New Year’s Dim Sum at Ginger and Onion Cuisine

Ginger and Onion Cuisine located at 240 Alton Towers Circle, unit A7 in Scarborough

We were in search of dim sum in the Scarborough McCowan and Steeles area in between visiting relatives for “bi lee” during the lunar year new. The husband found this Chinese restaurant called Ginger and Onion Cuisine (醉月軒) and we decided to give it a try. As Ginger and Onion Cuisine is a smaller Chinese restaurant, we had a good chance of getting a table during this busy holiday time when most Asians prefer to celebrate and dine at dim sum restaurants.

The restaurant was packed but we waited about 5 to 10 minutes in order to get a table for five. That’s not a bad wait at all.

View of the restaurant from the entrance

Dim sum order sheet

Their menu has so many classic dim sum choices including “cotton chicken”, “fried squid tentacles”, giant dumpling in soup, and others as well as newer items like a green tea BBQ pork bun and Portuguese egg tarts as opposed to traditional egg tarts. We ordered the dim sum on their order sheet, submitted it to the servers, and our food gradually arrived to our table. The servers were actually very nice and polite (you can’t always say the same for most Chinese restaurants as they want to be efficient over having professionalism/nice manners).

Second page of order sheet

Ginger and Onion Cuisine dim sum for new year

Special dim sum for new years

I was really impressed with the food and very satisfied with the visit. (They say they have free wifi but when I tried to connect, it did not work.)

Their shrimp dumplings were gigantic! I found them so tasty and one of the best ha gow I have had in recent memory (even better than the ones we had in Hong Kong!) I liked how chewy the dumpling skin was. It was so delicious.

Shrimp dumplings (XL) $7.68

My favourite pork dumpling (siu mai) was very tasty and good too.

Pork dumplings (L) $6.68

I hadn’t had the vegetarian bean curd rolls in a while and these ones didn’t disappoint.

Vegetable and shredded pork wrap with bean curd (M) $5.68

My mom ordered the steamed salmon fish head and it was great too. We happened to get the eyes of the fish too! (Sorry if you don’t like eating fish eyes.)

Steamed ligusticum wallichi with fishhead (M) $5.68

The baked green tea BBQ pork bun pastry was surprisingly good. I usually am not a huge fan of BBQ pork bun pastries, but this one was tasty despite it being cooled off (I ate it near the end of the meal when it wasn’t hot anymore).

Baked green tea BBQ pork bun pastry (L) $6.68

The Portuguese egg tart looked really disappointing to us because the egg had completely shrunken down and it looked like there was no egg to it. However, the pastry part was really crispy and had a good bite to it.

Portuguese egg tart (M) $5.68

Another standout dish was the minced beef rice noodle roll. This was SO smooth and silky. We couldn’t believe how good it was.

Rice roll with minced beef (L) $6.68

The “cheese ma la roll” was pretty good too. There were five rolls — much more than I anticipated. This was a hit with the kids and I liked how soft it was too (I also ate it cold as a dessert despite it being steamed hot to the table).

Cheese mala roll (M) $5.68

The fried dumpling with pork is a classic dim sum item too and they did it so well here! I usually don’t eat these but this one was so perfectly fried and big and really chewy and tasty! Wow. I was so surprised.

Salty dumpling with pork (S) $4.68

Lastly, the fish maw “cotton” chicken had three big pieces of fish maw on top of it (kind of harder in texture than the usual) and the chicken were really smooth and in good portions. My mom found the chicken salty though.

Fish maw cotton chicken (L) $6.68

I really enjoyed this restaurant and their food! I believe I might have found a hidden gem.

I liked the prices too. For all that we ate, we paid $88.47 after tax and tip. A 12% tip was automatically added to the bill. They charge $0.30 for each takeout container, so make sure you bring your own tupperware! (We used to be so good about bringing our own but have forgotten these days because we don’t always have leftovers nowadays.)

As it was Lunar New Year, we were lucky enough to catch the lion dance into the restaurant and partake in the lettuce ritual right before we left. We watched it from the side as we were already in our coats and about to leave. I also saw the “God of Fortune” when we entered the restaurant too!