Rosewood Chinese Cuisine is located at 463 Dundas Street West, east of Spadina in Toronto's core Chinatown district. I went for a weekday lunch. Rosewood has both dim sum and sushi menus.Rosewood features very traditional Chinese dim sum fare which (if you are not careful) includes chicken feet, pork blood, beef tendon and other items usually avoided by Western diners. There were plenty of diners for lunch so it appears to be doing quite well. Loose jasmine tea is included and the teapot is left at the diner's table; the tea was excellent (loose jasmine is my favourite.) Pop is $3.95, not AYCD as it comes in bottles, so I avoided it for the tea. Reusable chopsticks are used. Soy sauce is amazingly good, not salty at all, and quite fresh. Ginger was not dyed pink and was tasty.
Fish fillet congee was delicious, but beware the rather large portions (which goes for many of the rest of the offerings as well.) Tempura dipping sauce was excellent. Shrimp tempura was light, flaky, and very good. Yam tempura was also good. Sausage buns were excellent. BBQ pork buns were tasty, but a bit too doughy. Minced beef cilantro rice rolls were delicious, with good dipping sauce included. Miso soup was good and savory...for a traditional Chinese establishment their sushi options were excellent. Tangerine beef shiu mai was very good with a mild flavor.
Shrimp and chive dumplings were good but had a slightly odd flavour. Spring rolls were good, and as noted also were noticeably large compared to at other places. Ginger chicken on rice was very good with fragrant traditional rice, made excellent with the sushi soy sauce. Philadelphia roll was excellent, a good balance of ingredients. Salmon nigiri and spicy salmon maki were both very good.
Service was excellent and fast and friendly even with the language barrier. I was left very full with no room for dessert (of which there are many, unfortunately) and ended up staying 45 mins. past the end of lunchtime to slowly finish with nary a word of complaint from the waitresses who even let me take home the five pieces of sushi I had no room for (I hate wasting food!) I had an excellent lunch at Rosewood and the weekday lunch price of $17.99 is quite reasonable for the quality and variety of items. I would definitely return.Rating: 8-8.5/10
