The Egg Roll King

There was a fire in my belly and the only way to put it out was to douse all those clean eating experiences I had these past weeks with something a little more familiar and pacifying. As far as I was concerned, I had too much energy, and I was a long way off my centre of eating the way I hedonistically love to. I needed something that didn't make me a pushy, health conscious eater. I had to stop this before my poor palette tasted nothing but whey protein and supplement drinks. I needed The Itis. That's right, my dining comrades. We've all experienced it. The cure-all for a stressful day, for a very hungry stomach. Those high calorie meals that lead us to a general feeling of lethargy and well-being. But a good ‘bad for you’ meal.

We all have our own little kinds of sanctuaries in the big bad (I say 'bad' here in the 'cool' bad way) gastropolis of Kitchener-Waterloo, the places wherein we like to divulge our own calorie smashing urges: fast food joints, pubs, buffets, you name it.

For this Bon Vivant of bad, there’s only one kind of place I dare venture. A Place where authenticity is a cryptic word for a more glorified, gourmandizing past. Places where phonetic mis-spellings on a menu still enchant even the most familiar eaters and any thoughts had about the fashion of fusion food are thrown to the wind, because when it comes down to it, in this kind of place everything is bastardized even if a little, but still damn delicious. You all know it too. For some of you (and me), it’s a place you humbly admit is a guilty pleasure. So familiar and inviting it seems that this particular place has been around since time was time, and only the most gastronomically dogmatic try to suppress it. But our Western urges for salty, sweet and savoury keep calling us back. What exactly am I talking about? The Chinese-Canadian eatery, of course.

	Cool shake, bro!

Egg Roll King Restaurant seems a fitting name for a place that dare try to include all walks of Chinese food for Canadiana. Even going so far as to offer up food that is terribly un-Chinese, like French fries, or poutine. Now, I could make this a game of Six Degrees and specifically say that Egg Roll King labels itself as a Chinese and Vietnamese restaurant, but that poutine was created in Quebec and that those who originally occupied Quebec were from France and that the French, for a time, occupied Vietnam, influencing its culinary tradition, bringing us greats like Vietnamese coffee, and that therefore poutine, by some act of post-colonial Providence could be considered Vietnamese, but I don’t want to grasp at straws. I just want to praise a place that I consider to be an echelon of democratic eating. Where Canadian food, Chinese food, American food and Vietnamese food all come together not in some elaborate act of fusion cooking, but to live and be eaten side by side in complete culinary harmony. And you may wonder, dear readers, “Why would anyone do that?” Well, my only explanation, which came to me while watching the some odd 20 junior high school students that charged in as soon as the clock struck 3 and started ordering spring rolls and French fries, was that, as history often teaches us, a King gives the people what the people want. For years I myself had wondered the same, thinking the items so unfitting of the style of food offered at these kinds of restaurants must have been jokes, or covers for some other kinds of operations, but it was in that moment that I realized that Egg Roll King just does good business, and apparently has the best and most inexpensive egg rolls in town. Unfortunately, I wasn’t astute enough to try one. For an instant, I hoped that maybe, just maybe, one of those kids would ask for the shark fin soup- something I would have loved to have tried myself, if not for the price. And, yes, I’m probably romanticizing the dish in a place plastered with yellow and lime green walls, plastic grape vines along the ceiling, Buddhist shrines and other ornate trinkets; not to mention plasma televisions tuned into MTV and Teen Mom 2 marathons, but said soup is a rare commodity in these parts. And yes, I could go to a “fancy” restaurant and maybe order it, but that it is side by side on a menu with things like chicken wings and Moo Goo Guy Pan did my heart good, because Egg Roll King offered something for every foodie, student and all-around-eater. It offered me a strawberry shake (that’s right), and a heaping plate of Cantonese rainbow pork corralled in a field of fried rice. Perhaps an unconventional combination, but no less satisfying. Now, I didn’t see how it was prepared, but it had the sweet mellow flavor of fresh strawberries that one assumes will overpower the tongue with an indescribable kind of sweetness when biting into them; but it didn’t. If any sweetness seemed too overbearing, it was immediately subdued by the cool grittiness of the shake’s blended ice. And if there was anything artificial about it, I couldn’t tell.

	One of many manifestations of The Itis.

My rainbow pork, one of the chef’s specialties, was presented to me with the vivacity of a man whose upbeat spirit showed that he believed in his own food. He gasped along playfully with me as I dazzled in the rich, blooming red of the sweet and sour sauce that covered copious amounts of chewy pork, fried in an egg batter and stir-fried with vegetables whose juices deluged as soon as I bit into them and tamed the sweet, somewhat spicy flavor of my pork. What more can I say for such familiar, yet un-appreciated and satisfying flavours? If I didn’t know it was The Itis in me, I’d have thought I was in heaven.

Egg Roll King
85 courtland ave. east
Kitchener, ON N2G 2T6

Monday: 11am - 11pm
Tuesday: 11am - 11pm
Wednesday: 11am - 11pm
Thursday: 11am - 11pm
Friday: 11am - 12pm
Saturday: 11am - 12pm
Sunday: CLOSE

Payment: cash credit, debit.

Bill: Rainbow Pork: 9.95
Side of fried rice: 1.95
Strawberry smoothie: 4.00
Total: 17.97

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