Spicy Dragon - Toronto's worst restaurant

My inspiration for starting this blog is Spicy Dragon, located at 1060 Kennedy Road, at Lawrence. Posted on the door was a reasonably strong recommendation from a local newspaper, so I decided to chance it. I'm glad I did, as this restaurant now holds my award for the worst restaurant in Toronto. That title previously went to The New Raj Nagar near Yonge and Bloor, but that restaurant closed a few years ago.



Spicy Dragon looks like your typical suburban strip mall pseudo-Chinese restaurant. It bills itself as a "Hakka Indian Style Chinese Restaurant". To be honest, I don't completely understand what that means, but I'm sure most Hakkas and Indians wouldn't want to be associated with this place. Sure, it's a hole in the wall, but that doesn't bother me. Hole-in-the-wallness doesn't mean bad food, and in fact, some my favourite restaurants in Toronto are dives. What does bother me is the utterly tasteless food. I didn't think it was possible to make food this bad.

I should have left immediately after inquiring about the Manchurian Tofu, but I didn't for some unexplanable reason.

Me: What's the Manchurian Tofu?
Waitress: It's dofu with red sauce.
Me: What's the red sauce?
Waitress: It's red.

I kid you not. Perhaps she was new, but nonetheless that's what she said. And she was right. The sauce was... well... red. It had no taste to it whatsoever and presumably was just red food colouring with a cornstarch base or something (with a slight bit of chili thrown in). The Yu Hsiang eggplant was similarly tasteless, but this one was light brown in colour. The beef with green pepper and black bean sauce was tasteless and dark brown. Even the steamed rice was tasteless, as it seemed they used the lowest grade of unscented rice available. I could not fathom how they could remain open with stuff like this. Perhaps the cook was recently diagnosed with high blood pressure and suddenly took it upon himself to save all his/her customers from the evils of salt. (If so, it might actually have taken extra effort for the beef dish, since so many pre-packaged black beans and black bean pastes are heavily salted.) Or perhaps they just ran out of salt and spices that day. To be sure, I would have been overjoyed had they thrown some monosodium glutamate into the food.

Actually I lie. I said I didn't think it was possible to make food this bad. That's not actually true, as I once had food this bad in Beijing at an ultra-cheap Chinese fast food restaurant in a food court. As you can see from the picture, they don't even bother give you bowls or plates. They just give you the pan in which the food was cooked.


But that didn't bother me either. What bothered me was the completely tasteless steamed rice, and the tasteless main dish. Perhaps Spicy Dragon is striving for the authenticity of this type of China experience. If so, they've succeeded.