Jo Moon Ting....... Final Resting Place

2007 08 24.

This place is closed! Just goes to show how useful these web sites are in supporting restaurants. Customers will vote with their feet... Back to Cafe Orient.

The location must be jinxed!!!

Back to Viet for late night meals as the only game in town.

2007 08 09.

Latest intel from folks in the restaurant industry in Ottawa and Toronto is that congee is a big thing in Toronto these days and there are several restaurants in the north eastern parts of Steele and 400 that specialize in congee. The variety is suppose to be astounding and the taste much better than Jo Moon Ting. So much for good congee in Ottawa...

Names of these restaurant all have queen in them, like queenie, queen's congee and stuff like that.

Luck....

Jo Moon Ting.... 2007 07 03...

I am just a sucker for punishment, aren't I? Went there again tonight for their after hours half portions at half price, specials... Kung Pow Chicken $3.99... pretty bad... XO sauce fried Pork $5.99... so so... prices were reasonable but the chef for this part of the menu has definitely left the house... (heard one of the two main chefs had gone back to Toronto).

The place is too small anyways to support that kind of a format... I hate crowded restaurants... Cafe Orient was three quarters empty! and this place was the other end of the spectrum... because they have half the number of seats!

Jo Moon Ting…. The last time….. 2007 06 30.

The latest on this place that is different from the Café Orient is that it is open till 3am… Hope he has the clientèle! Ottawa is pretty dead after 7pm. And I had their roast pork and must say, and others agree, that it is the best in Ottawa. It is not suckling pig, but they use a younger pig with the suckling pig marinade before cooking and that makes a huge difference…. Much better than Double Happiness, which is a rip off place from my perspective…. Their suckling pig is not as good as Jo’s regular roast pig….

Most of the cognoscenti agree that the wonton noodles are better at Orient and many of the customers that migrated to try the new place in town have returned to the fold….

Also the BBQ chef is still here from Tor., but the other chef has returned to Toronto… presumably leaving the recipes for the XO fried noodle dishes to sous in Ottawa. So if anyone is venturing to try their regular dishes other than fast food …. it might be too late…… shame…

I certainly hope they make a go of it… it good to have an alternative to Café Orient for Chinese greasy spoon fast food…..

Revisited piece:

It was a beautiful Sunday morning and having done my groceries for the week, thought I would bike down to Chinatown and try out Jo Moon Ting, the new congee restaurant on the block…Somerset & Rochester block that is, which is supposed to have a great wonton noodle soup. Or rather it’s a five-ton noodle soup… bad old Chinese joke!

Anyway, it’s at the old Pacific Village and was a congee/noodle place with suckling pig before this latest transformation. I got there for noon and was lucky to get a seat. The seating has not changed since the previous Chinese and then Viet restaurants, so it is essentially a 30-40 seat restaurant, with one sizable table for 8. The décor is basically the same, and is not really suited for singles or doubles, or large groups greater than 6, during rush periods. The restaurant was full of Chinese people. A good sign for sure, but it was noon on Sunday. And Café Orient was full already… as this is just down the road from there.

The service was erratic and very rushed as the waitress was unused to the crowds. The owner was pretty understanding, especially if you spoke Cantonese to him. But they did get some orders wrong and if this bothers… then don’t bother…

The wonton noodle soup was good, but not as good as Café Orient’s. It just didn’t have the right soup, consistency, taste and au dent-ness as the bench-mark cafe. But it was very good! Probably as good as anything in Ottawa or ‘off the street’ in Toronto. Price point was a little high though, at $5+. The interesting twist here is that they will make ‘pork’ wontons if you’d like, but you have to ask. When I got in, the flustered waitress was so naïve that she asked if I wanted pork or shrimp and I said, ‘really, you have pork wontons?’. The manager/owner quickly interceded… it’s a rather ‘closed quarters’ type of place and if you’re claustrophobic... skip this place… He had to step in and say that ordinarily, all wonton soup is shrimp unless there is a specific request…. Then they will make the pork…. Great for folks who don’t like, or is allergic to shrimp!!!

No need for pictures as chinese fast food looks all the same….., actually in Toronto, they now have as in HK, dim sum which is shaped like birds and piggies, etc… so much one can do with har gaw and shui mai…..! These were pork wontons in the pic though and the “dried fried beef noodles” was reportedly good.

Now their specialty is congee, so I had to compare with my fav from Orient…and that was ‘assorted meats’… which is not for everyone as there is liver, tripe, intestines…etc… I found that the congee was actually better than café orient’s! The liver was as consistent... which would mean spongy and chewy, the intestines were not as nice (smaller and dryer pieces), but the tripe was pretty chewy-good as well, and the taste of the congee was supposed to be special… And indeed this shall certainly be an alternative to Café Orient.

In fact when I was here, the place was constantly filled and refilling with people … Chinese…not Caucasians, though. It was Sunday lunch and there was a lot of overflow from café orient, I am sure… (The main dishes being eaten by another table of six did not look great….!)

But back to the congee….they also had a number of specialty congees that are not available anywhere in Ottawa…. Like goeduck, clams, lobster (be loathed to try that, having to pay cash….) and well, I think this is a great addition to Ottawa, for that kind of food. Not everyone likes congee though, but as you know the Chinese eat this stuff for breakfast and brunch. I eat it when I am sick, so it’s like chicken soup for me….

I also asked if they had suckling pig, of course… my favorite…and they said yes. And I believe they will serve in the restaurant as well, but I did not see it on the menu.

This brings me to the point of the menu. It tries to be more than just a wonton/congee/noodle and roast meats type of place, like many that you find in Toronto’s Dundas and Spadina area….. It actually has a full menu. The evolution of café orient was that they were specialist in wonton noodle and congee and expanded to a fuller menu, with dishes and ‘one-dish’ meals. Whereas this place is starting out trying to be a full restaurant that has wonton, congee, etc specialties.

I wish them well of course, but I doubt very much that there will be a market for such a small format restaurant with so few seats and specializing in meats and noodles, to develop a clientele for dinners like Yangtze and Chu Shing…. Which means better try their other dishes now, before, if the chef hasn’t already left for Toronto, they remove the stuff from the menu? There is also Ging Shing further west on Somerset that is very good and has a chef from Mekong, who knows how to do Hunan Beef and ‘special young BBQ pork’… and the decor is better….

Anyway, I shall certainly make another trip for their ‘eat in’ suckling pig. And if there is company maybe their other dishes, but not for their décor, service, or wonton noodles. And will probably venture only in non-rush hours times, like weekday lunches and evenings, and weekend evenings…. Café Orient is pretty dead by 7pm at night…all nights….

2007 06 24 Jean Baptist Day.

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