中華牛羊館 - Chinese Beef Lamb House

The Chinese Beef Lamb House is a well known restaurant within the Chinese Muslim community in Toronto, it offers a variety of tasty halal dishes and is the perfect place for lamb lovers everywhere.

The restaurant itself is located in a pretty discrete plaza, but once you get there you will see a big banner announcing the restaurant. Inside you will find its walls painted with green grasslands and blue skies. It doesn't look amazing, but it feels really spacious and comfortable.

The Fried Lamb (清真紅燒羊肉) was delicious, the meat was very tender and not too fat and it had that special wild meat taste that makes it the best tasting meat in my opinion. $12.99






The Fried Lamb Stomach with Green Onions (蔥爆羊肚) tasted the same as if the stomach was from a cow, but slowly you will start to realize it has the same great taste of lamb. $8.99














The Xin Jiang Style Lamb Pancake (清真羊肉夾餅) was pretty disappointing, there were very few pieces of lamb and all of them were really small. $3.99




The standard BBQ Lamb Skewer (炭燒羊肉串), very tasty and not too dry either. The spices do not completely mask the great unique flavor of the lamb like in the other restaurants that I have tried these at. $1.99/ea




The Home Special Dumplings with Hot Soup (清真酸湯水餃) did not taste any special either, don't get me wrong though, it did not taste bad, but I would recommend ordering something else. $6.99





Finally I ordered the House Special Fried Rice (中華特色炒饭), I did not expect it to be any different from regular fried rice but one of the people eating had a big craving for rice so we ordered this anyways. $6.99

I am definitely going back to try a few more items on the menu next time I get the chance, you can order a whole deep fried or just BBQ lamb leg ($58.99) and one of the items in their menu is called BBQ Whole Lamb for $12.99/person, sounds really appetizing!

The total came to a $64 after tips for 4 people, we were not very full but it was just enough.

+ Great tasting lamb
+ Good portions for the price
+ Quick service
+ Halal


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3591 Sheppard Ave E

Jerusalem Restaurant

As the first middle-eastern restaurant in the city of Toronto, the Jerusalem Restaurant has a lot to live up to. Upon entering the restaurant, I had to wait for a good minute or two before anyone noticed us and take us to our tables. After getting settled down and picking out what we wanted from the menu, we had to wait even longer after getting the attention of the waiter to get our order. But enough nitpicking, while not spectacular, the atmosphere of the restaurant was very fitting for the type of food being served.

There was a lunch menu which I believe to range from around $3.99 from some light snacks to $10.99 for 2 lamb chops that came with rice/pita and or salad, once again I forgot to take note of it so I am possibly wrong on what the lunch menu comes with. I did not order from the lunch menu, but opted to go for the dinner combination for 2 for $36.

First came the baba ghanoush, hummus, mixed pickles and pita bread. Personally I love hummus a lot, I would often get a small tub of hummus and finish it with pita all in one or two sitting, but sadly I think I enjoyed the hummus from the small middle-eastern grocery store more than the one I have tasted today.




Next up was the falafel, never having it before, I was pleasantly surprised by its great taste. It was served some kind of white sauce, not sure what it was, but it might be tahini or maybe just sour cream or something.






This has got to be my favorite dish from the meal, fried eggplant. I have had eggplant made in many different ways but this one has got to be the best.







The tabbouleh salad was a great dish too, but it tasted a little bit too minty for my taste.




The main course, shish kabab and rice. We had the choice between beef, lamb, chicken, liver and kafta but of course I chose all lamb, my favorite meat. I was pretty disappointed that there was nothing really special about the shish kabab, I think I prefer the taste of skewered grilled lamb from Chinese cuisine a lot more. Other than that the rice had a really wonderful smell and tasted great too!

I know I complained a bit about the service in the beginning but after that, the waitress serving our table was really friendly and attentive to our needs. Although I don't think my emptied glass of water was ever filled, this should really be just standard service.

We paid $45 after tips for 2 people, overall it was a pretty good experience, I would recommend anyone that haven't had middle-eastern cuisine to definitely give it a try but other than that, I probably will not make another visit because nothing really stood out to make the long trip worth it. I also wanted to try some special drinks but sadly their menu didn't show anything that I haven't had before.

+ Totally surprised by how good the eggplant was
+ Portions were just right
- Below average service


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- It won't let me link to the restaurant directly for the map, this will have to do for now.

Tiffin Restaurant

Tiffin has a very homely atmosphere, the decor is very simple but sufficient. I did not have a good camera with me this time so the pictures didn't turn out that well, wasn't sitting at a place with a lot of possible angles to cover the whole restaurant either.

