roast pork – Michael Eats

Amazing Roast Pork at B’s Sizzling Kitchen

Published on January 22, 2023 by Michael NusairLeave a comment

Location: 430 Horner Avenue, Etobicoke
Website: https://www.bsizzlingkitchen.com/

B’s Sizzling Kitchen is one of those places that you’d probably never discover if you hadn’t heard about it from a friend or read about it online, since it’s kinda hidden away in a very nondescript industrial/residential area of Etobicoke. But it’s absolutely worth coming out of your way for.

It’s a Filipino restaurant that specializes in Cebu lechon — ultra-tender roast pork with delightfully crispy skin — and man, it’s good.

I started with the lechon sisig fries, which features a heaping portion of tasty pork on top of crispy, crinkle-cut fries. This was everything you want it to be. It’s porky, crispy, sweet, and addictive. It’s profoundly delicious.

But of course, the Cebu lechon is what you’re here for, and it’s just the absolute best. They make it with pork belly, and… I mean, just look at it.

Look at it.

The meat is melt-in-your-mouth tender, it’s perfectly seasoned and intensely flavourful, and the crispy skin is the stuff dreams are made of. Just give me a big bag of that skin and let me eat it like potato chips.

I’m going to like pretty much any well-prepared fatty pork dish by default, but this one is something special.

As I was leaving, there was a whole suckling pig sitting on a table waiting to be picked up, and I don’t think I’ve ever wanted anything so badly in my entire life.

Amazing Roast Pork at Luen Hing Barbecue

Published on November 13, 2022 by Michael NusairLeave a comment

Location: 888 Dundas Street East, Mississauga (inside the Mississauga Chinese Centre)
Website: None

If a restaurant has an enormous slab of tasty-looking roasted pork hanging in the window, you should eat at that restaurant. That’s just a fact. Is that a law? I think that might be the law. If you see a restaurant like that you have to eat there or you’ll go to jail. That sounds fair to me.

Luen Hing also has chicken and duck hanging in the window, and clearly I have to go back, because that pork… wow.

I ordered the roast pork and barbecue pork on rice, which comes with a seriously generous amount of tasty eats for about twelve bucks. It’s a great deal, that’s for sure.

I actually brought this home instead of eating in the food court, and I had resigned myself to the fact that the pork skin probably wouldn’t be particularly crispy. It’s hard to retain your crunch when you’ve been steaming in a sealed take-out box. But oh man, that skin was crisp. It was at delightful, kettle chip levels of crunchiness.

And the pork itself was so good. Super flavourful, nice and tender, fatty but not too fatty, and of course, the aforementioned super crunchy skin. Delightful.

The barbecue pork wasn’t quite on the same level — it was a bit dry — but it was still quite tasty, with a nice balance of sweet and savoury.

The steamed cabbage and the sauce they poured on top were also quite good. It all adds up to a seriously satisfying version of this dish, and a restaurant that I’ll almost certainly be returning to in the near future.

Amazing Roast Pork at Wilson’s Haus of Lechon

Published on January 30, 2020 by Michael NusairLeave a comment

Location: 365 Wilson Avenue, North York
Website: https://www.facebook.com/wilsonshausoflechon/

If you’re looking for tasty roast pork, go to Wilson’s Haus of Lechon. Trust me on this one; just do it.

As you might imagine, this place specializes in lechon, the Philippines’s version of roast suckling pig. I knew I was probably in good hands as soon as I walked in the door and saw the whole, glorious pig sitting behind the counter.

I wound up trying the roast pig and the roast chicken, and both were pretty much incredible.

The pork is absolutely fantastic; it’s tender, juicy, and absolutely exploding with flavour. The meat itself was thoroughly infused with a delightfully garlicky, herby punch of flavour. But the pork itself still shines through. It’s so good.

I wish the skin had been a bit crispier, but it was otherwise so delicious that it didn’t really matter.

The chicken was also pretty amazing, though it’s hard for anything to compare to that pork. I wanted dark meat and wound up with a breast, but it was surprisingly tender for white meat, and of course it had that same garlicky/herby flavour.

The combo comes with sticky rice and lumpia Shanghai, which is a very tasty pork-stuffed Filipino spring roll. It’s all so good.

Excellent BBQ at Excellent BBQ Restaurant

Published on April 17, 2018 by Michael NusairLeave a comment

Location: 9425 Leslie Street, Richmond Hill
Website: None

If you’re going to put the word excellent in the name of your restaurant, you’d better be able to back that up. Even if you’re serving pretty good food, that’s not excellent, is it?

Well, Excellent BBQ Restaurant in the Richlane Mall in Richmond Hill definitely lives up to its name: it is indeed excellent.

There’s something really satisfying about the simplicity of Chinese-style BBQ like this. It’s beyond simple — it’s basically just whole pieces of meat and rice — but when it’s done well, it’s delicious and comforting in a way that few dishes can match.

Excellent BBQ Restaurant does it quite well, which is evident as soon as you get there: when I visited, there was a line going out the door, and it remained that way for the whole time I was there.

When you’re serving food this good, word gets around.

We tried a few different things. BBQ duck.

BBQ pork.

And roast pork.

Everything was really good. In particular, the duck was fatty, tender, and perfect. The skin could have been a bit crispier, but that’s a fairly minor complaint.

Both types of pork were just as good — there wasn’t a whole lot of crispy skin on the roast pork, but what was there was shatteringly crisp and amazing. The BBQ pork was slightly dry, but again: that’s a minor complaint.

Dynasty B.B.Q. Restaurant

Published on June 9, 2013 by Michael NusairLeave a comment

Location: 1550 South Gateway Road, Mississauga
Website: None

Driving by, you wouldn’t be blamed for completely missing the food court in Dixie Park. Housed in a nondescript building in a somewhat industrial stretch of road along Dixie, it doesn’t look like much. The seemingly perpetual construction right outside certainly doesn’t help matters.

Those who venture inside will find a pretty good Asian food court. It’s generally nothing you’d want to go too far out of your way for, but most of the vendors here serve decent quality Chinese food (they’re mostly Chinese, with one Vietnamese place and one Japanese), with cheap prices and voluminous portions.

The best one is easily Dynasty B.B.Q. (Well, there was a Korean place that I used to really like — their pork bone soup was particularly delicious. Sadly, it closed down and was replaced by the aforementioned Vietnamese place. R.I.P., Korean place. You are missed). They have a typically comprehensive menu, though the real gem is the dish that comes with a combo of roast pork and BBQ pork.

Featuring a heaping portion of both types of pork served on top of rice (it also comes with a cup of mediocre soup that you should probably skip altogether), it’s a steal at $5.50. Though the less showy BBQ pork is certainly tasty and absolutely worth eating, it’s the roast pork that is the real reason to come here. I can’t claim to be an expert on this particular dish, though I have had it at a few different places. This is the best version of it that I’ve had. Perfectly cooked and yieldingly tender, with a satisfying layer of unctuous, melt-in-your-mouth fat, not to mention the salty, addictively amazing crispy, crunchy skin, it’s pretty outstanding.