Tasty Soup at Tang Home Style Lamb and Beef

Tang Home Style Lamb and Beef
Location
: 3380 Midland Avenue, Scarborough
Website: None

Tang Home Style Lamb and Beef is a great under-the-radar Chinese restaurant; they’ve got a whole bunch of tasty looking noodle dishes on the menu (not to mention a lamb bun that it seemed like most of the other tables were ordering — I’ll have to come back to try that one), but their specialty is paomo, a delicious lamb soup.

Tang Home Style Lamb and Beef

They serve a regular version and a spicy version; I went with the spicy version.

The thing that makes this dish stand out are the chopped-up pieces of flatbread interspersed throughout.  They’re kinda like very thick, chopped up noodles; they have a great amount of chewiness to them (they’re not soggy or mushy at all) and bring the soup a ton of personality.

Tang Home Style Lamb and Beef

The bowl is also crammed with a generous amount of sizable pieces of tender lamb.  It’s a hearty soup, that’s for sure.

Tang Home Style Lamb and Beef

As for the broth, it’s mildly spicy and has a very zesty, slightly sweet flavour.  I liked it on its own, but it really comes alive once you add some of the smoky chili oil that’s on the table.

A Great Deal at Juicy Dumpling

Juicy Dumpling
Location
: 280 Spadina Avenue, Toronto
Website: https://www.juicydumpling.ca/

Juicy Dumpling actually does have stuff other than juicy dumplings on the menu, but of course, if you go to a place called Juicy Dumpling and you don’t order the juicy dumplings, what are you even doing with your life?

Juicy Dumpling

I got an order of six mini soup pork dumplings, which was $4.99, and a pork bun, which was $2.85.  It was a solid lunch for under ten bucks.

Juicy Dumpling

I’m a little bit perplexed as to why they’re calling these mini soup dumplings.  They seemed like a pretty standard size to me?  I can’t recall having soup dumplings that were substantially larger than the ones they serve here.

Juicy Dumpling

They’re tasty dumplings.  There’s no vinegar or any of the other condiments you’d expect with soup dumplings, but they’re pretty tasty on their own, with a decent amount of pork and soup inside.  They’re not the best soup dumplings you’ll ever eat, but for five bucks for an order of six, they’re pretty great.

Juicy Dumpling

The pork bun was satisfying too, with a good amount of sweet pork filling inside of a fresh, fluffy bun.

Delicious Hunan Chinese Food at Chili Cabin

Chili Cabin
Location
: 1100 Dundas Street West, Mississauga
Website: None

As a fan of spice, I’ll admit that Chili Cabin mostly caught my eye because of its name.  They specialize in Hunan Chinese cuisine, which, according to Wikipedia, is similar to Sichuan cuisine, but with a more pure level of spice rather than numbing heat.

Chili Cabin

I tried the Hunan style stir-fried pork and the stewed vermicelli, which both offer a customizable level of spice: mild, normal, or extra.  I went with extra spice for the pork, and normal for the noodles.

Both dishes were very spicy.  Not quite blow-your-face-off hot, but definitely hot enough to put some sweat on your brow and clear your sinuses.

Chili Cabin

And both were very tasty.  The Sichuan comparison seems apt, as both dishes had a similar flavour profile to Sichuan dishes that I’ve had (but without the numbing heat).  I liked both quite a lot, though the pork was my favourite of the two.  The pork was nice and tender, and it comes absolutely doused in a flavour-packed oil that was intensely delicious.  It’s one of those dishes that’s almost too flavourful on its own, but once you have it with rice it really comes alive.

Chili Cabin

I liked the noodles a bit less, but they were still very tasty, with a nice chewy texture, satisfying spicing, and savoury ground pork interspersed throughout.  It’s a winner.  They have a million things on the menu here, and I’m quite keen to come back and try some more stuff.

Tasty Noodle Soup at Wonton Hut Noodle Bar

Wonton Hut Noodle Bar
Location
: 671 Queen Street West, Toronto
Website: https://wontonhut.ca/

There are a bunch of great wonton noodle soup restaurants in the GTA — at least in places like Markham and Mississauga.  In Toronto itself, it’s a bit harder to find.  Enter: Wonton Hut Noodle Bar, which is on Queen Street and serves a very tasty bowl of the stuff.

Wonton Hut Noodle Bar

They actually have a decent variety on the menu (including a handful of Vietnamese dishes, oddly enough) but of course, the place has “wonton” and “noodle” in its name, so you’ve gotta get the wonton noodle soup.

Wonton Hut Noodle Bar

It’s good.  The wontons themselves are seriously tasty, with big chunks of perfectly cooked shrimp and a very satisfying flavour.  And the noodles are satisfyingly springy.

Wonton Hut Noodle Bar

The flavour of the soup itself is a bit on the subtle side, but is nicely amped up by a couple of spoonfuls of the legitimately fiery chili oil they have on the table.

A Meaty Bowl of Noodles at Szechuan Noodle Bowl

Szechuan Noodle Bowl
Location
: 526 Bloor Street West, Toronto
Website: https://szechuannoodlebowl.ca/

Szechuan Noodle Bowl is definitely about more than just noodles, with an impressively deep, multi-page menu that has a whole bunch of tasty-looking Chinese dishes.  Still, it’s called “Szechuan Noodle Bowl,” so clearly, I had to order the first dish on the menu: Noodles, Sichuan style.

Szechuan Noodle Bowl

You can choose from either chicken or pork (I went with pork), and spicy or non-spicy (I went with spicy, of course).

Szechuan Noodle Bowl

It’s a solid bowl of noodles.  The flavour was a bit more muted than I’d like (this is particularly true of the spice level, which was almost nonexistent — and sadly, the jar of chili oil that you’ll often find on the table at a place like this was absent, so there was no way of amping things up), but otherwise this was a really satisfying bowl of noodles.

Szechuan Noodle Bowl

The thick noodles were nice and chewy, the garlicky pork was quite tasty, and the peanuts added a good amount of texture.  It didn’t exactly rock my world, but I enjoyed it (the affordable $11.99 price tag for a very substantial serving of both noodles and pork definitely helps).