Red Tea House — Restaurant in Toronto

Red Tea House is a HK Style Cha Chan Teng and have been in business for many many years. It's one of my go-to place whenever I am in the Scarbrough area.

It's nothing fancy, it's like a mama-papa shop hole-in-the-wall type of restaurant but that's the type of style and vibe I am seeking when I am here. Sometimes, when it's packed, you have to share a table, which is typical and I don't mind it.

The staff are friendly and courteous, they are all aunties so give them time to serve you and don't be aggressive or impatient with them. This is a chill place where it seems most customers know each other and with the staff.

The food are good portion, relatively cheaper price than others. You can order their all-day breakfast, all-day combo, lunch specials, afternoon tea specials or dinner dishes, so many kinds.

NOTE: If you don't read Chinese, it maybe a challenge as they don't really have a menu as they wrote all their food items around all the walls in the restaurant.

My favourite item here is its beef brisket soup noodles. Many other places will heat up the beef brisket in clear broth and just add whatever sauce you want whether it's curry sauce, special Chinese style but the meat just never submerged in the sauce when they are not dip into the sauce. Instead, at this Red Tea House, they marinated the beef brisket in their secret sauce for many hours, so you can smell and taste the difference. The beef brisket are tender, juicy and they have a good cut with some tendon attached to the meat.

Beef Brisket soup noodles + a cold lemon iced tea for only $7.99 CDN + tax (that's super great deal in our inflation era right now).

And you can order cold beverage that comes with the combo with no extra charge.

This is not a place that stands out, but the food does its job and it's a good place for a casual meal.

I highly...

Walked into this place totally random as I was stuck in traffic and was hungry.

For the interior, it is a dated 90's look with red tables, fans installed on wall, menu taped to wall, etc. Nothing fancy but I thought that also means authentic and local, so I didn't take off any points for that.

I have ordered an afternoon tea combo, with dimplings and noodles. To my surprise, they didn't allow me to upgrade my meal drink to red bean ice, even though I have offered to pay more. Anyways, since I was craving for red bean ice, I have ordered it separately and have 2 drinks (it is a hot fatt, so it is ok), and didn't deduct point for that either. Just thought this is not conventional and interesting.

Price is on par with other HK cafe. Food portion is a bit small for me. I think the noodle was a bit too soft, as they were broken into small pieces whenever I held them with my chopsticks. Veggies were a bit rough, and had grass-like texture. It can also improve the presentation of the food. For example, the red bean ice was pre-mixed, where most other places served thet in layers (red bed at bottom, milk in middle,...

Food was delicious but attitude was rude - we ordered pickled cabbage noodle and beef noodle which cost us around 26 bucks in total. Both are great food and cost effective. But the attitude of the waitress was horrible and impatient. I spoke mandarin and needed my husband to translate to her in Cantonese. She was very impatient listening to me speaking Mandarin. Also, I requested no green onions and no garlic, she stopped writing what I ordered to the paper and put down both of her hands and started to frown like she was so upset and gave up. I’m not sure what she was upset about because it’s a normal request to a restaurant. Her attitude was just very confusing to me. Then my husband who speaks Cantonese talked to her, she seemed to be more comfortable but still not very friendly. I felt so offended by her attitude. I will never come back again just to get treated this way. Also, note that the whole menu was in Chinese on the wall and only a few dishes have English subtitles. So if you only speak English it would be difficult to...