Pearl Yorkville Chinese Cuisine — Restaurant in Toronto

Due to the ratings being on the lower end, I decided to try the takeout here first.

The first thing I noticed when I looked up their menu was the relatively high prices - many orders are between $20-30, and 2-course for Peking duck is close to $100. I ordered two noodle dishes (chow mein and noodles with beef), one beef dish, and one spring roll (not one order of spring roll, literally one spring roll) and the total price came close to $90. With that said, I felt this place was kind of selling itself as a "high-end" Asian restaurant so I decided to place the order anyway, hoping the higher price would translate to higher quality food.

Overall, I was pretty disappointed. The quality of the ingredients felt no better, both the noodle dishes were mostly noodles with few vegetables and protein. The food didn't taste good - everything tasted pretty bland and excessively greasy. This place costs 50% or more than restaurants in Chinatown but the quality is not much better - I felt like I was paying more for its physical location than the quality or the quantity of food.

Even though I ordered a takeout, I had to give this restaurant a one out of five stars for the service. First of all, they have a pickup window next to a narrow, dark and dirty sidewalk, which is just weird. There's no bell or anything to notify that you are waiting there to pick up an order so it's just incredibly awkward (did I say this sidewalk is narrow?). I waited there for a few minutes before deciding to go into the restaurant to pick up the order. When I stepped into the reception area, the guy working at the front desk didn't even acknowledge me and silently passed over the food when I told him that I was there to pick up an order and gave him my name. I get that service isn't always the priority at asian restaurants, and that is fine, but given the price this restaurant charges for its rather disappointing and overpriced dishes, there is nothing to redeem its terrible service at the reception.

It's great to see a new business occupying this space that was sitting vacant for a long time, but I feel this general area deserves a much better restaurant. I definitely will not be ordering from this place and will make sure anyone I know won't make the same mistake I did by giving this place a try. It's not worth...

Another new, higher-end Cantonese Dim Sum addition to the downtown culinary scene

Today, taking advantage of a fine Autumn day, I took a leisurely drive down a ‘Fall Foliage‘ lined Don Valley Parkway to meet up with a couple of decades long ex-chowhound foodie friends for a mini-luncheon chowmeet. We decided to give the relatively new ‘Yorkville‘ location of the fast expanding ‘Pearl Restaurant‘ chain a try.

The three of us ordered the following from a fairly basic, traditional, run-of-the-mill Dim Sum menu: Woo-Kok, Fried Taro Croquettes with Minced Meat Filling Steamed BBQ Pork ‘Cheung-Fun’, Hand-rolled Rice Crepe Har-Gow, Steamed Shrimp dumpling with Minced Bamboo Shoot Hong Kong Style Shrimp Toast Steamed Baby Cuttlefish with Curry Sauce Steamed Beef Tripe ‘ Ma-Lai-Go ‘, steamed Caramel Sponge Cake

Overall, quality was fairly decent and acceptable though nothing to shout about.

Maybe it's just me? However, I detected the quality of the BBQ pork used for the Cheung-Fun filling to be a bit off. Whereby, conversely, the Har-Gow was fairly nicely crafted, with well seasoned juicy interior and crunchy shrimp filling. Though the skin wrapper was a touch thick, compared to most of their uptown peers, they were actually more delicate and thin! Nowadays, it is an uncommon sight to see Hong Kong style shrimp toast being featured on a Dim Sum menu. As such, seeing them on Pearl’s menu, I jump at the chance of ordering them. Sadly, these Golf Ball size, round concoctions were nothing like what I had in mind?! The version I was expecting should be a flat rectangle piece of bread, topped with dressed shrimp paste, further topped with a whole single butterflied prawn, rolled in fine bread crumbs and then fried. What we were presented with was more like a banquet style Cantonese Shrimp paste Stuffed Crab Claws but without the pincers. Still, they were quite juicy, crunchy and fairly delicious. Remainder of our order featured average to above average fare.

Overall, to me, it was a wonderful and enjoyable lunch since great companies with great food stories, experiences and jokes always trump the caliber...

Came in for dim sum today for the soft opening, we've been anxiously waiting for their opening for months at this point so we were so excited to see they're finally open! The interior decor is very nicely done, it's not a particularly large space, but they were able to fit a good number of tables and seats. The space was clean, modern, and bright. The chairs are also very nice and comfortable. The service was excellent, we were seated immediately (it is probably not as busy as it was their soft opening and I imagine it would only get busier), but we were offered the menu and asked for our tea choice as we sat down. Once we ordered, the food came out very quickly, at a nice pace, everything felt fresh and hot. We only ordered 5 dishes, since it was just two of us, but we ordered the staples, har gow, Siu Mai, sticky rice in lotus leaf, fried taro, and soup dumplings. I particularly liked the sticky rice here, as it comes as one large sticky rice wrapped in lotus leaf so it has a lot of meat inside. The ingredients were very good quality as well - big pieces of meat instead of minced meat with sauce, shiitake mushrooms, lap cheung... Probably the best sticky rice I've had in the city. Overall the quality of the food was excellent. On par with Pearl Harbourfront - so if you're a fan of them you'd like it here too. We'll definitely be back, probably tomorrow to try other dishes! But very happy to have a good quality dim sum/chinese restaurant in the neighborhood!

Edit: came back again the next day, ordered all new items and everything was still very very good! Delicious, freshly...