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| - In a nutshell, I would recommend this restaurant for their Crispy Beef, Snow Pea Leafs (to-miaw), fried vermicelli (cha-misua) and Peking Duck. It is best to go their with a family of at least four, just so you can try a large variety of dishes. It is not a cheap place and is cash only so be prepared to spend about $80 for four people.
Chung King Garden is located at Market Village (4394 Steeles Ave E, Markham, ON) and being a Chinese mall, plan your times accordingly because it can get up to 50% the chaos of Manila driving within the compound which is 100,000% more chaotic than normal city driving in Toronto and parking is limited during peak hours.
Some history: I'm a regular at this place now, so they may treat me a bit better, but I still hear complaints from some of my friends who go there without me. This place was on my blacklist for two whole years a while back because of bad service. The thing that brought me back was the dish called Crispy Beef thanks to my Uncle L.
Their rendition of Crispy Beef they make is by far the best among all the places I have tried. I've tried other places such as Coconut Garden and although Coconut Garden had better texture, the taste of Chung King is still hard to beat. It's a bit spicy, but I can tolerate it even if I can't take spicy food too much. It is best eaten at the restaurant as soon as it arrives. It is not too bad when you take it home, but it is miles apart in terms of quality when it was freshly made. This dish goes very well with their fried vermicelli.
The fried vermicelli which we normally refer to as cha-misua is a tastier (and less healthy) rendition of the noodles we eat on our birthdays. It's a carbohydrate dish that I would use as a filler when I have a lot of guests. Ignoring the fact that it is a bit on the oily side, this dish is very tasty and can buffer the heat from the Crispy Beef so it balances things out. Now because this dish is a bit oily, I would recommend you eat it with some veggies, namely the snow pea leaves.
The snow pea leaves which we refer to as to-miaw allow us to at least feel less guilty that we are eating mostly unhealthy stuff. Personally I am not really fond of vegetables, but this dish goes very well in balancing out the oiliness of the other two dishes and is one of the few vegetable dishes I would crave for.
Now although the three dishes above can make a good family meal, for occasions you would need something extra. That would be the three-course version of the Peking Duck and Chung King Garden makes one of the better ones in the places I have eaten in Toronto. I think the only issue we have is they don't show us the duck being carved on the table (space is very limited in the restaurant) and as such it sometimes feels like you are not getting the whole duck.
The first course of the duck is the skin and a little meat served on top of shrimp crackers (chicharon) wrapped in a thin dough wrapper, some green onions (yuck) and cucumber with hoi-sin sauce. I personally like this a helluva lot more than that bread they give you at Peking Man. However, they also charge extra for the wrappers so watch out for that one. In a big event, this is what I start with as the appetizer along with the to-miaw.
The second course of the duck is the diced up insides pan fried a little and garnished with some fried noodles and other small veggies. You eat it with lettuce and hoi-sin sauce. Not really too fond of this one because it tends to get a bit messy. On a big event I would have this served at the same time as the crispy beef and cha-misua.
The third course is the bone and soup with a bit of tofu. Though I dislike this because of the bones, it is what makes this dish taste good. I like drinking the soup to warm up my tummy near the end of the meal to make sure there is room for dessert (which we usually bring during a big event) and get rid of any lingering yuckiness from the oils in the food so we can taste the dessert a bit better.
Although those dishes I have stated are good, as far as their other dishes go for the most part I would say they are a miss or I could have had better and cheaper else where which is why I won't recommend them unless you are adventurous.
However, one thing I have to say is the quality of their food is consistent. If I don't like it once chances are I won't like it again, conversely if I liked it once I would want to eat it over and over again. This was a comment I had with Peking Garden at Greenbelt Makati that although their Peking Duck was the best ever I had tasted the first time I went there, the second time I went there was below the top 10 places I would eat Peking duck. For me consistency is important as well when it comes to judging a restaurant.
Hopefully their service improves and remains consistent as time progresses, thankfully it has a bit for me, but for newbies they may have issues.
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