Ginger & Onion Cuisine located at 7131 Kennedy Road in Markham

Ginger & Onion Cuisine is a Chinese restaurant that has been around for many, many years.  It’s one of the first Chinese restaurants in the Markham area to open for traditional dim sum and Chinese fare.  I remember when they used to exist as another name and my family and I used to go there every weekend for dim sum.  That goes back to the days when my grandfather was still alive too.  Memories.  With this newer Ginger & Onion Cuisine, their Chinese name of the restaurant is a play on words because it means “increase more income for the employees” — “ga ren gong” translating as “give me more pay”.  It’s smart!

On a Monday afternoon, some friends and I had a small reunion here at close to 1 p.m.  There were actually a lot more people here than I expected.  We even had to get a paper ticket to wait in line and to be called.  Thankfully, we didn’t have to wait long at all and we got a table shortly.

The inside of Ginger & Onion Cuisine

At Ginger & Onion Cuisine, they still offer dim sum using those traditional push carts.  Baskets of steamed dim sum are pushed around on carts by ladies who yell out what types of dim sum they have in their carts.  I say that it’s a traditional way of having dim sum because most Chinese restaurants nowadays simply give you an order sheet of all the dim sum that they have and you mark off what you want.  Then, you submit the sheet of paper and the servers will bring out your marked-off dishes as they are ready from the kitchen.  With these traditional push-carts, there’s a definite authenticity to the dim sum experience.

Between the four of us, we ordered some classic dim sum to share.  It was nice to have dim sum with friends on a weekday and to catch up with each other.

Deep fried shrimp

Beef tripe

Rice noodle with fried dough fritter

Assorted crab meat, mushroom, ham, chicken

The classic siu mai, shrimp dumpling s, and veggie dumpling

Beef ribs

Fried spring rolls

Curry octopus and black bean spareribs

Boiled vegetables. $2.80

“Tofu flower”

The dim sum was moderate tasting to mediocre to decent.  (For example, while I enjoyed the beef ribs, I didn’t enjoy the siu mai as much.)  I actually really liked the desserts!  I haven’t had ‘tofu flower’ in a very, very long time.  While the tofu in this dessert wasn’t the most smooth that I’ve had, it was still decent.  I also enjoyed the black sesame soup too.  Yum!  Two great desserts that we had to finish off our dim sum session.  Yay!

Black sesame soup

Market Village area

Have you been to Ginger & Onion Cuisine before?  What was your experience like?