Kum Koon Garden

Kum Koon Garden
257 King Street
(204) 9434655
Reimbursement available for $4 parking in adjacent lot

One of the secret culinary pleasures of the Indo-Chinese cultural scene in Winnipeg are the $25 holiday meals that take place as celebratory and fundraising events. I attended a belated Chinese New Year supper this evening with Nic and his family. For $25 a person, you receive a leisurely 10-course meal, served in the traditional slow-service style (generally one dish at a time). The meal price also includes red wine and sparkling wine, pop, and Chinese tea.

We began with an appetizer platter made of barbecued duck, steamed chicken, barbecued pork, ground pork wrapped in tofu, jellyfish, and seafood balls, garnished with slices of ham, pineapple, maraschino cherries, and cilantro. This is always a fun way to start a meal, especially those not familiar with traditional Chinese cuisine. There's a lot of variety. Safer bets are the barbecued pork, which I always enjoy. I also really like the jellyfish, which comes cold. It's slightly crunchy and slightly slimy, and as a result, is fun to eat. If you can get over the surprising texture, as Marge has, the subtle taste is actually quite nice.

The second course was fish stomach soup, which may sound disgusting to most folks. However, I assure you this soup's flavour is subtle and not at all fishy. The soup has fish stomach, pieces of crab, and egg whites. The consistency is similar to egg drop soup, I believe. The broth is clear and has been thickened. I always have this soup with a little red wine vinegar and white pepper.

The third course was steamed chicken, which Ian determined must have had a salt rub to give it its very tasty and well-seasoned flavour. The table receives the whole chicken cut up into manageable pieces, skin attached.

The fourth course was fresh sugar snap peas stir-fried with scallops, squid, and shrimp. Everyone at the table loved this dish for its freshness and the sweetness of the snap peas. We finished the platter.

The fifth course was deep fried tofu with suey choy and shiitake mushrooms. I personally didn't have any of this dish, but everyone else who had it seemed to enjoy it. The suey choy and deep fried tofu, having not much flavour in themselves, absorb the seasonings well. This dish is a little more pungent and has a thick, gelatinous mushroom sauce.

Halfway, what everyone had been holding out for arrived--the crab and lobster. This is always delicious, I find. The fresh crab and lobster are flash-fried in a light batter, I believe, before being stir-fried with ginger and green onion. Though a challenge to eat, it's well worth it. For those who are adventurous, the crab shell and lobster head are available for brain-consumption. I'm not kidding.

The seventh course was a whole deep-fried pickerel. Not being a fish fan myself, I can only convey others' opinions that this dish was heavenly. Again, batter and seasonings are light, the better to taste the pickerel. The fish arrives split in half. The server will cut the fish into manageable pieces for the table before leaving.

The eighth course was a Chinese-style ham hock. The entire hock is presented after having been slowly roasted in its own skin and juices. Topped with fine strands of black seaweed, the meat has an earthy taste and is so tender it falls off the bone.

The nineth course was deluxe fried rice. In real Chinese restaurants, the fried rice is actually quite light in colour, not much soy sauce having been added during the stir-frying process. The fried rice has peas, barbecued pork, egg, onion, and shrimp in it. Traditionally, fried rice came at the end of a meal as a test of the chef's work. If you enjoyed the meal, you should be full at this point, and by not touching the fried rice, would signal to the kitchen that they have done their job. However, by eating the rice, you have shown the previous dishes were not very good and/or not generous enough. In the 21st century, though, such traditions are no longer kept up, but they make for a good story.

The meal ended with pre-packaged fortune cookies all around.

Unfortunately for those not connected to the Indo-Chinese community, these gatherings tend to be a mainly Chinese or Southeast Asian event. You need to know someone to get tickets in the first place! The one I went to this evening was for the Chinese Seniors' Association. If you can get tickets, though, it's a great night of eating!