Toronto is one of the oldest Chinese communities in Canada. Here we celebrate the more traditional, original Chinese cuisine – there are many spots that still cook Chinese food from the 1980s that you can't find anymore. We also have an incredible younger generation of chefs rewriting Toronto’s Chinese cuisine with much more modern restaurants. To discover the best of the scene, I recommend making a day of it, spending the morning and afternoon in Markham and Scarborough for the Chinese breakfast joints and the dim sum. After that, head up to North York, where street food is being celebrated in strip malls, from Chinese hot pot to bakeries to dessert shops, to bubble tea shops to stir-fry places. Then continue the feast into the early hours downtown.
Providential 9
Providential Nine is one of the newer shops in Toronto. It's a family-owned restaurant where the wife insists on being in the kitchen every day and where dim sum is still made fresh, not frozen. It's a true showcase of Cantonese cuisine. My favourite is the rice rolls. All their dumpling variations on the dim sum menu are incredible.
Daan Go
This is one of my favourite cake shops. The name is the pronunciation for cake in Cantonese. It’s run by a Chinese-French pastry chef who also does his own ice cream. I usually visit there once a week, just to see the new flavours that he has. He has macarons that are great for kids. It’s the perfect place for a sweet pick-me-up, right after dim sum.
Good Catch Café
Good Catch is a Hong Kong café – an amalgamation of fusion and colonization. It's the best gift the British left for the Hong Kong folks. They introduced custard, afternoon tea and all the good Western snacks, which got incorporated with Chinese flavours and influence. That is the specialty of the Hong Kong café. Good Catch is one of those places where again they make everything from scratch. They're proud of the food they bring out and their quality is always consistent.
Dong Kee
Dong Kee is up in Markham. It’s very regional, very niche. They're known for this one dish, toisan, which is eel clay pot rice. It's a specialty in Ontario. There are a couple of places that do it, but my favourite is Dong Kee. They're also well known for live tanks, where you pick the seafood and they cook it fresh. It's packed with industry folks.
