Kum Koon Garden

Kum Koon Garden
257 King St
204-943-4655
http://www.kumkoongarden.com/index.html

July, 2011



As Winnipeg’s largest restaurant, Kum Koon seats well over 600 people, which is amazing considering the kind of line-up you sometimes have to endure. During weekday dinner seatings, the restaurant will often look cavernous and you may expect bats to fly out of the dark. However, during weekend lunch hours (and often during the week as well), the lobby bursts with hungry, expectant patrons, while the dining room bustles with Hong Kong-like activity.

Servers dash through the aisles and arms wave frantically, hoping to wave down the traffic of food-filled carts. Most of the treats are almost always fresh as people gobble them up as quickly as they emerge from the kitchen. As a child, I remember wanting a seat close to the kitchen (really!); if you sat in the middle of the dining room, the carts could well be empty every time they reach you. Today, they pump out more service and more food so you rarely find yourself short on dumplings; however, sitting close to the kitchen still gets you the freshest and hottest choices.

This is the essence of dim sum: waiting for carts full of food to pass by and hailing whatever you consider tempting. More people become dim sum fans every day and you can’t get enough of the same foods at every visit. Staples include shrimp dumplings, pork dumplings, rice noodles, various deep fried items, sticky rice dishes and assorted buns. While some complain that you get bored of the same options after a while, a new wave of dim sum restaurants experiments with nouveau and fusion dim sum.

Koon leads the way in creating new and innovative dishes to add to its traditional dim sum favourites. The candied beef strips combine the savouriness of meat with the lovely sweet coating. The strips are a little tough so prepare to chew.

Koon’s dim sum sushi is one of the most outrageous examples of fusion that I’ve ever seen. Rolled with traditional nori (seaweed), this Chinese maki comes with pork rolled over pollock, steamed afterwards. The pork provides a traditional dim sum flavour while the seaweed explodes with ocean-taste after steaming. I admit to having a hard time with this dish. While the roll tastes good enough, I can’t wrestle with the merging of these two flavours—each of which I love separately. It’s definitely worth a try to give your own assessment.

For the dim sum traditionalist, all of the usual suspects cruise on the carts. At least four different kinds of shrimp dumplings swim in this dim sum ocean. The traditional dumplings have the mashed shrimp meat, while the new method, whole shrimp dumplings also appear. You can also order a shrimp and scallop combo, or a shrimp and vegetable combo. All of them taste wonderfully hot and steamy.

The monstrous pork dumplings are probably the biggest in the city. Old-style pork dumplings had huge fat content but this lean version doesn’t give up any of the flavour. The beef dumplings (normally larger than the pork dumplings) are smaller than average, but equally flavourful. If you don’t like the taste, you might find the Worchestershire a little strong but not overwhelming.

Fat content blubbers all over yesterday’s dim sum but most of Koon’s dishes come low on fat. Even the beef rice noodles, often swimming in pools of oil, sit atop a pond of oil-free, deliciously sweet soy. The rice noodle portion is also a bit small but it has a great meat to noodle ratio (lots of meat). The spring rolls also have a nice ratio of meat to veggie stuffing. Perfectly fried, these rolls have very little grease on the surface.

If you’re not a fan of dim sum, both the chow fan and the chow mein noodles are well cooked with lots of accompaniments. Again, both of these dishes often come with gobs of grease glistening on the surface but Koon really holds back on the fat without sacrificing the flavour.

For decades, Winnipeg’s Chinese population believed that you can’t get good Chinese outside of Chinatown—and with few exceptions, this was true. Then a large immigration injection into the suburbs demanded that the neighbourhood joints improve their food. For a while, downtown had its tables turned and it trailed the burbs in quality, quantity and innovation. Bravo to Kum Koon for taking their food to a higher level and re-establishing itself as one of the best Chinese places to eat. It’s no secret though—just ask any of the hundred people waiting in line.

****½ /5

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