For our anniversary dinner, we visited R&D, a restaurant opened by Masterchef winner Eric Chong and judge Alvin Leung. It took over the location of the former pizza joint, Strada 241. The restaurant does a twist of traditional Asian mixed with Canadian dishes in a tapas style.
The Chili Crab Bibimbap ($18) was delicious and spiced by the kimchi. Our waiter mixed all the ingredients together for us (after I took this photo).
This Red Star Punch ($12) was sweet and refreshing. It contained oolong infused gin, hawthorn, mandarin, lemon and Shanghai rhubarb bitters.
These spicey sichuan lamb Little Dragon Buns ($6) were perfectly cooked with flavourful soup inside each dumpling.
The sichuan hollandaise on these scallops and chinese greens ($23) was to die for. This was probably my favourite out of all the dishes. We wanted to lick the plate.
Shrimp Toast ($12) was a flavourful bite of prawn, black truffle, cauliflower, preserved duck egg and english mustard.
Lastly, the Octopus ($14) was deliciously chargrilled and served with octopus crisps, a vegetable chimichuri and pureed eggplant that tasted exactly like the traditional eggplant and beef hot bowls you can order at Chinese restaurants. It was interesting that it was used as a sauce in this context.
Obviously we couldn’t resist dessert. Plus it’s a celebration. I ordered the Crispy smoked milk ($8), which came with marshmallows and a lemon ricotta icecream that was to die for. The fried milk was sweet with a surprise of smoke, a flavour which the ricotta and marshmallows nicely cleansed.
Nash ordered the Banana Split ($8) which was no regular banana split. The fruit was fried and served with 3 delicious icecreams: raspberry, peanut butter and malt. I couldn’t decide which dessert was better.
We both enjoyed our dinner at R&D a lot and can’t wait until our next food adventure together.
Tiana Feng 