Downtown Archives - Page 18 of 18

The almighty “Mongolian Hot Pot”, or I like to call it’s literal Chinese translation, “Small Fat Sheep”.

This place isn’t one of those nondescript type places nestled away in a back alley in Chinatown that’s only accessible through a curtain down the hall from a mahjong parlor. But it’s the type of place that strengthens its street visibility with neon, either too late or too early festive Christmas lighting and perma-plaqued newspaper articles and reviews, quintessential signs that you’re about to eat at a Chinese restaurant.

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So Mongolian Hot Pot made its appearance in Montreal a few years ago and has been simmering ever since. So why is a sheep representative of “Mongolian” hot pot, as opposed to the various other visuals of livestock you’d want to be picturing as you’re eating? Because sheep is to Mongolia as Lady Gaga is to tampon string flashing crotch shots. I’m sorry to have said that, but I’m not sorry for implanting that image in your head… haha.

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So this is what happens, you order the type of soup you want, either a spicy, traditional herbal or non “hot air” (this concept covered here) inducing soup base and it’s set to simmer on top of this thing (induction burner) that looks more at home on the deck of the Starship Enterprise than it does in a Chinese joint. This is the Dr. Xavier eara Enterprise I’m talking about rather than the Studio 54 Enterprise where they were steering the ship with old fire alarm levers and Staples “easy” buttons.
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I opted for the “Refreshing soup” base. I should also mention that all soup bases are based on Chinese medicinal herbs (which include dried Longans – dragon eyes, dried dates, mushrooms, ginger, whole garlic cloves, szechuan peppercorns, scallions, to name a few), as well as other various fungi and tree bark that are unpronounceable due to the fact that in their names, the consonants out number the vowels that defy the U after Q rule, require hyphenation, and basically make you sound like you’re sucking the tip of a 9 volt battery.

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So once you order your soup, almost instantly, a plate of the restaurant’s namesake is placed on the table. Freshly sliced lamb and beef.

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Purely coincidental, but this place is all you can eat as well. I know I know, it seems like a running theme, but can you really blame me for pointing you in the direction of endless plates and bowls of gluttony? They boast a hot pot selection of over 70 items. A myriad of vegetables, seafood items which include various fish and shellfish cakes, tofus, at least 5 different kinds of noodles, as well as other unique hot pot accouterments you must try.

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Do yourself a favor and try that vegetable. The phonetic translation is “Tong Ho” and I don’t remember, but I think it’s listed as that on the name plaque in the fridge. It’s “Chrysanthemum Greens”. It has a unique peppery and spicy flavor. Also pictures of the various “balls” – both beef and seafood… Yeah yeah, save the jokes, it’s sad enough to picture fishies swimming around without balls.

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As with being “all you can eat”, Mongolian Hot Pot is also “all you can drink”, which includes a few Chinese juice options as well as your standard soda fountain. Let’s be honest, if you’re not already jaded by working in the restaurant service industry, wasn’t it one of your childhood dreams to work one of these machines? …Maybe it’s just me, but I can never get enough experimenting with glass to trigger angles to fully maximize the soda to foam quotient to optimize a full glass potential. Pulling your own beverages is a science kids, do it right or go home.

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Head over to the sauce station and fix you up a sauce. My favorite is hoisin, soy suace, “BBQ” sauce, sesame oil with some scallions and coriander.

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Be warned, this concept of “all you can eat” at Mongolian Hot Pot is all encompassing. From the spring roll appetizers, to desserts. They offer your standard no-love buffet pastries and cakes. But what is unique to this place is their fried Chinese buns and sesame balls. The fried buns are what’s best and is what people stand by the plate with tongs ready for their arrival. Crispy on the outside and chewy on the inside, you drizzle condensed milk over the top… but you might find a liking to it and choose drowning the bun like some people and serve yourself up a bowl of condensed milk with a bun floating around somewhere. Kind of gross, but people do it.

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The aftermath. Be careful of how much you take, because there is a fee and charge for uneaten food of more than 200g. You can visit the fridges as many times as you want, so waste not what you put on your plate.

The overall experience is great. The service is par, you can’t really expect much when it’s practically self-service, but they do watch over your table pretty well and fill your pot up with soup when it’s running low. I should also mention that the medicinal herbs used in the soups will tackle your senses. It’s kind of like when you’re in a room and someone has really foul, sour smelling body odor, and you’re not sure if it really is B.O. but something tells you it is. Its objective isn’t to slap you in the face but it’s to stick around for the long run and remind you all of its presence – like these herbs. Not to say that they smell like a truck driver who has no air conditioning driving through Arizona, but the smell is very pungent and will stick to you like a fly in molasses. You will come out of there smelling like what you just ate… but it’s so worth it, it’s like smelling a band-aid… it’s gross but you know you do it anyways.

Mongolian Hot pot
50 De La Gauchetière
514.393.0888

Guess what… I sprained my foot. Yeah, I know… AGAIN right? I’m going to say I don’t know how it happened (but in reality, I know exactly what happened, but it’s just a bit embarrassing to explain). So due to the lack of mobility I was stuck in between the kitchen, bedroom, living room and PS3 to warrant any dining out until today.

