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| - We were wandering around Scarborough amidst snow flittering down last Friday, when we decided to turn in to this place for din-din. Turned out to be a good choice. Don't know if the Sam Woo name is some kind of empire, but they seem to be in a few places in the Toronto area, either as a BBQ (Chinese BBQ) manifestation, or this "seafood" variant. Indeed, there's a Sam Woo BBQ restaurant right in the same mall!
SWSR is somewhat pricey in the sea of Chinese bargain eats in Toronto, but that comes with a classier set-up: table cloths (no cheesy plastic cover, thank you very much), cloth napkins, and - usually a pet peeve of mine - GOOD quality tea!!! I mean, come on Chinese restauranteurs everywhere - don't you know it's a national insult to serve tasteless low quality colored water and pass it off as 'tea'?
Service was attentive, or at least DESIGNED to be attentive. We binged on 1) baby bok choy in seafood soup (quite a bit too salty, probably on account of salted fish bones being a major ingredient) - still the veggies were fresh 2) Sauteed grouper (yummy and perfectly seasoned, and not overly greasy), and 3) scallops "da liang" style, which meant covered in egg white. This last dish was a mistake - too few scallops, and they're the bay variety rather than the monster-size one would expect for $16 - we should have ordered sauteed ones instead, as there would be no hiding! My only complaint is that they have NO white wine selection - only a Kressman riesling-like offering by the glass, which is a little sweet to my buds.
Dessert (complimentary) consisted of a bowl of tsa-tsa, a little agar-agar "cake" with a couple of fresh goji berries (all the rage these days supposedly due to goji's health benefits) and a little glutinous rice dumpling covered in sesame, with lotus seed filling - hence, no excuse to go to that special dessert place on Hwy 7!!
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