One of the things about being a priest is that you find yourself visiting hospitals on a semi-regular basis. Recently I found myself up at Victoria Hospital on Pembina Highway. The visits were mid afternoon, and they had me finishing just before suppertime. Fortunately, just down Pembina at Markham there is a place called Golden Loong. They feature cuisine from Xi’an a city in Northwest China.
Golden Loong: Spicy as Advertised
Situated in a strip mall, Golden Loong occupies the place that once housed Romani’s Pizza. The interior is divided into two areas. One contains a series of booths. the other is a larger dining area with larger tables as well.
One of the first things I noticed about the menu at Golden Loong was that it doesn’t really contain any appetizers. There are no egg rolls, dumplings, or consomme soup on the list. Facing this I decided to order two main dishes. This was a bit of a mistake. Only a bit, as I took the leftovers home.
The first dish I ordered was a pork noodle dish. The biggest surprise was the portion size. It was huge. The second dish I ordered was glass noodles with spicy peppers. This dish really delivered on the heat. Primarily mouth heat, but it did get into the rest of body as well. As I worked my way through both dishes, I ended up concentrating on the Pork Noodle dish. The Glass noodles I packed up. They sat in the fridge at home for a couple of days. Then I tossed them in a frying pan with a little bacon fat in it. I added a few cups of water and I had a soup with some nice bite and really good flavour to it.
The pork noodles came with plenty of flavour and a huge portion
Like the Pork Noodles, the Glass Noodles portion was huge, and had the added advantage of really delivering the heat.
On my second visit I opted to go for just one menu item and then see if I had room for something else. This time I went for a Seawood Noodle soup. Again, the portion was huge. This was a larger bowl than I’ve received at many of the Vietnamese restaurants I’ve tried. I really enjoyed this soup. It had a light broth similar to many wonton soups. The seaweed noodles were chewy without being undercooked. It also had lots of onion and mushrooms throughout.
The Golden Loong soup, loaded with seaweed noodles, onions, and mushroom
I wanted to try one more item. So, I went for their shredded pork on a bun. This was probably my least favourite dish. While there was plenty of pork and it was quite tender, there wasn’t a lot of flavour.
The service very good. Many of the servers seem to have come quite recently from China to Canada, so at times the communication can be a little difficult. Still, the service is attentive and I had no trouble getting the attention of one of the servers when I needed one. They all worked well together as a team.
