Fancy Chinese Cuisine 利嘉盛 — Restaurant in Markham

An amazing start to a wonderful dinner that ended up totally spoiled by a couple of unexpected BAD dishes!

For years, FANCY has been known for its consistently good and well executed Cantonese cooking, a persistent pack house irrespective of time and day and ‘ lack of parking space’!! This evening, armed with a super early reservation…..which we hope would result in more available parking spots, our party of 5 give this local favorite a long overdue re-visit.

We ordered the following dishes: Deep fried crunchy fins and bone skeleton of Dover Sole topped with stirred fry fish filet cut from the whole fish. Sweet and Sour Pork Stirred fry sliced beef with oyster sauce marinade and Chinese Kale ( Gai-Lan ) Fried Silver Thread Anchovies and long beans with peppered seasoned salt batter Peking Duck 2 ways - Traditional wrap with crispy skin and Lettuce wrap with stirred fry diced meat and mixed crunchy vegetables

Our meal started off with a huge welcoming bang….the result brought about by one of the best tasting and perfectly seasoned and cooked fish dishes I have had for a while. Succulent, moist, chewy, loaded with umami and shrouded with amazing wok-hay smoky aroma, this is one hell of a stirred fry creation! The crunchy and lip smacking deep fried bones were addictively good!

Sweet and Sour pork was one of the better rendition in town. Crunchy with the right amount of well balanced, tangy sweet glaze coating.

Seasoning of the stirred fry beef was exactly to my liking, the degree of caramelization spot-on. The cooking and timing of the Gai-Lan preparation was impeccable.

The crunchy, deep fried String Beans and Anchovies possessed the right amount of savory salty-ness and mouth tingling spiciness. Very enjoyable!

Sadly, the arrival of our ‘ Piece de resistance ‘ dishes - Peking duck 2 ways, totally ruined our aforementioned pleasurable experience! Rather than thin and crispy, our carved duck skin was irregular, CHEWY and totally lacking the desired crispiness. This was made worse by the ultra-thick, Indian Chapati like wrapper they provided. Are we creating a duck skin wrap or a duck skin ‘ sandwich , we wonder?! As if this was not bad enough, they followed up by literally ‘ pouring salt onto the wound’ by giving us a disaster of a lettuce wrap second course. The stirred fry product was way too salty, the meat tasting stale, the result…inedible!

Oh well!! This totally inconsistent meal of ours is one great example of ‘ You win some…You...

I had an extremely negative experience here, so heed my warning. I absolutely do not recommend this restaurant to anyone.

The service was exceptionally slow, not just my table, the entire room did not see a single dish for 30 minutes.

The food was not fresh either, so I'm not sure why it took so long. The Siu Mai was very bland and overcooked. The Fried Chinese Dough Rice Roll was clearly not made in house. It was very soggy and had absolutely no crunch. The Conpoy with Dumpling in soup was disgusting, it broke apart while it was still in the soup and tasted sour as the meat was clearly way past due. I have doubts much of these Dim Sum dishes were made in house as much of it appears to be frozen and reheated to serve customers.

The Daily Weekday price is $4.68 per dish but there is a catch they only surprise you at the end. There is a minimum spending of $25 or they will refuse to get you the bill. You are more than welcome to just pay the difference and get nothing in return as the waitress suggested.

Absolutely do not get tricked by this restaurant. Nowhere does it say this minimum spend of $25 is necessary anywhere in the restaurant, nor on the menus, nor on the walls, nor any prior warning by any employee.

After being forced to order an extra dish to complete the minimum, the bill will have a mandatory service charge of 12% of the total after tax, which again makes no sense nor is legal really. This service charge is also not notified anywhere in the restaurant or menu.

I won't be surprised if this place closes down by the end of this year. They are clearly trying to shake down what's left of any remaining customers that still come to this place. Do not fall for the cheap prices, you certainly get what you pay for when you come here.

There are plenty of better options in Markham for Dim Sum. I highly recommend bringing your business elsewhere. I do not...

The food crew and I were looking for a place to have a nice brunch. I hadn't had Dim Sum in a while so I called up Fancy Chinese (Kennedy and 14th) and made a reservation for Sunday Brunch. Fancy Chinese is a staple here in Markham/Unionville and most of my Foodie friends have been here at least once. Note to you, my Google Family, this is a busy and popular place, get a reservation!! We got there at about 1:00 pm and the place was packed. We waited for about ten minutes which was no issue at all since the kids entertained themselves watching sea creatures in the fish tanks.

We were seated right smack dab in the middle of the restaurant at a round table, which I was very grateful for since I get to see what everyone else is eating as to get inspired for my meal. The servers were very attentive and took very good care of my kids, pouring water, removing plates, dropping napkins, which was a really nice touch. We ordered some classic Dim Sums like Sui Mai, Har Gao, Cha Siu Bao, Rice Noodle Rolls, Xiao Long, fried squid tentacles, etc., and purely by fluke since most of the menus were in Chinese, we saw on another table a lobster and noodle dish (Lobster with E-Foo Noodles?) which looked really great and we ordered that too.

So we ate, and we ate, and we ate, the servers came over and cleaned dishes as we cleaned them off, and took really good care of us. The food was fresh and flavourful and we had a great time. The servers even brought out deserts for the kids which they loved. On this visit we were very well taken care of, we had great food, and the value you get here is what separates Fancy Chinese from many other...