Tak Fu Seafood Restaurant

Tak Fu Seafood Restaurant is a long standing restaurant located in the north part of Scarborough that serves dim sums in the morning and traditional dinner dishes in the evening.  I personally have been to both although on this particular day we were there for their morning dim sum.  The place is not that big with probably about 3 or 4 larger tables and about a dozen medium to small size tables along the side of the front and side of the restaurant.  Being such a small restaurant, all of their dim sum could be selected with pen and paper on the sheet of paper. 

Ha Gow

As most dim sum places, it is hard to really go through every dish that ones order.  The more traditional Chinese Ha Gows and Siu Meis are of course a staple at any dim sum restaurant.  We also ordered some fried turnip cake, some sesame buns, and beef steam rice noodles in addition to other items on the menu.  Most of it arrived within ten minutes.  I have to admit I was a little disappointed with the overall quality of much of their dim sum as much of it lacked flavor, seasoning or even color for that matter.  I know that most dim sums are what they are but the dim sums presented were about as plain as day.  All the dishes looked rather boring.  I don't know if it was the size of the restaurant but if you don't put your effort to make good solid dim sums then maybe it is best not to serve it at all and that focus should be more on their more dominant and core business which would be their dinner menu.

Assorted Dim Sums

 

Steamed Pork with Shrimp

Overall Tak Fu was satisfactory but really lacked any extraordinary features amongst their dim sums.  The place has been there for quite some time and I can honestly say their dinner was better than their breakfast menu.  They didn't have many special unique signature items and much of their dim sums lacked any specialty or ingenuity that would make them stand out from the rest of the pack.  There was no line up and truthfully it was eerily quiet even for a Saturday morning.  Again as mentioned before, the restaurant itself is not that big and it just seemed like the dim sum menu to me was more of a "filler" rather a core part of their business.  However, doing something like this sometimes can kill your better part of the business as well so maybe it would be better not to do it all.  Overall I would give it a 2.5 out of 5.

Tak Fu Seafood Restaurant
633 Silver Star Blvd
Scarborough, Ontario

416-230-7061

Captain's Boil

Captain's Boil opened up about 5 months ago but a few nights ago was the first time I had a chance to venture into the restaurant.  The restaurant is located in the heart of North York on Toronto's most popular and Canada's longest street Yonge Street and located just south of Finch Avenue.  The restaurant specializes in seafood served in some of the most amazing sauces imagined.  From cajun sauce, lemon pepper sauce, garlic sauce to their signature Captain's Boil sauce, each one of those sauces can also be topped off anywhere from mild to super spicy to the liking of the eaters that evening.

We made reservations for the evening however in order to do so, they need a minimum party of eight and that every member must be present to be allowed into their restaurant.  The rules are strict and there are no exemptions.  Failure to do so will mean forfeiture of your table.  Punctuality is a must and there is about a 2 hour eating limit.  Prior to placing our order, the waiter explained to us that lobster was about $36 a pound, the crab was about $23 per pound and the crawfish was about $16 per pound for the evening.  We ordered a little bit of everything and tried every sauce possible to get the full experience of Captain's Boil.

First thing hitting our table was the Mussels mixed with Garlic Sauce.  Before I go any further, one must know that most of their food is served in plastic bags.  They provide gloves and bibs for you to eat and you will need it because it will get super messy.  The seafood was all marinated thoroughly inside these plastic bags according to the sauce that you had ordered.  We went with the garlic sauce with the mussels and believe me when I say they didn't hold back on the ingredients.   There was a ton of garlic inside the bag and the mussels themselves were pretty big as well.  Each mussel was caked with garlic and every mussel was steaming hot.  Everything tasted wonderful and the combination of the garlic and the mussels were absolutely perfect match.

Mussels with Garlic Sauce

The next one to hit the table was the Crawfish with Mild Captain's Boil Sauce.  The sauce was delicious but the crawfish had a slightly bitter taste within it.  I haven't had crawfish for quite some time but I remembered the taste could be a little funky with or without any sauces.  It was either a hit or miss with each one.  Some of the crawfish tasted fine, some were a little bitter.  If I had to do a redo, I might have gone with a cajun spicy sauce to try to repel some of that funky taste or just skip the crawfish altogether.

Crawfish with Captain's Boil Sauce

The Fish Teriyaki with Rice was next and they were one of two dishes that we had ordered that was not served inside a plastic bag.  For the non-spicy loving people, this dish was for you.  The fish was nicely cooked and the rice was moist and tasty.  I actually enjoyed the rice as there were also some green onions and corn inside the rice to give it that extra flavor.  A hidden secret but the rice tasted even better if you mix the rice with some of their Captain's Boil sauce because when you do so, the entire dish actually comes to life even more.  Try it next time if you haven't done so the  next time you are at this restaurant. 

Fish Teriyaki with Rice

The clams were also eaten with their signature Captain's Boil sauce.  It was a good thing that the seafood was mixed inside a bag because without it, the clams would not have been completely marinated.  The clams themselves were tiny so having them inside the bag really made sure that every clam was drenched in its sauce.  We also had the sausage tossed in there with the clams as well.  The sausage themselves tasted a little cheesy which led me to believe that there were stuff with a little bit of cheese inside them as well.  Not sure if that was the case or whether it too had just absorbed large amounts of Captain Boil's sauce but it was the sausages were saturated with taste.

