Foodstuffs’ hippest young hypocrite with another hit!
By Leo K. Moncel
Attentive internauts may notice that in the previous column, I expressed my opinion that we all need to eat less meat and implied I was working on it myself. So why have I turned around and run out to eat at an establishment called the Chinese Beef Lamb House?
Even more attentive readers may recall that the first paragraph of last week’s column was about how I’m really big on traditional cuisines. Basically, when I heard there was a good Chinese-Muslim restaurant in the GTA, I had no choice but to put my eat-less-meat reform on pause and get on the hated purple subway line to Scarborough to gorge myself with some good friends.
Plopped in the middle of a dismal strip mall, the ridiculously bright signage of the Chinese Beef Lamb House advertises the restaurant’s Halal status. Inside, the décor is a style I’d call pastoral-cartoony and fairly tacky in that endearing Chinese restaurant way. The huge dining room is clearly meant to accommodate large social functions. It’d be ill-fitting for an early date, but it’s perfectly good for eating with a number of friends.
The menu is, of course, heavy on beef and lamb. If you are seeking chicken or seafood, they are on the menu and I imagine they are good, but between the six of us, we felt there was enough to explore without even getting into it and still have a greatly varied meal – and we weren’t even adventurous enough to go in for the offal.
We began with the requisite Jasmine tea and watery draft beer. At eight dollars a pitcher, I was not complaining.
The first dish to arrive, our lonely vegetable, was cucumbers with garlic. In this recipe, one of the few raw vegetable dishes that is often seen on the Chinese table, the cucumber is smashed with the side of a cleaver, soaked in a salty garlic dressing with a bit of vinegar and sesame oil, then topped with fresh coriander. This light dish was an instant favourite and became more popular as we received the heavier dishes to come.
Next arrived two lamb “pancakes”, little sandwich-like foodstuffs where chunks of slightly fatty lamb meat rest between two pitas about the size of a compact disc cut in quarters. It was simple and scrumptious and the only dilemma was how to split eight pieces between our five meat-eaters.
Next, we received two orders of lamb with cumin. I was skeptical, but a friend who had dined here before insisted that two orders would be an absolute necessity. This seems to be a hallmark Muslim-Chinese dish: a Chinese cooking style is applied to ingredients typical of a Middle Eastern-Islamic tradition. The beautiful smelling stir-fry consisted of a goodly pile of thin-sliced lamb fried with onions, green onions, and, I do not exaggerate, at least four tablespoons of whole cumin seeds. A light, salty brown sauce with a hint of chili held the swarm of cumin seeds to the lamb. Two dishes just barely covered us; this intensely flavoured dish was agreed to be the highlight of the meal.
Our vegetarian friend, who was warned what he was getting into by the restaurant’s very name, ordered tofu with chili pepper, a dish of thin tofu skins covered luxuriously with a garlicky sauce and fresh green chilies sliced lengthwise. We didn’t steal too much from him, but it was tempting.
For our starch, we skipped rice and got a large flatbread that was erroneously identified as “sesame pancake”. It was sweet and chewy and covered in sesame seeds like a giant, disc-shaped Montreal bagel.
Another delicious starch dish is the stir-fried homemade noodles. Large ribbons about the width of a thumb with a slightly sweet sauce topped with thin slices of onion, carrot and lamb.
We also got four beef-filled buns, each almost the size of a hockey puck and filled with oily, well-salted minced beef. I found them just a little too oily for my liking, but tasty nonetheless.
The hot and sour soup was fairly ordinary, and though it was chock-full of strands of egg and soft tofu, the thickened soup suffered in comparison with extraordinary flavours of the other dishes.
After our meal concluded, we paused a moment. Yes, we were full, but we weren’t completely stuffed, and the joy of eating was just too strong to be halted yet. We picked up the menu once more and settled on a plate of sesame beef. This dish — slivers of sesame seed-topped beef stacked on pale cabbage confetti — was a beauty to behold. The sauce was a typical red sweet and sour affair, but not so gloopy, and tasty to be sure. The most marvelous part was the texture. I suspect the meat was deep-fried on a low heat without batter until it was fall-apart-in-your-mouth tender with just a bit of external crispness, like well-done ribs.
All-in-all I must say that eating at the Chinese Beef Lamb House was one of the best dining experiences I’ve ever had in this city. The service was dependable and the cost was really reasonable – main dishes start at $7.99 and max out at $12.99. The portions are not huge, but this place definitely doesn’t skimp where it counts. Side dishes like the cucumber, the buns and pancakes are around $4.99 – $7.99. The whole meal was only $16 each after tax and tip. The biggest problem, of course, is that it’s in Scarborough. Well, really, I’m glad it’s in Scarborough, or else I’d probably quadruple my meat consumption and never be able to unpause my little eat-less-meat reform. If you have an interest in Chinese food or even Middle-Eastern food, I cannot recommend this place highly enough.
The Chinese Beef Lamb House is presently located at 668 Silver Star Blvd, Scarborough, M1V 5N1.
For more information, check the listing at QQEat.ca (link: http://qqeat.ca/search/show.php?id=291)
Chinese Beef & Lamb House has moved to Unit 201, 668 Silver Star Blvd, Scarborough, M1V 5N1.
Tel: 416-7548379
Business Hours: 11am – 12am
Intersection: Steeles & Midland
Thanks, Tina. Do you know the managers of this restaurant? They should consider a downtown location. Authentic Chinese food is becoming more and more popular.