Xin Jiang BBQ 新疆燒烤店

Thank to KL, 6 of us came to this Xin Jiang BBQ place near (NW corner of) Pharmacy and McNicoll. For more info about this exotic place, XinJiang, click here. One Friday (again… Friday evening), while on my way to a mall, I got a call from KL. He was like… you wanna go for Xin Jiang BBQ tonite? My answer was SURE. Well, after I hanged up with him, I wondered how this kind of BBQ would look like or taste like. HOT and SPICY for sure, but how HOT and SPICY would it be? Would be be so much that I could not eat? oh no…

Okee… So, around 7:45pm, we arrived this restaurant. I believe originally there used to be a Japanese restaurant at this strip mall, but it has been closed down now. I guess all of you, (those who live in Toronto), would agree that the no. of Northern Chinese restaurants keeps increasing. You can see Szechuan, hot/spicy restaurants everywhere. Well… of course, they’re in great demand these days.

Take a look at the entrance… I kinda felt like I was in mainland China for some reason.

Before diving into the BBQ, of course we ordered something that could fill up our stomaches. Here’s a cold minced pork noodle, before and after stirring & mixing. Tasted ok – a bit home-made though 🙂

We also ordered an appetizer – Chinese style salad – shredded veggie w/ jelly fish + vinegar – the first two bites were good, but as I ate more and more, I found it too sour. The taste of vinegar was just a bit too strong. However… I found, it is actually a very good complements for the HOT BBQ skewers. Once your tongue is burnt, the salad actually tasted much better, so was the noodle. (LOL) The fried rice was also not bad.

We ordered different types of BBQ meats – beef, lamb, chicken, beef tendon, and mushrooms. The beef was a bit dry. I would give my votes to the lamb and chicken as these two were the most juicy. The mushrooms were extremely salty, but I’m sure, it also depends on personal taste. You may like it if you like salty taste.

After about half an hour, we saw the place started to fill with customers, and eventually… with SMOKE!!! Coz they were BBQing lots of food (by the way, all the food were BBQ-ed by the restaurant). Another thing is… the restaurant kept playing the same English album, with some classic ones, such as the Somewhere over the rainbow, etc. which was nice but I think they should consider changing it once in a while.

Service was ok. Nothing much to complain.

Price… it was about $15/person.

I will post the restaurant info here later.

Oh yea, I originally thought I could just drink tea, but due to the spicyness, I had to order a coke. The food there was ok – maybe it’s just because I’m not a Northern Chinese person – not really used to the spice they use and the taste in general. It was overall a good try though.