North Garden - Dim Sum A Cut Above

Despite my travels and adventures into all types of cuisine, there are some days when I simply crave the food I grew up with. And even though my family, being from mainland China, did not have Dim Sum on a routine basis, there are enough flavours and cooking styles here to represent the food I was accustomed to. Thus when a fellow resident on a night of call listed off a dim sum restaurant that I was not aware of, it immediately piqued my interest, rumbled my stomach, and catapulted itself to the top of my restaurant wishlist. And so I was off to North Garden Restaurant the next morning.

Located in Fort Garry, North Garden is a warm and welcoming Chinese restaurant in a small strip mall just off of Pembina Highway on University Crescent. My first marker of the quality of a dim sum restaurant is the clientele ... and so you can imagine the huge smile I had when I heard Mandarin and Cantonese echoing through the walls of the place, excellent! The modern wooden tables and plush decor show a sense of elegance and style that was further exemplified by the eager and attentive waitstaff.

North Garden features two menus on this particular Sunday morning: a dim sum menu offering the classic steamed dumplings, rice rolls, rice and congee dishes; and a lunch menu for larger offerings and family style meals. Being there specifically for dim sum, I focused on that particular menu. North Garden utilizes the paper ordering system as opposed to the traditional method of having push carts hauled around with the various items. I prefer this method as it allows me to get the food as fresh as possible and exactly what I order, rather than having to wait around for the same dishes to roll around on the same carts. Prices seem a bit higher than most, but not extraordinarily so.

The small Pork & Preserved Duck Egg Congee was a healthy bowl of congee filled with pieces of fatty pork and preserved duck egg. The version here was nice with a smooth and silky congee with large bountiful pieces of preserved duck egg. I was less enthused by the dripping pieces of pork fat, seemingly the throwaway portions, that added very little to the dish. Make sure to top off the congee with a dash of Chinese white pepper!

These Steamed Shrimp Dumplings with Bamboo Shoots were a nice offering with plump large pieces of cut up shrimp. The addition of bamboo gave the dish a textural crunch, a nice contrast to the smooth shrimp. The thin dumpling skin was thick enough to hold all the ingredients in without sticking or tearing but thin enough to avoid overpowering the dish. Tasty!

These Shui Mai Dumplings are some of the best I have ever had. North Garden deliberately puts these at the top of their menu and for good reason too, as the four pieces of incredibly juicy dumplings are filled to the brim with pork, Chinese mushroom and topped with fresh shrimp and fish roe. There is an element of sweetness from the tender and plump pork mixture that is unheralded and elevates the entire dish. Texturally you have the crunch of the fish roe contrasting the fatty, juicy and smooth pork.

Pan Fried Radish with Chinese Sausage Cake was unfortunately average. The radish cake was a nice tender softness but underfried such that the exterior only had the slightest of crispiness. Robbed of this textural contrast, the dish tries to do its best to enhance its flavours by adding in Chinese sausage, but overall it cannot recover from its stumble. The accompanied hoison dipping sauce adds sweet and salty flavour to the dish.

Steamed Rice Roll with Chinese Bread Stick is a classic dish that marries crispy fried Chinese dough with the silky texture of the rice roll. I loved the dichotomy of the textures here and found the addition of the dipping sauces, Peanut and Hoison, nice accompanying flavours to the fried dough.

These Steam Beef Balls were only average. Large balls of ground beef are mixed together with cilantro and green onions and steamed to tenderness. While I enjoyed the tenderness of the beef, there were large (and I mean large) globs of pure fat that were simply unpalatable. Furthermore, there was a lack of contrasting texture in the beef ball such that it was simply a monotonous mixture of fat.

Finishing off with a bang, the Steam Squids in Curry Sauce were excellent. A personal favourite, North Garden does the dish justice by pairing tender but still chewy squid with a delectable sweet, salty and slight spicy curry sauce. Each bite is a wonderful mixture of the underlying squid with the multitones of the Chinese curry paste and a slight bit of freshness from the green onions. Tasty!

North Garden ranks highly on my list of Winnipeg's dim sum options. Despite the somewhat inconsistent quality, North Garden offers enough dim sum to satisfy even the pickiest of customers. Standouts include the steamed curry squids and the shui mai, some of the best dishes I have ever had anywhere. Definitely a recommendation for anyone looking for dim sum, especially if you are in the south side of the city.