Can General Tso march uptown?

Should Toronto restaurants come with a Best Before date? A couple of months on the job and I’ve come away dismayed from several restaurants which won plaudits last year. What’s going on? Surely restaurants are not letting themselves slip once the reviews are in? I have a suggestion: instead of going twice to restaurants when they open, maybe reviewers should go only once and then return in a few months just to make sure.
 
Lai Toh Heen has just been given the hi-sign as one of the best new restaurants of 2007 by Toronto Life.. Will this be the breakthrough Chinese food experience for me? I know Chinese cuisine can be complex and subtle from the occasional piece of eye-opening  dim sum, and from the Mongolian-American restaurant Susanna Foo in Philadelphia where I ate a never-to-be forgotten tea-smoked squab. I’ve only found it matched by chef Neil Baxter at Rundles in Stratford.

Instead, my idea of Chinese food is an Asian version of Big Macs, sinostyle fast food, pungent takeaways and drop-ins to the ruggerscrum of a Chinese restaurant where you struggle through the masses for a seat, shout to be heard and are identified only by number.

I had a fave greasy spoon called Champion House - now shuttered - where they banged a gong when the Beijing Duck came out and served 3-fire-alarm Gongbao shrimp – erratically. I never knew whether the food would be as good as last time because Champion House, like all Chinese restaurants of my acquaintance, had a revolving door for chefs, or as the writer Saki quipped “She was a good cook as cooks go, and as cooks go, she went.” There was no communication between Chinese hosts and our Western selves. They didn’t speak much English, we spoke no Chinese. To them we undoubtedly looked all alike. We joked about being hungry again in an hour, a joke  since been amended  by the avalanche of cheap Chinese products. Now it’s “I hardly finished eating before my Made-in-China sweater started unraveling.”

Going uptown must mean better communication. I want in to the world’s oldest-running civilization. First impression: Lai Toh Heen is elegantly black and silver. I know from a Californian blogger what upscale means in today’s Chongquin – hostesses in long lavendar dresses with matching rabbit chubbies (short fur jackets). But we didn’t get a chance to spot any kind of a chubbie before we were whisked into a small back room redolent only of a viewing chamber in a mortuary. It’s even got concealed strip lighting and Muzak. The only other mourners are a gloomy couple who share with us their irritation at not getting the pan-seared scallops they ordered.

Two things strike me. First, either the restaurant thinks that surroundings don’t matter. After all,Confucius, who wrote the bible for Chinese eating, never mentioned décor. He concentrated, like today’s nutritionists, on food as fuel, the higher starch the better.

Alternatively, Lai Toh Heen believes its food is so good that we won’t notice we’re sitting in a mortuary.

Well that gets blown apart almost immediately. I’ve invited along the Gourmand Couple who eat regularly at Eisenginn Farm, the cathedral of food in these parts, with the promise of a unique Chinese experience. Beijing Duck is perfect for four. “Hah” says the Skeptic – “you gotta count. If the duck comes out too quickly, it’s been deep fried rather than roasted.” Apprehensive, we sample the soup Hot and Sour is glutinously pink and mild. The eyebrows of the Gourmand Couple rise simultaneously. Why, you can eat spicier, tastier Hot and Sour from Soup’s On’s version at the supermarket. The Skeptic reports the Wonton soup is listless.  

The Beijing Duck takes atleast twenty minutes and looks wonderful, like a shard of French polished walnut, but the little pancakes curl drily and the glistening crackly skin is lined with unwanted fat. Sill even a second class combination of skin,scallion and pancake tastes good – then the second course arrives, a terminally bland mixture of chopped duck and veg on an iceberg lettuce leaf.

The Gourmand Couple had in mind juicy fried orders, remembered from eating on Chesapeake Bay. What they get is unrecognizeable as the conventional oyster. I had high hopes for tea-smoked shrimp: the shrimp look real but we have to check the menu to find out whether they were meant to come with flavour.

We have a last wistful glimpse of the Shanghai we missed as the Skeptic hails the valet for his car. The bill is $10 and the Skeptic asks for change for a twenty spot.The valet asks “How much should I take?”

To restore my belief that there is a Wizard of Oz er great  Chinese cooking, I drop by Cha Liu, a little dim sum place above Eglinton. The steamers are slapped down one two three on the table, the server barely notices us, same old same old. But not the tastes! Fried Salmon Milk custard bar is sensational, Fried taro and chicken cake is a little hemisphere of stuffed light pastry, Fried shrimp and mango roll is a crunch of fried scented cream….. Get over here Lai Toh Heen and take instruction!  I ask our server what is the sauce on the table. “Spicy sauce” he says tightlipped. Then he gives a slight smile. When we order more, he smiles more. By the end of the meal, he shows teeth. Finally, we’re communicating – great food’s done the trick.

*Lai Toh Heen 692 Mount Pleasant Road
(one block south of Eglinton)416-489-8922
Food plus tax:$140 Wines by glass start $7.50. Uninspired wine list. No wheelchair access.