Phoenix Garden

Hello hello! We are about half way into lunar new year so the last couple of weeks has been full of festivities with family and friends. This year we had our dinner at Phoenix Garden. There used to be a Phoenix Garden near Renfrew but the one we went to was on West Broadway.

Phoenix Garden appetizer platter

★★★

Our dinner started off with an appetizer platter with assorted cold cuts, mushrooms wrapped in tofu skin, jelly fish and salted fish. While we were excited to finally get some food in our stomachs, we found the entire platter to be extremely salty. So needless to say, it wasn’t a good start to the meal.

Fish maw and egg white soup

★★★

Next came the fish maw and egg white soup. This soup is a thicker soup and red vinegar is usually added to taste. The fish maw in it was chewier than other times we’ve had it before but overall the soup was pretty good.

Steamed buns with ham and crisp

★★★★

Then we were given steamed buns with ham and special crisp inside. Unfortunately the bun wasn’t very warm and it was awkward trying to sandwich everything together because the filling was quite stiff. The ham was dripping in glaze and the special crisp added a unique texture to contrast against the fluffy bun.

The proteins were up next starting with the seafood. First came a dish of sauteed shrimp, scallops and broccoli topped with heaps of tobiko on top. There wasn’t much flavor to it but the seafood was cooked nicely. The lobster and e-fu noodles came shortly after.

Lobster with noodles

★★★★

This is the dish that brother deer usually has the most of because he’s not interested in the other seafood options. The noodles were dripping in the sauce the lobster was cooked in and the pieces of lobster were cracked so that they were easily removed. Something we noticed was that they didn’t have lobster forks and gave us regular forks instead. I guess this saves on the amount of cutlery they need to buy but it made extracting the lobster meat slightly more difficult.

The steamed fish with light soy sauce came next. It was a fresh fish but it wasn’t big enough to share among everyone at the table. The piece that I did get was pretty tasty though.

Fried chicken

★★★★

Originally we were supposed to get tea-flavored duck but we swapped it for the deep fried chicken in plum sauce because Old bean’s family doesn’t eat duck for lunar new years. It was a good swap though because the chicken was one of the best dishes of the night. The chicken was deep fried so that even the white meat remained nice and juicy. Lil’ bun kept going back for more and the light plum sauce complimented it well.

Sea cucumber, Mushrooms and Chinese broccoli

★★★

Nearing the end of the night we got the sea cucumber, shiitake mushroom and chinese broccoli dish. This is served so often in Chinese dinner sets that it’s hard to imagine going out for dinner without having it. The sea cucumber was soaked for a long time so they expanded quite a bit. However this also led to them losing out in the flavor and texture department. Everything was covered with a soy based roux.

The last thing that came before dessert was the fried rice with egg whites. There wasn’t very much of it and it wasn’t too memorable either.

Donut with red bean

★★★

For dessert we got these donut looking things filled with red bean. The dough itself wasn’t like donut dough because it was much softer and reminded us of fried milk or pudding. It was dusted lightly with a decorative pink sugar to bring in some of the lunar new year colour.

Quick bites

1. Not the best Chinese food we’ve had
2. Quick service
3. Not sure if they portioned everything well because for a table of 12, we didn’t have enough food to go around for some of the dishes.