North Garden

North Garden Restaurant
33 University Crescent
Winnipeg, MB
(204) 275-2591

November, 2010



You know that there are basically two types of Chinese restaurant decors: the dingy, beat-up, stained dining room that holds three tables (where everyone gets take-out or delivery), and the generic Chinese restaurant, complete with big, round tables that dominate a huge dining room; smaller tables hug the walls. The occasional peacock and dragon creep along the walls but otherwise, the dining room looks pretty bare. An ample buffet counter sits in the back corner, luring the masses who can’t be bothered to sift through the 250+ items on the menu. Sometimes you’re treated to a layer of paper or white garbage bag-like plastic on the table. As you enter the little strip-mall on University Crescent (near Pembina Highway), you have no reason to believe that North Garden is anything more than a take-out joint. The unsophisticated sign doesn’t look like it can conceal an establishment with anything more than a take-out counter. Walk into the Garden and you find a surprisingly monstrous and modern dining room, complete with an aquarium full of crabs in the entrance-way. The bright and spacious dining rooms feature the usual, large round tables in one side, while the other has contemporary tables and chairs (not the simple, steel-framed chairs you see at many Chinese locations).

As a guest here on this occasion, I didn’t have the opportunity to view the menus, either the food or the beverage types. Judging by the bar at the front of the restaurants, Garden looks like they offer a nice selection of spirits and liqueurs (the Chinese aren’t know for wine or beer—but they do love their cognac). From what I gather, I take a stab that there may be three different iterations on the food menu—one with the usual Sino-slop (you know, broadcasting the usual chicken balls, sweet and sour pork, etc), one with “authentic” Chinese options, and one written exclusively in Chinese. Knowing Chinese food quite well, I advise ordering off the “authentic” menu, rather than taking a crash-course in Chinese and daring for the mysterious.

The traditional multi-course, Chinese meal starts off with a cold-cuts course. This course generally includes a variety of meats, mostly consisting of pork and sometimes beef. You often find more exotic options, such as jellyfish. Our course comes with the standard barbecued pork, which tastes juicy and lean, with a minimal amount of food colouring (you often see this barbecued pork bright fuchsia. Uncommon items include a concoction similar to a cabbage roll, although bean curd acts as the wrapper, housing assorted vegetables, lightly covered with a sweet sauce. Finally, several roll slices adorn the plate; these slices look quite similar to sushi maki rolls, although the wrapper taste is not as strong and ocean-like as traditional nori (seaweed wrap). Because Winnipeg’s population is quickly embracing sushi, I suspect that the Garden is expanding its ethnic boundaries (which is quite unusual for the Chinese). The intro course has nice offerings, although most of the selections could use a bit more spices and seasonings.

The soup course follows and ours is a seafood soup that’s low in seafood content (I only see the occasional nub of shrimp and shred of crab) and high in other ingredients. The broth needs some salt to jumpstart it as the paucity of seafood leaves the overall liquid blandish tasting. The abundance of rice noodle adds a nice texture but I much prefer the texture stemming from the sprinkle of Japanese roe—this is a wonderful touch. This is an average soup that has the potential to be a great soup (lots of seafood in your seafood soup should be a constant).

Our meal tonight includes an opulently generous representation of main items, so I’ll be brief in descriptions:
• Lemon chicken: tastes very lemony, moist and cooked well. The crunchy skin encapsulates the moist and tender meat, finished with a sweet, lemony sauce.
• Crab (Chinese style): Chinese style crab includes the entire crab, bust into pieces, and smothered in a rich sauce (this comes in a sweet, garlic sauce). The sauce usually acts as a wonderful accompaniment to crab, without having to resort to the ubiquitous butter. Unfortunately, the Chinese don’t do any shelling for you so you’re left with a gooey mess of crab flakes and shell bits before you finish your first leg. Some traditions die hard.
• Fried chicken: When ordering deep-fried crispy chicken, most Chinese restaurants will present you with a desiccated fowl that screams out foul. Deep fried chicken ends up being sun-dried chicken that falls apart in strips, not like pulled-pork, but like beef jerky—yes, it’s THAT dry. Heed my advice, if you eat in a Chinese restaurant outside of San Francisco, Vancouver, New York, Toronto, or any city where the Chinatown has fewer than five beat-up hovels, do not order the deep-fried crispy chicken. The meat from the Garden’s chicken indeed tastes dry, but not dusty, like Chinese fried chicken can often taste. The skin comes perfectly light, crunchy and non-greasy, compensating greatly for the dry meat (after all, isn’t the best part of the chicken, the skin?).
• Fried pork chops: These chilli pork chops ooze with garlic flavour—you can see the flakes of cooked garlic all over the pork, as well as the chilli flakes. This dish packs a punch if you don’t normally eat spicy foods. Garlic overcooked the pork but the tremendous flavour makes this dish a success, nevertheless.
• Pork bellies in pickled sauce: When cooked properly, pork bellies can be one of the finest meals around; cooked poorly, and bellies are fatty, greasy and heavy. Unfortunately, these bellies fit into the latter category. Combine the meat with the kimchi-like sauce and I know I don’t need to try this dish again.
• Eggplant in oyster sauce: I love oyster sauce—and I believe most foods taste better drenched in it. The eggplant is no exception although the combination tastes a little odd (but good).
• Fried tofu in stewing beef: Tofu itself doesn’t have much flavour but its spongy tissue loves to soak up the flavours of surrounding sauces. These perfectly fried cubes, dripping with delicious sauce, provide the perfect conduit for the wonderful stewing sauce; the falling-apart beef makes this dish genius!
• Chinese broccolis with shrimps: This is a classic dish done to perfection, complete with plump and juicy shrimps and crispy vegetables.
• Snow pea shoots with shiitake: One of the most pungent fungi around, shiitake mushrooms overwhelm your taste buds when eaten whole. Snow pea shoots have a powerful veggie taste that I find too green. These two powerful flavours leave your mouth feeling like a battlefield.
• Fried sole: This fried fish has a crunchy, fried skin, which is pretty much the only thing I want to eat. The flesh is thin and hard to access, especially around the cage of fine bones. After you manage to pick out the meat, the fishiness of the flesh dominates your palette. The abundance of scallions offer relief, but I’d rather just eat the scallions alone.

The Chinese aren’t big on desserts but the creamy, custardy meal ender is a nice way to combat the overuse of grease. Most of the food comes deep fried, or pan fried in generous amounts of oil. That’s pretty much the standard of today’s Chinese restaurants. As far as food quality, I find Garden better than most of the Chinatown establishments, although you’ll hear many Chinese (the older generation anyway) tell you that good/real Chinese food can’t be found outside of Chinatown. They’re wrong.

***½ / 5

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