Toronto’s Chinese food scene is among the most diverse and dynamic in the city, spanning everything from silky dim sum and hand-pulled noodles to charcoal barbecue and modern Cantonese cooking. Our team of 11 food experts selected the spots below as being extra special: they made our Top 100 Under $100 guide to delicious, affordable restaurants in Toronto. (At six of these restaurants, two people can dine for $50 or less before tax and tip.) Pull up a chair, grab some chopsticks and let us know what you think.
Yin Ji Chang Fen
Address: 369 Spadina Ave., and other locations
Contact: 416-585-7888; yinjicanada.com
There’s an incredible amount of skill behind good chang fen, the silky, gloriously slippery rice noodles that are nonetheless considered a “simple” breakfast or snack. They’re made from just rice flour, a bit of starch and water, typically; the thin batter is quickly steamed. But when executed well, the subtle perfume of rice rises from the glossy sheets; they’re strong enough to roll around savoury ingredients, to douse in the darkness of warm, sweet soy sauce, then to survive a ride at the ends of chopsticks — but they should also be delicate enough to tear. This Hong Kong-based specialist long ago mastered those paradoxes; they’ve been plying the trade since 1958. Here, you can get them filled with sweet corn or vegetables, beef brisket stew, shrimp and scallops and myriad other combinations; they are also gorgeous eaten plain. The shrimp and chive version is a great place to start: the snap of seafood and the allium bite intermingle with the sweet-salt of soy and the simple pleasure of a perfect noodle in just the right proportions. The youtiao fried dough sticks are also good: golden, airy, crunchy and gently chewy. For dessert, pair a hot HK-style milk tea with the peanut butter and condensed milk toast, a nutty, sweet, velvety indulgence. — Jennifer Chan
Cheng Du Street Food
Address: 405 Dundas St. W.
Contact: 416-596-8800; chengdustreetfood.ca
Though Sichuan cooking is best known for the málà spice mix of tingly, tongue-numbing peppercorns and sinus-searing red chiles, any place can do that. The kitchen at this modern, tavern-style spot skilfully layers in complex textures and aromatics; depending on the dish you’ll also get some combination of salty, sour, sweet, bitter, funky and smoky notes as well as the requisite numbing-spicy buzz. The wide-ranging menu runs from cold starters to stir-fried duck and vegetables to mapo tofu, noodles and oil-poached fish. The spicy and sour fish soup is excellent: an enormous bowl of tender fillets in a sea of brightly yellow, chili-studded oil, with tart pickled green peppers. Ask for extra vermicelli noodles to dip in the broth — you’ll want them. The stir-fried cabbage has a wonderful crunchy-soft texture, copious amounts of chopped garlic and a sweet and malty tang from black vinegar. The spicy garlic tripe, too, is excellent, its deeply garlicky base given strong crunch and freshness from the Chinese lettuce stems called celtuce, vibrant cilantro and a hint of wasabi. This is a busy place, even at 6 p.m. Be prepared for a wait. — Jennifer Chan
Charcoal Kebab House Downtown
Address: 108 Mutual St. and other locations
Contact: 437-880-7873; charcoalkebabhouse.com
The hand-pulled lamian noodles at this TMU favourite come thick, firm and deliciously messy, glistening with vegetables, veal and a spicy-sweet Sichuan peppercorn and tomato sauce. Though lamian appear through much of China, the wok-fried ones here reflect the Uyghur, predominantly Muslim traditions of the country’s Xinjiang territory. They’re superb. As you might expect, Charcoal Kebab House’s spicy, cumin-kissed lamb kebabs carry the taste of the kitchen’s charcoal grill. They’re blackened just enough to bring out a smoky, bittersweet char, and served on sesame flatbread that sops up the flavour-packed juices and fat. The lamb kidney kebabs are also excellent: tender with a bit of bite, and the underlying iron flavour complements the caramelized crust. Between each kidney is a thin slab of juicy, sizzling lamb fat. The portions are generally large. Platters of spicy stewed chicken and potato dapanji, stacked on a bed of noodles, will feed four or five. — Karon Liu
Belle Isle
Address: 1455 Gerrard St. E.
