Dragon Meat in Heaven

A hard day’s work had me hankering for the food that has always lifted my spirits, especially when, in our dear culinary gastropolis, every other place seems like an unappetizing tomb. But, even when entrees seem redundant, I’m always enlivened by the comestible stuff that had me serendipitously writing about it in the first place. So, turn away, or cover your eyes, lest you, like me, love absolutely everything there is to love about the food that has me eating first, and talking later, even in the good company of my cibo chum, Joey. That’s right, TAIJI Chinese Restaurant’s food had us eating without a whisper; without the uproarious laughter that always has us celebrating food everywhere. It was a long day, anchored by a meal in a deserted but very much appreciated place.

I went through the list in my mind just to make sure: Mando pop blaring? Check. Plasma television rotating a slideshow of entrees? Check. Portion of the menu in Chinese I couldn’t read but wished I could so I could order the stuff: Check.  Don’t worry, in the humble, warmly coloured space of TAIJI you still have admittance to all your favourites. Chow mein, sweet and sour pork, sesame chicken. And just before you come to a conclusion: stop right there. TAIJI is a civil restaurant. Sure, there are those Chinese Canadian favourites; but there are a lot more of those familiarities from red China, call me a running dog.

Joey couldn’t get his mind off of the curiosity that was egg drop soup, the Italian in him calling out for stracciatella, even if I tried to dismay him. I took the reins after that. There were more interesting things to eat. So I entertained my own guilty pleasures and chose a classic, Cantonese chow mein: a nest of fried wheat noodles topped and softened with a medley of bright vegetables and savoury meats in glistening sauce. If Joey could handle chopsticks as well as me, I reckon he would have beaten me to even more of it.

I’ll be damned if Joey’s stubbornness didn’t pay off, because I was pleasantly surprised by our egg drop soup. Crystalline and viscous, it was a textural pleasure with a clean broth, flavoured with an element of spiciness reminiscent of cumin.

Lastly, and much more to my indulgence, we were graced with fried green beans with minced pork. Traditionally cooked with tough, chewy, and pleasantly bitter long beans, our dish, an homage to the original, was a little more texturally delicate. Supple crumbs of ground pork peppered a plate of soft, tender green beans, juxtaposing the salty, savoury dynamic of the dish with refreshing vegetable balminess. With a little heat, and briny pickled vegetables, our tastebuds were firing synapses like fireworks. If Joey and I were any quieter, you would have heard little pops and bangs, but the happy sounds of our chams and chomps were paradoxically even louder.

Yup, there might be dragon meat in Heaven, but when you’re at TAIJI, who needs it?

Mon, Wed, Thurs: 12pm-9:30pm

Tue: Closed

Fri-Sun: 12pm-10pm

ANY PAYMENT

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Reliable

I’d spent the later part of a sick day turning over in my mind what I could do to get over the poorer judgments of overdrinking on St. Patrick’s day, and all I could think about was not going into any pub at all. Avoiding every kind of solid food, supping on nothing but a single bowl of soup broth, graval, and bay leaf tea. But deadlines are deadlines, and even if mine isn’t an iron stomach, I still had to go out there and eat. 

I did whatever I could to meet a happy compromise; go on internet forums, ask around for places that wouldn’t have me gagging, wondering what, if anything, I could put in my spent stomach, until Joey offered me the evident answer: soup. It was a fantastic idea. The problem was, or so the internet food community told me, that no place anywhere offered soup as a meal all its own, unless of course you considered pho. I did. But from that, an even further, foreign convention: Chinese soup. I really didn’t entertain it any further than that, however. In fact, I had Joey and I driving around and scoping out as many places as we could before I surrendered to the thought of eating at a place that lay underground, without a sign, and built on a foundation of having you boil your own food in soup broth. Yes, I was so hard pressed to find a place that I disdainfully decided to go to a place I had been avoiding for months. A place I would have avoided for a lifetime if not for my bad judgment that led me to looking for the hair of the dog. A place I know is the reincarnation of a place I chewed out years ago. But, as Joey optimistically said, ‘maybe it’d be better this time.’

Mushu All-You-Can-Eat Hot Pot had me at a moral impasse. I’d known what it had been, and had a good idea of what it still was. Its filled dining hall meant nothing to me the nights I passed by, but the residuals of a hangover and the urge for something soupy had me ready and willing to entertain its hidden bearings, or the ragtag crew of youngsters trying to run a hotpot restaurant without a sign.
I had no qualms with the plastic leaves wrapped around exposed pipes for decoration, the Mediterranean floor tiling, the cold temperature of the room. I was surprised by the prohibition of tea. Anything remotely close to being offered was hot water. But no tea. I couldn’t even buy it. Was Musha a cash grab? A cost cutter? Either way, I would have to come to terms with the experience of feeling like a Mongol in the dessert. But hey, what was lacked in hospitality was made up for in hot pot. I suppose.

