Chinese food has long been a takeout staple for Canadians, and while places come and go, there's…read morestill a lot of long-time fixtures that have been keeping busy families fed, including Cole Harbour's HK Wong's.
Despite having a decent amount of seating in their restaurant, Wong's has been takeout-only since the pandemic, with a sign on the window warning as much, although the continued format is now due to staffing issues.
Armed with this knowledge, I placed an order (over the phone and aided by shots of the menu on Google - they're not the most technologically-enabled business), and our food was ready in short time despite being the last Sunday before the holidays.
We were hanging out with a friend and wanted plenty of leftovers for the week, so we went heavy on variety. Egg rolls were a must, as were Shanghai noodles, beef and Chinese broccoli for some more substantial protein, Buddhist delight for veg, mapo tofu, and BBQ pork fried rice.
Even though Chinese food is intrinsically associated with takeout in people's minds, some dishes fare better than others in that format. I try to avoid most fried or battered foods, as they absorb sauces or steam in their own heat and lose their crispness.
When I got home with our food, our assortment of options quickly took up all the real estate on our plates once we had a little bit of each dish.
I know I just went on about fried foods and takeout/delivery, but egg rolls, while always better right out of the kitchen, often come in a paper bag which allows some moisture to pass through. The wrappers still maintained some crispness, and the Halifax style of meat paste filling had a pleasant flavour of curry powder.
Mapo tofu is a dish of bite-sized cubes of silken tofu with ground pork in a sauce that typically has layers of sweet, savoury, spicy and a little funky. While I was happy to see it on the menu at all, Wong's definitely pulls their punches here for their suburban Dartmouth clientele with very little spice, no discernable tingle of Sichuan peppercorns and no funk. The lack of depth was disappointing, but it wasn't a bad dish, just not living up to its potential.
Shanghai noodles have become one of mine and my wife's go-to dishes, with the thick noodles making for fun slurping. The sauce was an inoffensive mix of sweet and salty, and there was a very mild note of wok hei to it.
The beef and Chinese broccoli was exactly as advertised, with wonderfully tender slices of velveted beef and crispy stalks of Chinese broccoli tossed in a light, garlic-heavy sauce.
It's always good to get some more veg content into a very carb and meat-heavy meal, and the Buddhist delight delivered with tender-crisp assortment of the earth's bounty.
Last, but not least, the BBQ pork fried rice had a good amount of diced cha siu, and a better hit of smoky wok hei than the noodles had.
At ~$80 after tax, and still under $100 after tip, this hearty feast provided dinner for three, plus a few other meals for two afterward.
HK Wong's isn't recreating the wheel by any stretch of the imagination, but their menu does have more true Chinese dishes in the "Chef's Specials" section of the menu than some of their peers. People's taste buds are much more adventurous than they were 20 years ago, and when combined with the solid hands in their kitchen, leaning into bigger, more authentic flavour profiles would help this CH staple stay around for years to come.
