Last Noodles of 2008 - December 1st, 2008

I was very excited to venture out to Chinatown this time, because I vowed to show my friend the authentic version of the nasty 'sweet and sour pork.' The last time I had this pork dish was back in the summer and I definitely missed it. I HATE the sweet and sour pork that most places serve. They use frozen pieces of battered pork, at least that's what they claim. I think that they throw in pieces of cardboard into the pork sometimes. Nasty. Okay, so the REAL version of the dish is served on a sizzling plate. There's REAL chunks of pork and ZERO traces of cardboard matter.

My friend and I went to the House of Gourmet blah blah blah restaurant, of course. It was going to be the last time I would get to have my noodles this year. We got there at the beginning of the dinner rush and were seated right away, more or less. We ordered 3 dishes to share between the two of us because we were starving. We ordered a bowl of stewed beef and wonton noodle soup, my noodles and, finally, pork in chef's special sauce on a sizzling plate. The soup came first, as it came from the front of the house. Okay, their shrimp wontons are pretty much huge siu mai. Seriously. Anyone who's had them there knows that I'm not lying. It's awesome! They're HUGE shrimp siu mai disguised as wontons. Sneaky ninja dumplings. Despite their skills, the shrimp 'wontons' failed to get ordered by us. My friend is sadly a

 shrimp hater and so I just go the pork wontons which are relatively smaller. I was sad. I took a picture or two of the bowl and thought they were fine, at the time, but I found out that they were blurry when I uploaded them onto my laptop. Boo... This is a picture of my brother's bowl of stewed beef noodle soup (without the wontons). The soup is there.. somewhere. The bowl that we got had more soup. Their soup kind of tastes weird. I remember when I tried my brother's bowl of soup two years ago, I thought the soup was kinda nasty. It grew on me this time. The meat is heavenly. It melts in your mouse and is sooo tasty!

I made sure to explain that the sizzling pork dish appealed to most of the senses. You can hear it sizzling as the waitress brings it over to the table, you can smell the sweet and smokiness of the dish, you can see the steam trail of the dish as it's carried to the table, you can see the bubbly sauce and  you can finally taste the tender pork with the sweet sauce. 

The sizzling pork dish came next. The kitchen already poured the sauce on the beef, so there sadly wasn't a huge spectacle. It smelt sooo good and I couldn't wait to dig in. It was really good. The pork was tender and the sauce was smoky and not too sweet.

My noodles came next. The only thing I can remember about it was that it wasn'

t as smoky. Oh, my friend, who I was with, commented that there wasn't "... as much sauce as we usually get." I had to tease him about it, because at the beginning of the semester, he only ate Canadian-Chinese food. Gotta love how one semester of Chinatown trips can turn someone really white, more asian than some asians are.

I'm going with my friend tomorrow and we're probably going order the same things.. I'm excited! Woot!

Enjoy the winter everyone! Make sure you bundle up so you don't freeze.

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House of Gourmet

484 Dundas St W

Toronto, ON