Reviews Crown Princess Fine Dining

Although the prices are a little bit higher compared to some dim sums restaurants, but the quality of dim sums is better. Ordering dim sums before 11am, then you can get most of the dim sums at CAD 3.80 for each serving. That’s why so many people go there before 11am. Not recommend the steamed vermicelli rolls

The fam jam was also in town so obviously, we needed to go for dim sum. Ju recommended Crown Princess (her other rec was Rol Son, which we went to last time) and seeing as I’d never been here before, it was perfect. We came Saturday morning around 10:00am and we’re able to grab a seat no problem. This place has to be one of the fanciest dim sum places I’ve ate at. Fine dining suits CP’s name perfectly.

Hours are good. Every day of the week from 10:00am to 11:00pm. 

Look at that entrance. You feel like royalty walking through that door. It gets even better inside. Plush, comfy, velvety pink seats, marble flooring and chandeliers. You’re clearly paying for the upscale atmosphere but it’s not too pretentious. I don’t normally like fancy places but I liked it here. 

Dim sum menu is huge. It looks exactly like the one at T. Pot in Calgary. Same font, style and colour. Interesting. There was also a Chef’s special recommendation list. 

- 4x Tea ($1.60 each) - $6.40 for all four of us is some pricey dim sum tea but I will give them props, it was good tea. Plus look how fancy their tea pots are. Fine China game on point. 

- Har gow (#2) ($5.80) - can’t ever go to dim sum without ordering the har gow. Good ratio of shrimp to skin. 

- Goose liver & caviar siu mai (#3) ($6.80) - caviar! On siu mai! Can you get any fancier than that? Priciest siu mai’s I’ve ever had but I liked the caviar sprinkled on top. 

- Sticky rice with chicken meat wrap in lotus leaf (#7) ($5.80) - pretty standard lo mai gai but it’s satisfying if you want a rice dish. 

- BBQ pork bun (#18) ($3.80) - we were too stuffed to eat this at the table but saved them for the road trip. Fluffy bun and the cha sui inside was tasty. 

- Fried octopus tentacle (#24) ($6.80) - the octopus tentacles were bomb. One of my favourite dishes. Perfectly fried, light while still having a bit of chew to the texture. Could have ate a whole dish to myself. 

- Pan fried turnip cake with pork meat (#29) ($4.80) - the lo bak go was pretty standard. Didn’t love it, didn’t hate it. Needed to be more crispy. 

- Crispy taro & mushroom dumpling (#31) ($4.80) - wu gok was pretty decent. Crispy, not greasy. 

- Baked BBQ pork puff pastry (#33) ($5.80) - BBQ pork anything is good in my books. These were satisfyingly good. Slightly sweeter than the cha sui bao. 

- Rice noodle wrapped with pork & shrimp (#39) ($6.80) - these were AMAZING. I’ve never had these type of rice noodle rolls before. Absolute heaven. Order this for sure! That crunch inside the rice roll is like you’re eating a hybrid spring and rice roll, all wrapped into one delicious bite. 

- Pumpkin congee with lily & corn (#43) ($5.80) - another first trying pumpkin congee. The flavour is pretty subtle to begin with but it actually grew on me after having another bowl. I’d try it if you like jook and want to try something a little different. 

We had a couple boxes of leftovers to eat later on in the afternoon. Overall, the dim sum was good. More pricey than your normal outing but hey, sometimes you gotta treat yo’ self.