Contact: @belleisle__
This curvy, candle-lit funhouse, the younger and somehow even cooler sibling to Lake Inez, could almost coast on style points alone. The seating was hand-moulded by a skate park designer, the decor includes both a giant swordfish mosaic and a poster of David Lee Roth, and the drinks list, from all-star bar manager Linh Phan, is built for wild nights out; Belle Isle’s jiggly, curacao-blue jell-o shots — a signature dessert — bear the inscription “fuck it” on their tops. Yet that’s just a backdrop to the young co-chefs Keith Siu and Ronan Shaftoe’s often exhilarating modern Cantonese-Canadian cooking. Along with the crews at Mimi Chinese and Sunnys, the two are creating a distinctly Toronto subcuisine in realtime, built, as Siu puts in, on “what it feels like to grow up in Toronto as a Chinese immigrant kid.” Their take on Chongqing hidden chicken forgoes the usual Szechuan-spiced wings for wet lemon pepper (aka “strip club”) ones; it’s both hilarious and delicious. Their sensationally tasty crudo appetizer, a nostalgic play on Hong Kong curry fish balls, combines mild, creamy-textured curry with sweet yellowtail tuna slices, punchy yellow tomato halves and tiny goldfish-shaped potato chips they painstakingly cut and fry in-house. The cheung fun rice rolls are all rich, decadent, lip-coating deliciousness, stuffed with roasty-tasting beef shank and tendon terrine, while the peanut-brittle topped dan dan noodles come sweet, cheap and compulsively inhalable. Is this drinking food or fine cuisine? It’s probably best just to say: both. Another can’t-miss: their coarsely-chopped beef tartare served with crispy chives, deep-fried sesame bread and a brightly tingly cumin and green Szechuan peppercorn mayo; it follows almost none of the rules of beef tartare and is also quite possibly the most delicious version in town. Though there are other excellent desserts, the jell-o shot is more interesting than at first blush. One recent rendition was flavoured with milk tea, black-sugar-seasoned tapioca pearls and Ontario rhubarb — as well, of course, as a healthy bit of booze. — Chris Nuttall-Smith
Meataa 7 Authentic Charcoal BBQ
Address: 5285 Yonge St.
Contact: 416-733-9777; meataa7.com
The specialty here is as specific as they come: Chinese-Korean charcoal barbecue from the Xita district of Shenyang, China. Which might sound rarefied until you take the place in, with its endless platters of ready-to-cook meat, its happy, all-ages beer hall vibe and the spitting, smoke-breathing, live charcoal grills at the centre of every table — the only ones we’ve found in town. These are universal pleasures through and through. The pork and pickled cabbage combo makes a great start. The cabbage crisps and sweetens in the charcoal’s heat, while its flavours meld with the sizzling pork belly, Chinese-Korean-style choucroute garni. The garlic beef plate’s fat-ribboned brisket slices dance over the charcoal to dripping tender. (NB: brisket, handled right, makes a slam-dunk grilling cut.) The kalbi combo: melty short-rib and fat-capped offcuts sliced large enough for grilling to sizzly crisp but rare. They’ve got ready-to-cook eel and pineapple, chicken knees (knobbly but tasty), tofu, vegetables and an all-meat birthday cake, too. The sides, by contrast, are simple but effective: tasty cucumber salad, cold noodle mul naengmyeon (made with chewy, ramen-like lye noodles here), and seasoned rice stirred through with hard-fried eggs. For dessert, there are roasted marshmallows on sticks. — Chris Nuttall-Smith
Sam’s Congee Delight
Address: 7354 Woodbine Ave.
Contact: 905-479-1074; samscongeedelight.com
Congee, at its core, is just rice porridge, but few places in the city do the breakfast staple right. It’s often too watery, lacking rice’s sweet, nutty character. Not at Sam’s, which started as an open-air food stall in Hong Kong before relocating to Toronto in the 1990s. The congee menu spans dozens of different toppings. You can get ground beef, sliced chicken or fish, offal or preserved egg, mushrooms or corn. The “assorted” congee (“little boat congee” in Cantonese) is the staple here. It’s creamy, thick and bursting with umami, topped with dried squid, ground beef, chewy pork skin, green onions and peanuts. But a bowl of congee isn’t complete without youtiao, the deep-fried, savoury Cantonese crullers that Sam’s makes in-house. They’re excellent, though the sweet, salty, umami fermented bean-curd paste fritter is also superb. The straight-up sweet fritter, meanwhile, is probably the greatest possible pairing with a bowl of warm soy milk — highly recommended. Sam’s rice noodle rolls are also excellent; if you’re short on stomach space, order number 203, the sweet, tender sheets wrapped around a freshly fried youtiao — two delicious specialties in one. — Karon Liu
Skyview Fusion Cuisine
Address: 8261 Woodbine Ave., Unit 8