My mom had to go to Chinatown this afternoon to take care of some business so we decided to go for lunch. We headed to one of our family friend’s restaurant, La Maison Kam Fung for Dim Sum. “Dim Sum” literally means, “touching the heart”. Small steamers of sweet or savory dumplings and confectioneries are piled high on rotating dim sum carts, while the song like calls of “cart-ladies” listing their contents fill the air. Dumplings of three or four, small dishes of different meticulously marinated cuts of meat or feet, I think Dim Sum can be categorized as Chinese Tapas. The roots of Dim Sum are deep in the history of the Silk Road (so I’ve heard), with mention of the tea drinking culture as well as the symbolism of how each dish is created and visually represented. When you grow up in a Chinese family like me, it’s undoubtedly that at one point in your child hood, you’ve spent a weekend morning at a Chinese restaurant listening to the clatter of white porcelain dishes. The clonking sound of a falling metal tea pot lid will always be synonymous to the days when you blew the plume of steam radiating from a carefully chopstick clutched dumpling over a multi-layered plastic lined table.

Stemming from these wonderful memories I asked my friends not too long ago about their top five favorite dim sum dishes. This made for interesting conversation because we knew how to recite the dishes of each cart as though we were one of the white plastic gloved cart-ladies. Everyone knew that “Har gow” was ALWAYS said before “Sui Mai” and “Pei Dan Jok” and “Ngow Jap” were ALWAYS on the same cart (shrimp dumpling, pork and shrimp dumpling, preserved egg porridge and stewed beef trimmings, respectively). This being said, we all agreed that Dim Sum wasn’t Dim Sum until you had your favorites, and I managed to squeeze all of mine in today. So in no particular order, here’s sum of the dim sum me and mum managed to dim.

Steamed tripe with scallions, ginger and garlic. It was tender and crunchy, but not chewy, the biggest downfall of tripe. If not prepared properly, it can feel like you’re chewing on a mouthful of rubber bands.

“Chiu Jiao Fun Gor” Dumpling of the Chiu Jiao people of China. Shrimp with pork, scallions and peanuts wrapped in a tapioca flour wrap, served with a chili oil on the side.

“Siu Mai” – Shrimp and pork dumpling with Chinese mushrooms with salted egg yolk on the top.

Shrimp and crab meat wrapped in seaweed… battered and FRIED. This dish is no joke, it’s served with either a choice of a sweet transparent red sauce, or straight up nitty gritty, tangy yellow huey “mayo”. Go with the mayo, you’ll thank me later.

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: I love short ribs. There aren’t enough words in the world to explain my unwavering devotion to the short rib. The adjectives in the English language and Giada De Laurentiis’ vocabulary would fall short to the ones I would have to invent to fully express my yearn for the short rib. When I have short ribs, a warm sense of reassurance washes over me, I believe skies can clear, oceans can part and blind nuns can regain their sight.

Black pepper, and garlic steamed short ribs. Short ribs make me poetic.

Soy sauce steamed beef meatballs with water chestnuts and coriander. The way they prepare this dish, in particular the beef. They whip it… they whip it good. By whipping the meat, you break down the protein molecules. Protein wants to stick together, so the more you tear them apart, the more they want to bind to each other resulting in elasticity. This renders the meatball like a super bouncy ball that would live up to being steamed and not fall apart like a meatball you’d get in a sangwich.

“Cheung Fun”. Translated as “intestine noodle”, this dish has nothing to do with any thing intestine other than the way it looks. Being stuffed inside a steamed rice flour “skin”, this dish comes in three varieties, beef, shrimp or barbecued pork. Pictures here, of course is the choice of champions, barbecued pork.

Vegetarian soy bean wrap… Chinese mushrooms, bamboo, baby corn, “wood ear” (black fungus), and water chestnuts in a garlic gravy awaits inside.

One of my top five. Barbecue pork puff pastry… crazy good. I like to eat this near the end so the pastry that falls off soaks up all the different sauces on my plate to then pick it up and eat it…

“Cha siu bao”, Steamed barbecue pork buns. Light pillowy soft buns with steamy pork. This kind of bun also comes baked.

DESSERT!!! A Dim sum outing STAPLE. Egg Tarts. These are usually the first to go because people order them at the beginning of their meal. Once they come out of the kitchen, for some reason people go into hurricane mode and start hoarding these things like bottled water and batteries. They leave them on the table as a trophy in the face of the slow people who do not have cart-lady friends who would come directly to their table ignoring the designated carting route.

As with any Asian cuisine, you’re going to have to wear your adventure hat. In the illustrious words of The Crow, eh hem, I mean the “Chairman”, go in with “an open mind and an empty stomach.” Be prepared to see, smell taste and experience everything for what it is. Don’t be biased, and taste everything… If it wasn’t edible, they wouldn’t be serving it. I’ve been going to La Maison Kam Fung since before I was born. I’ve been eating there through three renovations and one relocation. The food is consistent, whether it is for Dim sum or a la carte and today was no different. The service was slow even for the lunch time rush, but that’s expected with Chinatown service… at any time. Offensive to some, but endearing to me, it is what it is, that’s the charm of Chinatown. Eating in Chinatown is like going to work, sit, eat, leave.

You can have dim sum anywhere in the world, but the sounds and smells accompanied by the strange faces, listing the same dishes in the same order will always be familiar to you. With everything Dim sum encompasses, whether it be the history behind it, memories associated with it or even the vision of pickled chicken feet being pedaled by take-no-bullshit-cart-ladies, maybe these reasons are just the top few rungs on the bamboo steamer tower of reasons of how and why Dim Sum touches your heart.

La Maison Kam Fung
1111 rue Saint-Urbain, Montréal
514.878.2888

Downtown

I’m a little hot pot.

Heart touching