While Joe Chow's has been in New Glasgow for as long as I can remember, it was only in my 40th year…read moreon this earth that I darkened their doorway. What can I say, we were a Ming's and Dragon Bowl family!
The restaurant is just about everything you'd expect an old school, Chinese-Canadian restaurant to be.
Vaguely oriental script on their sign? Check.
Wood paneling? Check.
Heavily boomer clientele? Check.
That's not to slag any of those things (well, maybe the latter...). Restaurants like this, and ones that my own grandparents ran, were trailblazers in bringing new foods and flavours to palettes across Canada, from the biggest city to the smallest towns.
I've had my fair share of takeout out from Joe's, but I wanted to get their food fresh from the kitchen. Chinese may do better as takeout than some other foods (I'm looking at you French fries), but everything is better when it hasn't been steaming itself in a plastic container.
We got a hefty order considering it was just my wife and I, but such is the way of things!
The meal started off with their pan fried dumplings, which seemed more like pan fried wontons, but they worked - crispy edges and something resembling chili crisp for dipping added sweetness and spice.
For a Chinese place, their menu is oddly bereft of pork other than the de rigueur spare ribs and BBQ pork noodles and rice, so we went with the latter for our rice dish. It was a solid iteration of fried rice, with little else than the desired protein in it, but it hit the right notes. Fried rice is like pizza in that it's hard to have a bad version of it, but it's equally rare to have a really memorable one.
Our favourite dish of the evening was definitely the hot and thick noodles (oh, grow up). For the namesake hotness, you can chose the degree of spice and we went with the middle of the road 3 out of 5. The broad noodles had a little hit of wok hei to them, which along with the moderate spice made for a nice flavour profile. Chicken, eggs, bean sprouts and julienned carrot fleshed out the dish, and the chicken was quite tender and distinctly *not* overcooked and dry.
To bring *some* vegetables to the meal, our final dish was the almond guy ding. The mix of baby corn, carrot, onion, water chestnut, broccoli, chicken and almonds may not have tipped the scales on this being a "healthy" meal, but it was a deftly cooked and kept out plates from being completely brown.
Joe Chow's is a relic in all the best ways - a testament to hard-working people that made a life for themselves and shaped the communities they set up in, and who still take pride in putting good food on people's plates.