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.
Return Visit
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.
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.