Top Choice Restaurant 阿一小廚 — Restaurant in Markham

Went there for dinner and it was extremely disappointing.

First, despite reservations and there was no many people waiting for table. They still limited us to finish our meal in one hour and a half. But, in fact, as soon as we finished most of our dishes, they already rush us with desserts and bill and we have to finish our meal and pay the bill in one hour. That was one of the quickest dinner we ever had when we were gathering with family outside for dinner.

Second, some of the dishes were done terribly. We order one of their signature dishes I believe—Stirfried Large Clams With Black Bean Sauce（豉汁炒蜆）, even through the taste was ok, almost half of the clams on the dish were not opened or just opened with a small gap which tells these clams were not fresh at all(as the photo below shows). Feeling extremely disappointed since we through this was one of their best dishes to order. Also, for the Stirfried Pork With Green Beans (四季豆炒豬爽肉）, the green beans looks way overcooked, they were dried and looks like they got cooked long time ago and just being reheated and put together with some pork for us(photo below). The cutting of the meats on some dishes also looks wired, for example the chicken we ordered, they were being cropped in very large pieces which showed their unprofessional cropped skills.

In addition to this, our server for the table also looks mean and rude. Our waitress keeps asking us “do you guy order soup?”, or “you guy didn’t order soup”. She sounds like it is wire for us to sit there without ordering their very expensive fancy soup or if you guys don’t want soup we won’t serve you properly. ( not sure, but I feel like this is the reason why they want to rush us out..). We were Cantonese and we know how to make soup at home why do we need to pay such high price to just drink your soup ?

Overall, a ridiculous restaurant with ridiculous rules, and staffs there were just bad in customer service and cooking skills.

All just my own opinion based on real experience, and no worries, will definitely not...

The chicken was tough and chewy, it also was lacking in flavour. Probably the worst steamed chicken I’ve had. There was a lot of blood too, I’m used to eating this in HKG with a bit of pink and blood but this was too much.

The beef with Maggie was excellent and probably the only dish which was good from the 4 items we ordered. There were more vegetables than beef but it was flavourful so it was good overall.

The seafood rice lacked so much flavour, it could very well have been regular fried rice without salt. Quite disappointing. The sweet potato tips with garlic barely tasted like anything too, also didn’t have enough garlic to give it any flavour. It was a lot though, so at least there was that redeeming factor.

After the beef, the next best dish was the free sweet and warm tofu dessert.

Service was divided - 2 servers were nice, the other 2 were curt and did not even acknowledge our request for more garlic ginger spring onion sauce for the chicken. They just looked and grunted and left, never to return with anything. We had to ask 4x to get more ginger sauce which we had to use on the ginger and on the rice to give the 2 dishes some flavour.

We probably ordered the wrong items but 1 good dish out of 4 dishes isn’t a good average. I rarely give low scores but all 3 of us weren’t too happy about the lack of flavour.

Not sure I would return, maybe to try something else but I wouldn’t...

We’ve been coming here for a little while now and I never ended up reviewing it until now. They recently renovated their place so it’s a lot nicer than it was before, looks kind of like a ship. Also definitely took the covid precautions seriously, plexiglass barriers everywhere and larger tables have like huge barriers around them. Props to them. Came here on a weekday even with reservations (pro-tip: try to reserve beforehand), and we still had to wait. Kinda crazy because this wasn’t the case pre-covid. One thing I liked was that this place clearly has made a name for itself considering how busy it was and also the variety in clientele. Back to the food. The food here is always good, and you can tell they are working on their presentation with their larger serving plates. The only reason why I’m giving this 4/5 instead of 5/5 is because while I appreciate the barriers they’ve set up, they didn’t have a proper process for contact tracing with covid, the owner was going around tables getting their info but he skipped us completely and likely skipped many others. This should be done as people are ready to be seated and not while people are in the middle of their meal. Also, unlike some other Chinese restaurants, they do not provide free soup, but they do...