New Fountain Fast Food

Best Hongkong style milk tea at $1.75 small cup. Cooked dishes is just average but decent prices. Friendly services too. Not much more to say. Why force people to give at least a 140 words review. Do you need me to write a book?

Well executed and reliable Cantonese rice and noodle dishes. New Fountain is one of the stalls in the 3636 Steeles food court, specializing in Cantonese dishes, e.g. rice or noodles with stir-fried toppings. It has long menu of choices, ranging from $4 to $8, with a typical lunch of $5 including tax for the main dish, soup, and soy milk.

Today, I had the (battered) fish with dry bean curd (foo jook) on rice, with "Chinese soup" (i.e. a variety of four flavour soup, not hot and sour soup) and soy milk. It was $5, packaged for takeout back to the office (next building over). After a 5 minute walk west, the food was still very hot and tasty in the styrofoam containers.

I notice that the staff seems to have changed -- I haven't been there in months -- but the formula remains unchanged. I've previously had beef brisket (beef stew), and lo hon (vegetarian with mushrooms) chow mein (fried noodles), which are standard Cantonese cafe dishes. There was a time when I would phone in orders for dinner and drive over to pick up a family meal, since it was simple to do (with no parking hassles, as I would have after 30 minutes south on the DVP).

I can appreciate that people unfamiliar with Chinese menus might be intimidated with all of the selection, which is typically the many combinations and permutations of a predictable number of ingredients. I have ordered substitutions before (e.g. noodles instead of rice), which aren't a big deal for the kitchen. When the lineups build up, I can see that the patience might not be as long as might be expected of someone asking about the ingredients at a McDonald's.

New Fountain is almost always my destination for lunch pickups, because of the high quality/price ratio. To the left is a Taiwainese noodle soup stall (good, but soup can be messier). To the right is a Chinese barbeque stall (i.e. roast duck, chicken, roast pork). Further to the right are Vietnamese and Korean stalls. Friends can split up in the food court to their own preferences, and converge on a table for a fast and filling lunch. (Nutrition depends on what you order!)