Located at 680 Silver Star Boulevard in Scarborough
A new location of this restaurant opened up at Silver Star and Steeles, so my family and I decided to go try it out. We arrived on a Saturday night at 6 p.m. and the night was bustling and full of patrons already deep into their meal and another table paying for the bill already. Although it’s good that it was so busy and customer-approved (it seems that way anyway), it also gave the impression that they were trying to rush us out of there to get ready for the 8 p.m. dinner slot for another round of customers. This is not surprising since it is a Chinese restaurant and Chinese places are never known for their polite service — they just serve you the food and will rarely ask you how the food is. It’s simply the way Chinese restaurants work. However, the ultra speedy atmosphere made it difficult for me to enjoy my food in peace and quiet.
The restaurant had taken over the previous Shanghai restaurant and had completely renovated the space so that one entire side of the restaurant was lined with huge tanks of live lobster, eel, crab, and fish. It was nicely done and made the place look glimmering and sophisticated.
We ordered the 6-person lobster meal. There were 7 of us, but the food was plenty enough that we packed some of the leftover crab home with us. You can tell a Chinese restaurant is super Asian when they end up spelling even their own restaurant name wrong… -_-
Steamed bass — the meat was pretty smooth. They served the soy sauce in a wine glass which made it look like a glass of red wine at first lol.
Poached clam in wine — this had a really strong wine taste to it and was pretty much the only thing was memorable about it. The clams weren’t that tasty otherwise.
The gigantic 6-pound lobster was served on a bed of fried garlic and also covered with it. It was an impressive mountain of seafood, and around our table, other people had also similar looking mountains. There was one table that ordered two huge lobsters that they needed two servers to serve the plate to the table. It was a bit excessive lol. And you can bet that once the plate was securely placed on the table that everyone around the table whipped out their cell phones…
To my disappointment, the lobster was not very good. Although it was huge — some pieces were the size of my palm and some of the claws were bigger than my hand — the lobster meat was very flavourless and at times fried too much and dry. There wasn’t any fresh taste of seafood even though they claim that the lobsters are cooked fresh from their tanks. The meat also stuck to the shells and made it hard to eat. At some places, you can just pull the entire claw meat out of the shell, and this wasn’t really possible here. The sizes were humongous, no doubt, but the taste was lacking. It was deep fried with a light batter.
It does look impressive
The crab was a little better in terms of taste, but generally, I prefer lobster since the meat is easier to get to and you don’t have to search so hard for the meaty portions. Perhaps if both dishes of seafood were steamed instead of fried, it would have retained the fresh taste and allowed more moisture in the meat itself.
The eel was not bad. It was fresh-tasting and smooth for the most part. However, eel parts usually have a lot of small bones that you have to look out for.
The boiled spinach and king mushrooms were good as was the soup of the day.
The fried rice with the lobster roe and “brain” was disappointing too. It was not flavourful and didn’t taste any different from a bowl of plain rice. It was served on a very nice glass platter though.
The dessert was black sesame soup. It was not too sweet. The soup itself was a bit thick and “slimy” for my liking.
Overall, as you can tell by the general tone of this post is that I didn’t like the restaurant and that it was a disappointment to me. My family has been to the other location and said that place was a bit better. If you have never been to this restaurant itself, I’m sure the huge portion of lobster is a great way to lure you in. However, I think I’d rather go to another restaurant that makes their lobsters better tasting.
Check out what I thought of the restaurant on my second visit.
stenoodie 
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