Explore Toronto’s melting pot of flavours

I grew up in a sleepy town near Toronto in the 1990s, so my exposure to Chinese food outside our home fell into two categories: Cantonese or westernised Chinese cuisine. To find the former, our family made weekly jaunts into Markham, a suburb with a large Chinese community, where we’d stock up on groceries at an Asian supermarket and have a dim sum lunch at a Chinese restaurant. My mum always joked that we jook sing, a Cantonese term for Chinese who were born and raised in the West, loved eating har gau and siu mai dumplings even more than she did. 

At the time, I didn’t even realise there were other types of regional Chinese cuisines. But that would soon change as more people from other parts of China began immigrating to Toronto in the 2000s, bringing their unique dishes with them. While Cantonese dining stalwarts still prevail in Toronto’s Chinatown (one longstanding eatery, New Ho King, even got a shout-out in the Kendrick Lamar song Euphoria and appeared in Drake’s Family Matters music video), the city now has an eclectic collection of eateries showcasing other regional authentic Chinese food, from numbingly spicy Sichuanese delights to hearty Uyghur cuisine to hand-pulled noodles from the north. 

Newer restaurants like Sunnys and Mimi have won hearts with menus that transcend regional borders, with Hong Kong tea eggs, Sichuanese twice-cooked pork and Hunan-style seabass all served side by side, earning themselves spots on best-of lists and full houses on weekends. 

I’m equally excited to see chefs putting their innovative spins on the classics, honouring their heritage while experimenting with new flavours and techniques. At a dinner at the downtown institution Hong Shing, I enjoyed chefs Eva Chin, Wallace Wong and Colin Li’s modern take on things like har gau with chenpi citrus foam, and black bean gremolata-topped fried green beans. 

I’ve yet to take my mum to one of these modern Chinese spots. But when I do, I’m sure she’d be delighted to see how we jook sing are doing Chinese food a little differently these days.