Dim Sum traditional Carts

My friend Joanne and I wanted to go for some old school traditional Dim Sum which the carts that roam around the room with various dim sum dishes so we decided to go to Dim Sum King on a Saturday afternoon just around the time of Chinese New Year.

Dim Sum King has a massive room with round tables and it is located on the upper level in the Dundas West area of Chinatown.  You can kind of tell when the Dim Sum is authentic when the clientele is mostly Chinese.  Two white girls kind of stick out in a place like this but we like good food so we joined the packed restaurant for some traditional Dim Sum dishes.  

When we first arrived we were seated at a table by the wall just under a vent so it was really cold so we asked to be moved and they seated us at the back of the room on an elevated area.  I thought it would be great since it was a bit away from the crowd but then we realized because it was elevated the carts couldn't come to out table so they would stop at the edge of the platform and just either show us 1 thing or point.  I am pretty sure we missed some dishes because of this and I am also pretty sure the Asian men that were sitting at the table close to the edge got much better service than we did.

After our meal we waited a long time to get our bill and found out that they lost it so we had to wait and then we finally paid it and left.  Hmmm think they forgot about us...  

I have to say that although service is quick it's not always the best in a lot of these Dim Sum restaurants.  One time I went to a Dim Sum restaurant similar to this one and was with a group of very diverse people but the server would only go to the 1 Asian man in our group.  I have a few Asian friends and I think the next time I go for Dim Sum I will get them to come too and see if the service is better.  So my recommendation is to bring your Asian friends with you to make sure you get served well.   

But anyway most of the food was excellent.

The Har Gow - Shrimp Dumplings were great but you had to ask for hot sauce or mustard sauce to go with it.

These stuffed Jalapenos were really flavourful.

I think it was the first time my friend had this Cheung Fun and it was good but not as good as Susur Lee's.

These fried pork and veg dumpling was great too.

I really like these deep fried pork dumplings because they are sweet and savoury.  I think this was the first time my friend tried these too.

These dumplings were also made with flaky pastry and filled with a sweet meat filling.  I enjoyed these a lot.

This disappointing dishes were the BBQ pork which was tough and not that flavourful but since we only had a couple of pieces I decided to take it to work and use it as a soup stock base and that was a much better use of it as it turned my soup into a great BBQ pork flavoured comforting soup.

I like Turnip cake since it's kind of an unusual thing to find and I never make turnip at home, but this one was not very good at all.  It had a rubbery texture and even though they are generally dense and kind of glutinous they aren't rubbery, so this one didn't hit the mark and was kind of bland too.  Skip this one and get it somewhere else.

Overall the food was good and the value was good too.  All of the dishes came out to roughly $60 and the tea is included.

I would probably recommend going with a group of people to get the best experience so that you can try a lot of different dishes and everyone would have different tastes so you would get great value and probably better service too.

Grab your friends and family and have a weekend Dim Sum outing if you have never done it.  Dim Sum King is good but if you want some Dim Sum that is a bit more elevated I would recommend going to Luckee at the Soho Hotel or Lai Wah Heen inside the Doubletree Hilton Hotel.

Sustainable Dim Sum Festival 2018

Event:  Sustainable Dim Sum Festival

Date:  March 6, 2018

Location:  Rotunda at Toronto City Hall 

I had the pleasure of attending the SUSTAINABLE DIM SUM FESTIVAL again at City Hall recently.  It's a fun little festival full of creative Dim Sum from some of the Top restaurants and chefs in Toronto.  

It's a fun event where you pay one price and get a passport, chopsticks and a glass for the beverages and with the passport you go around to each station and they stamp your passport and give you one of their dishes.

It was great to see my friend Matt Dean Pettit there with his Mattys Seafood Brand serving up his crab dip on crackers.

I didn't try all of the different dim sum dishes because I was at another event before hand but I tried 

Some of the participating Vendors included Kanpai Snack Bar, Daniel et Daniel Catering, Earlscourt BBQ,  Centennial College, Just Craft soda paired with Northern Temple Vodka and Bar Reyna and more Breweries and wineries also participated.  I didn't keep the passport so I don't remember everyone but there were about a dozen vendors.  There is also an artist on hand painting during the event and it's pretty fun wandering around and finding out what each one is serving because they take sustainability into consideration in the products they use to create their dim sum dishes.