Contact: 905-944-9418; skyviewfusioncuisine.com
If you have to pick just one GTA dim sum spot, this is it. The room, with its modern chandeliers, its satin-covered chairs and its wall of aquariums, is just on the right side of ostentatious. And the Skyview kitchen’s elegant dim sum staples get all the details right: the telling snap of the shrimp in translucent-skinned har gow dumplings; the generously filled pork siu mai with glistening orange fish roe for salty pop. The pan-fried turnip cakes look almost like quartz, with shards of sausage gleaming through the translucence and clean turnip flavour that gives way to the crust from the pan. The cheung fun rice noodle rolls come magnificently sheer and satiny, with fresh-tasting pea shoots peeking out. The char siu bao nail the steam-bun-to-pork ratio, and the chicken feet arrive perfectly braised, in a sauce that gets the dark soy and fermented black bean funk just right. No place is perfect: The egg tarts are just OK, and you can find better squid tentacles elsewhere. But the brown sugar cake, a rare take on Malaysia’s bolu sarang semut, is all lacy, honeycomb-like channels, with a faintly gelatinous stretch and deeply complex caramelized sugar notes that linger in memory long after the cake is done. — Jennifer Chan
Sun Chinese Cuisine
Address: 3480 Platinum Dr., Unit 110 (in Ridgeway Plaza in Mississauga) and other locations
Contact: 905-828-9090
If you’re mesmerized by the open kitchen’s noodle master, who deftly twists, slams, stretches and folds blocks of wheat dough into armloads of metre-long lamian, you won’t be the first. Hand-pulled noodles, offered at this busy Mississauga specialist in nine different shapes and thicknesses, are a staple in Chinese cooking; the Langzhou-style beef noodle soups that anchor Sun Chinese’s menu are perhaps their most famous iteration. Here, they come in broad bowls of clear chicken and beef broth that’s rich with the scent of cinnamon and star anise, topped with braised beef, vegetables and chilies. The noodles soak up the umami-rich soup, turning red and slick with chili oil. Start with the regular thickness as a baseline before working your way to the “flat, very wide” ones that offer a completely different experience: They’re chewier and thicker, with a texture that allows them to hold even more broth. Don’t hesitate to slurp; the servers have plastic bibs ready. Pair the noodles with grilled lamb skewers, a cool cucumber salad or niangpi, a cold and silky appetizer of, yep, noodles tossed in sesame dressing. — Karon Liu
Supreme Taste
Address: 351 Broadview Ave.
Contact: 416-778-8029
Chinese barbecue is notoriously hit and miss. Most of the old si-fus, the barbecue masters, are long retired, and few if any places consistently nail the cuisine’s four staples: barbecue pork, roast duck, roast pork and poached chicken. But the regulars at this Chinatown east mainstay come for the kitchen’s roast pork, its skin consistently delicate and crackly, and the meat well enough seasoned that dipping sauce seems beside the point. Save the sauce — they make their own here — for the glistening roast duck, it allows the fatty waterfowl to shine. For what it’s worth, the poached chicken is nicely chickeny — high praise in many quarters — and the char siu comes sweet and sticky and properly full-flavoured; ask for the end pieces if you’re into super-concentrated crusty bits. Cantonese staples round out the menu: congee, wok-fried rice, noodles and vegetables. Pro-tip: Barbecue and steam-filled takeout boxes don’t mix; grab a table instead in the bare-bones dining room. It is always alive with the neighbourhood chatter of Chinatown. — Karon Liu
Wok Theory
Address: 530 Dundas St. W.
Contact: 416-979-2480; woktheory.com
At just three-years old, Edwin Lam and Trinh Tieu’s busy modern Chinese spot is the new kid on the Spadina Chinatown block. It’s also among the best bets for dim sum downtown. While many of its neighbours have farmed out their dim sum prep — the skilled but often tedious labour of stuffing and folding dumplings just so, or getting just the right egg custard texture in dan tat tarts — at Wok Theory they make everything in-house; Tieu runs the kitchen herself. There is much skill evident in her kitchen’s har gow dumplings, a benchmark for any dim sum house. Here, the wrappers come thin and satiny, with meticulously scalloped edges and the blush of good shrimp showing through; they’re lovely. So too are the kitchen’s steamed bean curd rolls, which come nicely filled with pork, shrimp and the refreshing crunch of bamboo shoots; just enough sauce clings to the soft and stretchy tofu skin wrapper. The steamed barbecue pork buns almost float like fluffy clouds, a little sweet, a little salty, everything you could ask for. And don’t miss the plump pan-fried shrimp patties, with their juicy interiors of pork, shrimp and the lifting bite of chive. — Jennifer Chan
