Lion City 獅城

“A quitter never wins – and a winner never quits.” That’s what one of my friends, AH, typed on his MSN. The workload has been quite crazy lately. When I was up til 3 am, QA-ing, trying to search for bugs, that’s also what I told myself. Today, I was on MSN, and saw another good one, “Life consists not in holding good cards but in playing those you hold well”. That’s so true. I guess a winner who plays well should also know when to quit.

Life has been hectic. I gotta say sorry for those yet-to-be-delivered promises (i.e. coming out for a drink/dinner). There have been nights that I dined out and I have taken some pictures, but they’re still in the queue now (just like the piles of work on my desk these days).

There have been so many times that I thought of giving up blogging, but my persistency even surprised myself. When did I first start? I think it was around late-2004 – one and a half years already eh… I guess it has become a habit already. People said if you can keep doing something for 3 months, you should be able to form a habit.

Back to the main topic now… “Lion City 獅城”

I have mentioned about this restaurant in one of my previous commments. My colleague, who is a malaysian/singaporean, highly recommended Lion City’s Hainanese Chicken Rice (海南雞飯). He said this is the most authentic Hainanese Chicken Rice that he has ever tried in Toronto & Mississauga. Therefore, one Friday afternoon in the group email stream, I suggested this restaurant to my HS buddies… and there we go! Don’t you find there are many times you want to plan something or people keep talking about things they want to do, but actions are never never taken? On the other hands, there are times when you just thought of something and *boom* you’re there doing what you just had in mind a minute/an hour ago.

That Friday night was a very good example of the second scenerio. Life’s short. If you want it, just go for it!

We took 2 cars to Mississauga that evening. This restaurant wasn’t hard to find at all. Before I went, I gave them a call to confirm that they’re open and kinda made a reservation (although that was not totally necessary).

The first time I stepped into this restaurant… Hum… the tables are very similar to Restoran Malaysia (near Major Mac/Bayview – btw, I dropped by this restaurant before July 1, it is under renovation at that time – yeah… excited to see how the new look would be like~) By the time we arrived, Lion City was about 2/3 full. But there were only 2 persons (1 older guy and 1 mid-age woman) taking orders & serving.

Looking at the menu… there were really a huge selection, Malaysian, Singaporean, Vietnamese, Thai… Oh gosh… Luckily, I was there with a “mission” – to try out their Hainanese Chicken Rice. Here it is…

 

 

 

      

We ordered 4 dishes of Chicken Rice… there goes 1 whole chicken. We could tell they just chopped up the whole chicken and divided it into 4 portions for us. The chicken was tender and quite tasty! The rice was fragrant – however, I would expect it to be even more fragrant (from my teenage memories – I remember having very good chicken rice in HK, but it could be just memories…) I think if they had to make it more fragrant, they would have to put a bit of lard in it… which is not very healthy. As you can see, they gave us 3 different sauce. I would say the dark soy sauce (with sesame oil) is my favourite among all three. If you’re a “sauce person”, I’m sure you would love this!

This is the Blachan Kangkong (馬拉盞通菜) that we ordered. Gotta have some veggie… but just like any other veggie dish in an asian restaurant, it’s quite greasy. We also ordered the Braised Duck Rice (潮州滷鴨飯), which is actually very good! (Maybe I just had an extremely high expectation for the Chicken rice.) I guess something that’s very “authentic” may not necessarily mean that it’s very good. I think anyone who tried the real Yangzhou fried rice (揚州炒飯) would agree with me. Nevertheless, I think this place is still worth a try if you happen to be in Mississauga. Their dishes are quite good on average.

 

 

 

       

We also ordered the Beef Curry. I had a little bit of that and liked it! Wasn’t too sure about the roti coz I didn’t try that.

 

 

 

       

Overall the experience was ok. Why? The food was good, but the service was… I would give it a 2 out of 5. Two persons were just not enough for the night – either they are not efficient or they really need to hire another person. The wait was extremely long. I wanted to order their milk tea coz my bf said it was good, but it took a very very long time for them to even process the order… then I asked them to change that to “take-out”. We waited for another 10-15 minutes… finally I had to ask them to cancel that order and get the bill. That took another 10 minutes. My GOD!

The price was reasonable – you can also take a look at their online menu.

FYI :Lion City Restaurant
1177 Central Parkway West, Unit 70
Mississauga, Ontario
Tel: 905-281-0860
Open 7 Days – Mon: 11:30am To 9pm, Tues, Thurs & Sun: 11:30am To 10pm, Fri & Sat: 11:30am To 11pm