Don Mee — Restaurant in Victoria

Honestly, if you've been to Victoria and not been to Don Mee's, you're kind of doing something wrong. It has always been a tradition in my family to come here every time we visit Victoria, and it's not a tradition I'd ever want to stop. The food here is delicious, the service is great, and honestly just coming here is an experience all its own.

Don Mee's is a Dim Sum restaurant, which basically means that you don't come here to order a single plate of food for each person in your group, but instead ask for small plates (or bowls, etc) of food and share them. Ie, you might get a plate of chicken buns, and get about 3 to share for everyone at your table. Don't worry though, they often cut things into smaller sizes to A) make it easier to share and B) make it easier to grab the food with the provided chopsticks. These plates are ordered from food carts that periodically make their rounds around the restaurant, and each cart will have various different foods on offer. Don't worry though: if you miss something that you wanted, they're usually pretty good at going to get it for you if you ask nicely! But with all the food on offer, you only need a bit of patience and curiosity, and the good stuff will come around eventually.

As for the restaurant itself, it's pretty solid. I must admit that the interior decor feels a bit dated, and that the servers can sometimes have very strong accents, but seeing as the establishment is in the heart of Chinatown, the accents are par for the course and should be expected. As for the interior, well. It's a popular place! They can't exactly close down! Yet there's enough tables that I've never personally needed a reservation to pop in for lunch. Parking can be a bit tricky, but that's typical Victoria. There's a small parking lot less than a block from the restaurant that will be your best bet (it is pay parking, just fyi).

If you're coming here for the first time, I'd personally recommend the shrimp toasties or Shrimp balls, sesame balls (with red bean paste), or, the absolute staple of my every visit, the sticky rice. The sticky rice is honestly my favourite go-to dish, and my family frequently take a few extra servings of it to go home for later. It can be a bit difficult to get it all out of the leaf it's served in, but I've found that if you've taken it home for leftovers, just let it cool completely (likely overnight) and it will separate much easier in the morning (as long as it's still cool before you reheat it). If you're having it in-house though, no worries; again, they will cut it open for you to make things easier. It's also fun to guess which person at your table is going to get the tasty tidbit of chinese sausage! (We occasionally 'fight' over it, what fun!) ...and now I'm in the mood for some sticky rice. Oops.

Most of the food here is admittedly meat-based, and I've never made it a priority to check for vegetarian/vegan options. That's something you'll have to research yourself.

All in all, I cannot recommend Don Mee's enough. There's a reason it's been around...

Was here in July 2020, and had a strange experience to say the least. Ordered food, staff was polite and courteous, no problems. I go to order a dish and enquire if a small rice side dish was included with the dish (different procedure for different places, so best to check I thought). The answer was no, so I proceeded to ask what kinds of rice they have. The waiter responds with various types (egg-fried, boiled, and so on). I order my rice and everything is fine. Later, the food comes out, the meat is quite fatty but that seems to be a custom in BC, so you got to stick with what the locals get I guess. The portion of rice was huge however - no harm though I thought, I clearly enquired about a small side dish when ordering my main dish, so I figured they're just being generous. The bill comes later, and they try to charge me 12 euro (18 CAD) for a big plate of egg-fried rice (the side dish). The waiter tries to drag their heels and say "you should have ordered a side dish" (clearly I did when the last thing I said before ordering rice was "does this main dish come with a side dish of rice included?"). I insist on speaking with the manager and they go away again for a few minutes. They come back 20 minutes later and basically repeat the same thing, with no manager in sight. At this stage, it was obvious that the waiter was infact the manager but just wanted to make me wait in order to wear me down and make me pay for this overpriced and dishonestly served mountain of rice. This goes on for 45 minutes with them leaving, then coming back and repeating the same charade about how I should have been more specific with my order (again, why would I want a portion or egg-fried rice for 2-4 people when I clearly showed that I wanted a small side portion of rice immediately before ordering said rice?) Eventually, we compromise, I pay for half of the rice, and off we go.

I can understand that a business is having a bad day (it was 3 in the afternoon on a sunny Thursday afternoon in this big hall with nice decor, but we were the only ones there), but don't try to swindle your only customer you've had for several hours, and don't do it in such a blatantly obvious way. Worse still, why try to hide the fact that you were the manager (or at least the most senior member of staff on duty) when I repeatedly asked to speak with...

It is the better Chinese food in the area, though somewhat pricy. The dishes that are good are just good, some are meh. But, THE BEST egg tarts I've had in my life. It is adequate dim sum. If you want really good Chinese food, go to Vancouver. Or Richmond.

This was my second time at this restaurant. Last year the siu mai was what you'd get at any dim sum restaurant, this time it was chunky and kind of tough and tasted a bit too much like pork (might have been a little close to expiration if you know what I mean) and not much else. Chicken feet and cow intestine were good but the sticky rice was bland. Shrimp dumplings were excellent. So you have a range of pretty good to somewhat bland dishes.

I said the egg tarts were outstanding, and they were. I've had a LOT of egg tarts. I don't know what happened, but the custard was spiced with cardamom. While cardamom is not as common in Cantonese cuisine, and egg tarts are not made spiced, it happened. Whatever genius decided to do this deserves a raise because it subtly added a little complexity to make a beautiful tart.

We arrived at 11:30a, the restaurant filled up steadily after and was packed by the time we left. People would come up the stairs, conglomerate at the top and block everyone who was trying to pay, while the line to be seated was somewhere behind them. There were not many people coming to clear the tables, I saw about two-three people pushing carts and four other people running around serving, clearing and setting up tables, and trying to handle payment. So 7 or 8 staff in total.

For a restaurant with 15+ tables that could seat 6+ at each it was clear they were overwhelmed. Not their fault, but they were understaffed, so while everyone was nice, service was just...