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“Asian Cuisine” — Unimaginative Name, Great Cantonese Food">“Asian Cuisine” — Unimaginative Name, Great Cantonese Food

I treated my mother to din­ner tonight for Mother’s Day, and went to a Chi­nese restau­rant in Rich­mond Hill called “Asian Cui­sine”. It’s a thor­oughly unimag­i­na­tive name, but the Can­tonese food and ser­vice were far bet­ter than I had expected. In fact, I haven’t had good restaurant-cooked Can­tonese food like that in years! I enjoyed the food so much that I find myself writ­ing a review of the place right away!

“Asian Cui­sine” is located at 9021 Leslie, on the east side just north of High­way 7. If you know how to get to Times Square, just go north on Leslie one light. I have actu­ally been at the plaza sev­eral times to eat at “Chili Secrets” (or “half acre” in Chi­nese), but we thought we’d give some­place new a try. Boy am I glad we did.

I should also add that the com­pli­men­tary bowl of soup (“lai tong”) was very tasty. We were explic­itly told there was no MSG in the soup, and I could see that they used a fair num­ber and amount of ingre­di­ents to make it tasty.  That was a good start to the meal and a good sign of things to come.

You can tell when a place stir fries their food prop­erly. Good places have “wok hei”, which essen­tially means they cook with high enough tem­per­a­tures dur­ing cook­ing to cause chem­i­cal reac­tions in the ingre­di­ents to pro­duce all those tasty, aro­matic com­pounds that make us go “Mmm­m­m­m­mmm!” Places that take short­cuts will boil the meat first, and then throw it into the wok for a quick stir before plat­ing the food.

When I sat down at our table tonight, I had heard the roar of the wok burn­ers from the kitchen, but that can be decep­tive. The real proof is in the tasting. When I bit into my first piece of beef from the bit­ter melon & beef dish at Asian Cui­sine, I could taste that they cooked their food prop­erly. They cooked the ingre­di­ents from raw in the wok at high heat.

When I tried the “three fresh” seafood dish, with scal­lops, shrimp, and squid on a bed of green veg­eta­bles, I knew the ingre­di­ents were fresh as well as cooked prop­erly. The shrimp was refresh­ing, burst­ing with fla­vor in the mouth. The scal­lops had some meati­ness & grit to the tex­ture, indi­cat­ing they were fresh when cooked and weren’t the mushy previously-frozen discs that used to be scal­lops. The squid had bounce and just the right amount of resis­tance, and weren’t the hunks of rub­ber that some places end up serving.

The stir-fried pork neck on greens dish was a lit­tle salty, but very well done. The pork neck meat had good tex­ture — it had a bit of its char­ac­ter­is­tic bounce and resis­tance, but over­all was very ten­der and sea­soned well. What made the dish spe­cial, for me, was that the chef used leeks as the base veg­etable for the dish. Leeks are aro­matic — hence their use as foun­da­tion veg­eta­bles for west­ern soup stocks — and packed a won­der­ful, sub­tle fla­vor that is often miss­ing from other veg­eta­bles used for chi­nese dishes. Leeks are not com­monly used in Can­tonese cook­ing, but the fact that the chef chose to use them tells me that he is truly think­ing about how to make the dishes good, inter­est­ing, and enjoyable.

Ser­vice was good from begin­ning to end. Though we were the small­est table being served this evening, we were given the same atten­tive and cheer­ful ser­vice as any other table. In fact, when my mother men­tioned to the boss-lady that the food was really good, the boss-lady was vis­i­bly pleased and got rather chatty. That’s a very pleas­ant and pos­i­tive change from the better-than-thou aloof­ness that many Chi­nese pro­pri­etors exhibit. It turns out the chef in the kitchen, also a pro­pri­etor (the hus­band per­haps?), had been head chef at other restau­rants for the past 11 years. He has expe­ri­ence and the boss-lady was vis­i­bly proud of it.

Din­ner came to $50 for 3 dishes plus a few bowls of rice. It’s not the cheap­est place you can eat, but I think the final tab was entirely worth it. You’re pay­ing for qual­ity ingre­di­ents cooked prop­erly and served with a pos­i­tive atti­tude. I’ll take that any day over sav­ing $10 or $15 and being served some­thing bland, with poor tex­ture and bad service.

I’ll be back again to try their food on a reg­u­lar night, and then try their dim sum on a week­end some­time. When my dear grandma was still with us, her favorite restau­rant was Gar­lic & Onion (“Ga Yun Gong”) in Mar­ket Vil­lage. How­ever, their qual­ity has been declin­ing steadily since then. I’m happy to have pos­si­bly found a new restau­rant as a go-to place for good Can­tonese food.

As we left the restau­rant, the boss-lady and the chef said thank you and good night to us. That in itself is a rare thing from a Chi­nese restau­rant. The real kicker though was that I could see that they were sin­cere. That, my friends, sealed the deal for me. I will gladly give my din­ing dol­lars to a small restau­rant that cooks with heart & gives real ser­vice over a large restau­rant that’s just churn­ing out dishes or a chain pro­duc­ing food by the numbers.

It has been a long time since I’ve been impressed with a Chi­nese restau­rant. My mother is even harder to please, and even she was say­ing how good the food was. If you want good, qual­ity Can­tonese food in Rich­mond Hill, I highly rec­om­mend “Asian Cui­sine”. It’s an unimag­i­na­tive name, but it’s seri­ously good food.