Chinese food – Michael Eats

Tasty Noodles at Wu Ji Xi’an Foods

Published on August 1, 2026August 1, 2026 by Michael Nusair2 Comments

Location: 117B North Service Road East, Oakville
Website: None

Wu Ji Xi’an Foods is probably the hole-in-the-walliest hole in the wall I’ve visited in quite a while. It’s take-out only, with the extremely no-frills interior being about the size of a walk-in closet.

I actually wasn’t even able to get a photo of the interior, because as soon as you walk in, you’re face-to-face with the proprietor. Taking out my phone and trying to snap a photo felt like it would have been awkward overload, especially since the woman behind the counter seemed to speak minimal English (their card machine was down, and she had to tell me they were cash only via hand gestures).

They have a few things on the menu, but their specialty seems to be a cold noodle dish called liangpi, so that’s what I went with. It’s $7.50 for a pretty hearty serving, so it’s a great deal.

The dish comes with rice noodles, some sliced cucumber, a few chunks of seitan, and four sauce packets: sesame paste, soy sauce / vinegar (I think), garlic water, and chili oil.

It’s really good. The broad noodles are nice and chewy, the seitan has a satisfyingly meaty bite, and it’s seriously flavourful. This is definitely not a dish that’s subtle in the taste department; it’s savoury, tangy, garlicky, and a little bit spicy, with all the flavours working really well together.

My only real complaint is that with the generous amount of chili oil, I figured this was going to be spicier than it was, and it was surprisingly mild. A bit more kick would have been nice, but everything else was so satisfying that I can’t really complain.

Tasty Crispy Beef at Faley Restaurant

Published on July 23, 2026 by Michael NusairLeave a comment

Location: 42 Rexdale Boulevard, Etobicoke
Website: https://www.faleyrestaurant.com/

I’ve been meaning to check this place out since reading about it in Corey Mintz’s list of the 50 best restaurants under $50, which was published way back in 2018. Yeah, I’ve got a bit of a backlog of places to check out — I have a custom Google map that I keep updated with all the restaurants I want to try, and it’s currently sitting at over 400 places scattered throughout the GTA.

Well, I’m glad I finally made time for Faley Restaurant, a Hakka joint in Etobicoke — it’s good.

The dish that Mintz singled out is Faley’s Special Gan-Ben Beef, which he described as being “embedded in [his] brain’s craving centre.”

It’s a crispy fried beef dish tossed in a sweet, slightly spicy sauce, and yeah, it’s tasty. In particular, the crispy fried coating on the beef is extremely satisfying, with the beef itself remaining nice and tender.

It is aggressively sweet, however. I found it a bit cloying, but when you combine it with the other dish I ordered, Manchurian style vegetables (a stir-fried vegetable dish with a deeply savoury, mildly spicy sauce), it tempers the sweetness and rounds things out. Both of those dishes are solid on their own, but together, they really come alive.

Lamb Noodles at Three Sheep Gourmet Foods

Published on July 10, 2026 by Michael NusairLeave a comment

Location: 1000 Burnhamthorpe Road West, Mississauga
Website: None

I was intrigued by Three Sheep Gourmet Foods when I saw that they had a dish on their menu called “Lamb Haggis Noodle Soup.” My initial assumption was that this was just a translation quirk — but then I saw that they also have a dish called “Scottish Noodles.”

Could it be… Chinese/Scottish fusion??

No; the answer to that is no. I ordered the Lamb Haggis Noodle Soup, and the only connection to haggis is that it features a bunch of innards. Otherwise, there’s nothing even remotely resembling that dish.

(Still kinda curious about those Scottish noodles, though.)

Aside from dashing my Chinese/Scottish fusion dreams, it’s a solid dish. The soup has a clean, meaty flavour (and is nicely kicked up by the optional chili oil on the counter), the various organs are nicely prepared, and it’s got a very generous amount of thick noodles (which were slightly overcooked, but still satisfying enough).

My only real complaint here is that one of the bits of offal (spleen, possibly?) was just too strong for me. It was like liver times a million. I actually like the metallic, minerally taste of liver, but this one kinda knocked me out. I quite liked everything else in the bowl, however.

A Tasty Breakfast at Ying Ji Chang Fen

Published on July 7, 2026 by Michael NusairLeave a comment

Location: 4040 Creditview Road, Mississauga
Website: https://yinjicanada.com/

Ying Ji Chang Fen does well. I showed up at around 10:00 on a Saturday morning and it was already starting to fill up; by the time I left, it was basically packed. That’s not to mention the constant stream of take-out orders. Clearly, people know a good thing when they find it.

Their menu consists mostly of various congee dishes and rice noodle rolls, and I tried one of each.

First up: Marinated Beef & Shrimp with Chives Rice Noodle Roll. No, it’s not the most photogenic dish you’ll ever see (neither were), but it was thoroughly tasty, with a generous amount of perfectly cooked shrimp and tender beef, a perfectly chewy rice noodle wrapper, and a delicious sweetened soy sauce on top.

Bonus: the extremely tasty chili oil on the table, which enhances everything you put it on.

I also tried the Preserved Egg and Minced beef congee, and yeah, that was just as good. The congee itself was hearty and satisfying, and all the toppings — from the crunch of the peanuts to the chewiness of the preserved egg — worked really well together.

I got a side order of the dough stick, and that was quite good too — slightly oily, but nice and fresh, and a really great complement to the congee.

Tasty Buns at Blooming Garden Dessert House

Published on July 1, 2026 by Michael NusairLeave a comment

Location: 1177 Central Parkway West, Mississauga
Website: None

Look, I’m a simple man with simple pleasures. Put a red bean bun in front of me, and I’m going to eat and enjoy that bun. I’ve had a lot of red bean buns of varying levels of quality, but I’ve never had one I’ve outright disliked.

I also enjoy desserts that are on the less sweet side of things, so when I saw that Blooming Garden Dessert House serves something that they call a “less sugar red bean pineapple bun,” I was all over that.

I know that I just said that I’d enjoy literally any red bean bun that you put in front of me, so maybe that kills my credibility a bit, but this was a particularly good one. I really, really enjoyed it.

I thought it might be barely sweet at all, but while the sugar level is definitely on the more restrained side of things, it’s plenty sweet. The sweetness level is about on par with the better red bean buns that I’ve had, so advertising this as “less sugar” is probably overkill.

Everything here is just right, from the satisfying chunkiness of the filling, to the ultra fresh and chewy bread, to the perfectly crispy topping. It’s legitimately one of the better versions of this that I’ve had in a while.