Category: Bouffe / Chow

One of the reasons to visit Toronto almost two months was food – food in restaurants, food in cafe eateries, food at takeout vans, and also food in Chinese supermarkets. This is when I discovered Oriental Food Mart, with a few branches around the GTA, including one in Markham, where lives Toronto’s most important concentration of ethnic Chinese and another in Missisauga’s Chinese town.

One of the advantages of any other Canadian city, including Toronto, Vancouver and Calgary is the presence of a T&T Supermarket, commonly known as 大統華 (Tai Tung Hua), a joint venture between one of Taiwan’s ten biggest conglomerates (they also sell dairy products, and even own hotels!) and Californian supermarket chain Tawa. T&T is one of the best known names in the Canadian Asian grocery business and definitely rivals mainstream big names in terms of quality (Kim Phat and Hawaï in Greater Montreal are trying hard to match this level of quality but still aren”t there).

T&T also has the reputation of being well-packaged and fresh, but also charging a premium for the augmented quality (qualitatively verified by yours truly). This is where Oriental Food Mart (華盛 – Hua Sheng, which translates to something like Chinese blooming) comes in, with a reputation for more competitive prices with just a slightly less appealing presentation, although not remarkably less by so much.

I went on Sunday after lunch, presumably the most busy time of the week, as the suburbanites stock up for the rest of the week. My Torontonian hosts had just taken me to a dim sum place in the same new-looking mall. I did my groceries there, even if the prices were comparable – more frequently than not, it was more expensive – than in Montreal.

Modern Chinese supermarkets (I’ve seen these in Hong Kong) tend to have these vegetable counters, imitating the look and feel of a traditional outdoor fresh produce market. They are an easy way of telling customers that the veggies as fresh from the field (or the box they came in) as possible,

Quite naturally, you find a counter for prepared foods, a bakery and a counter of what I call Chinese cold cuts, but which is better named as siu lap or siu mei (barbecued meat). Just like anything coming from a supermarket which can be bought in a specialized shop, one may be right to be suspicious and purchase it elsewhere (which I did). Because of greater turnover and the hopeful corollary of a fresher roast, siu mei is one of those things that’s worth buying on a last day in Toronto.

In the bargains, I got a stick-free wok (“made in Korea”) for 30$, a metal plate for a few dollars, and a six-pack of Vita juice for only $2.99!! [The market price in Mtl is invariably $3.99, sometimes $6.50 for two six-packs.]

Oriental Food Mart is where my hosts shop most of the time. If you are planning a food trip to Toronto and have already seen and been to T&T, then the Oriental Food Mart is definitely worth going to as well. I filled any space left in my single sports bag and several cloth bags.

1661 Denison Street, Markham, ON. (Corner of Kennedy, 1km north of Pacific Mall)

I’m not (historically) the biggest fan of this kind of Chinese desert which we generally denominate as tong sui, literally “sweet water”, designating any kind of sweet dessert soup or custard. I don’t think the previous picture, that of a B仔涼粉, or a dish of grass jelly served with fresh fruits, actually represents “tong sui” per se, but it was served in tong sui place in Markham where I had it.

In Montreal, my friends and I would try to find a similar kind of place, but in vain. There was one restaurant Sai Gwan, literally West Gate, appropriately near Chinatown’s De La Gauchetière western gate, which had a glass-windowed fridge keeping various kinds of typical tong sui, like ginger custard (薑汁撞奶/燉奶), sweet potato soup (番薯糖水) or – a personal favourite – black sesame soup (芝麻糊). Another one was the short-lived Congee Restaurant (豐衣粥食) in Brossard, which besides serving more variety of congee I’ve ever seen in the Province of Quebec, also had a large selection of tong sui.

I say that I am not the hugest fan of tong sui, because for most of my life, I’ve associated it with the stuff that they give you at the end of your meal in any Chinese restaurant in Chinatown. I could not assess the quality of the stuff, but as it was given for free, and very strangely either red-bean or a tapioca-pearl-based, not the most “expensive” kinds of tong sui, the idea that tong sui was something cheap was reinforced until I recently attempted to rediscover Chinese food (such as realizing that bok choy could be cooked in better ways than your parents were used to).

Relatives and friends have always been more excited (or just inclined) to bring me, or have me tag along for tong sui excursions and detours. It’s not an idea that comes naturally – mais c’est une idée qui fait son bonhomme de chemin.

The previous pic was that of a ginger milk curd that my once-a-Montrealer Torontonian friend had. Also known by its short name of “daan nai”, the milk curd is produced by the reaction of ginger juice with milk – some cheat by using eggs in their recipe.

Edit (2008-11-27): One group in the Hong Kong Student Science Project Competition even did a project on ginger milk curd in 2006 (see PDF presentation).

The one made by Yee Shun Milk Co is one of the best known in Hong Kong. The eatery/cafe has two branches in Causeway Bay that I know of and more on the Kowloon side (see map).

Tong sui is a particularity of Cantonese cuisine, thus one with sentimental value to me. I would really like it if Montreal could just evolve beyond bubble tea and adopt more serious types of food by upgrading its current concept of a cha chaan teng for instance, just like Xiao Fei Yang (Little Sheep) helped push the idea/market for hot pot in this city. However, I live on a different planet, where just a clean place serving Chinese desserts where you can hangout with a laptop simply defy the reality of our demographics (even with the influx of Mainlanders, some of whom might find Hong Kong-style food natural to have in their Chinese food landscape).

At this point, I’ve given up on waiting for others to feed me – I’m more interested in how our Chinese/Asian supermarkets have evolved and are becoming better places for buying the ingredients to make all this food I don’t have access to (I just got a new wok with chopsticks for frying). Speaking of which, Markham’s Oriental Food Market (華盛) will be the next food topic on CLC.

Whereas here in Montreal, street food was banned since the last generation, it’s not unusual to see food vendors populate sidewalks in Toronto. Although generally you find hot dog stands – I was told that the city by-law regarding street food only allowed one kind: sausage + fries – we have bumped into these trucks selling Chinese food parked on St. George, a street that crosses the University of Toronto campus.

Specifically, it would seem that they are in business during the day, but not during weekend, to my dismay, as I wanted to treat myself to some Chinese food made in a van in less than a minute (I settled for pizza on Spadina).

According to a friend of mine who went to U of T, the former, Wokking On Wheels, is a true institution that has fed more than one student running between library and exam room.