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| - Yu Garden is a famous "dimsum" small dish eatery in Shanghai.
I was excited when my friend told me about this eatery opening up in toronto.
We came for lunch and ordered the following for 2 people:
Deep fried crispy rice cake
Wheat gluten and Black mushroom
Nanxiang Drunken chicken
Chef's special poached chicken
Shanghai fried soft rice cake
We ordered 2 chickens due to me, being a Canadian shanghai Chinese read the menu in Chinese. As the poached chicken was written in a way that lead me to believe it was a deconstructed way of describing drunken chicken as it mentions the region (also used as identifying name) of the "yellow spirit/wine" and it being a house special at $17 for half a chicken. An aside, shanghai cuisine is not known for poached chicken ( Cantonese poached chicken is the emblem for Chinese poached Chinese), but drunken chicken will look like poached chicken. Anyways, my fault for not reading the menu.
Texture and temperature of the poached chicken was fine. It just had no taste of chicken. I mean if I were to order any poached chicken dish it would be Singapore Hunan chicken (I certainly would never have order a poached chicken dish in a shanghai restaurant). Initially I thought it was drunken chicken and when I bit into it, it was literally like eat something that has a texture of chicken But zero taste. No flavor. I then asked and was corrected by the server (I physically circled and orders the wrong dish) so I ordered the drunken chicken. When it arrived, It also had no chicken taste. The wine flavor was fine. Just no chicken taste. So weird. They must have used some non-organic tasteless chicken.
The wheat gluten and black mushroom arrived and when I tasted it, it was not good. Linear in flavor, skewed towards mainly sweetness. It should be rich in texture and has a depth of flavor, oily, salty and sweet. It's like they forgot the soy. Texture is not right as well. The wheat gluten should have been air dried so that the outer part is kind of "crusty" and have the inner part soft also to have interplay between "meaty"mushrooms, crunchy bamboo shoots (which they don't have), cleansing napa cabbage, herbal string mushrooms (which they again don't have). A disappointment.
The deep fried crispy rice cake is fine. Except it would have been great if they had just friend it a bit longer so it is golden everywhere. Better yet. Instead of deep frying the rice "cake" lightly then cutting it up. Just cut it up first and deep fry it much more so I can get maximum surface area that is deep fried. Even so, I have to say the flavor was bang on, fragrant and salty, almost umami. But overall it's flavor is just muted.
The shanghai fried soft rice cake uses a vegetable called ???shepherd's purse), a very much shanghai flavor. Except the rice cake is tasteless. Had no fragrance of rice cake, texture of the rice cake is passable at best as well. Not chewy enough. They might have gotten shepherd's purse in a frozen form from the supermarkets but then they should have used lots more. Once again the flavors are fine. Just not rich nor deep.
So weird, as shanghai cuisine is really about thick and deep and rich and oily flavors.
Overall, its as if someone explicitly decided to mute and tone down all the taste and flavor of the dishes I tried. So instead of a rich and deep flavor that shanghai cuisine is known for, I just wisps and hints of the flavor.
Disappointed.
Service is lacking as well. I will just highlight one instance. The server decides to collect all of the hot oil containers from all the tables and refill them during the middle of service. This is fine as it is a Chinese restaurant. But when she had to go behind me, lean into my space and then take the oil container, not a whisper of an "excuse me". I'm not Mr manners by all means. But this is just indicative of the staff not giving a rats ass about how the customer feels. I'm made to feel like I'm in their way, that they will go through the motion and tasks and that my friend and I were just there to give them money and throw the dishes in front of us.
Expected much better.
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