It was an interesting menu. You could pay for complicated broths, or choose from the ones they offer for free. Pay for a little all-you-can-eat, or a lot, depending on the ingredients- anyway, I’ve never any scruples about denying myself seafood, especially if it saves me five dollars. And if you really read the menu close enough, you can get some interesting additions for free. The print’s small, but they’re there. There was even a sauce cart, so you could make your own little dipping concoction; and if you didn’t have any ideas, there was a courteous plaque on the wall giving you recipe suggestions. It was actually pretty intriguing.

A spicy Szechuan and savoury pork broth were our two options, with a whole slew of options ready to be lurched: taro, yam, cabbage, curd, chicken, beef, noodles, sausage, and fungus- our favourite.

Hot pot, it seems, no matter where you get it, is never a true misadventure, especially when you essentially cook for yourself, and pay people to shop for you. That said, there are things you’d probably never know to get yourself. Or, if you’re really raw, know where to get. We were dazzled by a sweet nameless sausage, boiled in our spicy Szechuan sauce, immortalizing the convention of Chinese cuisine’s sweet, salty, savoury, spicy philosophy. And when those bits of chili and barley coated the inside of curled sheets of tofu curd- let me tell you- I was glad my lack of discretion and jaded attitude had me settling on Musha after all.

Musha (Xu Yuan Xuan) All-You-Can-Eat-Hot Pot
Unit 5 2 king street north
Waterloo, ON,
n2j 2w7

(519) 722-3612

Mon-Sun 1030am-1130pm
 
Any payment

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Coming Home

You’d think that the bowl of congee would otherwise be my White Whale. Well, guess again, that’s the Chinese bakery, but that’s another culinary critter altogether. It was the kid from Hong Kong though, and his ‘earth-to’ over a bowl of congee that made me really fall in love with everything Chinese food. Go further back, and it was that same Hong Kong kid and a chalky cup of Hong Kong tea that woke me up to a whole other world of culinary sentience. Ever since, I’ve been obsessed with a cuisine I’ve no doubt mastered in another life, and have been trying to return to in this one.

Happy Valley’s Congee & Bar’s lights were a marvel when I first saw them glowing and abandoned months ago in that poor plaza that burned down in 2010. Since its opening a month or two ago, I’ve wondered why it hasn’t been crammed with homesick out of town kids looking for a little simulacrum of the eating houses they miss in Hong Kong, Richmond Hill, Markham, wherever. It certainly was an egg in my beer, reminding me of all the pilgrimages I’ve taken to the culinary suburbs of Canada’s Rose Capital just for some sludgy tea and deep fried devils. It was almost too good to be true. Too good in fact, that the cynic in me was disqualifying it before even eating there; not getting my hopes up, thinking that what it had was already here, thinking it couldn’t last too long, despite its namesake in Hong Kong. I’ve watched enough police dramas and rom-coms to know better anyway. Still, something in my heart of hearts nagged me to pay homage to that emulsified porridge of fat and white rice that inspired my gastronomic vocation, if not career. So I’m paying my dues to the dish, and the dining hall of clinical Chinese cosmopolitanism that houses it. I’m talking wooden booths, flood lights, television screens, hearths, sleek browns and blacks coupled with plastic cookware and the homeliest Cantonese food I’ve come to know and love in my limited adventures of eating.

Happy Valley’s a remarkable place; of course, its menu’s a pastiche of Chinese soul food, and dim sum, but it also operates as a substitute to the banal bars and the typical fare we expect to eat when we go to them. Happy Valley’s a fantastic change of pace for these parts. If I’m not giddy about the boldly inexpensive alcohol, I certainly am about the even cheaper snacks you can grab if you’re adventurous enough. Have you ever paired a Hong Kong Tea with a pint of beer? You can there. I know, because I did it. I’ll never need any whiskey espresso bar again; why would I when I can get a pint of crisp beer with oaty finish for 2.66 and a one dollar cup of the most on-the-mark Hong Kong tea I’ve ever had in town: malty in aroma, bitter and sweet in flavor, chalky and mouth coating in consistency. I saw my future as a retired expat reading the Hong Kong Economic Times: flip-flops, relaxed flower print shirt, comb-over. All this while taking turns between fanning myself, turning pages, and having a sip.

