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Foods from Lichee View Restaurant
Reviews
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2007 Nov 7
I believe what Ashley is referring to was a document that CFIA produced on how Lichee View was using/preparing ungraded eggs in their food. I believe CFIA does not get involved in rating restaurants cleanliness, but they do ensure the food being used has been certified as safe for consumption. The same report also had a lot to say about the handling and preparation of meat in a lot of Ottawa's lebanese fast food restaurants. No comment! I'm the same document could be produced if someone did an access to information request with CFIA.
2007 Nov 6
Among all the Chinese restaurants I have tried in Ottawa, Lichee View got my vote for “one of the worst Chinese restaurants in Ottawa” undoubtedly.
When this restaurant was first opened in 2003, every one was so happy to have a good Chinese restaurant in the mid-town area and every one wanted to try it out. Many positive reviews came out and we went there for our group dinner (and we took a group photo there and that is why I knew it was opened in 2003). We had two big round tables (of 10 each), one table for adults and one table for children. The dinner was pretty good at that time. I still remember the kids walked to Dairy Queens to get ice creams after dinner.
My friend also ordered take-out from this restaurant for Christmas party and we all loved the food. Well, things didn’t stay the same for long since the food was going downhill significantly in our subsequent visits.
Lichee View and the already closed Good Friends (located in the existing location of Jo Moo Ting) were included in the top 10 dirtiest Ottawa restaurants list published by Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) on Ottawa Citizen in 2004 (if my memory serves me right). I believe that CFIA in Ottawa took action to report those failed to comply with the restaurant hygiene requirements to alert the public. I remember that was a heated discussion when Toronto Star published a report regarding food hygiene at the food court establishments on Spadina in Toronto downtown area. Many customers complained to CFIA that they should release the report to alert the public. (Somehow I haven’t seen any similar public report of that sort from CFIA for a long time. Wonder if such list still exists upon public request.) On the topic of restaurant hygiene, it is surprised to hear that even fine dining restaurants can fail to pass the hygiene standard. My Canadian Caucasian friend’s daughter worked in a fine dining restaurant in the west end and she told her mom how dirty the restaurant was. (Don’t want to say the name yet until it is publicly announced by CFIA.)
Anyway, back to my review of Lichee View. We haven’t set our foot in this restaurant for almost 4 years. On a Saturday night two weeks ago, after our 2-hour ballroom dance practice at 10:00PM, one of our friends asked us if we want to have late night snacks. We were at Merivale location and didn’t want to go to Chinatown. Lichee View was the closest place to us. My friend said we can just go there to check it out.
When we arrived there around 10:20PM, their parking lot was full and inside was 80% full as well. This was a good sign. So, we decided to try it out.
When we went in, we waited for about 5 minutes at the entrance and no one came to check on us. I stopped a server on her way to the cashier desk and told her that we wanted a table for 4. She simply pointed us to a table. So, we were seated by ourselves. (Don’t laugh. This is typical for Chinese restaurant.). When I looked around, I noticed that most of the customers were quite young, likely university students who came here for late Saturday dinner.
Later, we were given their late night snack menu (a subset of their dinner menu, but a smaller food portion). Most of the dishes were $3.50 each. We ordered the following from the late night menu:
Deep-fried Tofu
The tofu arrived on our table first, with nice golden brown color. It did look great! But unfortunately, it only tasted okay. When I bit it, lots of water came out. It just indicated to me that the chef didn’t drain the tofu enough before deep-frying. My friend had one bite and didn’t eat the rest of the tofu.
When this restaurant was first opened in 2003, every one was so happy to have a good Chinese restaurant in the mid-town area and every one wanted to try it out. Many positive reviews came out and we went there for our group dinner (and we took a group photo there and that is why I knew it was opened in 2003). We had two big round tables (of 10 each), one table for adults and one table for children. The dinner was pretty good at that time. I still remember the kids walked to Dairy Queens to get ice creams after dinner.
My friend also ordered take-out from this restaurant for Christmas party and we all loved the food. Well, things didn’t stay the same for long since the food was going downhill significantly in our subsequent visits.
Lichee View and the already closed Good Friends (located in the existing location of Jo Moo Ting) were included in the top 10 dirtiest Ottawa restaurants list published by Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) on Ottawa Citizen in 2004 (if my memory serves me right). I believe that CFIA in Ottawa took action to report those failed to comply with the restaurant hygiene requirements to alert the public. I remember that was a heated discussion when Toronto Star published a report regarding food hygiene at the food court establishments on Spadina in Toronto downtown area. Many customers complained to CFIA that they should release the report to alert the public. (Somehow I haven’t seen any similar public report of that sort from CFIA for a long time. Wonder if such list still exists upon public request.) On the topic of restaurant hygiene, it is surprised to hear that even fine dining restaurants can fail to pass the hygiene standard. My Canadian Caucasian friend’s daughter worked in a fine dining restaurant in the west end and she told her mom how dirty the restaurant was. (Don’t want to say the name yet until it is publicly announced by CFIA.)
Anyway, back to my review of Lichee View. We haven’t set our foot in this restaurant for almost 4 years. On a Saturday night two weeks ago, after our 2-hour ballroom dance practice at 10:00PM, one of our friends asked us if we want to have late night snacks. We were at Merivale location and didn’t want to go to Chinatown. Lichee View was the closest place to us. My friend said we can just go there to check it out.
