Yenching 燕京

Have been quite busy at work lately. Due to the job nature, somtimes I just don’t know what time I can get off work. That’s also one of the reasons why I didn’t have any plan for the V-day, nor my bf had made any plan for the night. Luckily, I didn’t have to stay that late on the V-day. The general idea was to first go shop with him so that he can get my V+B-day gift, then have dinner in that area. However, as expected, at around 8 p.m., every restaurant was full. The expected waiting time for a walk-in @ Rainforest was about 1 hour 15 minutes. Since we were at Yorkdale Mall at that time, we just asked and see if we could eat there, but I was not gonna wait that long!!! So, I thought of going to a Chinese restaurant instead. That’s actually an idea that I got from chowhound too. Although Bayview Village is closeby, we have never tried the Yenching Restaurant there. After reading about this restaurant, I decided to give it a try.

Although I have made up my mind, I kinda hesitated because there weren’t a lot of patrons in this restaurant compared to the other ones in BV, e.g. Il Fornello, Oliver & Bonacini Café & Grill, Kabuki, etc. (Usually I do see a quite a lot of customers there) Maybe Chinese food just doesn’t really go with the V-day. 😛 1-2 seconds later, I was walking into this restaurant.

The restauarant was not a really big one. It was divided into two sections. We were sitting in the front section, with a long and comfy bench-sofa. I really didn’t expect the bench-sofa could be that comfortable. With the bright lights and the overall gold-red theme, it gives you a feeling of being in a grand chinese banquet hall.

When you look at their menu, the items with * are the house-special/recommended dishes. Red indicates spicy dishes. Ok, time to talk about the food… Here’re the dishes that we ordered.

Cold Appetizers – Sea Jelly （海蜇）. I love it. I always love sea jelly. My bf also said the taste of this dish was very authentic.

Spring rolls – 2 per order. I find this so-so, I prefer the ones from Salad King instead. But it’s good to have the plum sauce with it.

Then we also had the recommended spicy dish – Yu Hsiang Pork （魚香肉絲）, which wasn’t really spicy. It was a bit greasy, but Chinese dishes are generally like that. What I like was the combination of shredded bamboo shoots, Auricularia auricula-judae （木耳 – direct translation would be wood ear）, and water chestnuts pieces. The texture of this combination was really good. I like this dish.

Another dish we ordered was the Mandarin Honey Porkchop, which was not bad either.

Besides the ones mentioned above, we also ordered a dish of Stir-Fried Shanghai Cabbage. That was a huge dish for 2 persons, but the taste was good and you could tell it was being cooked in an extremely hot wok, which is very important for a Chinese dish.

Since there were only two of us, we couldn’t finish all the dishes (although the dishes weren’t huge – so you may have to order some more dishes if you’re going there w/ a bunch of big guys who can eat a lot), so the waiter offered wrap-to-go. With 3 bowls of rice, 2 appetizers, 3 main dishes, 2 cokes, the total was around $40 after tax, before gratuity. (Thinking back,… now I wonder why the final total was only around $40. Main dishes cost about $10/dish; Spring rolls $3.50; Sea jelly $6.50 + rice + pop – should be more expensive than that!) The overall experience was pleasant. Waiters were very attentive (one reason may be… there were not a lot of customers at that time).

Next time if I happen to be there again, I would like to try other recommended dishes such as Szechuan Cripy Beef （四川脆皮牛柳）and the Moo Shi Style （木樨） dishes.

FYI: Yenching 燕京
Bayview Village
Tel: 416-226-1222; 416-226-1226
Hours: M-S 11:30a.m. – 10p.m.; Sunday 11:00a.m. – 10p.m.