Unlike the last time I ate at a restaurant place, this one did not have a lunch buffet. The menu did not have too many variety, and prices are around $3.99-$5.99 for appetizers and $6.99-$8.99+ for main dishes. There was also a lunch menu ranging from $3.99 - $5.99 which I heard had very small portions.
This 3 piece vegetable samosa (comes in beef/chicken/veg $3.99) tasted really good. I would definitely recommend this, I wanted to get some more after I finished the meal.

+ Unexpectedly good, really spicy





Sorry for the dark pictures, but seen here is the mutton curry and mutton korma with naan. Each dish came with 2 pieces of naan at $7.99. Let me just say that this is some of the best lamb that I have ever had, the regular curry and korma tasted very rich and its aroma was heavenly. The portions are really small though, at $7.99 I would have expected to get at least a bit more.


We ordered half a tandoori chicken($10.99) after the curry and naan because we weren't even close to being full. We weren't big fans of this dish, I didn't really find anything spectacular but one thing worth noting was that the chicken was still very moist, a good thing.



To the left is something called the Faluda drink($4.99) and to the right is the Mango lassi($3.99). The mango lassi paled in comparison to the faluda drink had a flowery aroma and tasted pretty amazing and distinct.

There is also a section when you enter the restaurant with all sorts of different Indian sweets, I did not try them out but they looked pretty good! The service was really excellent too, the waitress was very young and inexperienced but very eager to please!

Spent $25/person for lunch (I left $50 including tips) I expected to be a lot fuller or maybe the food could be less expensive.

+ Great food
- Portions are way too small
- Kind of expensive due to small portions

*I checked what Tiffin meant and it looks like the portions were small on purpose?



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Siddhartha

We were at Gerrard Indian Bazaar one Sunday afternoon for some school assignment and decided to try one of the Indian buffets that are abundant in the area. I have always heard of bad things about Indian buffets so I haven't tried it until now. Siddhartha looks significantly more attractive compared to its neighbors both inside and out.

+ Great decor
+ Good atmosphere




There were several types of curry, naan, and other usual items such as butter chicken and the tandoori chicken. This was my first time eating butter chicken, personally I think it doesn't really taste that much different from some of the ways Chinese restaurants prepare their chicken. I think the best dish I had was the curry lamb, the curry I didn't like that much but the lamb itself was pretty awesome.

The small salad bar had the usual items including some fresh fruits. As for desserts, there was the gulab jamun(a cold sweet dumpling) and rice pudding, I had no idea what the yellow cubes were, but they tasted pretty good. Ice cream flavors were chocolate, vanilla, mango and banana.

Lunch buffet was $10.95/person, not sure if it was more expensive on the weekends. We had several drinks, a masala tea, with a total coming to $35 after tips (2 people). Just a word of caution though, do not expect a big buffet like you would find at a place like Mandarin, I think I only saw around 14 - 16 choices. You would probably need to order from their menu to compliment the buffet to fully enjoy the experience.

+ Great atmosphere
+ Very helpful and nice staff
+ Most of the food was pretty good




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Xin Jiang BBQ/新疆烧烤店

Xin Jiang BBQ is one of the worse northern Chinese restaurants I've ever been to. I usually do not care if the atmosphere of the restaurant is good or not if the food is awesome but since this place has neither, it really takes away from the whole experience.

- Decor seen in common Chinese restaurants
- Gives a feeling that things are unclean

One of the most important items in a Northern Chinese restaurants are its BBQ meat skewers. I usually love these but none of the people that ate could finish them. We only ordered 2 per person and most of us could not even finish the first one.

- Spices are too strong
- Tastes really bad











This is apparently a very common dish, "Pork bones in sauce". I did find this to taste pretty good compared to the BBQ meat skewers.

+ Good in contrast to the meat skewers
- Pretty standard and forgettable









I usually order noodles in meat sauce(炸醬肉麵) in most Chinese restaurants I go to. It has been one of my favorite dishes from my childhood. This one was actually not that bad, better than some other places.

- Too salty
+ Pretty big portion







Couple's lung slices(伕妻費片)

This tasted really weird at the beginning but since everything else was pretty bad, I kept at it and it slowly grew on me. I ended up finishing almost the whole thing, no one else wanted to touch it.

+- Tastes kind of sour (kind of weird but not bad)

We ended up paying for around $60 after tips for 3 people. It was not worth it for such bland items and especially since the food was so bad I felt that we were cheated. On the other hand, the service was pretty good, things came quite quickly and the staff was friendly.

- Food is bad
- Prices are quite high for such a standard menu
+ Service is alright


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