Golden Jade Restaurant

For my aunt's birthday, my cousin arranged a surprise family lunch in Markham, and of course I brought my baby along with me.

Restaurant: Golden Jade Restaurant
Location: Markham
Meal: Lunch
Day: Sunday
Son's Age: 7 months

Apparently, this restaurant actually relocated from the Steeles and Silver Star area. The entire meal was ordered ahead of time so I must admit that I am not always aware of what I ate or what it would be called on the menu, but I can still review how I liked it!

Accessibility: ⭐️
The good news is, there is a dedicated parking lot. I brought my son in his car seat to place on a chair at the table.

Of course, since this was a family function, the moment I set the car seat down, a family member came and scooped him up, so here is a photo of the empty car seat! The washrooms, on the other hand, are far from accessible.

There is absolutely no counter space to change a diaper and no change table. If you drove, I suppose you could change your baby in your car. Also, I did not see any high chairs around, nor was one offered to me, so I suspect they don't have any, in case your child is old enough to sit in one.

Service: ⭐️⭐️
Despite the fact that it was a surprise lunch, my aunt was actually quite punctual. Lunch was already late (1pm), but food did not arrive until an hour later. I'm particularly aware because my sister could only stay for an hour and thus was not able to eat anything for lunch. In general, the servers barely acknowledged us, and the only reason I give two stars is because they helped arrange the surprise birthday party and helped us take a group photo afterward.

Food: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
I am going to try my best to describe each of these dishes as accurately as possible. First, we started with soup.

Generally, I enjoy soup, and I found that this was no exception. It was a nice way to start the meal on a cool day in November (although it would be nicer if I didn't have to wait an hour for it). The next dish was chicken and jellyfish.

The chicken was served cold (intentionally - not a product of the late start). It's quite good once you wrap your head around eating cold chicken, and it goes surprisingly well with the jellyfish, which I usually associate with pork. Next there was this dish.

I have to admit that I don't remember what this was or how it tasted, but clearly it did not leave any kind of impression on me, good or bad. We then had some fried fish.

This dish was pretty tasty albeit a little dry. There was a little bit of chilli on it, so it gives a little bit of a kick but still manageable for those who can't handle their food too spicy. This was followed by beef and mushrooms. 

This was also good but relatively generic, so it provided a bit of variety to the meal but was not a standout. We also had sweet and sour pork. 

I actually really enjoyed this because it wasn't too greasy. For those of you who are not accustomed to Chinese food, this is not the sweet and sour pork you get from Manchu Wok. It has fresh peppers and onions and a good amount of sweet and sour sauce. The next dish was bok choy. 

While it doesn't seem impressive, this was a welcome reprieve from all the other heavier dishes we had been eating thus far. Plus, it's always good to eat your veggies! After this, we had a much more memorable dish. 

I don't know what this was exactly, but it was shrimp coated in something orange and fried. Flavour wise, it was delicious and unique. Texturally, the coating was very powdery, which I thought was strange and off putting, as it left a weird aftertaste in my mouth. The consensus around the table seemed to be that the flavour more than made up for the texture, though, so I guess I kind of recommend it? Although how would you even ask how to order this? That weird orangey powdery deep fried shrimp? I don't know. Anyway, the next two items were your standard noodles and fried rice. 

I actually don't even remember the noodles, and I remember the rice even less 

As far as the whole meal goes, the food ranged from delicious to unmemorable yet inoffensive. I'd say that makes to a rather enjoyable lunch overall. 

Overall: ⭐️⭐️½

The food is pretty good, but the service was less than impressive and the restaurant itself does not make it easy to bring a baby. As such, I wouldn't recommend bringing a baby here (not to mention that the location itself is already pretty inconvenient if you live in the city). 

Shangri-la

To celebrate my father-in-law's birthday, my husband and I decided to treat him for dim sum. The best dim sum tends to be in the northeast part of the GTA, so we found ourselves at Shangri-la in Markham.

Restaurant: Shangri-la
Location: Markham
Meal: Brunch
Day: Saturday
Son's Age: 25 weeks

This restaurant is particularly nice because it is also a banquet hall and convention centre. This means that the venue is spacious, well decorated, and clean, and to be honest, it's pretty rare to find a good dim sum restaurant with all these qualities, so that's already a big plus. It's also set up as if for an event (probably to entice people to book their weddings here), which means the tables have clearly marked numbers, so when my in-laws were seated, they let us know which table they were sitting at, which made it much easier to find them once we arrived.

Accessibility: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Since there is a large parking lot, we opted to just bring the car seat in and place it on a chair.

It turns out that if we had decided to bring the stroller inside, there was plenty of room for us to navigate to our table, so that's nice to know for the future. I believe I saw high chairs also but I can't be sure. The washrooms are both large and clean, which is amazing and again could easily accommodate a stroller, but more importantly, there was a change table available.

It's nice because it is not inside the larger stall, nor does it block anyone else using the facilities. From an accessibility perspective, this restaurant is perfect for bringing baby. The noise level in the dim sum restaurant also means that if you have a fussy baby, you don't need to worry about disturbing other patrons, but you can still hear each other and carry a conversation, so again, perfect for bringing a baby.

Service: ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Service was unremarkable - in fact, they served our dessert dish first. It's pretty much what you would expect at dim sum restaurants - you mark your order on a paper, your server takes the paper from you, then brings your dishes out as they are ready. Very little interaction, but they get the job done. 

Food: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

I've mentioned this in previous posts, but I always have difficulty rating Chinese food simply because I've had so much that I usually greatly enjoy the food, but can't tell if something is particularly outstanding or just average. I can recognize when the food is bad, though, and the food is not bad at all here. Because dishes are served whenever they're ready, I couldn't capture everything in one photo, so I will just post a bunch and comment intermittently. As I said earlier, we somehow started with dessert, which was a sweetened pancake with peanuts. 

It was sweet but not too sweet, so it wasn't that big an issue that it came first. Next was deep fried taro dumplings and turnip cake with preserved meat. 

Turnip cakes are one of the dishes I almost always order at dim sum, and this place did not disappoint. I don't typically have taro dumplings though, and these were really good - crunchy on the outside but smooth on the inside. Then we had siu mai with fish roe and beef balls. 

Both these dishes were tasty, as expected. We also had beef tripe with ginger and green onion as well as spare ribs.

These dishes were both fine albeit unmemorable. We ordered some congee for the table.

Again, fine but not memorable. This was followed by bean curd rolls.

This was nice and juicy - they did not skimp on the sauce here. Finally, the last dish was char siu bao, or buns with BBQ pork.

This was a good finish to the meal, and pretty much what you'd expect for a char siu bao. Overall, I was very satisfied with the food, and there is a decent amount of variety that you can order from, which is great when you are eating with a large group of people.

Overall: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
This is probably one of the better dim sum restaurants to take your baby. The food is great and the place is clean and spacious. Not to mention, the presentation of the food is slightly nicer than most Chinese restaurants. I would definitely come here again. 

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.