My friend Kevin turned 39 recently. Word came down: we’d be seeing “Sinners” (great!) and then having dinner at Mandarin (wait, what?). Given how snobby my friends can be, I was surprised he chose a chain buffet for his birthday meal. I had never set foot in one during my two decades in Ontario.
I would learn, however, that Mandarin isn’t just any chain buffet. It’s a nostalgic touchstone for many: a place where families, friends and strangers show up to gorge, hang out and let loose. It’s more than just a restaurant — it’s an Ontario ritual. I’d discover there’s a deeper story here, one that starts with a crew of ambitious newcomers and somehow has led to a homegrown chain that’s still standing, still packed, and still surprisingly loved.
I mentioned the upcoming excursion to my fashion-obsessed bestie Michael, fully expecting him to mock us. Instead, he flew into a jealous rage that I got to go to Mandarin, eagerly inquiring if I was journeying to the Brampton location, complete with a towering waterfall and 25-foot aquarium.
We were, however, eating at the Eglinton location. Heading into the restaurant, we were greeted by a giant candyfloss machine. “Cotton candy?!” I squealed. Inside, I froze in delighted awe: the shrimp was glistening, the carving-station light was glowing, and mournful sax covers of 2013 pop hits drifted through the air.
Once seated, my friends piled their plates with great slabs of sashimi, mountains of noodles and small forests of garlic broccoli. Normally healthy-ish foodies, both calorie-counting and elitism were tossed out in favour of multiple chicken balls. Those were Kevin’s favourite, he told me later. “I shamelessly crave them. Grew up having an order with our take-away and have a soft spot for those tiny morsels of chicken wrapped in bread and served with a perfect sauce,” he said. “So many pals have little stories about this place. It’s a common thread for a lot of people.”
Turns out, almost everyone has a Mandarin story.
On a Saturday night, the place was rammed: large gatherings, young mustachioed bro packs, date nights — even a bride in her wedding dress. The buffet was a great equalizer. The friendly uniformed waiters were quick to whisk away dirty plates or bring another $8 frozen cocktail.
As a Canadian, I sometimes feel like we’re lacking cultural traditions. At last, I thought, here was something that felt uniquely Ontario: a place where everyone was full, happy and maybe a little unbuttoned.
“Unabashedly Chinese-Canadian”
Sure, some people go to Mandarin ironically, according to Toronto Star food reporter Karon Liu, “but there’s an earnestness in the place that’s charming and non-intimidating,” he says. Like many Ontarians, Liu has been going to the Mandarin since he was a kid, and it was the place his partner wanted to celebrate finishing his PhD.
“Considering how many Canadian businesses shuttered in the last two decades, I think Torontonians are cheering for the Mandarin because it’s a local business with more than one location, and it has survived all these decades without really going downhill.”
It’s also just refreshing that it’s an unabashedly Chinese-Canadian restaurant, Liu says. “There was a time in which foodies went through an overcorrection in trying to not stereotype cuisines that they inadvertently denigrated chicken balls and chop suey as not ‘real’ Chinese food, but it very much is a cuisine ingeniously developed by Chinese immigrants that recreated dishes they knew back in China with ingredients they could find stateside,” he says. “They created dishes that were familiar to them but also palatable to a Western audience in order to earn a living in Canada and the US. It’s quite a feat, and it’s great that Chinese-Canadian cuisine is being more appreciated now.”
Brampton-bound
Leaving the restaurant, our group grumbles about how there isn’t any Mandarin merch to commemorate our visit (a crewneck sweatshirt with the Mandarin logo would go hard, we agreed). I thought I was going to a kitschy chain buffet. What I found instead was something closer to a cultural landmark, a shared ritual that connects generations of Ontarians.
Over the coming days, my obsession with Mandarin only grows. I dove into the chain’s history online and viewed the flagship Brampton location Michael had rhapsodized over — the Mandarin mecca. I resolved to go.
I arrived for lunch in Brampton a few weeks later, the Uber driver marvelling at the sheer size of the place, which has an imposing Bond-villain-lair vibe, enhanced by the aforementioned waterfall. Even late on a Tuesday lunch service, the place was busy: solo diners, couples, families, business meetings. One huge group was barefoot, laughing and FaceTiming relatives mid-meal.
You even get to choose your dining room: Garden (waterfall), Fish (aquarium), or Bird (live birds). I picked Fish then began to scope the different sections of the buffet, names blazing in pink neon. There’s a sushi station, multiple soups and breads, pies, fresh fruit, a sundae bar, pizza, grilled pineapple, bowls filled with salad, olives, and beans, lemon chicken, curries, noodles — everything.
I dug into the dried garlic green beans, salt and pepper shrimp, wok-fried baby corn, soft noodles, curry chicken, shrimp with snap peas, breaded torpedo shrimp with sweet and sour sauce, a seafood medley pie, honey garlic spareribs. And that was just one plate! The second? Prime rib, mashed potatoes, creamed corn, sushi, and more shrimp, smothered in cocktail sauce.
Sometimes, if you choose the Fish room, you might get to watch a diver hop into the tank to clean it: “dinner and a show!” according to El Martin. She and her sister Anne Goldson are long-time Mandarin loyalists. Martin likes it because “you can be a kid again,” she said. She’d recently come for her friend Susan’s birthday. “We were both stuffed by the end,” she says, “but you still have to have the candy floss.”
Family man Tim Ali had grown tired of the buffet near their place pre-pandemic, but he begrudgingly headed to the OG location for his son’s birthday. The grill master asked what kind of steak he wanted and made him a custom one in 10 minutes — and it was perfect. “Now my faith in Mandarin has been restored,” he beamed.
The story behind Mandarin’s rise
This kind of pure pleasure has always been Mandarin president James Chiu’s goal. “Food and people coming together are family values that live deep in the heart of Mandarin,” he tells me. Chiu immigrated from Taiwan to Montreal in 1963, where he got his first job as a dishwasher at a summer camp. One day, he says, the cook quit: “Then I became the cook.”
In 1973, he co-founded his first restaurant, Sweet & Sour, in Montreal, but, after five difficult years, he decided to decamp to Ontario, where he and his co-founders bought a small restaurant on Queen Street in Brampton.
What started as a single à la carte spot grew into dozens of locations.
“We are all Canadian and Canadian in heart,” Chiu says. (Staff uniforms have featured the Canadian flag for over 30 years.) “(We want) to ensure that everyone is welcomed as soon as they arrive and that everyone is happy and smiling when they leave,” he says. “This will never change.”
I grill him about the volume side of the business. How many pounds of shrimp do they serve per year? (More than four million.) How many pounds of rice? (Over 400,000.) Last year, nearly six million people filed into a Mandarin location. That’s almost the population of the entire GTA.
Chiu has his own Mandarin memories. One woman stopped him for a photo then told him she used to come as a teen with her grandfather. Now she was back with her granddaughter, passing on the tradition. Another woman once insisted on speaking with him. Chiu braced for a complaint. “She then proceeded to say to me, ‘I have finally found my kitchen.’ Mandarin felt like home to her. That will always stay with me.”
Just over a week later, Michael texts me. “Do you know where my parents were just now?” I should have known. Everyone always comes back to Mandarin — it’s home.
