Golden Duke Chinese Cuisine

Happy 100 Days to my dear son! In Chinese culture, we celebrate a baby's 100 days with red eggs (okay technically we do that at one month, but in Hong Kong people like more time to prepare properly, and let's face it, I was in no condition to plan a big party within the first month given that my son and I spent the first week of his life in the hospital, but I digress). Anyway, it's a big celebration where the entire family gets to meet the new addition, and in all the hoopla I did not take any photos for this blog. I mean, we took tons of photos in general, but I don't like posting photos of other people without their permission and also people are not food, which is what you really care about. So here goes my second review without photos!

Restaurant: Golden Duke Chinese Cuisine
Location: Markham
Meal: Dinner
Day: Saturday
Son's Age: 100 days!!! ...+3, but who celebrates on a Wednesday

Since we were celebrating a special occasion, we called ahead to the restaurant to let them know and they helped us prepare a banquet and reserve three tables with 12 people at each table.

Accessibility: ⭐️⭐️⭐️
As with most Chinese restaurants, this one is not particularly stroller friendly purely due to space restrictions; however, since we were actually in Markham, there is a dedicated parking lot and they brought out a chair for us to put the car seat on, and they also provided a high chair for his one year old godsister. Unfortunately, the washroom has no change table. My husband is a dutiful father who did both diaper changes during the banquet, and he had to change our son on the counter between two sinks and under the soap dispenser. This is preferable to changing him on the floor, of course, but still not an ideal situation.

Service: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
The service during the meal itself was not particularly memorable, but I must give them five stars for successfully hosting such a large party. As I mentioned earlier, they had a seat for my son and a high chair for his godsister. They also set aside three large tables in the back corner and adorn them with red tablecloths. They were very helpful with choosing an appropriate menu, accommodating one vegetarian guest as well as allergies to nuts, eggs, and dairy. The banquet menus that they had are typically for tables of ten people; however they allowed us to seat twelve per table (excluding babies) and increased food quantities accordingly. Considering how difficult it is to accomplish anything with a newborn, let alone plan a party, their help was greatly appreciated.

Food: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Full disclosure - I never know how to rate Chinese food. I eat it so frequently that I can only tell when it's bad. Don't get me wrong - I love Chinese food. I just don't know if it's the best thing ever or par for the course. Since I have no photos, I'm going to break this down into paragraphs to hopefully make it easier to follow.

We started with Peking duck. I have never met a Peking duck I didn't like, and this was no exception. The skin was crispy and there was a good amount of meat, and it was served with all the trimmings: sauce, cucumbers, carrots, and green onions. My friend refers to it as a Chinese taco.

The second course was stir-fried duck meat with lettuce. For all the hipsters that think lettuce wraps are a new thing, Chinese have been using them forever to eat the rest of the duck meat after Peking duck. This is also a course that I've always liked, and here was no exception.

Next was pan-fried shrimp and chicken with crispy vegetables, crab meat with fish maw soup, and braised bok choy with garlic. These were all good dishes - not particularly outstanding but I found them satisfying.

After this was crispy chicken, deep fried fillets of sole fish, and stir-fried lobsters with Maggi sauce. All of these were delicious. The chicken was perfectly crispy. The fish is not what you would typically see in a Chinese banquet, which provided a bit of a refreshing change (although I do love steamed fish usually). The lobster was cooked and seasoned well, although I still am not quite adept at eating lobster with chopsticks.

We then had seafood fried rice and braised e-fu noodles. These were both good, but I think all Chinese restaurants should know how to make these.

Finally, we ended with what the restaurant described in English as "signature dessert" and "fancy pastries". The dessert was red bean soup, which is typically served as good luck due to the red colour. The fancy pastries were Chinese cookies, so not exactly what I would describe as "fancy". I did appreciate the goji berry jellies that they served with the cookies though.

Overall: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Accessibility is a little problematic, but the food is great and the service in preparing for the celebration was phenomenal and very well appreciated. I am not sure how this place is on a regular day, but based on this experience, I would recommend hosting a special event here.