Flashback: Kung Hay Fat Choy!

Our newly created family tradition of going to Chinatown in London to eat at Mr Kong's for Chinese New Year could obviously no longer be honoured.  We were in need of a new, Toronto based, version.  And despite there being a very large Chinese community around Spadina, with a very vibrant Chinatown (complete with street and shop signs in Chinese), we were very disappointed to learn that there is no real centralised celebration of the New Year here in Toronto.  Specifically, we were not going to be able to watch the dragon dance (our favourite part....well, almost, food always comes first!)

House of Gourmet - our new tradition?

crispy duck....mmmm...

So, I got on to Google and Yelp and Chowhound and all the other online review sites I could find, and managed to finally decide on a place right off Spadina.  And we loved it.  It was loud, it was packed, there were items on the extensive menus that scared the wits out of us and the service was as fast and furious as can be expected in any Chinese restaurant (though surprisingly, it was also quite friendly).  We feasted on Peking duck done two ways, spicy aubergine (I will not call it eggplant) with shrimp, steak in 'chef's special sauce', the best special fried rice I've had in a long time and chow mein.  And the bill did not relieve us of as much of our hard earned cash as you might have thought.  On the way home I bought what I thought were sparklers, thinking that they could somehow compensate for the lack of entertainment.  The stall holder nodded enthusiastically and repeated 'sparklers' back at me when I asked, so you can imagine my shame our disappointment when I lit them back at home and got a nose-full of incense.  Yes, they were joss sticks.  I haven't liked joss sticks since I went through my phase of wearing tie-dye and purple hair.  When I was 14.  Nick actually really likes them and proceeded to burn a few around the apartment. He claims that Joss sticks are another thing I've stripped him of since we've been together (mwaa ha ha haaaa!) They now live in the back of my junk drawer in the kitchen.  And as before, Nick has forgotten all about them.