Northern Dumpling Kitchen located at 550 York Regional Rd 7 in Richmond Hill

April 12, 2018:  This was a substandard lunch.

After an early day of work for me, my mom and I headed to Times Square at Leslie and Hwy 7 for lunch.  We picked Northern Dumpling Kitchen 興隆軒 as we noticed through the restaurant windows that there were so many customers dining inside!  If a place is packed for a random Thursday lunch time, it must be somewhat good!

We got seated immediately.  The restaurant offered a huge variety of Chinese (Shanghainese?) dishes in their a la carte menu as well as a Monday to Thursday lunch special.  Although the lunch specials were a good deal, the dishes featured on it didn’t appeal to our tastes that day.

Quite small but cozy interior with booth seats and tables

Menu cover

Lunch specials

Instead, we ordered three items to share.

The Leek Egg Pancake looked good and was packed full of cut-up scrambled eggs, leeks, and some vermicelli.  However, it was not fried crispy enough and the shell was rather soft and soggy.  My mom also said there was a lack of fragrant taste of leek.

Leek Egg Pancake. $5.99

Too soggy for my taste

The Dan Dan Spicy Noodle was okay.  I liked the taste of the semi spicy soup base.  It had noodles in a spicy soup base with peanuts scattered on top.  My mom didn’t like the lukewarm soup broth and neither did I.  Even for me, it felt like the soup wasn’t hot enough.

Dan Dan Spicy Noodle. $6.99

The Pan Fried Cabbage and Pork Dumplings were the only better item of the three.  It had a thin dumpling skin with a juicy inside with lots of dumpling soup in it.  The dumpling could have been pan fried just a tad more to give off a more fragrant taste though.

Pan Fried Cabbage and Pork Dumplings. $6.50

There were so many customers dining in here that I felt perplexed because the food wasn’t very good.  Perhaps it’s cheap prices that draw them in?  Hmm..

Lunch time

Storefront

One of the many restaurants at Times Square at Highway 7 and Leslie