Lucky House (Chinese)

Lucky House has been for a long time at 304 Richmond St. W., near John St. in downtown Toronto, but just recently added an AYCE menu (possibly due to the closure of the Yonge/Eglinton Mandarin?) It really is/was a house, a rarity nowadays in that area, and such a skinny one it’s my my first portrait-oriented exterior shot. It's $36 for lunch on weekends but $30 for dinner Mon.-Thurs. It's a sit-down rather than buffet, which was unexpected, and ordering is old-school onto paper templates. Pop is canned $2.50 each not AYCD. Has a bright interior with Chinese music atmosphere; Mishy said it was very pretty. We were the only customers when we arrived possibly because it was just before the Easter weekend and the two more singles who showed up stayed at the front to pick up take-out. Reusable chopsticks are included in the utensils, happily. There is white pepper at 

The important caveat for Lucky House is: don’t overdo that first order! Beware as the portion sizes are (much) larger than one may be used to from other places, as would be expected from a non-AYCE that just branched out. For example, the wonton soup was in a full-sized bowl between two and three times the volume of soups at most Japanese AYCEs, but it was fantastic as Mishy and I both noted. Hot and sour soup was equally large and equally excellent, best-of-breed at least for AYCEs I've ever been to. Sweet and sour chicken (also twice the size) was also fantastic, as we again both noted, and seemed better than Mandarin’s.

Mishy didn't like the breading on the sweet-and-sour chicken balls (four per order but very large, the size of Mandarin oranges) but I think that this is how it is done traditionally; it's thick, heavier, darker and baked, but has a nice flavour. Chicken fried rice was quite good although muted, but became even better with the wonderful soy sauce which we both loved and was fresh and flavourful and not too salty. Chicken wings took a while to arrive but were worth the wait as they were quite tasty and I enjoyed the seasoning.

There are no desserts per se, but there are sesame balls with red bean filling which are pretty close to being one. The weekday dinner price is lower than expected for the offerings/locations, but is pretty much exactly offset by the higher-than-expected weekend lunch price. Unfortunately I didn’t get to try many of the available dishes I would have wanted to due to the portion sizes; I prefer self-service buffets for this as then I can regulate them myself and avoid large quantities of offerings I don’t enjoy. Happily I enjoyed everything here I was able to try.

Rating: 9 / 10 + 0 value adjustment (standard pricing) =  9 / 10