Sausage and Clams with Captain's Boil Sauce

The other non seafood dish we ordered that evening was the Chicken Tender with Fries.  This dish was actually more for the kids as they really can't dig spicy foods.  However, it looked really tasty and it came with about four rather large pieces of chicken tender so a couple of us actually tried the chicken as well.  The breaded part was nice and crispy and the meat inside was well cooked and tender.  The fries were a tiny bit spicy although one could also request it to be made without the cajun sauce if one really wants non-spicy fries to go with their chicken tenders.  

The last two dishes were my favorites for the evening.  We ordered two different types of shrimp.  The first one was the Shrimp mixed with Cajun Sauce while the second bag was Shrimp mixed with Lemon Pepper Sauce.  Both were equally good. The Lemon Pepper was more pure and less gunky while the shrimp that was mixed with cajun sauce was much more savory in its taste.  I enjoyed both of them and the shrimp themselves were medium in size.  You really couldn't go wrong with either ingredient.  

Shrimp in Cajun Sauce

The last dish to arrive and the best dish of the evening in my mind was the Crab mixed with Captain's Boil Sauce.  This dish was fantastic in that by doing it the way they did it, the entire crab was perfectly steam and had sauce covered in every nook and cranny of the crab.  For those who love to eat tomalley, they actually even took the time to remove the membrane and tomalley part under the crab head shell for you, have the that entire part cooked and marinated and have the entire portion served inside the crab head.  I love eating that part of the crab, more so than the arms and legs as it was incredible.  Kudos to the boys and girls in the back for getting that part right. 

Crab mixed with Captain Boil Sauce

Overall, it was a fantastic night with fantastic food eating with fantastic people.  The table next to us ordered a king size crab and I can tell you it was absolutely huge.  For that dish, I didn't see it being served in plastic bags although they would have needed garbage bags to get the entire legs marinated.  Despite being on Yonge street, sneak into the 24 hour Metro store to get two hours of free parking. Everything tasted great and a head's up, the cajun sauce is super spicy so watch out.  All of the seafood tasted great with the exception of the crawfish.  As mentioned it was a hit or miss.  If you were to avoid one seafood, that would have been the one.  We didn't go with the lobster as we thought $36 a pound was a bit much plus we had plenty of other seafood to go around.  We will certainly go again in the near future.  Overall I give it a 4.25 out of 5. 

Captain's Boil
5331 Yonge Street
Toronto, Ontario

647-348-7808

Sansotei Ramen

A brand new plaza opened up very recently in the newly developed downtown Markham area and up popped up a Sansotei Restaurant which specializes in hand made rice noodles with very tasty additions and ingredients in every bowl of noodles one orders.  Their sister restaurant is located in the heart of downtown Toronto and I have had the chance to have been there a few times and have loved every minute of it.  People who know and have been to the downtown location know how busy that restaurant was and how crazy lineups were.  Unfortunately, even though this place just opened recently, this restaurant was humming with people lined up outside the door at five-o-clock on a weekend evening.  After about a twenty minute wait, we were finally crammed into the back somewhere where three of my friends and I finally sat down a table.

With so many great noodles to choose from, many of my friends and I each finally settled on their Tonkotsu Black ($9.45) while others took up the Tomato Seafood ($9.45). I also decided get a side order of Spicy Slow Cooked Chicken Wings ($6.00) to feed our empty stomachs.

The chicken wings themselves appeared to have been marinated with sweet soya sauce and then once the wings were fully cooked, they were sprinkled with chili oil.  The wings themselves were rather of the small variety and each wing was spicy, but not overly spicy.  There were five of them served in a wooden bowl. 

Spicy Slow Cooked Chicken Wings

The Black Tonkotsu arrived and it looked wild.  The black pepper sauce mixed with the green onions and pork belly soup made this dish look radical.  There was also one soft bowl egg, some corn, thick noodles and several pieces of pork belly in the bowl.  Of note, one gets to choose between thin, thick or vermicelli as their choice for noodles.  The entire bowl tasted absolutely amazing.  The pork belly was half lean and half fat and had plenty of taste to it.  The pork belly soup base really brought out the entire pork taste to this dish. Unlike its sister restaurant in the downtown area, the pork and pork belly soup base was not overwhelming and not as salty.  This time around it was just absolutely perfect.  Everything tasted just about right!!

Black Tonkotsu

The Tomato Seafood combination also tasted pretty good from all accounts.  Although not as wild looking as the Black Tonkotsu, the Tomato Seafood I was told was equally tasty.  I mainly tried the soup base and found it to be very strong and condense with the sense tomato truly captured within the base itself.  It was certainly not watered down and one could also sense a bit of seafood in it.  There was also a small piece of scallop and I believe there was also some corn in the bottom of the bowl. 

Overall, it was a wonderful experience and for sure I would go back for round 2 and round 3.  The noodles were fantastic, service was fast, and as I looked up, the lineup never seemed to have wanted to end.  If you really love ramen, then this is definitely one of the better stops in Markham.  Overall, I give it a 4.5 out of 5.

Sansotei Ramen
3987 Highway 7
Markham, Ontario

905-604-7118