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| - Once in a blue moon, Yelp lets me down. My visit to House of Gourmet last night was one of those occasions.
I failed to see what was so great about this place. I knew what to expect in terms of service (blunt) and setting (meat carcasses at the entrance; place didn't look exactly gleaming), so I'm not complaining about that. In my opinion, the meat quality just wasn't good enough, and no amount of focusing on the cheap prices can distract from that.
The chicken in my Szechuan dish came in slimy, thin pieces - a turn off to both the eye and palette. It tasted just how it looked - slimy, thin and grey. The quality of my DC's pork was similarly poor.
As for the rest of the dish, I can honestly say I enjoy the chicken Szechuan in fast-food chain Szechuan Express way more. Maybe that's ignorant on my part; maybe the stuff at House of Gourmet is The Real Deal and I'm a fool who's been misled by too many European and North-American style Chinese takeouts, but Yelp is all about giving your opinion, right? And my opinion is that I didn't enjoy my dish here at all.
The sauce was waaay too oniony and spicy. Even though I generally adore oniony and spicy food, and even though I generally LOVE Szechuan chicken, I couldn't finish more than three bites of my dish (and I was really hungry upon arrival and thought that I was hungry enough to eat anything.) Onions, onions, onions...
This place was as cheap as you'd get in Toronto, but it didn't feel like much value for money when I only ate three bites. I took the rest home in a takeout box and gave it to my boyfriend; he didn't want it and he ended up donating it to a homeless man.
I hope he likes onions...
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