Swatow–Amazing Chinese Food in Toronto

While over in Canada, I spent a couple of days down in the big TO wandering around and enjoying all the things I used to enjoy years ago.  For the most part, Toronto is very much like it used to be.  The big things stay the same and the details keep changing.  So Queen street is still Queen street, but many many of the shops have closed or moved on.

On a nice sunny Friday, I found myself walking around enjoying a nice afternoon with Rene.  After a nice stroll around harbourfront the hunger bug struck us and we began to talk about potential lunch locations.  At first I thought that I would fulfill my  need for some street meat hotdog cart love, but there were none to be seen.  As we walked back up from the lake, we found ourselves in Chinatown, and we remembered some of our late night restaurant excursions from the 1990s.

There was one special place that we used to go to specifically for “crispy noodles” that neither of us could remember the name for.  Rene knew that it had a big yellow sign and red writing, but in Chinatown, that is about as useful as saying there is a duck hanging in the window…

A walk up Spadina eventually jogged our memory and we found ourselves in front of Swatow (Rene was totally right about the sign.)

 
This is by no means a glamorous restaurant and it looked to me like nothing had changed at all since 1995 or so.  It is a nice little place that is open until 4am for the after pub crowds.  I have never been there and seen it less than half full, they seem to have a good crowd going at all times.  Here is how it looked on that sunny Friday afternoon.  The wall mirror makes it look much bigger, which I suppose is the desired effect.

I went for the crispy noodles (of course) with beef and vegetable.  The other important thing to note is that this place gives a pretty massive portion of food for a very reasonable price.  I believe this huge dish cost me about 11 dollars Canadian.  Most of the meals seemed to be between 9-12 dollars though.  Rene went for the “special” version of the crispy noodles.  I forget exactly what that involved, but as a rule I like the listings for meals to be pretty explicit as to what I am going to receive.  I have had more than one interesting surprise experience by choosing “special meat”

All went well though and Rene enjoyed his noodles from beginning to end.  Swatow delivered a meal that was very much up to the standard that I recalled.

My craving for a Toronto Chinatown meal has now been satisfied for a while, but I am sure I will go for it again the next time I am over there.  The other regular Chinese experience that I can no longer enjoy is the long departed Mr. Pongs, home of the awesome jumbo.