nothing more.

Service:
I always constantly see new staff which suggest to me high turn over rates. The staff always seem to be scrambling around like headless chickens. On one occasion, the staff completely forgot my meal order completely. We even got staff to talk back to us about not changing your mind on what to order and the same staff coming back later to reveal - "we ran out of this on the menu". WTF? Cannot even maintain basic cooking ingredients? 

Would I come back? Maybe if I was desperate for shaved ice!

Food Photos: 

Address:	8333 Kennedy Rd #1078, Markham, ON L3R 4P8
Phone:	(905) 470-8836
Website:	www.chamecha.com/
Hours:	Wednesday 12–12PM Thursday 12–12PM Friday 12–12PM Saturday 12–12PM Sunday 12–12PM Monday 12–12PM Tuesday 12–12PM
Map:

My work place is very close to Hwy 7. I was always curious about this restaurant, It's a Bao time, since the former Go for Tea restaurant/drink house was split into two restaurants. On this day, a few colleagues agreed to venture to this establishment in the Hwy 7 area.

Food: 2.5/5
Service: 3/5
Pricing: $15 per person

Atmosphere:
Seating is like a cafeteria style. Just grab some seats and wait for your orders (10 - 20 minutes). The backdrop is very colourful and decorative. The restaurant is very quiet with no music.

Food:
There is basically like 1 cashier and a long line will form if there are many customers.  On this visit, I ordered the following:

• Korean beef Bulgogi with Banh Mi - $6.89
• Taro Chips - $3

The menu can be found here. I like my order of the korean beef bulgogi with the crunchy french baguette. Many of the flavours went well together. The taro chips were disappointed and lightly salted. There were some parts that were just burnt.  The other comments from colleagues were that the sandwiches were too saucy and not about the filling. They vowed to never return again.

Would I return again? Probably not. We had to wait like 30 minutes for our meal and it wasn't that busy...

Food Photos:

Liked the Korean bulgogi ban mi

Taro chips weren't that good

 

You feel like you are eating sauce

Non Food Photos:

Address:	230 Commerce Valley Dr E #2a, Markham, ON L3T 7Y3
Phone:	(905) 771-8866
Website:	http://www.itsabaotime.ca/
Hours:	Wednesday 12–8PM Thursday 12–8PM Friday 12–8PM Saturday 12–8PM Sunday 12–8PM Monday 12–8PM Tuesday 12–8PM
Map:

Other colleagues at my workplace suggested Haru for some time. By chance, another colleague today suggested that we try out this restaurant, "Haru" and we agreed. It's located up in Richmond Hill directly across the "World Bowl" plaza. This plaza is very quiet and has lots of parking spaces along the perimeter of this plaza. Another restaurant at this plaza is Bali.

Food: 4/5
Service: 4.5/5
Pricing: $9 - $15 (Lunch)

Atmosphere: 
It was a very quiet Tuesday in this restaurant. The decor looks kind of upscale with the nice wood theme through the restaurant. Seating can probably fit 20-30 people at max. Judging from the signs on the wall ("No split bills for Thursday and Friday lunch"), a lot of patrons ask for split bills. In addition, there are more signs on how to manage your children (not to run, etc). Tea was served quickly and Korean waitresses were quick for ordering.  There is free wifi with the account "Haru" with password as their phone number.

Food:
Waited about 15 minutes for the order but they came all at once. I ordered LC Sushi 09 - Lunch Combo Sushi 9 => 7 sushi pieces with Spicy Salmon roll. It was really everything I had expected and tasted good. There was a side salad dish with miso soup. Tasted normal to my expectations (good texture and no smell). Dessert came with this lunch combo and I requested Green Tea ice cream. The servers served a single green tea scoop and it was a perfect way to end the meal to cool the spicy salmon. I wouldn't mind coming back to try their other dishes.


Food Photos:

Udon Noodle combo

Tempura Shrimp and  Yam

Salad and Miso Soup

Dragon roll with 7 pieces of sushi

 

My spicy salmon roll with 7 sushi pieces

 

Green Tea ice cream (other options include red bean and mango)

Non Food Photos:



 



Address:  10 East Wilmot Street, Richmond Hill, ON L4B 1G9
Phone: (289) 597-2136
Website: http://www.harusushi.ca/

Hours:

Map:

Found this place online via comments from other toronto food bloggers. This restaurant is called "Xiao Long Bao" - in reference to the soup dumpling that explodes when you bit into it. Other foodies have noted that this restaurant is the sister restaurant of Ding Tai Fung (not to be confused with the famous restaurant chain in Taiwan).



