Happy Valley Village — Restaurant in Toronto

For the uninitiated: it is far more common outside of China for people to come across Chinese cuisine originating from South and South-Eastern provinces. Because of this, the North-Eastern (东北) Chinese cuisine served here is a pretty unique and stand out experience.

People in the North-East live through extremely cold winters and it makes sense that the meal centres around a large one-pot stew, where the bubbling pot in the middle of the table doubles as a fireplace. The people would huddle around and eat starters while waiting for their casserole to come to boil.

This restaurant earned its full five stars with us because it captured this authentic North Eastern experience for the Canadian audience. It was a typical cold day when we visited, and the piping hot food made before our eyes not only satisfied our hunger but expelled that miserable cold-all-day feeling. Their bright red interior design and northern Chinese village aesthetic with separate dining booths looked and felt the part.

As starters, we had a plate of saucy glass noodles in sesame oil and mixed vegetables, a plate of stir fried tofu skin and green peppers. We enjoyed these before the lamb and mushroom based broth for our main dish was poured into the centre pot by a restaurant staff. As the pot got started, the staff also formed corn bread from fresh lumps of dough and attached those to the upper ring of the pot (a bit like tandoori style naan) before closing the pot with a big circular wooden lid.

A 20-minute timer was set and once time was up, the server lifted the lid and we were greeted with a cloud of steam. The corn bread was cooked from the steam of the casserole and was pillowy on the inside while the side that stuck to the pot was crunchy. Like croutons, the corn bread tasted delicious while dipped into the rich lamb broth as the crunchy and spongy textures oozed with soupy flavour in each bite.

There was something about the cooking technique (and perhaps the anticipation before the lifting of the lid) that made for an incredibly tasty meal. The meat was juicy, the mushrooms tender and vegetables crisp yet all of them infused with the umami from the simmering stock.

With complimentary ice cream to finish and plenty of leftovers to take home, we suggest you plan your visit to get the most of the generous serving by either coming with a lot of dining companions or with a truly empty stomach (or both). Getting a table reservation helps as that would save a lot of waiting time. We did not book and had to sit outside for about an hour before securing a table. The fact that this long wait did not affect our rating speaks volumes about the exceptional...

Came here because of the good google reviews, but our experience left little to be desired.

First there's the nagging from the waitress for us to join their membership club, of 200 dollars so that we would have to come back to this place even if their food was bad. luckily we didn't fall for the scam.

Secondly, all the people that worked there had bad attitude written on their face, now i understand that it is a saturday and they probably wished that they were somewhere else, but that's no excuse for the unprofessionalism.

For example the girl who was taking our order literally was whispering from across our table, causing none of us to hear what she was saying, and she refused to come closer for some reason.

Then there's the waiter serving us who used a dirty pot lid with left over food on it to cover our pot, and then he forgot to turn on the stove to heat up the food, while leaving us there sitting for nothing for 16 minutes until their timer went off. when a second waiter came to check and realized that the stove was not turned on, he blamed the faulty cookware and tells us that we have to wait another 16 minutes, and if the stove disconnected its power again, we would have to move to another table. however, it was very clear that the stove was not malfuctioning as we realized that the first Waiter never even turned in the stove in the first place.

so like a bunch of starving costumers we had to sit there and wait for the food to heat up, while the rice that they gave us now 32 minutes later are completely cold.

when we finally started eating the food with the cold rice and the dirty pot lid, we were shocked at how small the portion was inside, and how little meat was on the Lamb Spine that we ordered, it was literally 90 percent bones and 10 percent meat, and it was 44 dollars just for that dish alone!

At the end, because of the poor services, the lack of willingness to take responsibility for their mistakes, we decided to tip them 12 percent instead of the recommended 15 percent to show our unhappiness for their service, but this is when the waitress displayed even more rudeness on her face, and dropped us the receipt before leaving without saying anything, almost like we owed her money and should be serving her instead.

Overall we are glad to say that we will not be returning here in the future, and i really hope management trains their employees better, or their business is going to suffer even more than it is right now (there were barely any customers at lunch time...

There was a yelp elite event for this place that I missed out on (and one of my friends and his gf kept raving about this place) so recently my friends and I decided to check this place out.

The place is CRAZY busy. We tried calling in earlier but were told over the phone that they don't do reservations, only walk-ins.

The plaza itself has a lot of parking so that shouldn't be an issue.

We arrived and using the digital waitlist found that there were about 40 ppl ahead of us which equated to approximately a 2 hr wait. Some of our group decided to wait while the rest of us went to check for empty tables at the other restos in the plaza.

We managed to be called up in around 35-40 min which was pleasantly surprising. We were about to eat at Dear Saigon.

We got a big group booth w/ some comfy, plush cushions near the entrance (the cold breeze actually felt kinda nice during the meal to cool us down).

We were started off w/ some cold melon that was just brought to the table.

We had a group of 8 and it was our first time there so we asked the server for recommendations. As per her suggestion, we ordered a 4 serving size iron pot stew and then ordered a bunch of a la carte dishes (and then ONE MORE iron pot at the end) to round off the meal.

We got the tomato soup braised beef brisket iron pot stew and added a couple extra corn pancakes (which were just kinda meh tbh). This stew was delicious. The taste was reminiscent of a slightly more flavourful russian borscht. The beef chunks were so tender and meaty. The veggies were tender and cooked well.

We ordered a second iron pot at the end of the meal cuz we were still kinda hungry. It was stewed beef brisket w/ potatoes. The broth was a lil too salty for all of us and everyone agreed that the tomato broth was MUCH better and had way more umami.

As far as a la carte/side dishes go, the standouts for us were the shovel stir fried lamb (which is literally cumin lamb that's de-skewered on a plate) and the sweet n' sour pork slices. I also DID enjoy the kung pao chicken even though it was numbing AND sweet rather than just numbing.

I was skeptical at first, but I think the high rating for this resto is legit! Will definitely be back for future visits.

P.S. even though there is no mild option for some stews on the menu, I believe the server told us that you can request mild and they can...