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| - From the fine folks that brought popular hipsterized fusion Vietnamese sandwiches to this fine city, comes, uh, hipsterized Chinese street food I guess, served in a 90s/early 2000s hip-hop music deafly-ghetto-blasting, dimly lit and renovated-to-suit sorta-out-of-place place in the heart of Toronto's Chinatown. Chinatown seems to be a favourite and much fetishized part of town lately amongst the wanna-feel-cultured hipsters and restaurant grinders who love the late night cheap ass hangover cures and the "authentic" gritty atmosphere, so already we're hitting a few points on my in-development hipsta scorecard.
I dunno what was up with the first incarnation of Lucky Red, but the second iteration takes much of the successful concepts of Banh Mi Boys and apply it to a new resto concept that involves a) full sit-down service, b) alcohol, and c) variations of the Chinese steamed baos.
Bao is what they do here, and likewise wih the BMB sandwiches, in ideas you don't traditionally think of. It's like there's an idea contest of what we can do with or what else to stuff inside these damned baos. Quite conservatively creative ideas, if you ask me. There's the $8 "hambaoger," which are a pair of fresh sliders with the steamed baos as buns, with simple ingredients and sauces that reproduces the Big Mac taste (it's been more than a decade since I actually ate a Big Mac, yet still know what it taste like oddly enough). Fun to look at, quick to wolf down, certainly would go for more if it didn't kill me first.
There's also the smores bao, that uses Nutella instead of chocolate sauce, graham cracker crumbs and a deep fried bao to sandwich the goodness of a traditional s'more together. It was alright tite, but was kinda weird biting into a crispy bun you don't normally think of as crispy.
Service was great, likely owing to that there were only about five diners in an otherwise hot summer night. However as interesting the food experience is, eating at Lucky Red seems for me something mainly for a one-off novelty factor, of trying such food in a culturally gentrified setting and realizing you just spent all your grocery money, you've gone nearly deaf reminiscing over Missy Elliot tracks, but hey, you got to eat beef tartare with chopsticks.
{TTC: 505 or 510 streetcars to the epicentre of Chinatown}
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