Wednesday, April 18, 2007

Restaurant Review - Congee Star

On the recommendation of my beautiful Thai friend, we went to this Chinese restaurant, Congee Star, which is located on the west side of Don Mills north of Wynford Drive in Toronto. I would think that they would be known for their congee, and we decided to have one of their interesting combinations, ones I have not seen in other restaurants. This congee contained salted fish and preserved duck eggs. With this, we had a dish from the Snack section, which was Chinese fried dough wrapped in rice noodles. My friend told me that Chinese fried dough, without the rice noodles, goes well with congee. The congee tasted good, and arrived very hot, the rice toned down the flavour of the preserved duck eggs. Then we ordered a soup, with crab and fish maw; my friend likes fish maw, though the Thai cut up the fish maw into larger chunks than the Chinese do. It tasted pretty good regardless, and arrived piping hot. Finally, we ordered a dish with fish and bitter melon over rice noodles. The rice noodles were the thick kind, rather than vermicelli. Again, quite tasty, though I find bitter melon to have an odd bitter taste, something I can't stomach too much of. The meals were reasonably priced and were quite generous in size, we could not finish all of the food. I would go back, especially to try the hot pot, a dish that my Thai friend recommended for me to try but ultimately I did not choose, she knows I would like it, but she is mostly vegetarian, and I wanted to select dishes we could both eat.

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