Toi Shan Restaurant — Restaurant in Calgary

I wanted to give myself a chance to calm down and think overnight before I write such a negative review. I work in the restaurant industry and I know that really negative reviews can actually really impact an establishment. I hate writing poor reviews, but I really feel this one is warranted. There is no email listed on the website that I can see, so I hope the owners and management see the reviews and try to rectify the issues.

I had several recommendations to try Toi Shan, despite the higher price. My mom lives out of town and barely gets Chinese food, and we were craving some delicious almond chicken soo gai, beef and vegetables, and chicken chop suey. We also ordered egg rolls and were gifted two spring rolls for ordering over $40. Our total came to $64 and change, with free delivery. SWEET! I tipped the driver , and was so stoked to try what was supposed to be the BEST around. It had better be for $73!!!!

To say we were disappointed is an understatement. Almost nothing was really edible. The free spring rolls were apparently decent, my daughter would only eat them and I never got a chance to try. Here's a rundown:

Almond Chicken($16.95)- Way too dark, looked like either super old oil was used, or GROSSLY overcooked. The chicken inside was soooo dry and overcooked. We are talking almost chicken jerky here. I pulled some chicken out and ate that because we were all starving, but I would have sent it back in a restaurant, just like everything else we ordered. NOT GOOD!

Beef and mixed Veg($15.50 )- RUBBERY, and slimy, greasy beef, greasy vegetables, in a POOL of water and grease. I picked a few vegetables out and ate them, but I had to literally spit the beef out. No flavour at all. Some vegetables were almost raw, some were ok. But still oily and no taste apart from that. YUCK!

Chicken chop suey($15.50)- Same thing as the beef- rubbery, slimy, oily, and in a pool of liquid with next to no seasoning. Chicken was completely inedible. The description on the menu also describes " Egg foo yung".........GROSS!

Egg rolls ($5.75 for 2) -Really dark, again looked very overcooked or really old oil was used. The outside was NOT crispy like an egg roll should be. IT was thick chewy, and doughy. The inside was ok.....but I didn't eat much because there was so much grease coming out and it was super off-putting. ANOTHER MISS!!!!! EWE!

Wonton Soup( $4.50)- The wonton soup was edible. Not great at all, but edible. I would say that there were a lot of wontons, and the portion size was pretty decent for $4.50. The broth was bland, but after I added a ton of Soy and pepper, it was better and I was able to eat the whole soup.

All in all,I would rate the whole meal around 1/10. My mom was SO UPSET. I am hoping maybe I can rinse some of the oil off of the vegetables and sautee them myself and add some sauces and spices and at least not have to throw everything out. My poor mom splurged a lot of $$ on a treat for all of us and she was so disappointed and upset. We all were.

As I mentioned, I hate writing poor reviews, but this was just absolutely unacceptable. Seeing other reviews, I don't see a lot of owner/management interaction on here, so I am not really expecting much. It would be great if they would be more cognisant of what they are sending out. Maybe it was an off- night with new chefs, maybe the order sat a while, maybe they didn't have time to change the oil and didn't realize how GROSSLY overcooked the chicken was. MAYBE a lot of things. But this was an almost ENTIRE MEAL ( besides the free spring rolls and the $4.50 Wonton soup ) that will likely just end up in the garbage.

So disappointed. It's the worst meal I think any of us has had in a VERY long time, and possibly EVER for...

*READ THIS REVIEW BEFORE CHOOSING THIS RESTAURANT *

My friends and I came into Toi Shan and had the worst customer experience. We get that we all have bad days but this by far tops off the worst dining experience. After sitting down our waitress hastily ask what we wanted and kept telling us we were ordering too much food. To be honest, For 3 girls we only ordered 2 medium soups, 1 small shrimp dish that had 10 shrimps and fried calamari to share.

Once the food came out, a hot plate of sizzling shrimp was place in front of one of my friends. She had to jump off the chair because hot oil was being splashed on her while as waitress dashed off like nothing happened. Workers came by to help and our waitress decided to assist by putting the sizzling plate on the other side of the table and dismiss that the hot oil was splashing on my other friend.

At this point we were showered with snarky comments of “wow you girls eat a lot” and “you don’t need wine, you ordered too much food” I had to repeatedly ask for our bill while our waitress nonstop stood at our table and commented over and over how much food we ate.

To be clear we’re 3 petite girls that ate 1 of our medium soup that we shared 3 ways, 10 shrimps on the sizzling oil plate and half the calamari serving from our entree. The food was decently good but not enjoyable when you have a waitress passive aggressively...

Among the worst "Cantonese & Perking Cuisine" I have ever consumed. I ordered take out, so it's not like I could send it back. The ginger beef was heavily coated in batter and then sent to me drowned in some liquid "sauce" so it was mushy and just gross. The meat was VERY over-cooked. The "chicken fried rice" had pork, chicken and shrimp in it. The sweet and sour pork was again very overly battered and drowned in sauce so it too was mushy and disgusting. I the only thing even close to being worth eating was the won-ton soup, which was also pretty damn bad. It was basically just won tons served in warmed up chicken broth with slivers of over-cooked pork floating around in it.

So to summarize, everything was over-battered, extremely greasy, drowned in sauce to the point it was mushy and gross, all of the meat was way overcooked (an understatement) and the chicken fried rice seemed like a mixture of rice and whatever was laying around.

I was very disappointed in the food which was delivered to me and would never recommend anyone eat at this "restaurant".

I didn't mention that it is also expensive. I ordered two dinner plates and a side of disgusting ginger beef which came to $40.92 taxes in.

I wouldn't feed this...