Kanpai Snack Bar Pork & Cricket Dumpling

Earlscourt BBQ Pork Spring Roll

Daniel et Daniel shrimp and sweet potato bun

Seared Tuna

YUM! It's time for Sustainable Dim Sum

Sustainable Dim Sum Festival

Tuesday March 6^th, 2018
6:30pm-9:30pm

Rotunda - City Hall

Includes all dim sum items and all beverage

TICKETS ON SALE HERE:   DIM SUM Festival

Overfishing is the biggest issue our oceans face today. 

At this event, you can fill up and feel good doing it! 

Making this event possible are: Live Green Toronto, Yorkshire Valley Farms, Greenbelt Microgreens, Export Packers, C-fu Foods, Biosposables, Terus, Bullfrog Power, and Ocean Wise Conservation Association   

Restaurants are serving Ocean Wise recommended seafood at this event.

Guests will receive a passport to try each item from one of the restaurants!

Pair your Dim Sum items with local and independent wines, beers and ciders, all in support of Environmental Defence; defending clean water, a safe climate, and healthy communities. 

Vendors include:
Bar Reyna
Beau's All Natural Brewing
Bindia Indian Bistro
Brickworks Ciderhouse
Centennial College
Daniel et Daniel Catering & Events
Earls Court BBQ
Foodoes Fish & Chips 
Foreign Affair Winery
Globe Meats Fresh Market & Grill
Just Craft Soda
Kanpai Snack Bar
Kinsip House of Fine Spirits
Matty's Seafood
Mill St Brewing
Muskoka Brewery
Nickel 9 Distillery
Pure Spirits Oyster House & Grill
The Combine Norfolk
Tung Hing Bakery
Walter Caesar
and more....

Don't miss the live art being created by Artist Mark Grice. 

Bid on the piece and you could go home with a one of a kind painting created that night!

www.markgricetheartist.weebly.com 

BRING YOUR OWN PLATE or use our compostable options! 

Each guest will receive a pair of reusable bamboo chopsticks as a take home.

THIS IS A BECK TAXI SPONSORED EVENT. BECK TAXIS WILL BE ON HAND TO GET YOU HOME SAFE. 
PLEASE DRINK RESPONSIBLY

Toronto's Sustainable Dim Sum Festival

Sustainable Food has become a top of mind thing lately because at the rate we are consuming our food sources we will run out of food to serve the World by 2020.  We must find other ways to sustain our food industry.

I was happy to attend the 1st Sustainable Dim Sum Festival at Toronto's City Hall on March 8th.  It took place in the Rotunda of City Hall it was kind of fun walking around the large column in the centre of City Hall with a passport in hand trying all of the various foods with a sustainable aspect to them.  Whether it was a dumpling that mixed cricket powder with pork to meat and eggs provided by Organic local farms, to ingredients not used extensively.  

It wasn't all Dim Sum though, there were fantastic soups, an Asian meatball soup and a great chowder,  and from my Pork Ninja friends a meatball wrapped in bacon.  My other favourite restaurant Hawthorne Food & Drink had tea smoked devilled eggs and there was Tuna poke from Daniel et Daniel catering, they had a huge line up for their poke.

My favourite Dim Sum bites of the night included new restaurant Lake Inez's fantastic dumpling, I loved the flavour of it.  I also loved the legendary PIG MAC from Dailo.

Food Vendors:
Cafe Belong, DaiLo, Daniel et Daniel, Kana Snack Bar, Lake Inez, Hawthorne Food + Drink, Bruce Wine Bar, Saturday Dinette, Pork Ninjas, C-fu Foods, Centennial College
Meat, poultry and eggs are provided by Rowe Farms and Yorkshire Valley Farms

Beverage vendors:

401 Cidery

Beau’s All Natural Brewing Co.

