Walking along Dundas Street West, we stumbled upon this large shop - it's Dagu Rice Noodle 大鼓米线. The glass windows were plastered with promotional posters. The claim that their pork soup is freshly made daily with 300kg of pork bones used for every barrel of soup drew me into the restaurant to check it out.
Stepping inside, Dagu restaurant is spacious, casual and bright.
Another section has bar counter and padded booth seats.
Dagu Rice Noodles is a restaurant chain founded in Shanghai in 2010. It has hundreds of outlets throughout China and expanded to Canada and USA in 2017. There were crazy queues when this Dundas Street Dagu outlet opened 2 years ago. It is still popular with millennials today.
They have a few flavours including spicy but since this was my first time at Dagu, I opted for their Signature Rice Noodle Soup with Braised Bone-in Pork. The set comes with unlimited rice noodle refills.
This is traditional "cross bridge noodles" 过桥米线 where the hot broth is used like a "steamboat soup" to cook the noodles and also optional sides like beef slices, lamb slices, meat balls, prawns, mushrooms, bean sprouts, tofu, eggs etc. It is a comfort dish from Yunnan but is found all over China.
The pork bone soup came steamy (not churning bubbles) hot in a large thick stone bowl which kept the temperature up almost to the end of the meal. The stone bowl itself was heated up before pouring in the soup as per "cross bridge noodle" custom.
The tongue scathing cloudy, collagen rich pork soup had a nice full round smooth body and was not overly greasy. The dominant flavour was savouriness from the preserved mustard leaves, preserved bamboo shoots, dried kelp etc. The sheer amount of pork bones used ensured that porcine aroma and taste made its presence felt too. All in all, the soup had a comforting homely feel.
The meaty pork bones were from the back bone. Tender, almost at the verge of mushiness and most of the flavour had already been leached into the soup (as it should be for stock bones) from hours of boiling.
I enjoyed Dagu's rice noodles. They were soft tender spongy springy and had a subtle rice sweetness which I like. Ate it with a bit of pork, some soup and a pinch of chili sauce, it's great.
I was really stuffed after the meal and I was really hungry at the start as we had walked for about 4 hours exploring the city on foot. The set came with unlimited noodle refills. The younger folks around me asked for it, but one serving is more than enough for me. My bill came to CDN14 tax and tip included. Good value by Toronto standards.
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Restaurant name: Dagu Rice Noodles 大鼓米线
Address: 115 Dundas St W, Toronto, ON M5G 1C4 (at intersection of Bay Street, 5 minutes walk from Eaton Centre)
GPS: 43°39'20.1"N 79°23'03.3"W 🌐 43.655570, -79.384243
Nearest TTC (Subway): Dundas
Tel: (416) 901-9208
Hours: 11:00am - 10:30pm
Non Halal
Traditional "cross bridge noodle" shops in China.
Date visited: 4 July 2019
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