Yong He All Day Breakfast — Restaurant in Markham

Summary at the front: The cooking in this restaurant is very good, but other dishes are average and generally salty. People who are afraid of salty food should ask for less salt. Recommended dishes: pickled fish fillet, kung pao chicken, cumin mutton, Yonghe fried rice, garlic stir-fried A vegetable, shredded pineapple, stir-fried pork, stir-fried green beans, stir-fried lotus root slices. The dishes are clean. The fish fillet with pickled cabbage scored 95 points, and the stir-fried vegetable with minced garlic scored 90 points. Too much thickening is a common problem. The shredded pineapple scores 100 points. Be careful because it is very hot inside. Let it cool before eating, otherwise you will be burned. The beef patty was 70 points, not freshly baked so it was lukewarm. I feel that the chefs in this restaurant are very good, but the waiters can only say that they are reluctant. They don't take the initiative to bring water to drink, and they have to ask them to get it. Although they bring various things to them quickly, they rarely take the initiative to serve. When I left, there were ten tables of customers, but there was only one cashier and one waiter, so there was insufficient manpower. There was poor indoor ventilation and I smelled of oily fumes after eating.

On my second visit, I added that the live fish with pickled vegetables is far inferior to the fish fillets with pickled vegetables, because the live fish has fish bones and scales, and the fish head is not cooked enough. Dry pot cauliflower is fried and placed in a small hot pot until the fuel is burned out, but all the onions in the small hot pot are not cooked. The onions are cooked in the places where the flames are burned, and the cauliflower is hot, and the cauliflower is hot in the places where the flames are not burned. Lukewarm, with raw onions. Pork and pickled cabbage buns. The pickled cabbage is chopped into fine pieces and mixed with the pork. It is difficult to eat it. The meat filling is good and there is soup. The skin of the bun is soft and becomes soggy after being soaked in the soup. I don't like it. The cucumbers were crispy, salty and sour. I thought it was too salty, but my friends who were traveling with me thought it was very good to take home and eat. When I went out, I was smelling of oily smoke again.

The third time, I liked the fried pork buns very much, but my gay friends said they were too hard to bite. The honeycomb corn is deep-fried and very crispy. In fact, there is no corn, which is almost the same as eating fried shredded taro. The stir-fried lotus root slices are glutinous lotus root. They are fried very well but I think it is too salty. Finally, the cucumber is not as good as the previous two times. Crisp, a little soft. The fourth time, the stir-fried pork and stir-fried green beans were both very good, but the stir-fried pork was really too salty. The portion of braised pork is large, the meat is soft and tender, but the sauce is not rich enough. Now I only order stir-fried vegetables and pickled fish fillet from this restaurant. The fifth time, the cumin mutton rice bowl was really good (see picture), a bit too salty but very delicious, the Yangzhou fried rice was OK, the Qixiang beef was deep-fried, too crispy and hard to bite, personal opinion generally. The sixth time, the peanuts of the Kung Pao Chicken were very crispy, the chicken was very soft and tender, and overall it was salty but delicious. Yonghe fried rice is actually fried rice mixed with sliced beef, diced chicken, sausage, shrimp, shredded lettuce, and feels better than Yangzhou fried rice. Takeaway: The portion of Mongolian roast mutton is large enough, but the roast is relatively tough. Apart from the portion size, it is not as good as the Chinese Beef and Sheep Restaurant. The dry-roasted hairtail fish is delicious and too salty (it seems to be a common problem in this restaurant. Many dishes are too salty. People who don't like salty food should indicate less salt. The hot chicken offal only has chicken kidneys and no chicken...

It's hard not to notice this place especially at night. Bright lights, big open windows, you can't help but take a peek in.

After waiting a few months since they put up their sign, I decided to pass by this place on the way back home to see if they were finally open and was pleasantly surprised to find that it was. It was about midnight so I was happy to find something open that wasn't a McDonalds.

The decor and layout of the space is very inviting, a good cross between old school Chinese decor and modern styling. Was greeted and told to sit anywhere, so I picked a spot closer to the front so I can see how everything works.

Mind you, this is not the typical breakfast place despite the name. The restaurant seems to specialize in Norther Chinese cuisine. The menu itself is fairly concise, not an overwhelming selection like how you would expect most Chinese restaurants. The main issue however is that if you cannot read Chinese, be prepared to hit a roadblock. A lot of the menu items are direct translations and do not describe the dish at all, and the staff speak next to no english aside from asking how many seats. The signs/menu items on the wall are also written in Chinese only. Google translate may be your best friend here.

I ordered the Chilli Fried Noodles, Chilli Oil Beef, Leek Pancake, and a Pork & Cabbage Bun to try. Everything came in a fair amount of time one after another. Overall, everything was delicious, especially the Chilli Noodles and Beef. If you're a fan of heat or just want to warm up from the cold, these dishes are definitely for you. The bun was also very juicy and soft, well worth the $1.50.

While delicious and full of flavour, my only wish is that they used less oil. The amount of oil on everything I felt was much more than is needed, everything was practically drowning in it. -1 star for that.

Another issue was the service. I mentioned earlier that while the servers speak minimal to no english, they seem to lack the basic customer service skills on top. It took 10 minutes for the bill to arrive in an almost empty restaurant (1 other table of 6 other guests who appear to be friends of the staff). Even after waving at the 2 waitresses, literally 2 feet away and calling for their attention, they managed to look directly past me and walk away. When I finally decided to walk up to the front cashier and ask again for my bill, the staff just looked over at my table and walked away to ask someone else to do it. I'm not sure if this was just a case of lack of training and she didn't know how to, but I found it extremely rude. Total damage for the night was $30.

Would I come back? Maybe. Since there's limited options open late in the area, if I have no other choice I may return. I might give them a few months to flesh out their service details and see how they do, because as is I don't think they'll have many returning customers. If you can look past the poor customer service/experience, the food itself is rather worth a try if...

Self serve (so don't expect excellent table service although they do bring some food item to your table), 24 hours open, variety, clean, good price, AYCE soy milk and congee for 1.99. After reading some review, just to be fair, Chinese food has pork, even is a veggie dish, oil used could also contain pork. So if you have a straight diet restriction, just skip this restaurant. Menu without English or staff don't speak your language is not a sin, and they don't break any law. Skip this place if you are picky about this. Different culture has different tolerance. I was self serving myself a bowl of congee at the counter and a server poured another bowl of congee back to where I'm getting my food , I was stunned and she went "never touched". I would stormed if I'm not in this restaurant and I'm sure most of you would call 911, but this is a culture with long history of suffering, saving every bit of food is a virtue for the Chinese culture. So I was totally OK with it. Trust the Canadian enforcement on food safety in Toronto restaurant, if they break any safety rule, they would be closed by now. Before you blame, think of how other people can accept your own...