Brickworks Ciderhouse

Mill St. Brewery

Muskoka Brewery

Walter Caesar

George Brown College (Mocktails)

There was also a Silent Auction and live painting.  The silent auction benefiting the Environmental Defence which all of the proceeds of the event were going to.

There was a lot of fantastic artworks on display at the event.

It was a fantastic event for the 1st Sustainable Dim Sum Festival and it was organized by experienced organizers Drink Inc. Events.   As you may know from reading many of my event posts I notice the attention to details at events and at this event I really liked that there was a free self serve coat check.  No waiting and no tickets.  They also gave you a wine glass, passport and wooden chopsticks when you arrived.  The chopsticks were for you to keep and the glasses were returned to the rental company so there wasn't a lot wasted.  There were volunteers ready to keep things tidy at the stand up tables.  The only thing I would have like to see would have been an area to sit down.  We were all dying to sit on the stairs by the column but there was limited space so I can understand why and it was only a couple of hours but it was tough juggling the wine glass, passport, plates of food and of course trying to take photos with my phone.  I think I need more hands.  

Overall it was a fantastic event and it was great to see so many local restaurants participating in creating sustainable food.  This must be the trend of the future if we want to have enough food for everyone.

For more info about sustainability:

http://environmentaldefence.ca/

New Sustainable Dim Sum Festival

LOVE DIM SUM?

LOVE THE ENVIRONMENT?

Toronto welcomes it's first Sustainable Dim Sum Festival.

Wednesday, March 8th, 2017
6:30pm-9:30pm
Rotunda - City Hall
Tickets $55 - includes all dim sum items and all beverage

In partnership with Live Green Toronto!

Make a delicious difference and support Environmental Defence!

Save your appetite and feel good about over-eating at this event! Some of the city's and province's best chefs will put their spin on delicious dim sum items using only fresh, local and sustainable ingredients from our environmentally conscious partners.

Overfishing is the biggest issue our oceans face today so all of our seafood options are Ocean Wise recommended. You can get more information about Ocean Wise at www.oceanwise.ca.

Meat, poultry and eggs are provided by Rowe Farms and Yorkshire Valley Farms.

All guests will receive a passport to try each Dim Sum item from each of our vendors!

Cafe Belong
DaiLo
Daniel et Daniel
Kana Snack Bar
Lake Inez
Hawthorne Food + Drink
Bruce Wine Bar
Saturday Dinette
Pork Ninjas
C-fu Foods
Centennial College
Meat, poultry and eggs are provided by Rowe Farms and Yorkshire Valley Farms.

Pair your dim sum items with local and independent wines, beers and ciders, all in support of Environmental Defence; defending clean water, a safe climate, and healthy communities. 

Some of our alcohol partners include:
401 Cidery
Beau’s All Natural Brewing Co.
Brickworks Ciderhouse
Mill St. Brewery
Muskoka Brewery
Walter Caesar
George Brown College (Mocktails)
And more!

Local artists will feature their "Environment-themed" works of art for auction, in order to raise money and awareness for Environmental Defence. PLUS a LIVE art installation onsite with artist Mark Grice. You don't want to miss it!

BRING YOUR OWN PLATE or use our biodegradable options! Each guest will receive a pair of reusable bamboo chopsticks as a take home.

TICKETS ON SALE NOW! 
Please note tickets will go off sale March 7th at 10pm or when they sell out (whichever happens sooner). There will NOT be tickets available at the door. Get your tickets now!

Click here for tickets: Ticketfly

BECK TAXIS WILL BE ON HAND TO GET YOU HOME SAFE. 

Rotunda - City Hall ( 100 Queen St W, Toronto ON M5H 2N2)

Dim Sum - Uptown chinatown

Skip Chinatown and head to Chinatown North

Everyone thinks that you need to either go to Chinatown in Toronto or to Richmond Hill to get good Dim Sum in the City, but on this lazy sunday I proved that you can find some better than Chinatown Dim Sum in North York.

