I had a very mediocre lunch with my Chinese wife, and decided not to go back. Then a Beijinger-experts on dumplings-said, "pretty good dumplings-acceptable by Chinese standards-mabye best in Montreal". So i went back without my wife. Someone posted a review a year or so ago saying that the food was going downhill. I visited the Chinatown location for lunch today upon my Beijing friends recommendation.
I LIKED IT-
GOOD: I had the lamb dumplings-excellent dough. Insides were a little bit low quality ingredients. I loved the springy texture of the dough wrappings very much. The pickled daikon before the meal was good and fresh, and lightly pickled in a pleasant way. I loved that the food is made to order. Dovetails with my sensiblities
BAD: The soup-free with the lunch-was miso based soup-not Chinese-but Japanese. Very very bad quality compared to real Japanese miso soup, but I tend to by hypercritical when people try to replicate cuisine of another culture sloppily. Real miso soup is wonderful and healthy. This was not that. I am not even sure if they used dashi or even instant dashi mix. Dashi is such an amazing and magical basis for Japanese food. But I don't usually love it when without rhyme or reason, a Japanese dish shows up in a Chinese restaurant.
If I go back for dinner, I want to try the bones with brown sauce-what a name-I suspect it's oxtail with a hong shao style sauce, but I will drag my wife in and find out. I love well prepared Chinese take on braised oxtail.
The 4 star rating would be about 1 star lower in New York or Toronto. But here in Quebec, it's nice to have acceptable Chinese food. Also, when I first went to Qing Hua it was the Lincoln street location. I noticed that the riviews for the Chinatown location are much lower-so perhaps when I took my wife here, it was bad because it was bad. I think that they have resolved their problems and this place seems very good now. Go.