Today, we went to Scarborough for Chindian (Chinese Indian) food at Federick Restaurant which is popular with locals.
Federick Restaurant is a short 5 minute drive from Scarborough Centre.
Today's the first day of summer and the day is bright, sunny and windy. It's the June Solstice (Summer Solstice) of 2019, the longest day of the year with 15 hours 26 minutes 31 seconds of daylight. It was hot, at a blistering 26-27℃ in the afternoon.
Federick Restaurant is a small intimate space inside. Simply furnished, it is clean and comfortable. Soothing Indian music playing softly in the background. Business was still brisk even at 2:30pm when I took this picture.
Federick Restaurant was founded by Simon Lee in 1992. Simon's family lived in Kolkata for over a century. (Hakkas are in India since the 1700s.) He started work at age 14 in Kolkata's Double Happiness restaurant, then moved to Frederick's Restaurant in Mumbai where he worked as a chef. Simon moved to Sweden in 1976 where he founded 4 restaurants before coming to Canada. He passed on last year in 2018. (Source: YorkRegion.com)
Federick Restaurant positions itself as a Hakka Indian cuisine restaurant. I love both Indian and Chinese food, so Cindian is the best of both worlds for me. There's a nod to American Chinese cuisine in the menu with dishes like General Tso Chicken and Singapore Fried Noodle. (But, I saw neither abacus seed nor lei cha in the menu - the dishes most associated with Hakka cuisine in Singapore and Malaysia.)
My Indian friends told me that Chindian dishes are those labelled as Manchurian.
Two of us, we picked Manchurian beef, Manchurian paneer and Manchurian chow mien (stir fried noodles).
Manchurian beef was a heap of beef slices smothered under a dark fiery looking red blanket.
The beef slices were tender when hot but stiffened a little when it cooled.
The red colour sauce tasted savoury spicy with underlying beefiness. This description belies the subtle complexities from the many vegetables, herbs and spices in the blend which we can smell and taste.
We love this sauce so much, we were lapping it up even though it was actually quite greasy.
Manchurian paneer is the happy marriage of quintessentially Indian cheese with Chinese bean paste sauce.
Oh.. we so love this. The gently savoury paneer cheese is complemented by savoury sweet spicy bean paste sauce with lots of herbs and spices in the blend, making it taste like no bean paste sauce that I have tasted before.
The Manchurian chow mien stir fried with bits of chicken and some crunchy vegetables. We didn't enjoy this so much as it was very greasy and the noodles were soft. Flavour was sweet savoury spicy but the grease got in the way of everything.
Our Manchurian beef was from the lunch special menu which comes with a generous serving of boiled rice.
As Federick Restaurant dishes have robust flavours, for future visits we shall skip the stir fried chow mien and just have boiled rice for our carbs.
Information for you ๐ Just two us, so we didn't try many dishes. But, we did enjoy ourselves with the food especially the Manchurian beef and paneer. Environment and service were OK, and pricing was reasonable. Portions were big, so we couldn't finish everything and had to bag home the leftovers (which is customary in Canada). We paid a total of CND30 tax and tip included.
More on Johor Kaki in Toronto ๐ click
Restaurant name: Federick Restaurant ็ฆๅฉ้ ๅฎถ
Address: 1920 Ellesmere Rd, Scarborough, ON M1H 2V6, Canada (just steps away from the TD bank branch)
GPS: 43°46'29.5"N 79°14'27.2"W ๐ 43.774856, -79.240899
Tel: (416) 439-9234
Hours: 11:00am - 10:00pm (Sunday 4:00pm - 10:00pm)
No pork, no lard
Date visited: 21 Jun 2019
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