Crown Princess Fine Dining Restaurant

We were happily invited to have lunch with some of our out of town friends to Crown Princess Restaurant for some dim sum.  Now I have always resisted from blogging on dim sum places because sometimes it can be difficult to really blog everything that comes through.  But after today I think a restaurant is a restaurant so here goes. 

We got there just before noon hour and it was three-quarters full.  By noon hour, this place was lined up all the way outside.  I was told that this restaurant is one of the more pricier restaurants for dim sum and that it is a more of an upper class type dim sum restaurant.  This place goes by the mark on the sheet what you want system.  The teapots and plates are of a slightly fancier type. We ordered a variety of dim sum but I will just highlight the main ones.

Snow Peas Shoot In Garlic Sauce

Abalone Tarts

We ordered snow pea shoots to add an extra food group in our meal since everything was mostly seafood or meat.  The snow pea shoot was off the simple type where it was cooked into garlic sauce.  Keeping things simple, the vegetables were quite nice. 

We also ordered the abalone tarts.  This is not a dessert.  Shaped like an abalone, the insides consisted mostly of ground pork and mushrooms.  We are not too sure if there were any abalone on the inside.  We could taste any but that does not mean it was there.  It was slightly on the salty side and a little oily but was edible otherwise. It is a "special dish" on the paper card.

Dumpling, Siu Mei and Tripe

Mango Pudding

We also a variety of dumplings and tripe.  The famous "siu mei" had a small mushroom on the top.  The meat was nicely done.  The taste was interesting in that it wasn't heavy on the meat side.  It was a good siu mei and slightly different from other restaurants.  The tripe had some carrots on top mostly for decoration.  The tripe was very tender and "crunchy".  It was quite fresh and again one thing I noticed was that it was not that heavy on the MSG.  It was quite light yet still tasty..  We also ordered a mango puddingwhich came in the shape of a fish.  With some condensed milk, this dessert was quite good.  There were no mango chunks but definitely a strong mango taste to it.

Vegetarian Roll

Shark Fin Seafood Dumpling in Soup

 

 

 

 

A couple of other interesting dishes that arrived were the sweet potato, taro and mushroom rolls.  Basked in a nice soup sauce, this is a great dish to have for any vegetarian lover.  The flavor of the soup was such that it was not so heavy that it took away the taste of the individual ingredients. 

Finally the last one was the "shark fin" seafood soup.  Recently the city banned shark fin so the fins were substituted with vermicelli like strands.  The big dumpling inside the soup plus the "shark fin" is suppose to make this dish one of the most special dishes in the menu.  When it arrived it came with special bowl and dish.  We split it up into 5 bowls.  Inside the dumpling also contained some ground pork.  It was quite tasty and did not disappoint. 

Overall it was a great experience.  We also ordered meat and shrimp steamed noodle rolls or also known as Cheung Fun.  We also had a seafood congree which contained some scallops and clams which help filled the void of an empty stomach and a pumpkin soup that sure looked and tasted a lot like a butternut squash soup. 

The restaurant is somewhat divided where if one wants a more private area, they could sit on the other side of the room for more privacy.  There was plenty of public parking all around the restaurant.  This place is located in the heart of downtown Toronto and would make a great lunch and dinner place. This place however is a little pricey and if one is concerned with that, then an alternative dim sum restaurant might be in order.  Otherwise the food is pretty good and not heavy on the MSG. For this place, I give this a 4 out of 5.

Crown Princess Fine Dining Restaurant
1033 Bay Street  Toronto, ON

(416) 923-8784