Spring Rolls - All You Can Eat!

Spring Rolls

45 Eglinton Ave. E.

Toronto, ON M4P 3A2

Canada

After a hard night of drinking, waking up the morning after (well, err.. afternoon) is always a tough task. After shaking the cobwebs out of the cranium, my thoughts quickly flash to food. My buddy and I decided to walk over to Spring Rolls on the southeast corner of Yonge and Eglinton. I've always liked the food at Spring Rolls, so when I heard they had an all you can eat deal on I had to test out my capacity for gluttony.

The Review:

We were seated in the upper level, which was already packed with couples and families. The all you can eat ($18.99) menu was huge with almost 80 items and divided into categories. They had everything from dim sum to Thai noodles to sushi and sashimi. They even had something called a 'sexy roll'. Does that mean the roll is sexy, or I'd become sexy if I ate the roll? Hmm. Back to the food. We started off with miso and hot & sour soup, along with lime infused chicken wings, crispy squid tentacles, har gow (shrimp dumplings) and shu mai (pork dumplings).

Miso Soup

One thing I always do whenever I have all you can eat asian food is start off with a miso soup to get the old belly ready for action. I find it coats my stomach with a layer of warmness that will protect it from the impending speed overeating session. The miso soup had a good, flavourful base with chunks of tofu and big pieces of seaweed. I liked how all of the tofu and seaweed pieces were different sizes - with every spoonful I'd get a different combo mixed with green onion. My only complaint was that they put the white part of the green onion in the soup which overpowered the taste of the soup base if I happened to scoop up a piece. After a couple bowls, I moved onto the lime infused chicken wings and crispy squid tentacles. The chicken wings had the unmistakable taste of the classic Chinese style deep fried chicken wing, but had a hint of lime and black pepper which was a nice added touch. Crispy skin, juicy chicken. The crispy squid tentacles were small to medium sized which was great for one biters. The squid was battered in a light coating that was seasoned perfectly and had a nice crispy texture. I loved them.  The har gow and shu mai were smaller than the dumplings at other places, but were on par with the taste. Straight up average.

Surprise #1 - If you ask for the hot mustard you're used to at regular dim sum spots, they give you regular yellow mustard instead - yes, the kind you put on hotdogs. Weird.



Gyoza and Korean Short Ribs

Next up, the gyoza dumplings and Korean short ribs. The gyoza dumplings were moist and soft on the inside (pun intended), and pretty big. Good flavor with what tasted like a soy ginger dipping sauce which went well with it. Overall the dumpling was soft, but it was very 'doughy'. The outside was dense and chewy which kind of threw me off a bit. Now the star of the show. I find a lot of Korean BBQ joints use a marinade that is way too salty on the beef and ribs. Let me tell you - I've fallen in love with short ribs again. Not Koreans, just their ribs. The perfect balance of salty and sweet, meaty with a touch of fat and grilled perfectly. These guys were unbelievably tender. Had to re-order more.



Salmon sashimi, tuna (butterfish?) and spicy salmon rolls



We had a few other random dishes, and throughout the meal we were picking at salmon and tuna sashimi. The salmon was great - bright with a lot of fat. What I liked were all the pieces were fairly big and were uniformly the same size. Every piece was butter soft with no chewiness. I had about 24 pieces to myself. Totally got my money's worth in salmon alone. Our mistake was that we left the spicy salmon rolls for the end, and after an hour and a half of pounding back food this would be challenge. Sushi rice is dense. Eating these rolls with no more room in the bag seemed impossible. So we did what anyone else would do. We hid the rolls. Under scraps of short rib bones, in bowls of half finished noodles and in sauce cups. Tada! All done. Finished off with the ritualistic end of meal green tea ice cream. It was a huge scoop, actually overflowed the little bowl it was in. Good stuff. 



The Verdict:

Although I'm not the biggest fan of 'chain' restaurants, I've always thought Spring Rolls was consistently good. The food on the all you can eat menu was more or less good. The Korean short ribs and crispy squid tentacles were fantastic. Overall, I'm giving the all you can eat ($18.99) at Spring Rolls an 8 out of 10. I'd definitely go back for a second, and probably a third round of gluttony.