A Markham go-to for Shanghai eats

369 Shanghai Dim Sum takes an old-school approach.

Whenever I eat Shanghainese food, I think of my dad.

Growing up, he always gave me lectures on regional Chinese cooking whenever we sat at the table.

When we first travelled to Shanghai, where my dad’s family was from, he told me the food there is different from the Chinese food I was used to eating (typically my grandmother’s Cantonese cooking, marked by the heavy use of steaming and simple flavour bases of ginger, garlic and green onions).

According to my dad, Shanghainese cooking is best described with the phrase, “long yao chek jeung,” which roughly translates to a heavy use of oil and dark soy sauce. The flavours are bolder, the dishes are darker in colour.

There are a handful of Shanghai restaurants in Toronto, including newer, smaller takeout operations like Sang-Ji Fried Bao in North York and Juicy Dumpling in downtown Chinatown. Larger chains like Asian Legend mainly do northern Chinese cooking (Shanghai is more on the central coast), but there are a few Shanghai specialties on the menu.

One of the older spots in the GTA is Markham’s 369 Shanghai Dim Sum (8380 Kennedy Rd.) where current owner Angel Lee has worked for more than two decades.

The restaurant first opened in 1995 in the Peachtree Centre, which itself opened just a few years prior. Lee notes a lot of restaurants in the plaza have been around since the centre opened. This was the time Markham went through rapid growth and development as waves of immigrants, particularly from East and South Asia, moved in and the city was poised to become one of the most culturally diverse in the country (and a destination for Chinese food).

Back then, Lee started out as a server at the restaurant and, in 2013, took over from the original owner who was born in Shanghai. She says Chinese food is one of the most diverse in the world, and every province and region has its own style of cooking and unique ingredients that continue to evolve. “The food at the Hong Kong café beside us is completely different from what we have,” she said.

Generally speaking, Shanghai cuisine has heavier use of soy sauce, cooking wine, vinegar, oil, and the dishes tend to have a hint of sugar added to balance out the flavours.

Pork is a popular protein, along with freshwater eel, fish, shrimp and crab (in particular, the seasonal Chinese mitten crab found in the Yangcheng Lake west of Shanghai).

Neighbouring provinces in the southern part of China also shape the cuisine. One of 369’s signature dishes, Dong Po pork (a braised pork belly that takes hours to render the meat tender and the layer of fat deliciously jiggly), is originally from the neighbouring Hangzhou city in the Zhejiang province.

The xiaolongbao is the most globally recognized Shanghai dish. It’s a soup dumpling best eaten by first puncturing the wrapper to let the steam escape before slurping the hot broth and pork filling. The English description on the menu isn’t the most accurate (they’re referred to as “freshly steamed juicy pork buns”), but nonetheless they’re B02 on the menu. There’s a variation with minced crab meat added and, since no cuisine stays stagnant, Lee says she’s been experimenting with a version that incorporates salted duck eggs and hopes to introduce it once the dining room reopens.

These dumplings involve a labourintensive process, explains Lee, as the pork is ground in house and the wrappers are also made from scratch.

They’re delicate and best eaten as soon as possible while the broth is still hot and the wrapper hasn’t dried out so, in pandemic times, it’s a good idea to either have a car to get them home quickly or find a nearby park bench.

The other two most popular entrylevel Shanghai dishes, said Lee, are the Shanghai fried noodles, made with thick noodles and stir-fried with shredded cabbage and pork and tossed in dark soy sauce, and the wor-teep, pan-fried dumplings better known in English as potstickers, served with vinegar.

Less of a staple dish on the menu is the simply named “stir-fried dry mushrooms with coriander.”

It’s actually an impressive minitowering dish of reconstituted shiitake deep fried and tossed in a spicy honey sauce with sesame seeds — a vegetarian take on deep-fried eels.

Other dishes, like a sizzling platter of shrimp, stewed bamboo shoots in soy sauce, sweet shredded beef tenderloin and bite-sized fried chicken, are more in tune with the dishes my dad grew up with.

Shanghai is also known for its robust street food scene, which the restaurant offers up via flaky scallion pancakes and a hand-held flat pastry stuffed with red bean for dessert.

Lee says that her regular customers typically found out about the place through word-of-mouth in recent years.

But with the pandemic forcing 369 Shanghai Dim Sum to be on the delivery apps, she says younger diners have been ordering from her lately.

She hopes that people will get to know more about regional Chinese food in the city, especially Shanghai cooking.

“In the last 20 years there’s been so much development here, but also there’s places like this plaza with so much history,” said Lee. “That’s why (the GTA) is so great for Chinese food.”

The Mainstays is a weekly series highlighting long-standing restaurants and neighbourhood favourites of Toronto. Food reporter Karon Liu offers recommendations for delicious takeout while also sharing stories of how restaurateurs are faring in the pandemic. Craving something in particular? Email kliu@thestar.ca with what you’d like to see him write about in the future.