Bright Pearl in Toronto Chinatown
After realizing the day before that we landed in Toronto in the mist of a long holiday weekend, we were faced with closed shops and restaurants. So much for breakfast at St. Lawrence Market, thus it's we had to alter our itinerary and head towards Chinatown. Hey, as we all know, Chinese people never close their shops for major holidays. As predicted, Chinatown was packed with people and we were ready to get some grub. What's better than some dim sum, right?
O~ Canada
One shocking display that I was met with upon arrival, and sadly didn't take a picture of was 3-4 people cooking various dishes on portable stoves in the lobby. I mean, WTF?? We were too hungry to worry about that as our hostess led us to our table, and it was time to eat!
Fried Tofu (炸豆腐)
Glutenous Rice (糯米雞)
Jellyfish (海蜇皮)
BBQ Bun (叉燒包)
Shrimp Dumplings (蝦餃)
Siu Mai (燒賣)
MaLai Cake (馬來糕)
Fried Tofu (炸豆腐)
Glutenous Rice (糯米雞)
Jellyfish (海蜇皮)
BBQ Bun (叉燒包)
Shrimp Dumplings (蝦餃)
Siu Mai (燒賣)
MaLai Cake (馬來糕)
One thing I noticed immediately about the Bright Pearl was that it was lacking Chinese people, as most of the crowd were mostly Caucasian. Now, even though I'm used to hordes of Chinese folks fighting in line with me at dim sum, I was way too hungry to care at this point. I wish my intuition got the better of me. Of all the dishes shown above, nothing was memorable, in fact, some were pretty bad. The Ma Lai cake was dry, the fried tofu was quite bland, the glutenous rice was probably the WORST version I've ever had (WTF was with that presentation?)! I could probably find faults with all of the dishes shown. What's even more astounding was the final tab presented to us at the end. Our 7 dishes cost more than 40CAD, which with tax/tip ended up being about 15CAD (~$13/person). For subpar, tasteless dim sum, that was definitely a ripoff. In fact, the dim sum here couldn't even compared to the shack in the San Gabriel Valley called Dim Sum Express.
I really hate to bag this place and sound like a heinous food blogger, thus I had reservations about blogging this place, but our experience was quite bad. Even with 3 hungry stomachs going in, none of the dishes satisfied us. It was quite disappointing, along with the rest of the Chinatown in Toronto. The streets might be large and clean, but when the food was piss poor, who cares about cleanliness? Bright Pearl, and Toronto Chinatown, you might have been open, but you truly failed me!
Final Rating: 3 out of 10 (AVOID!)
Bright Pearl Seafood
346 Spadina Avenue
Toronto, ON M5T 2G2, Canada
(416) 979-1103
I really hate to bag this place and sound like a heinous food blogger, thus I had reservations about blogging this place, but our experience was quite bad. Even with 3 hungry stomachs going in, none of the dishes satisfied us. It was quite disappointing, along with the rest of the Chinatown in Toronto. The streets might be large and clean, but when the food was piss poor, who cares about cleanliness? Bright Pearl, and Toronto Chinatown, you might have been open, but you truly failed me!
Final Rating: 3 out of 10 (AVOID!)
Bright Pearl Seafood
346 Spadina Avenue
Toronto, ON M5T 2G2, Canada
(416) 979-1103
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9 comments:
It's a shame it was so nasty because the pics make it look fantastic. Note to self: eat dimsum where there are lots of Chinese people in line. That's a good rule of thumb for any ethnic cuisine. isn't it?
I like how you have the names in Chinese too! Just got back from Cupertino so I'm spoiled with good chinese food again. I will avoid this place for sure if I'm ever in Toronto... why not visit the Greek town there, eh?
Wow. This makes me so sad. Never eat at a Chinese place filled with white people. You should know better, dude.
Liz: It's hard to make it sound good (ie: not racist), but a good dim sum rest will have like 80%+ Chinese in attendance. Worst dim sum ever was a place in Sac called New Canton. Ugh...
Anna: I was being FOB when I wrote it, so I turned on my Chinese font =P You know, I didn't know there was Greek town. I've only had Greek food once??
Weezermonkey: Hey, sadly we were hungry and I took a chance. Never again...
too bad this place didn't pan out for you. it's always disappointing to get bad food while you're traveling. now I know where not to go.
I'd take good dim sum over clean streets any day! Go SGV!!
Matt: It is what it is, I guess the holiday weekend threw us off a bit.
Cathy: Seriously, I <3 SGV!
yeah, you gotta talk about it if the place is bad... i have a hard time doing it too, but it's your honest POV. try Mother's Dumplings in Chinatown if you are still there!
http://www.mothersdumplings.com/
bit hard to find, but solid homemade style food and not too expensive! :)
Joanh: that's why I really appreciate living close to the SGV here in LA. Great Chinese food, at low prices!
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