Food:3.5/5
Service:4.5/5
Price: $10-20 per person

Link for Second Visit Follow Up


Atmosphere:
The decor of the restaurant is very clean and a lot of light with the use of mirrors on one side of the wall with a lot of natural light from the windows (2 sides of the restaurant). There are lots of small and large tables. There is a small waiting area with seats at the entrance. At the other end of the corner of the restaurant, there is an open display window where customers can view the kitchen staff making fresh dumpling dishes.

Food:
The menu is in English and Chinese with pictures. Everybody gets their own dish of ginger to mix with vinegar. For this visit, we ordered the following dishes:

• Seafood Soup Dumpings (inside is veg, shrimp, scallots) 
• Wonton Soup (no noodles)
• Rice with Mince Meat
• Meat Pies

I liked the wonton soup. The wontons are very large and filled with chives, onions and minced meats (pork). The seafood soup dumplings where a huge disappointment. There was no soup explosion ... Totally regret ordering this more expensive version of the dumplings. The signature dish of the meal was the 3 meat pies. They were full of hot meat juices and oil inside. I wished there was more available.

Would I come back again? Probably yes.

Food Photos:





Non Food Photos:





Address: 175 Commander Blvd #1, Scarborough, ON M1S
Phone:   (416) 291-0123
Website: http://xiaolongbao.ca/

Hours:

Map:

By some strange fate, I was checking xiaoeat's blogs and discovered that this Gourmet Malaysia was also strongly recommended. After more cross-checking on Yelp and other blogger websites, I was more convinced to visit this. Lastly, my wife's coworkers suggested a restaurant that was really good for Malaysian food since they originated from there - located somewhere on Sheppard East and Brimley. Was it the same restaurant,  "Gourmet Malaysia" ? YES! Historical records online revealed  that this restaurant used to be located in a food court long ago.

Food:4/5
Service:4/5
Price: $10-20 per person, depends on the dishes

Atmosphere:
The style of the restaurants feels semi cafeteria. There are rows of tables and chairs closed together. There are table booth seats along the the windows; however, these seats are very popular. There really seems to be no theme to the decor of the restaurant. Any colour is thrown into the mix of the restaurant. There is an art gallery display at one end of the restaurant while there is a mini Malaysia supermarket near the bar counter selling exotic sauces, ingredients and frozen durians (from Thailand).

Food:
After some initial research, wife and I decided to order the following dishes:

• Crispy Butter Prawns - $13.99
• Hainan Rice - $2.50
• Roti Cannai (Beef) - $8.99

The food came really fast - within 5-10 minutes. I heard from other sources that when this restaurant used to be in the food court, you had to wait 30 minutes! Crispy Butter Prawns - Firstly, the prawns themselves, fried with the heads on, tender, full of flavour and very crispy. So good that you can eat the whole fried prawn. There is a ton of that egg string topping on the dish. They were little and crispy which adds another level to the dish.  Roti Cannai - Roti with beef curry - one of the best dishes I ever had. The roti was fried with butter and flaky with many layers.  It was a perfect match with the beef curry. Sadly, I wanted more curry but the portions were small. Hainan Rice - this rice was totally infused the chicken flavours. My go to place for this dish is at Restoran Malaysia. It was just so delicious to eat by itself. I definitely need to visit again to try more dishes!

Food Photos:

Crispy Butter Prawns!

Beef Curry with Roti - not enough curry!

Hainan Rice - so good!

Non Food Photos:






Address: 4466 Sheppard Ave E #101, Scarborough, ON M1S 1V2

Phone: (647) 764-1188

Website: http://gourmetmalaysia.ca/

Hours:

Monday	11AM–10:30PM
Tuesday	11AM–10:30PM
Wednesday	11AM–10:30PM
Thursday	11AM–10:30PM
Friday	11AM–11:30PM
Saturday	11AM–11:30PM
Sunday	11AM–11PM

Map:

Lunch Review:
To my disappointment, this All You Can Eat restaurant isn't all you can eat at lunch time. AYCE is only available on weekends and weekday evenings ... Before of this, I expected lunch time to be quite deserted and it was ...

Arrived around 12pm and found many seats available. The pricing for the lunch menu is above average for First Markham Place (FMP) restaurants but I'm willing to spend for this place just to try it out. Food is above average but kind of expensive.

Food: 4/5
Service: 4/5
Price: $15/person

Food Photos:

I got Pork Katsu bento box - good and filling

ghost restaurant at lunch time

so empty