Ten Ren‘s Tea — Restaurant in Markham

I wanted to get some Tim’s but decided to come here for Tea after Timmy 😉

When I came in I was in awe. It was a great first impression! I was in a different Ten Ren location numerous times but I didn’t like it 🤭 So I wanted some Tea but when I felt the vibe, I wanted lunch. And it was great!!!

The service here is better, faster & nicer and the food is tastier than the other Ten Ren location I had gone to. Except the last time (Ive been here 3 times) the server had some attitude in the end. But it kinda happens with businesses nowadays. Overall their staff are pretty professional. They will give you their cup to cover if your cup is from other brand 😄 I found it cute. The food here is light and snack-like, which I love. It’s hard to choose a fav because I liked them all. However if you would like to try Taiwanese food, I’d suggest steam egg (it’s very soft and yogurt like), chicken soup w/ginseng & goji berry. Their daily special is also excellent here. But if you wanna know my fav choice, drum roll pls, the famous ice plus topping dessert. It’s kinda tricky about how to order. For instance you have to pick all different layers and even ice etc I don’t really know how it works together if separately I don’t know how it looks like 😁 it’s not like you can just look at a pic and they will do that for you. So I’d hope they can do something for the people like me so in the future I can just order based on pic references.

I really love the ambience of this restaurant. It’s bright, colourful and large. On the other side of the restaurant, there is a beautiful display where you can purchase tea and souvenirs. One occasion I went late at night, they were packed with customers from family with kids, & young adults to middle aged friends to seniors. It seems like a good place where people from all ages & backgrounds can hang out together and create a...

More than half of the restaurant was empty, yet the waitress wouldn’t let us sit on the other side for “convenience” reasons I suppose. We were told it was not “setup”, yet it looked perfectly fine to me.

We then waited 15 minutes for a booth to become available. Upon sitting down, we waited a solid 20 minutes, and no one came to take our order. I had to approach a waiter.

Our order came out relatively quick and my drink is missing the tapioca I specifically asked for. The waitress was not apologetic at all.

After all of this, someone came by to tell us that they’re closing, yet on Google and Yelp it says they close at 1am. When brining this to their attention, we were told they close on a ”situation” basis. Most business I know have set hours which they follow. They don’t close based off of how they “feel” that day. Then the manager comes by to tell us that the hours haven’t been updated online yet. Well.. maybe you should get on that. There could be people who are making their way to your shop, or customers who plan to stay a while. It’s quite inconsiderate and is bad for business. Whichever one of the two reasons we were told, neither were acceptable.

When the bill came, we both gave no tip as it wasn’t deserved. The waitress then had the audacity to make us aware that the tip isn’t included in the price. Implying that we “forgot” or “should” tip. In actuality, this place charges you 10% more to sit in so technically a “tip” is included in the price. Maybe instead of trying to squeeze every penny out of us, they should think long term. If they would have taken care of us this time, I would have been back and brought them business.

After all that’s happened during this one visit, I won’t be back. I’ll stick to other...

Jan 3, 2025: 2nd visit 4/5 Beef and tea were good in our 2nd visit to Ten Ren.

The Oolong Braised Beef Rice Bowl was good. The braised beef was soft and savoury. It went well with the white rice and veggies (broccoli and carrots).

The Pan-Fried Beef Tenderloin + Taiwanese Minced Pork Rice + Vegetable Soup Set from their Taiwanese Sizzling Hot Plate Selection was surprisingly good. The Pan-Fried Beef Tenderloin was nicely seasoned with salt and pepper, tender, juicy, and savoury. The beef tenderloin pieces were thick and generous. The Taiwanese Minced Pork Rice was good. Wish they added in more minced pork to the rice. The vegetable soup was good and tasty but a little too salty by itself. Definitely have to enjoy the soup with the rice.

Lastly, we tried the Assam Black Tea with getting milk and sugar on the side since we were curious how they make their Assam Milk Black Tea when ordered. For the milk, it’s evaporated milk. For the sugar, we were surprised that they use maple syrup.

The Assam Black Tea without evaporated milk and maple syrup was smooth and good. Adding in the evaporated milk and maple syrup to the Assam Black Tea created a harmonized melody of flavours to make a really good Assam Black Milk Tea :)

— Nov 4, 2024: 1st visit 4/5 We were craving some good milk black tea and Ten Ren hit that spot for us.

The Assam Milk Black Tea was awesome! It’s perfectly made here. Would recommend if you looking for a good smooth milk black tea.

We also tried the Mango Snow Ice. It was a good combo of mango shaved ice, mango pieces and condensed milk. The mango pieces provided were generous :) Only downside was the syrup which lathered the mango pieces. It would have been nice to have less...