I came here for Mother's Day dim sum.  There were only two slots available for reservation, 10am or 2pm.  We chose the 10am time slot.  The inside is furnished nicely with golden table clothes and seat covers.  Wall to wall carpet with slabs of marble murals up on the wall.  The chandeliers were hung like vines in the jungle on top of the ceiling.  It was a very comfortable setting for a little over 2 hours of dim sum.  We ordered the steamed tripe, roast duck dumpling, black bean pork ribs, turnip cake, fried taro pastry, and Baked Salty Egg Yolk Paste Bun.  The waitress dressed in a french maid outfit warned us that the Baked Salty Egg Yolk Paste Bun would take longer and told us to to complain later if it takes a long time.  It was a preemptive hush on the future complaint.  The food was freshly prepared and delicious.  I would have given them a higher rating if they paid more to details.  My table cloth was slightly stained when I sat down and the washroom in general could have been in better conditions.  The garbage bin was a bit of a joke in the men's washroom as it was tiny.  Naturally, it was overfilled when I tried to throw out a used towel.  Common sense!

The décor (Baroque?) is quite jarring – and it may play a role in actually distracting you from the food. Having said that, I did find the dim sum to be quite good here, but then again I may have been distracted by the maid outfits and chandeliers. Portions were good, and items like the char siu bao and law bock gow were not doughy like at other places in Toronto – (this is how I usually judge my dim sum).

The only negatives would be that there isn’t a wide selection of dishes, and that the waitress asked me to check my bill after I said I wanted to keep it. Why didn’t you ask me to check before I paid?

Excellent Dim Sum... High Quality.... I've had a lot of dim sum and this is the absolute best.

This is definitely one of the best dim sum restaurants I've been to. Very classy looking place too.

Chichi dim sum. This is definitely a different dim summing experience! The food and service were both good, but it's the venue that really stands out. Marble on the walls and pillars in the dining room - the tea comes in beautiful pots...it's vaguely like eating dim sum with the queen. All together, a tasty and fun experience. Pricey for dim sum, though! It may not become your ultimate, "I must go there again!!" dim sum location, but the originality is worth a visit - be sure to check out the bathrooms while you're there!

Stunning interior of chandeliers, marble, and granite. Anyone not in slacks and button-down might feel underdressed. Dim sum was fantastic. Creative new items raise the bar for quality in a way not often seen beyond Shanghai and Hong Kong. Can't wait to come back. Typical service for a dim sum restaurant, 1950s style formalwear attire aside. Crown Princess is trying very hard and it's working.

I tried their Peking Duck and Spicy Garlic Lobster and they were quite delicious and well done. The minor note I have to make for the Peking duck is with the condiments for the wrap that they provided; as you can see, they decided to be fancy and wrap a chili slice around a stalk of green onion. What's the problem with that you ask? Simply put, the green onion portion is far too big for the wrap and the chili is cut a bit too thick to be used. Traditionally, green onion is thinly sliced and you'd only need a few slivers to give enough onion flavour to the duck.

I found myself at the entrance of this place, I didn't know what to expect on my way here. It's so fancy from the outside, much different from any Yum Cha I've ever been to.  Looking like the place of a fancy wedding reception with a nice view all around. The restaurant was filled with businessmen,   Sheets ticked and ordered off, not like the ordinary food on the trolleys circulating around the place.  Glutinous Rice with Sugar aside Unique teapots, teacups, saucers and utensil holders to match the place.  (L>R) Scallop & Shrimp Dumping Mini BBQ Pork Buns Shrimp & Vegetable Steamed Rice Noodle Roll Baked Eel Puff Pastry  and of course, a Yum Cha visit isn't fulfilled without a filling of  Hargow All of these dishes tasted how they

I enjoyed the inventive and modern dim sum at Crown Princess, especially their desserts.

Blown away by the elegance and charm, I had forgotten how differently this restaurant looked before it became Crown Princess (formerly The Fifth Element). They had their grand o

Crown Princess served up excellent Chinese food in beautiful surroundings. It lived up to our expectations of food as good and possibly better than the San Francisco Bay Area.

