Address: 7155 Woodbine Avenue
Website: http://phoenixrestaurant.cc/templateEN/
Type of Meal: Dinner
Phoenix Restaurant is a
“cha chaan teng” (tea restaurant) chain with two locations in Markham and one
in Thornhill. Cha chaan teng’s
are popular in Hong Kong where they opened as an option for the common masses
to eat Western style food, which historically was only afforded to those who
were rich. The menus are generally large and vary with Asian options (noodles
in soup, chicken and rice) and Hong Kong-style western dishes (steak, baked
rice & spaghetti). There are many
tea restaurants across the GTA, each offering a la carte and set meals at
affordable prices.
At Phoenix I had one of their set dinners, the XO sauce stir
fried udon with seafood ($11.99) which came with soup, a mini croissant and
drink. To change the Hong Kong-style
milk tea to cold, I added an additional $1.15 which as a percentage of the meal
price is actually quite expensive. But,
I find this aromatic, smooth and strong tea is best enjoyed cold. Made from black tea seeped for a long time
and finished with simple syrup and condensed milk the tea is much richer and
stronger than the regular orange pekoe. Phoenix did improve on it by serving
the tea in a frosted glass and without ice so it stayed concentrated.
For the soup, I chose
the non-creamy borscht option. Unlike
the original Ukrainian version which uses beetroot for the broth, the Hong Kong
version is tomato and beef based. Phoenix’s
soup is spicier than others and very flavourful. Rather than have a lot of small chopped up
ingredients the chef left them in larger pieces so the soup ends up looking a
bit plain and watery. It’s a bit disappointing that the regular cabbage,
carrots and potatoes were missing as these vegetables add heartiness to the
soup.
The miniature croissants
are much like the ones that can be found in grocery stores, but they are
toasted with extra butter spread onto it.
Luckily, they aren’t very big as the one small piece of bread must pack
a big caloric punch! Normally, most tea
houses offer a sweet Chinese egg bun, which I would have preferred to the oily
croissant.
As soon as the XO sauce
stir fried udon was put in front of me I wanted to dig in. XO sauce is made from dried seafood, garlic and
chili oil which gives the dish it’s added to a strong aromatic smell. A fairly large portion of the udon was mixed
with shrimp, scallop and squid that were actually a decent size. Overall, it was a delicious stir fried noodle
dish.
We also got an order of the fried chicken wings ($5.25)
to share amongst the table. There were
five to the order and very crispy and hot.
They are your regular run of the mill non-coated and no sauce deep fried
Chinese chicken wings.
Overall mark - 7 out of 10
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Gastro World's Grading System
- Anything under 5 - I really disliked and will never go back
- 6 - decent restaurant but I likely won't return
- 7 - decent restaurant and I will likely return
- 8 - great restaurant that I'd be happy to recommend
- 9 - fantastic restaurant that I would love to visit regularly and highly recommend
- 10 - absolute perfection!