I live in a mostly Asian centric neighbourhood in the Willowdale, North York area of the city where you can get Indian, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese, Chinese and Thai food within blocks of each different ethnic restaurant venue.  About a 5 minute drive or a couple of subway stops away from where I live are a few places that you can get Dim Sum.  I love to have Dim Sum on lazy rainy sundays because it's the kind of food that is quick and slow at the same time.  You can get a whole bunch of quickly made dishes and take your time sampling a bunch of different things and even more if you go with a bunch of friends.

I was pretty hungry and knew that I couldn't wait to meet up with one of my friends to go for Dim Sum  so I checked out NOT JUST DIM SUM on Finch Ave. West.. just west of Yonge Street in North York.  I dropped in just after the normal lunch hour or when Dim Sum is normally consumed which is fairly early in the day.  There were only a few tables with people but they seemed to enjoy what they ordered.

It's not a fancy place but I have seen much worse places in Chinatown.   I was immediately served by one quiet but efficient waitress who provided just the right amount of service needed which I appreciate.  She had tables to clear but made sure the diners were tended to first.

I pretty much knew what I wanted to order but had a look through the checklist Dim Sum menu to decide what to order.

I ordered Chinese Broccoli, I figured some greens would balance out some of the heavy carb and fried Dim Sum dishes that i knew I was going to order.

I like to order the Pan fried Radish Cake because it's something I would never make at home and I like that it's a little different and most people don't order it.

I ordered my favourite Har Gow..
 steamed shrimp dumplings.


I also ordered a Green Onion pancake, also something that is a little different and not always available at some Dim Sum places.

And lastly I ordered Glutinous Pork Deep Fried Dumplings.

A good test for Dim Sum is if there is a puddle of grease left on the plate after you have eaten something fried like the fried dumplings or the Onion Pancake then they probably don't know how to do Dim Sum properly.

The Har Gow had a delicious and lightly seasoned shrimp centre with melt in your mouth shrimp instead of what you sometimes find with rubbery shrimp and hard rice outer layer.  These Har Gow's were like little pillows of shrimp goodness.

The Green Onion Pancake had a nice green onion flavour in a light and flaky pastry dough with a nice crunch to it.

The Glutinous Pork Dumplings had a nice sweet and savoury taste and the outside was crispy while the inside was creamy and light with a hint of sweetness.  I have had these in other places and after you eat a few they can sometimes feel like oil bombs in your stomach,  these ones were cooked at the perfect temperature to make them light and not greasy but still retain the soft interior.

The Chinese Broccoli was cooked perfectly with the chlorophyl green bright and still retaining all the vitamins you want from a healthy greens dish.   There was a bowl of oyster sauce on the side and the waitress brought bowls of chili sauce and chinese mustard to go with the dishes.

The Radish cakes were nicely fried with a nice crust on the outside but still soft on the interior.  It was seasoned well and didn't leave the typical grease pool behind that I have seen on many radish cake plates after I cleared my plate.

Overall I have to say that it was a winning Dim Sum experience with all the dishes that I ordered being really tasty and a quick lunch of really satisfying but also light little dishes.

Think outside the Chinatown box and look for a great little hidden gem close to where you live.  You never know if you will find something worth not driving all over town for.

In the past few months I have had a lot of underwhelming meals but it was nice to go to an inexpensive little place and be pleased with everything I ordered from the menu.

Try a little neighbourhood exploring for yourself and who knows what you will find.

New Food Inspirations - BBQ steam buns

Try something new

For the past few months I have been trying to get inspired by taking on new Food Missions that are posted on the GASTROPOST website that appears in the National Post on saturdays.   Every week they post new food theme missions that you can try to do and post onto their site.

This weeks food mission was to TRY SOMETHING NEW.  I started thinking about ethnic foods and if there was any ethnic restaurants in Toronto that I have never tried or things that I have been wanting to try.  There wasn't anything extreme and new that popped into my mind and it seems that Toronto goes through food trends.  The current trend is Tacos, which isn't anything new but it's just people experimenting with the things they are putting into tacos.

There are lots of things I will probably never try like Chicken Feet, fried crickets, fish eyeballs and other assorted weird animal products.  At least that I know of.  Considering the GMO food these days you never really know what you are eating anymore.

