Tracy Dessert at First Markham Place

Tracy Dessert located at 3255 Highway 7 East, Unit 29 in Markham

May 2, 2018: I desperately needed a visit to a Chinese dessert shop to get some herbal turtle jelly to soothe my heaty body, so I went to Tracy Dessert (许留山) at First Markham Place for it. (I always thought it was called “Tracy’s Desserts” and not just “Tracy Dessert”. Did they change their name recently?)

They offered the turtle jelly (Guilinggao) in two sizes, small or large. It was only a dollar’s difference so I chose the large one. (A small is $8.15 while a large is $9.15.)

Menu. I tried to take as clear a picture as I could, but the menu was plastered on the table underneath a sheet of glass so it was hard to take it without any reflection

Although this Chinese dessert shop has been at First Markham Place for a while now, it was actually my first time visiting it. I didn’t know that the interior would resemble such a traditional-style Chinese dessert shop like the ones they have in Hong Kong. Even their tables reminded me of it with the old wood style.

Traditional Chinese dessert style interior

They have so many desserts served hot or cold here and even hot dishes like steamed rice in hot pot with spareribs and snacks too. It’ll be nice to try their hot dishes here one day.

The turtle jelly didn’t take long to come out. We had ordered two of the large size hot ones. Its temperature was more like warm instead of steaming hot. I liked it though and it had the bitterness that I was looking for.

Since that visit, I’ve ordered turtle herbal jelly and also their soothing herb teas for take-out.

Storefront

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July 20, 2018: I returned back to try their hot dishes, specifically the rice in hot pot! There weren’t many people dining in on a Friday night. On this visit, I had the turtle herbal jelly again and we ordered the Steamed Pork Ribs with Rice in Hot Pot (which serves two people and takes 20 minutes to be served).

Herb jelly (large). $9.15

Steamed Pork Ribs with Rice in Hot Pot. $13.65

When the Steamed Pork Ribs with Rice in Hot Pot arrived on the table, I was surprised with how big the stone pot portion was. It looked great and had a lot of pork ribs covering the top of it with some preserved veggie strands and slices of carrots too. Unfortunately although the flavour was really nicely blended together, we thought that the rice kernels were not cooked thoroughly enough. They were hard near the centre. We asked them about it and they offered to reheat it for a few more minutes.

When our stone hot pot was brought back out again, the rice had indeed softened up and was cooked through a little more. However, there were still a bit of rice that wasn’t entirely soft.

There were lots of ingredients in here

The steamed pork ribs were plentiful and a little hard to chew through. We finished most of the portion but still had enough to bring home for another meal. It really was a big portion of rice.

Fish stomach soup. $3

They also had a special fish stomach soup being promoted for $3. I was curious about it so we got a bowl of it to try. It was literally chunks of fish stomach in a simple soup. It was very clean-tasting and pretty good.

Before we left, we also ordered another serving of the Herb Jelly to take home to consume later.

They have so many varieties of snacks on their menu that I do want to try on future visits.

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March 2, 2019: On this visit to grab a quick bowl of hot turtle jelly, I noticed that they have updated their menus. They no longer have the menus of all their food and drink items under the glass on the tables but in actual menu booklets now!

Here are the menu pages: