| rev:text
| - "The one with the Hong Kong styled interior."
The Good:
Relatively good food quality compared to other downtown Toronto Chinese restaurants; cleaner look than some of the others; resembles a typical modern Hong Kong style restaurant in the interior (i.e. organization of the restaurant + the decor); good "oil sticks"
The Bad:
A little pricier than your other Chinese restaurants in the area; typically gets very packed (long wait-times); often have to share tables ("Dap Toy") during peak times or wait longer
Overview:
Out of all the Chinese restaurants I've eaten at Downtown Toronto (I've livined on campus for three years just north of Spadina and College), King's Noodles has consistently delivered above average quality food for a downtown Chinese restaurant. Maybe it's just me, but I'd generalize that your typical Chinese restaurant on Spadina can't compete with those uptown, but that's my opinion. However, King's Noodles comes close. Interior styling is nice, resembling your typical Chinese fast-eat in Hong Kong (mirrors on the side, cashier and oil sticks prepared in the front) which I found to be different than other places on Spadina, plus it looked cleaner too. The floors weren't overly sticky like places nearby that I've tried (i.e. Goldsor, which I'll review later on).
Food quality is pretty good; we went as a group of 5 the first time we went and I ordered the large BBQ pork on rice. if you've had BBQ pork many times before you'll know that every restaurant has a different taste and sometimes you'll get those that are more crunchy while others are more soft and moist. This placed served the latter, which is pretty good but I prefer the more crunchy/harder ones. Others had the same, with some having soy sauce chicken instead. Overall, we all found it to be much better than others in the area. We also shared a seafood congee which we liked very much with the oil sticks. However, it was our first time and we didn't know how much one serving was so we ordered 5, one for each person. Well, suffice it to say it was too much: one serving could easily be enough for 3 people so we were left with oil sticks to take home (=. Some might find it to be very oily but hey, it's not often you have good Chinese food on Spadina (again, at least in my opinion and my friends). Lunch came out to be about $11 each, with my BBQ pork costing around $9 tax in but yeah, we were stuffed. Waiters and waitresses are typically running around frantically but overall service pretty standard. You pay up at the front at the cashier and the funny thing is they have a drop off box for tips which all tips goes in to. I'm not sure how then do they split the tips, maybe evenly but maybe this is why service across the board was pretty good.
They also have a dim sum menu to for lunch but I've only ordered a few things from it in addition to my regular lunches (in the cases where I came from a 5 consecutive hour of classes!) and I was starving. Prices for dim sum are a little higher than others though, maybe even a little higher than those uptown (say, Golden Court), and quality was OK, nothing exceptional.
Overall, I'd rate this higher than my other reviews but only because relative to what you have available on Spadina, this is probably the best places. Definitely give it a shot if you're in China town and want some food quality reminiscent of uptown restaurants with a pretty comfy decor.
- SImon
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