And that was just the start. Deep fried devils, chicken feet, sticky rice wrapped in lotus leaf, dumplings, barbecued pork steamed buns, condensed milk sandwiched between slices of toast, all on the cheap. It was a dream come true. So much so, I stayed after everyone left. If it really was a dream, I didn’t want to wake up. Our deep fried dough gleamed in the light, flakey, and chewy, the consistency was a treat all its own, better when dipped in my congee, bathing over every kind of ingredient: century eggs, meat, seafood, decked to the nines with white pepper and chili paste. The chicken feet, sweet and swimming in a garlic black bean sauce with a delightful caramel undernote- a fatty textural pleasure, especially when paired with beer. And the sticky rice, as expected, was embalmed by the vegetative earthiness of the leaves wrapped around it, aromatically reminiscent of tea. All the trinkets of meat and nuts made it that much more satisfying.  

The dumplings- named after Chiuchow city- were another chewy Epicureanism. Packaged with stuffings like pork, spring onions, and peanuts, the pungent overpowering aroma was a memory of my serendipitous culinary youth. The barbecued pork steamed buns too. All too familiar, the sweet, smoky savouriness was good to eat when the things were hot or cold. Happy Valley certainly had it all- for me at least: familiarity, food, congee. It was, like that kid from Hong Kong said years ago about a good bowl of congee, like coming home.

HAPPY VALLEY CONGEE & BAR
140 University Avenue W
Waterloo, ON N2L
(226) 647-8818
 
SUN-WED 1130 am-12am
THURS-SAT 1130am-130am
 
ANY PAYMENT

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Touch the Lion

I’d be remiss if during my days of culinary ethnography I didn’t at least once wax nostalgic about a place so dear to me if only because it was dear, at one point in time, to my dear Old Master. Yes, its eaters made it famous; there was a time when even Bolo Yeung himself would occupy its dining room with none-other than the Iron Fist. And there are still times when my dear brother and I visit, romancing the newspaper clippings proudly mounted on its lobby’s walls, honouring our Old Master, connecting us with him if only in the span of a lunch hour, and lamenting the fact that though we once did thousands of kicks under the moonlight as children, we don’t anymore. Life, huh? But no matter what it’s like, at least there’s food. 

Lai Lai Chinese Restaurant’s reputation obviously precedes it. And beyond its retrofitted, home exterior, beyond the stone lions guarding its doors, there’s good reason. To me, it lives as an extensive historical bricolage of the Chinese food offered in Kitchener-Waterloo for so long. Absorbed in a space of fish tanks, pastel pink walls, hanging dragons, a Buddhist library, and the passionate colours of Red China, there’s a dining room abuzz with familiar customers, some never tiring of typical Chinese Canadian fare, others always happy to have the most estranged eats. 

Lai Lai certainly has one of the most extensive menus I’ve seen too, and though I’m often jawing about how these dynamics can work against a place, Lai Lai’s has refused to pay it any mind for a long, long time. There are lunch specials, dinner menus, options that can take, so I’ve been told, up to half a day to prepare for the customer who so desires. Intense stuff.

To this day, we’re not yet that adventurous, but nothing stops us from a good communal ordering of the most sentimental food. Me, hoarding the most inexpensive bowl of braised beef noodle soup all to myself, and my company waiting on dumplings, fried eggplant in special sauce, and curried beef, ready, despite my own self-indulgence, to share every bit with me.

My soup was a joyful return to the warm spicey aromas I had spent years trying to cook all by my lonesome. Anise suffused in a sweet and savoury broth drowned soft noodles that entangled chewy cubes of stewed beef and crisp bok choy. Our fried eggplant carried the sweet and savoury motif with a little saltiness. Caramelized eggplant gave way in our mouths, crispiness juxtaposing the smooth pulp of the eggplant’s soft flesh. Our curried beef was a simple, familiar flavour of sambar powder stir-fried alongside crisp green bell peppers and onions. Lastly, our boiled dumplings were a chewy treat of roped wonton’s stewed in a savoury broth, exploding with pork and ginger, and accompanied by a vinegared dipping sauce of sesame oil and chili peppers.
But what we were and always are most excited about is Lai Lai’s special gelatin desserts; complimentary thimbles of gelatin flavoured with whatever the house could come up with: coconut, taro, red bean, the list goes on. They were as good as we remembered them, and Lai Lai’s still the paradise it always was in our minds.

Lai Lai's Chinese Restaurant
175 West Avenue
Kitchener, ON
Canada N2G 1R9
Tel:  (519) 579-3031


Monday & Sunday   11:30 am -  9:00 pm
Tuesday -Saturday  11:30 am - 10:00 pm
Holiday                   4:00 pm -  9:00 pm

Any payment

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