Sam Woo Seafood Restaurant

This morning we had a chance to have dim sum over at Sam Woo Seafood Restaurant inside Bamburgh Mall.  We decided to venture out there on a weekday morning as we hadn’t been there in quite some time.  We were told that the restaurant had early dim sum breakfast before 11:30a.m. where all dim sums were more or less $2.50 each.  After this time, the prices tend to jump an extra dollar or more.

We got there about 10:00 a.m. where the restaurant was about half full.  This restaurant does not have servers who call out the food on push carts but one needs to check off the food that they want on a piece of paper..  We chose about 12 items which were to be shared amongst four people. 

We ordered the usual shrimp dumplings, steamed rice noodle with shrimp and beef,  chicken feet, chestnut sponge cake and BBQ pork buns.  The food arrived slowly despite the lack of people in the restaurant.  Although it is difficult to really comment on everything that arrived, I could make comment on a couple of dishes that I liked and disliked.  

BBQ Buns

Sesame Balls

 The best was probably the sesame balls with sweet sesame paste on the inside.  The hot sesame paste was just perfectly sweet and the overall dish was a nice dessert to have at the end of the meal.  I personally liked this dish even though I am not really a sweets type of person. 

The worse dish ordered was probably the chestnut sponge cake.  It was rather dry and had more of a chocolate taste to it rather than a chestnut taste.  I ordered it for my daughter and she ate it without hesitation however I couldn’t help to say the taste certainly could have been better. For me sponge cakes should be sweet tasting and slightly moist so that it can somehow melt in your mouth or at least give you a juicy taste to it.  This one was rather dry and bland and therefore it did not taste as good as I would like it to have been. 

Chicken Feet

Chestnut Sponge Cake

 

Although these to me were the best and worse dishes ordered, there were also the MIAs.  There were two beef dishes including a beef meatball dish that never arrived.  After 30 minutes of waiting we flagged a waitress down about the missing two meat dishes.  She apologized and went to the back to check it out however another 20 minutes went by and it still hadn’t arrived.  Disappointed, we couldn’t wait much longer so we asked for the bill. 

Overall the food was satisfactory however my own personal pet peeve has always been if you go with the pick and choose on paper format rather than the push cart format, you better be able to bring all the food that was ordered on the order sheet.  Somehow, not one but two dishes were missing.  Humans make mistakes however what gets me is that when you remind the waitresses that two of our dishes were missing and they still don’t arrive, then that to me is unacceptable.  That is poor restaurant service and no matter how good the food may or may not be, it will never be acceptable and in some cases can ruin one’s entire meal.  There was also no wow factor with the shrimp dumplings or with the siu mei’s either.  Slightly disappointed, the highest I can give is a 2.5 out of 5. 

Sam Woo Seafood Restaurant

375 Bamburgh Circle 

 Toronto, ON
416-502-2888