Restaurant: Congee Queen (Thornhill, Ontario, Canada)

I always talk about Asian cuisine after going to Toronto. Its usually the closest place with good Chinese cuisine in particular since to be honest, Montreal has a lot of great restaurants but Chinese cuisine itself is a bit lacking. Its why I tend to avoid it whenever given the option. Sad, because I do truly love Chinese food. I mean, its not hard to imagine seeing as I am Chinese and my mom makes about the best Chinese food in town or its my best friend who also is a master in the kitchen.

Not surprising that the rare time that we all end up in Toronto for a wedding, we meet up for a dinner the night before to hang out. We never do double dates much seeing as we all have funky work schedules and commitments so this was a great time to catch up and have fun.

We lived at the Courtyard Marriott in Thornhill and right next door was the flagship store of Congee Queen. Let’s check it out!

Congee Queen

Dinner Selections

Crab Meat & Vegetarian Shark Fin served with Conpoy Rice in Chicken Broth

My best friend was the one who ordered this meal. She wanted to give this a try mostly for the vegetarian shark fin. It actually had a really  nice flavor. The textures are all there and the chicken broth was nice. I was originally worried that it would be too strong like on the salty side as broth sometimes tends to be, but it wasn’t like that.

General Tao Chicken Rice

My husband mostly focused on eating this meal. General Tao is very much non-traditional Chinese food however, I don’t usually fuss over these things. My husband thought it was good although he did end up not eating all the huge pieces of chili peppers because those were really intense.

Snow Pea Leaves with King Mushroom

One of my choices for the evening was this snow pea tips with oyster mushrooms. I think my description is the correct one but the one in the description is the one that is shown on the menu in case you ever want to get it at this restaurant. The season for snow pea tips is a little bit past so it was expected that they were more old in texture so it was more stiff and chewy. The mushrooms are always a nice alternative. I actually eat more of these types of mushrooms in Goodfood boxes and I really like them a lot. This veggie plate is a win. If we had it back in April when the snow pea tips were in season, then it would have been perfect.

Pork Rib with Onion on Sizzling Hot Plate

The second dish that I picked was pork ribs. This is a pretty traditional dish at least for myself when we went to Chinese restaurants when I was younger. I don’t go to Chinese restaurants as much mostly because Montreal cuisine isn’t great but Toronto is a different story so I was excited to see how they would prepare this. This one was okay. I think we all agreed that it tasted okay but it was nothing too fancy and felt a little overpriced.

Fried Eggplant, Minced Pork with Spicy Sauce

My best friend’s second choice was this dish which is an uber traditional Chinese dish. I was pretty full so I didn’t eat a whole lot of this one but it was fairly good. I’m not a huge eggplant eater but I do appreciate its health properties so I try to eat it more often and learn to appreciate it. This one was slightly spicy also.

Congee Queen had some pretty delicious meal. It does some cool dishes and sometime switches up some traditional meals to something of of a fusion of sorts. I do think that for the experience, it is a little bit more pricier than I would want to pay. I don’t mind so much paying for good food if there is something original but for the portion size and the price of some of the very common dishes, it definitely felt not exactly equal. Luckily, I am visiting and I don’t like Montreal chinese food so I didn’t mind it so much.

With that said, I am aware that for a congee restaurant, I didn’t have congee. We did have dinner but next time, if I was going for brunch or lunch, then that would absolutely make an appearance. Suffice to say, despite little things, Congee Queen is a place that I would go again when I head down to Toronto again.

Recap: Goodfood #4

I had to take a break this weekend. Sorry about that. For many reasons, it was one I had wanted to focus on real life things. Happy stuff! Plus, it was super humid and hot so being in the office was like sitting in a preheating oven. Regardless, we stayed in mostly and did a lot of gaminh and cooking. Thanks to finishing up the last two meals from last week’s Goodfood box.

Lets check it out!

Seared Haddock with Farro and Orange-Fennel Salad

A lot of new or ingredients we rarely use for this recipe. Haddock isn’t our usual choice of fish. And the fish part of this was tasty. Farro was new to us and its pretty much like a harder texture of brown rice ( or maybe it is brown rice…I should research it further). I’m not a hard rice sort of fan unless its in sweet congee. I didn’t eat the orange fennel salad mostly because of the not eating raw veggies thing but my husband did and his words, it was okay.

Grilled Ratatouille Sandwich with Sundried Tomato Hummus

Easily one of our favorite meals from this box. Its also vegetarian so thats saying a lot. Its juicy. The bread is made with a crispy outer crunch and the veggies, peppers, zucchini and multicolor chery tomatoes had a nice balanced flavor. You can make this for a fancy bbq sandwich idea if you’d like plus, the sundried tomato hummus was absolutely heavenly. Yummy!

Chinese Five Spice Chicken with Snow Pea Tips, Beans and Quinoa Salad

I’ve had five spices flavored stuff when I went to Hong Kong however, since my mom’s not much for spicing up food too much, I’ve never had much exposure. With that said, trying out five spices, it being a chicken dish and the fact that it had snow pea tips (which is one of my ultimate favorite veggies) made this one so awesome. However, we did make a little twist to this and cooked the snow pea tips as well with all the ingredients that would have gone in the salad which actually ended up fantastic. I’d do this one again any day. Now to figure out where to find five spices in the Chinese supermarket nearby. 😉

Chef Jonathan Garnier’s Fresh Tagliatelle with Lebanese Moussaka

Definitely an interesting choice here. We’re big fans of fresh pasta. I’d like to say that we’ve actually been buying fresh pasta options more than the dry ones. We also don’t eat chickpeas or eggplants a lot either but this one had some nice spices. Not to mention my husband did a fine job of putting it together. Not sure what Lebanese Moussaka was before. In fact, I’ve never heard of it before and it was pretty good. Definitely a nice way to incorporate chickpeas and eggplants into everyday meals.

That’s it for this Goodfood recap!
It was a success with 3 meals that we absolutely loved and one that we liked well enough.