Yue Lai Buffet (Chinese)

Yue Lai Buffet is located at 492 Dundas St. W. It must have been recently opened as we likely would have found it earlier as it is in Toronto’s core. Yue Lai is a super-low-price place that reminds me of Bento King at Yonge and Finch, and it even appears to have similar food although the consensus seems to be that Bento King is Taiwanese and this is more mainland. Thankfully unlike that place there are both reusable chopsticks and reusable metal trays. Yue Lai has a bright new interior. When we were there there was no pop machine, as it was down and they hadn't even worked out the price yet, although it was indicated would probably be $2, and they were not offering water (isn’t that illegal?) however there was tarot tapioca soup which sufficed and wasn't bad.

We both loved the bean sprout salad and it had kimchi like spicing. Mishy said the kimchi was among the best she had ever had, although I found it a bit spicy, but it was quite good and also fresh.  Tofu skin salad was delicious, and I couldn't identify the seasoning either... it was that well balanced. Cabbage salad was also quite good and fresh though, the seasoning was very similar to the previous two.

Stir-fried pork with chili peppers was surprisingly delicious, about as good as the best takeout version of it. Hot and sour shredded potato was the only dish I absolutely detested... not only did the flavours not go together at all and were rather repulsive but it also was annoyingly spicy-hot and burned my mouth. Definitely give this one a miss! French fries were dry but not too bad with the added nearby ketchup squeeze bottle. Spring rolls were dry but not bad. Stir fry tofu skin with chili pepper wasn't bad although there wasn't much flavour but the chili.

Deep-fried chicken wings were delicious, although a little bit dry, but I didn't mind as they were so tasty even without any mustard. Steamed chicken with shiitake mushroom was quite tasty and not dry, and had some five-spice as well so was pretty well seasoned. Spicy braised beef was quite good and was actually beef... was not expecting any beef dishes for such a low price. Spicy tofu was quite good with slices of something that looked like either pepper or okra. Sauteed potato, green pepper and eggplant was actually delicious as the potato tasted like fries when sauteed and picked up the flavour of the other items... it was actually almost excellent. Scrambled egg rice was good with some of the nearby squeeze bottles of soy sauce which was actually pretty fresh.

There are no desserts but I wouldn't expect them at this price: $15.99! This is just over half what most places charge and it’s the same anytime. There was only one (terribly) bad offering, so I am obligated to knock a point off for this and a few of the items being dry, after correspondingly adjusting upwards for (phenomenal) value.

Rating 9 / 10