Out & About #39 | Munching in Markham (Pt. 3)

Another day in Markham means another day of testing out new dining options.

This time around, I suggested looking around Commerce Gate for a change.

Lunch took place at this modern-looking restaurant that specialized in Japanese donburi (rice bowls).

The inside was rather well-lit, and though it was evident that the tables had been worn down slightly, the abundance of colour made it less obvious. Donburi also had a variety of J-Pop songs playing throughout the meal, and also happened to be airing Pycho-Pass on two TV screens located above the area where the chefs prepared the food at the far back wall of the restaurant.

(What are okonomiyaki fries btw? Something tells me that it doesn't stray too far from the poutine family, but it might use okonomiyaki sauce instead of gravy.)

After going through the vast number of choices, the Chicken Omurice and Umami Don were chosen.  We were then instructed - WHY YES, instructed - to mark down our choices on an order sheet by an thoroughly rude waitress before she grudgingly brought the sheet to the kitchen.

Shortly following the typical miso soup and garden salad starters, the meals arrived.

The Chicken Omurice was pretty good. It was the first time in a loooonnnggg time that I had seen proper omurice, where the term 'proper' holds the meaning that the rice was seemless wrapped in a thin sheet of egg without having it tear. Of course, there were still flaws in it though: underneath the several layers of sauce that had been applied on top, one could clearly observe that the egg sheet had been browned slightly, which meant that an inadequate amount of milk/cream had been added to the egg mixture before frying.
Inside the omelette was (classic) ketchup fried rice; it was just a teensy bit too dry for my liking, but nothing that bothered me too much. The okonomiyaki sauce and kewpie mayonnaise, though, seemed to be layered to excess, along with a generous amount of aonori, making the dish higher in sodium than needed. The overall taste of the dish, however, was good enough for me.

Umami Don was a donburi consisting of pieces of unagi, shredded artificial crab meat, cucumber, and a few strips of pickled radish atop a bounteous helping of Japanese rice. While there wasn't anything particularly unpleasant about the flavour, the sauces had once again been used in excess. To be quite frank, there was simply so much sauce in this rice bowl that the individual flavours of the unagi and cucumbers could barely be distinguished.

In conclusion, Donburi is quite a nice little hangout spot for those craving Japanese food, and don't mind the sodium and MSG attacks later on. (My throat became extremely dry the second I left the restaurant due to the ingestion of high levels of MSG.) The customer service, on the other hand, is something that gets me annoyed every time I weigh out the pros and cons of this place.


After lunch was a quick stop to Chatime; a Peach Black Tea and Taiwan Plum Iced Tea were ordered.

Before trying out this location, I had only visited the ones in the basement of the Taipei 101 Observatory and at Pacific Mall, so I was quite surprised to see that they were selling other items besides tea.

I didn't try any of these sweets, for they didn't quite look all that appealing to me.

Trying the teas, the Peach Black Tea proved to be a drink worth coming back to. The Taiwan Plum Iced Tea, however, tasted nothing more than Chinese chan pai mui, a traditional plum candy commonly sold at Asian herb shops. Given that I'm not too big of a fan of that taste though, I can't quite say that it was my cup of tea, both in the figurative and literal sense.


P.S. Weebly is having issues with saving post titles as of now, so some entries may not appear with the corresponding the title that was originally saved with them. Hopefully, this is only a temporary glitch and will be fixed soon. But please use the 'Blog Series' guide for now if you would like to locate a specific post!

---