Location: 28 South Unionville Avenue, Markham
Website: None
I’ve mentioned before that I make it a general policy on this blog to not compare dishes to the real deal in whatever country they’re from. I just don’t think it’s particularly useful or fair, for a number of reasons.
But sometimes I’ve gotta do it. In this case, I pretty much fell in love with the cheese noodles I had in Hong Kong, and was very excited when I saw that they had them on the menu at Garden Hong Kong Cafe in Markham.
It’s a really simple dish; it’s basically just instant noodles with cheese sauce. In Hong Kong, it was served with braised pork cheek on the side; here, it was chicken wings.
I will say that the version at Garden Hong Kong Cafe was tasty enough, especially when you top it with a generous spoonful (or two, or three) of the garlicky, sweet chili oil they have on the table. That chili oil is doing about 95 percent of the heavy lifting in making this as good as it is, but hey — tasty is tasty. I’m not complaining.
Sadly, the cheese sauce here is pretty bland, and is applied very sparingly to the noodles (as opposed to Hong Kong, where the sauce completely smothered the dish and had a delightfully sharp cheesy flavour).
Still, that aforementioned chili oil is delicious enough to smooth over any of the dish’s faults, and at $8.50 (!) — which includes a mug of delicious milk tea — it’s hard to deny that it’s an absolute steal.
I should note that this place is very small and very busy (it was already packed and had a waiting list when I showed up a few minutes after they opened on a recent Saturday), so keep that in mind.
Michael Eats 