Pine House Cafe located at 5661 Steeles Ave E, Unit 21 in Scarborough

We found ourselves in the east side of Markham and I chose Pine House Cafe (松屋) for us to have our late lunch.  We had been in this Milliken Crossing plaza many times (where Matsuda, Da Fu Seafood Restaurant, Jatujak, SumiLicious, and Nguyen Huong Vietnamese Sandwich are, to name a few) and hadn’t tried this Hong Kong style cafe out before.

Arriving there at 2 p.m. on a Saturday, we waited a couple of minutes before a booth table was cleared for us.  It was really busy in there despite the usual lunchtime hour already being over.  I guess lots of people were enjoying a late lunch plus the fact that this restaurant seems quite popular too.

I haven’t seen a Hong Kong style cafe serve hand shredded chicken before and since it’s one of my favourite dishes, I decided to order it to try.  The husband ordered the Stir-fried Beef Rice Noodles and I ordered the set D from the All Day Combo for the kids.

HK Style dishes, All Day Combos, Snacks, Stir-fry, Hot Plates

Classic specials, Chef Specials, Noodles

Lunch Set Combos come with a soup and coffee/tea

Page 2 of Lunch Set Combos

Both the stir-fried beef noodles and the hand shredded chicken were served on the same type of plates — an oblong ceramic plate with blue designs.  The portion was bigger than I expected!

Shredded Chicken (half) $19.99

I was really impressed with the Shredded Chicken.  It was piled high with smooth pieces of skinless chicken and there was jellyfish embedded into it too!  The flavour was just right; not too salty or too plain.  All of the chicken bones were included too and there was still meat on some of it too.  I finished this dish completely.  I liked that there was some silvers of green onion immersed into it too.

The Stir-Fried Beef Noodles were a bit “loose” in that the ho fun noodles in this dish were very short and scattered.  The pieces of beef were large though and plentiful.  The picture is actually deceiving because there was much more of it than the picture shows.

Stir-Fried Beef Noodles $14.99

Corned Beef Egg Sandwich as part of Set D $11.99

The Corned Beef Egg Sandwich was so much bigger than I expected!  The corned beef was basically an omelette that was at least one inch thick.  It tasted really good — hot and fresh — between the soft pillowy white bread.

There was a lot of sliced ham in the Macaroni with Ham in Soup.  I liked how generous the portion was.

Macaroni with Ham in Soup as part of Set D $11.99

All in all, this was a great first visit to Pine House Cafe and I’m really glad we were able to try it out.  My top pick is their hand shredded chicken — definitely a must-try.