When we arrived there around 10:20PM, their parking lot was full and inside was 80% full as well. This was a good sign. So, we decided to try it out.
When we went in, we waited for about 5 minutes at the entrance and no one came to check on us. I stopped a server on her way to the cashier desk and told her that we wanted a table for 4. She simply pointed us to a table. So, we were seated by ourselves. (Don’t laugh. This is typical for Chinese restaurant.). When I looked around, I noticed that most of the customers were quite young, likely university students who came here for late Saturday dinner.
Later, we were given their late night snack menu (a subset of their dinner menu, but a smaller food portion). Most of the dishes were $3.50 each. We ordered the following from the late night menu:
Deep-fried Tofu
The tofu arrived on our table first, with nice golden brown color. It did look great! But unfortunately, it only tasted okay. When I bit it, lots of water came out. It just indicated to me that the chef didn’t drain the tofu enough before deep-frying. My friend had one bite and didn’t eat the rest of the tofu.
2007 Nov 6
(continued from previous post...)
Preserved Egg & Pork Congee
Congee (or Jo, just like Jo from Jo Moon Ting) must be simmered with pork meat (and pork bones) for hours (just like a bone soup needs hours to simmer to get the flavor out). The congee we got was actually instant pork congee. The kitchen simply threw the cut-up preserved egg and few slices of pork meat into the plain congee (by the way, the congee’s water was absorbed by the rice porridge, meaning the plain congee has been sitting in the pot for a long time). When a Chinese restaurant can’t even make a plain congee right, you can basically forget about this restaurant. My Zojirushi rice cooker makes better congee than their kitchen. Sigh!
Stir-fried noodles with bean sprouts
This one was okay. Taste was average.
Spicy pork belly
Have you ever tried this food? Chewy food for your mouth to work out. Their version of spicy pork tummy was okay.
Spicy and Salty shrimps
Shrimps were not fresh. But taste was average.
Cold Cut Pork Hock (sliced)
Our worst experience was the pork hock (Chinese version of cold cut with spice). We were talking most of the time and my friend’s husband ate one slice and told us the meat had bad smell. My friend tried it and spat it out. I tried it and also spat out immediately. We agreed that the meat had gone bad (may be hard to taste because of the spice sauce). I asked my husband to drop his slice. We told the server that the meat had gone bad and she responded to us that the smell may be from the radish below the meat. I told her very firmly that she can try out the meat herself and we were not going to eat it. So, she reluctantly took the dish away and asked us to order another dish. We ended up ordering the fried noodle again. I can tell you that if we ate that meat, we would definitely get food poisoning.
Conclusion
My friends said, “We will not visit this restaurant again in our next 5 years”. But we wonder why this restaurant is always packed. Because of good price or because they offer late night snacks in the mid-town area? This is a mystery to us.
We talked to our other friends about our experience. They told us that they went there for dim-sum on last Saturday morning. The place was also packed. They told me that their dim-sum was very bad.
We all complained that Ottawa has no good dim-sum place any more. Let’s drive to Toronto to have good dim-sum.
Preserved Egg & Pork Congee
Congee (or Jo, just like Jo from Jo Moon Ting) must be simmered with pork meat (and pork bones) for hours (just like a bone soup needs hours to simmer to get the flavor out). The congee we got was actually instant pork congee. The kitchen simply threw the cut-up preserved egg and few slices of pork meat into the plain congee (by the way, the congee’s water was absorbed by the rice porridge, meaning the plain congee has been sitting in the pot for a long time). When a Chinese restaurant can’t even make a plain congee right, you can basically forget about this restaurant. My Zojirushi rice cooker makes better congee than their kitchen. Sigh!
Stir-fried noodles with bean sprouts
This one was okay. Taste was average.
Spicy pork belly
Have you ever tried this food? Chewy food for your mouth to work out. Their version of spicy pork tummy was okay.
Spicy and Salty shrimps
Shrimps were not fresh. But taste was average.
Cold Cut Pork Hock (sliced)
Our worst experience was the pork hock (Chinese version of cold cut with spice). We were talking most of the time and my friend’s husband ate one slice and told us the meat had bad smell. My friend tried it and spat it out. I tried it and also spat out immediately. We agreed that the meat had gone bad (may be hard to taste because of the spice sauce). I asked my husband to drop his slice. We told the server that the meat had gone bad and she responded to us that the smell may be from the radish below the meat. I told her very firmly that she can try out the meat herself and we were not going to eat it. So, she reluctantly took the dish away and asked us to order another dish. We ended up ordering the fried noodle again. I can tell you that if we ate that meat, we would definitely get food poisoning.
Conclusion
My friends said, “We will not visit this restaurant again in our next 5 years”. But we wonder why this restaurant is always packed. Because of good price or because they offer late night snacks in the mid-town area? This is a mystery to us.
We talked to our other friends about our experience. They told us that they went there for dim-sum on last Saturday morning. The place was also packed. They told me that their dim-sum was very bad.
We all complained that Ottawa has no good dim-sum place any more. Let’s drive to Toronto to have good dim-sum.
2006 Oct 24
LOVE this restaurant. Sometimes it is frustrating at dim sum as the carts are small and keep running out - but the food is delicious and their prices are extremely reasonable. Their whole fish at dinners are suberb.
Dim Sum [0]
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Adam
gold