Hakka Chinese Kitchen — Restaurant in Ontario

Update (Sept 2020) - We gave this a second try with a sizeable takeout order, and it was clear the flavors have improved vastly since our first visit. The Egg Fried Rice were fresh as with all the other dishes, and the Crispy Beef seems to have undergone a complete (and welcome) reworking. They were fully-booked for dine-in on the night we went to pickup which was confidence inspiring. We appreciated Hakka Chinese Kitchen listening to its customers' feedback and look forward to another trip.

Original (May 2020) - We had high but reasonable hopes seeing the ownership of this restaurant be affiliated with other similar establishments. Excusing the in-person experience given they just started, we were all unanimous in our opinions per dish. The drumsticks were underspiced and not crispy, likely due to the extra fat remaining inside. The Honey Garlic Chicken was just sweet with no garlic taste, which is absolutely necessary. The Sesame Chicken had none of the traditional notes, so it tasted even more of the weird base and fry oil. In the middle of the pack was the Szechuan Chowmein which was balanced but had an incredibly less amount of protein, we counted only 4 pieces for our serving. The Chilly Chicken had some of that classic chilly chicken taste which was nice to see, but again had the old taste in the chicken. The General Tso had the best flavor of all the meals, but was missing the critical high-amount of dried chillies; there was only one in the dish so it was lacking in what the traditional General Tso is supposed to be. The Crispy Beef was at the top of our list, though the pieces were simply too big and we all felt should have been smaller strips instead. All dishes suffered from the same issues: pre-fried meat, odd-tasting hoisin-like base, overly sweet, too saucy and excessive aftertaste of bad oil. We know most Hakka restaurants par-fry meats and refry just before serving and everyone who eats Hakka is okay with that. In this case, it was just severely poor and left everyone with upset faces just a few minutes into the meal. We hope to revisit in the future to a better, more flavor-accurate Hakka...

We had HAKKA CHINESE last night. A little unassuming Indo-Asian fusion mom-and-pop that we randomly found on Google maps next to London Icecream (which we had already planned to visit after dinner).

I had to come write a detailed review because I was so impressed and I'm a bit hard to wow with food as I'm a decent cook with a discerning palette and who has dietary restrictions.

It is some of the best food I've had in a long time. (I had never heard of Hakka cuisine before but had to ask our server after we had tried the food about its history and promptly started reading on it when I got home) Everything was from scratch with real ingredients and they are not afraid to bring the heat! lol. Everything we had was awesome.

We tried appetizers of spicy paneer and hot and sour soup. The paneer dish came out and I was giddy telling the server how delicious it looked and smelled(ended up being my favorite bite of the evening) and the hot and sour soup had hits of fresh cilantro and tender bamboo shoots.

For entree we shared Szechuan beef, Tanga Madras chicken, AMD Manchurian mixed vegetables.

I was pleasantly surprised by the lack of sugar in their dishes in favour of true home cooked and fresh flavours.

The service was great(when they were out of something we wanted they offered to make a fresh batch but we choose another dish instead). We were the only people in the restaurant (our first time dining in, in a year and a half) but their Skip alarm went off every two minutes. Highly recommend! Apparently they opened during the pandemic. I'll order delivery too!

Thank-you Hakka Chinese Kitchen for an...

I had been searching for a Hakka Chinese restaurant in London since I moved here from Toronto 2 years ago. For a long time I couldn't find this type of cuisine in London and I was missing some of the restaurants I used to frequent in Toronto. During the pandemic, I ended up finding this place and the food is amazing, it is exactly what I had been looking for and we've ordered from here through SkipTheDishes many times now.

Manchurian Chicken with steamed rice is my favourite dish and I love that it has spice to it. My boyfriend loves the Spicy Paneer, he orders it every time we do takeout from here. Also love the Crispy Sesame Beef and was shocked when we discovered it actually gets delivered still crispy and not steamed/soggy!

The only disappointment I ever had from this place was tonight, I ordered the Manchurian Chicken on Skip as I've done several times in the past and it normally comes with a bowl of steamed rice to eat with the chicken. Unfortunately, this time I did not receive any rice with my order and I ended up having to eat a bowl of chicken with sauce, almost like soup, it wasn't very satisfying with the rice missing. It felt like a really incomplete meal and I'm not sure why this happened. I will forgive it this time, and hope that doesn't happen again...