Chef Kam Shan Sung holds a dish of sautéed beef tenderloin with dim sum delights: har gow, sui mai and birthday buns

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Golden Central Chinese Cuisine

A simple, well-made dumpling can make one’s day. By this measure, a dim sum meal at Golden Central Chinese Cuisine (I’ll refer to it as GCCC) might make your next two weeks.

Tiled and tidy, this north-central restaurant serves mostly Cantonese-style meals as well as dim sum lunch service, the subject of this review. Positive word of mouth has fuelled busy lunch hours at GCCC and the kind of bustle that ought to accompany dim sum. Cart service in city dim sum halls is becoming a thing of the past and at GCCC customers order by ticking off selections on a chit. The atmosphere is less traditional, but the dishes arrive at the table hot, fresh and appropriately staggered.

Those who complain of the heaviness and greasiness of Chinese food haven’t eaten dim sum at GCCC lately. I suggest building a meal around any combo of the following four basic dishes — prepared and served with precision. Steamed shrimp dumplings ($4.50) display a coveted semi-transparent wrapping. The crab-meat and pork dumplings (a.k.a. siu mai, $4.50) feature thin, yellow, ruffled bean-curd wrap and a crowning dollop of deep-orange roe that retains its colour. Steamed Chiu Chow dumplings ($4.25) are robust, with a peanut-and-pork filling that contains finely diced celery. Rice crepe with barbecue pork ($4.75) is attractively plated on a white, rectangular dish. Its balance of lightly sweet and salty meat with moist crepe in light soya sauce and oil is perfect.

The GCCC menu features numerous other standards, but also unique dishes such as pan-fried pork buns ($3.99). These are lightly savoury and may be a bit plain for some tastes, but they’re beautiful. White with perfect round grill marks, rice flour dough is filled with a discreet layer of steamy pork. It’s minimal, mellow and superbly crafted.

The Chinese dough in rice crepe wrap ($4.99) is rich and a real guilty pleasure. Sticks of deep-fried rice dough are wrapped in moist, white rice crepe and chopped into bite-sized rounds. Sweet peanut dipping sauce is provided and the dish is given a drizzle of light soya sauce. It’s a hard dish to serve just right. I’ve eaten it at GCCC twice. The first time, the fritter was a bit overcooked, but on my follow-up visit, it had more bread-y moistness and plenty of airy loft.

Shanghai pan-fried dumplings ($4.99) are served with a dish of red vinegar. These petite gyoza-like pork-and-onion dumplings have a thin, wrinkled wrapper that produces crisp tiger-striped grill marks. Wickedly savoury, they’re a table pleaser.

Another unique and delicious dish is the steamed Chinese sausage rolls ($4.25). (What other kind of sausage rolls would a Chinese restaurant serve? Polish?) Like little Michelin Caterpillars, puffy white pastry is coiled around killer sausage. Thin and juicy, the meat packs big, savoury taste.

On my two recent visits to this restaurant, my guests and I ordered vegetables in oyster sauce ($5.50) as a complement to our carbs-and-meat marathon. Available in three types (gai lan, yu choy and lettuce), we chose the stalky yu choy. It’s fresh and hot and is presented with a modest amount of sauce ladled over the leafy end of the stack.

For dessert, we ordered steamed birthday buns ($3.99) which are listed in the main dim sum portion of the menu chit (also listed are larger noodle and congee dishes, etc.) rather than with the desserts. They resemble three little white baby bottoms, or ripe peaches, complete with blush. These dense orbs are filled with sweet bean paste and, again, are beautifully crafted. They tie for the city’s cutest dim sum dish with U & Me’s “bee-looking” shrimp dumplings.

GCCC’s friendly and efficient serving staff take time to chat with customers and happily explain the contents of the restaurant’s various dishes. The restaurant is a stellar addition to both the underfed north-central restaurant scene and the city’s nationally known dim sum culture.