Konner specializes in Hunan cuisine, one of the eight great Chinese cuisines. Excellent, I thought as I had no clue what Hunan food was about but at time all I knew was that it wasn't Szechuan. Little did I know that the distinction behind Hunan dishes is of it's purely Hot Spicy rather than Szechuan's complex Spicy. Hunan should also be fresher, oilier, and simpler.
There's not much lobby space while we lined up in queue and synchronized with looking at the Menu and writing up our order until our table was ready for this Hot n' Spicy crawl. Menu has lots of introduction for this cuisine along with great photos. I guess it's inline with their motto of introducing Hunan cuisine to the Canadian community.
Fish Head w/Pepper($15.99/small) is a Fish Head steamed and topped with Chili Sauce and side dish of Noodles. It was A-OK in general as Fish Heads go, however I felt that it was just slightly underdone as I sucked on the Head cavities. The Chili Sauce probably had some salt to give that savouriness and went GREAT with the Noodle(think Soba - Slurp!).
Hunan Fermented Stinky Tofu($4.99/small) looks to be five-spice variety Tofu as it was dark in appearance. It stank if you ZOOM close-by and the texture was crispy exterior and light airy interior. Alright snack but not my favourite Stinky Tofu of the bunch.
Chicken in Pot($11.99) was Snail and White Meat Chicken with Spicy Sauce/Bell Peppers/Onions. Imagine a small scale Cowboy style Chuckwagon Chili over the open fire, which is the style of presentation here. I didn't like the bland White Chicken Meat as it was neither marinated or juicy. (-0.5 *Star)
Dong Ting Duck Noodle Soup($6.99) was enough to feed a couple and it probably is an imagery of Dong Ting Lake in color. I didn't like the boney Duck pieces as much but it was only a small aspect of this dish. The Rice Vermicelli was a good selection as it doesn't get soggy while the Duck Broth was almost an equivalent of a Tonkotsu in depth which is probably why we thought over it. Obviously I won the battle!!! :P