Dragon Legend at 25 Lanark Road in Markham

I only found out about this restaurant because Dragon Legend did a good PR move by mailing out flyers of their newly opened restaurant and offering a 15% discount for anyone who visited before December 15th for dinner.  The pictures on the flyer showed the restaurant looking really sophisticated and fancy, so I thought why not check it out? (Especially when there was a 15% discount).  I can never say no to a great deal!

It turns out that in the morning to lunch hour, they serve dim sum and Japanese a la carte dishes.  At night time, they transform into an all-you-can-eat buffet where there is international fare which includes their sushi from the day time, Asian cuisine like dim sum, salad bar, king crab legs, a grill station, and more.  Arriving at around 5:30 p.m. on the last weekday before their promotion expired, there weren’t a lot of people at first, but once it got to the 7 p.m. feasting hour, the place was packed!  I’ve never seen a restaurant so full on a weekday night.  It must have been everybody flocking there to take advantage of the discount from the flyer as well!  There is also a 2-hour feasting limit.

The restaurant is to be commended for their amazing interior design and atmosphere.  They must have spent a lot of money decorating the place as the tables and chairs were all very uniquely designed in an Eastern and Western flair — some of the chairs resembled an old rickshaw.  There were lots and lots of ancient Chinese vases and statues and Asian decor in general.  It was quite an impressive venue.

hot and sour soup, mashed potatoes, beets, curry fish balls, heart-shaped seafood pancake, chicken dumpling, grilled squid, spicy salmon roll, spicy tuna roll, mango salad, siu mai, braised lamb, grilled fish, frozen grapes, and more

The food:  I flocked to the sushi bar and sashimi table immediately.  All of their sushi was really fresh and tasted really good considering it was an all-you-can-eat buffet.  Almost all of the sushi I’ve had at buffets are mediocre at best.  I can tell that their day-time Japanese lunch menus must be really good because of this.  I really enjoyed the sushi rolls; they were the perfect small size to fit into your mouth in one bite.  My favorite roll was the “Snow White roll”.  The salmon sashimi was ultra fresh.  They also had Japanese butterfish and other types of sashimi that you rarely see at other buffets.  The butterfish was extremely soft and fresh.

The rest of the hot plates were not bad; the grill station was the best though because it had really good selections like grilled shrimp on a stick, grilled pineapple on a stick, beef-wrapped onion, grilled salmon, and more.  These few that I just listed were the my top picks of the night.  Everything else was unmemorable.  Even the king crab legs that every table seemed to get were not great for me — they were not very fresh and didn’t taste great.

Hamachi & sweet shrimp

I liked how a server came to our table to ask if we wanted a free serving of a special course of hamachi and sweet shrimp.  Of course!  The little plate that came was really, really fresh.  I especially liked the shrimp.  It was very raw and tasted a little ooey.  It was definitely a unique texture.

The dessert station looked very impressive.  So many cakes and little tarts and platters of sweets!  Unfortunately, the only outstanding dessert was their tofu pudding (豆腐花).  It was one of the softest, smoothest, and perfectly-made tofu I’ve had in a long, long time!  I was ultra impressed with it!  The other desserts like the green tea cake and the tiramisu really interested me.  However, they tasted really plain.  There was barely any flavour of green tea or coffee in them.  Disappointing.  Everything else, dessert-wise, was also unmemorable. 

The dessert station was very pretty

Best desserts for me: Creme brulee and the tofu pudding

All in all, this place serves fantastic-tasting and fresh sushi and sashimi.  I would suggest coming here for lunch instead of the dinner buffet since only their Japanese selection is noteworthy.  Everything else is kind of like your typical buffet food.  The venue is indeed beautiful and impressive if you want to show off to a date or dinner party, but the buffet dinner price is also a little steep at $24.99 — it was actually $29.99 for us because their “holiday season” had already started on December 9 and that’s why they racked up the prices to be the same as their weekend one.  Good thing we had that 15% off…