御膳豪庭 Crown Jewel Fine Dining — Restaurant in Toronto

A month ago on a Friday, I had come here for lunch with my partner, and I had a very frustrating experience. I had arrived, and was ticketed and waited in line at around 12:30 pm or so. There was one person ahead of me, and they were allowed in at around 12:45. The hostess came to inquire if we can wait a little longer after we watched as an entire group of people that came long after we did were allowed in before us. The waitress also informed us that our table would be ready shortly, as they were waiting on the occupants of the table to finish up. We thought it may just need to wait another couple of more minutes, and agreed. By the end, we had waited until 1:30 pm, and we still were not given a straight answer as to when we would be able to be seated. After nearly an hour of waiting, my partner and I were very hungry and irritated, and ended up leaving the queue. I understand that they may have thought that we would be able to be seated soon, but the lack of communication from the staff the entire time about how long we would need to wait and them assuring us that it was going to be a short wait was very frustrating. The waitress is bias to the clients who speak her mother tongue and apparently favored to friends or acquaintance. Would not return...

Crown Jewel Fine Dining offers a decent selection at competitive prices: S for $3.50, M for $4.50, and L for $5.50, but on non-holidays if you order before 11am, S-L dishes will be $3.50.

Where Crown differs is the size of their dim sum. Their steamed shrimp dumpling har gow (L) and steamed shrimp & pork dumpling siu mai (L), are huge and about 50% larger than other restaurants while the taste is still relatively consistent.

Some dumplings could use more seasoning. The steamed vegetable dumpling (L) is a great vegetarian option containing snow pea shoots and prince mushroom slivers, but desperately needs salt. Similarly, the seafood dumpling in soup (L) is fairly bland despite containing chunky portions of various seafood and mushroom.

I’m glad restaurants are starting to offer more vegetarian options. A pumpkin congee with chestnut and corn (L) seems to grace most menus and truthfully is quite delicious. At Crown, they leave some pumpkin pieces strewn throughout the congee so it ends up having more texture and bite. The chestnuts also make the congee savoury.

If you prefer your congee with meat, the traditional pork and preserved egg (L) is available. At Crown, the pork is shredded rather than diced, which may make it easier for...

My fam dined here on a weekday evening after visiting Scarborough Grace Hospital nearby.

The parking lot was quite empty and the resto was even emptier.

We ordered a combo set and made a couple of dish substitutions.

The fish belly and tofu stone pot was very good. The crispy chicken excellent. Bak choy w/ assorted shrooms was good as well.

The sweet n' sour pork was just ok imo. Enough crispiness but meat to fat ratio was off in each piece. Also the pineapple presentation was pretty but I'd rather they leave that off the plate and give us more sns pork with the remaining dish real estate.

Stir fried beef w/ gai lan in satay sauce was mid. The gai lan was cooked well. The beef was on the tougher side and the satay sauce they used wasn't actually satay. It was too oily and the amount of actual satay used was negligible. This dish is a strong pass.

Our combo meal was originally supposed to come w/ char siu but we subbed it out for one of the above mentioned dishes. After seeing a plate of it arrive at another table I felt regretful that we did not order it. It looked good!

There was a strange odor permeating throughout the resto when we dined there. I can't identify the exact smell but it resembled...