Xin Jiang Restaurant

Located at 3636 Steeles Avenue East in Markham

In the spot where Xin Jian Restaurant is, there used to be a small and quaint Taiwanese restaurant. Xin Jian Restaurant has now taken over that spot and serves Chinese food of the Shanxi lamb and kebob variety, much similar to what Magic Noodle serves. I tried out this restaurant with my mom. The food is authentic. There seems to be more and more of these restaurants opening nowadays with the increasing number of people immigrating from mainland China to Toronto.

Asian cuisine

The inside

They had a solid BBQ skewer list so we picked several things from there: lamb, of course to try; beef thin tendon; and deep fried tofu.

BBQ Lamb Kabob. $2.49
BBQ Deep Fried Tofu. $1.60
BBQ Beef Thin Tendon. $1.99

The lamb came skewered on a metal stick and was pretty good. The beef thin tendon was not what I expected it to be. It was white in colour and thin like a noodle sheet. When you placed it in your mouth, it was very, very chewy, almost to the point of feeling you won’t be able to chew it down. After you continue to chew it, it becomes much softer and you are able to swallow it. What an interesting food item! It was covered with the same cumin powder as the lamb.

The BBQ deep fried tofu was mediocre.

Lamb Noodle Soup

We ordered the lamb noodle soup that came with green onion pancakes.

This noodle soup was more soup-based than noodles. There were only a few strands of clear noodle in there. The lamb meat was fragrant and paired with vegetables and big clear squares that tasted like half vegetable and half noodle. It was interesting to say the least.

The green onion pancake was delicious!! I’ve had many pancakes of this type before and this one was expertly made. It was fresh, hot, crispy, lightly fried, and rich in flavour in the right way — not too salty at all. I remember wondering how they made it so well as I was eating it. Mm mmm good!

Green Onion Pancake

Since the soup noodle didn’t have much substance to it, we ordered one more noodle — stir fried hand pulled noodle with chicken. This was pretty good; lots of noodles and chicken.