But anyway I thought it would be a challenge to try and think of new things to try and when I eat out over the next week I will try and look for new things if I can.   But last night I went out for dinner with a friend and we wanted to have
Dim Sum and since I live in a very Asian neighbourhood in North York we ventured out to a fairly new place called MANDARIN GARDEN Restaurant on Yonge Street just south of Finch Ave.   We had a glance at the photos posted in the front window and saw that they had a few different dim sum dishes so we decided to check it out.  I really like the nice Chinese Lanterns hung on the front of the restaurant.  They caught my eye when I drove by when they first opened.

The interior was clean and bright and the lady that served us was very friendly and efficient.   We ordered 3 dim sum dishes.  An egg and green onion pancake, a leek and pork potsticker dumpling and a steamed shrimp and pork dumpling.   

They were all made really well and the dumplings were perfectly seasoned and really flavourful.  The way I would have made them if I made them myself.  

Really authentic and tasty.

The people next to us ordered something that was very curious looking.  It looked like two flat white things skewered onto 2 bamboo sticks.  I asked our waitress what it was and she said it was BBQ steam buns.  So I decided to order it to try it.  I saw BBQ steam buns on the menu and thought it was the typical dough bun filled with BBQ pork and steamed.  But I was so wrong in this one.

It was a BBQ steam bun cut in half and then sprinkled with chilli spice and maybe other spices and then it was cooked BBQ style so it had a BBQ smokey flavour.  There wasn't any meat inside but you got the taste as if it was kind of meaty from the smoke.  I suppose this would be a great vegetarian substitute.  I never would have thought of something like that.  It was really interesting and so simple at the same time.

While it may not have been an adventurous new food sampling it was a good food inspiration on things I would never have thought to put together.

I am going to be on the look out for new things this week in my own hometown.   This new thing was right in my neighbourhood so you don't have to travel to China to try new foods,  just head to Chinatown North in Toronto.

Potstickers - the universal dumpling

When I want a quick and easy lunch with not to much fuss and mess I make up a batch of Potstickers. Almost every culture has some sort of dumpling and the Chinese culture have Potstickers. Why do they call them potstickers? Because when you cook them they are supposed to stick to the bottom of the pot and create a crust on the bottom.

Potstickers are pure simplicity. All they are is some thin dough with some sort of meat or protein filling normally. You can make them as easy as I did today or you can make them from scratch with a little more effort.

For those of you that think you can't cook here's a little help to make this easy go to lunch to impress the people that say you can't cook. Want to know how?

Go to your local chinese market or good grocery store that sells frozen potstickers. The ones I bought were pork and chive I think. Sometimes they just say dumplings but make sure they are not the soup ones.

All you need to do is grab a frying pan that has a lid to fit and preheat the pan to high and then put in about a tablespoon or so of vegetable oil, depending on the size of the pan. Make sure you leave space between each dumpling so don't overcrowd the pan.

After you warm the oil put the dumplings in the pan and turn the heat down to medium and quickly add about 1/4 cup of water to steam the dumplings and quickly put the lid on. The steam will defrost and cook the dumplings and the water should evaporate. When the water evaporates just make sure you flip the dumplings around and they will brown on the bottom and once they have a bit of a brown crust they should be done.

Dipping Sauce:

2 tbsp. Black Vinegar
1 tsp. sesame oil
you can add about a dime's size of grated fresh ginger or to taste

if you like it saltier you can add a couple of drops of soy sauce.

You can make any combinations of dipping sauce depending on how salty or tangy you like it.

Place the sauce in a small dipping bowl and place the potstickers on a place and serve.

Voila..you have an easy, tasty, quick and impressive lunch that you and your lunch guests will love.

You can also serve them as appetizers at a party. Great for snacks or for lunch.

It doesn't have to be complicated to be good.

Now you know why people around the world make some sort of dumpling whether it's ravioli, potstickers, perogies or whatever you call it.. It's just good food stuffed into a dough shell.

It's all good no matter where you have it in the World.