In my opinion, unlike uptown Markham or Richmond Hill, where you will find a lot more average priced, middle-ranged Chinese dim sum restaurants, there are only two types in downtown Toronto, which are basically the two extremes: the cheap and the pricey. The cheap, semi sketchy-looking, hole-in-the wall dim sum joints offer traditional dim sum plates at bargain prices, and are typically located in Chinatown (or the general vicinity of Spadina and Dundas). The other type, the pricey, extravagant "fine dining" Chinese restaurants have fancy dim sum during the day and multi-course dinners at night (and often doubles as wedding banquet reception halls on weekends). These high-end restaurants often have over-the-top decor and aside from traditional dim sum, they also offer new creations and sometimes creative takes on traditional ones. They are also generally very keen on presentation and service.
There are chandeliers on both the ceiling and the walls, where you will also find large fancy-looking paintings. The crown moldings, pillars, and the granite / marble bar completes the entire elegant ambiance that Crown Princess is striving for.

Highlights for me were: 

 - Baked eel puff pastry: It's not often that I see eel in dim sum so I quite like this, particularly the sweetness of the eel paired with the fluffy, flaky pastry.

- Jumbo shrimp w/ mayonnaise: Served hot, shrimps w/ mayonnaise neatly encased and wrapped in a very thin, crispy shell. Leave your chopsticks and eat it with your hands.

- Beef balls w/ preserved orange peel: I've never been a fan of beef balls but these were fantastic. They were ultra soft, tender and juicy.

- Baked salty egg yolk paste bun: The bun was light as air and it was filled with a sweet and runny egg yolk paste. I could have had all three.

- Baked lotus paste w/ tapioca: The best and most memorable dim sum dish. You know it's fresh when it takes the kitchen 20 minutes to make it. Really cool presentation too and the medley of lotus paste and tapioca was so deliciously thick; it's like nothing I've ever had before.

The chicken feet, shrimp dumplings, and the fried sticky chicken dumplings were good. However, the BBQ pork buns, the mashed potato & pumpkin spring rolls, and the steamed shrimp & vegetable rice noodle roll were truly disappointing. I'm pretty sure those BBQ pork buns are the smallest BBQ pork buns I've ever had in my entire life. The spring rolls were bland and boring, and the steamed rice rolls? Well, a thumbs-up for the generous amount of soya sauce they had in that porcelain flask, but two thumbs-down for the super thick rice noodle wrap.

I also have to mention that the service was odd at Crown Princess. First of all, I made reservations last Sunday for 12:30PM but we still had to wait 20-25 minutes for a table. I actually overheard someone beside me, who was also waiting, said out loud "so what's the point of making reservations when we still have to wait so long?". Good question, pal. My thinking is:

If you made a reservation, you will wait for 20-25 minutes.

If you did not make a reservation, you will wait for 40-45 minutes.

Your pick.

Secondly, several food runners at Crown Princess only spoke / understand Mandarin; they did not understand Cantonese or English. For example, the beef balls, which normally comes with Worcestershire sauce for dipping, didn't come with any, so I waved down a random food runner (which, by the way, is completely normal at a Chinese restaurant). My parents and I tried asking him for the sauce, in both Cantonese and English, but he stood there completely clueless! We had to resort to hand gestures. Next, another food runner had no idea what we wanted when we asked, in both Cantonese and English, for a second order sheet for dessert. This particular runner actually just walked away. As in, he didn't even try asking someone else to help us afterwards, he simply just WALKED OFF as if our conversation (if you can even call it that) never existed. How rude. But in all honesty, we just found the whole ordeal really amusing, and given Crown Princess' location and clientele, extremely weird. Management really needs to get on it and fix that.

Other than the less than stellar service, I still really enjoyed the dim sum at Crown Princess, particularly their new creations and thoughtful desserts.

Crown Princess 伯爵名宴 is considered a high end Chinese dim sum restaurant in the downtown area. What differentiates this dim sum restaurant from its competitors in Chinatown or uptown are their waitresses who wear French maid costumes and a whole array of fancy European decoration and cutlery. Perhaps that’s the reason for the above-market average prices. My favourite dish would undoubtedly be Maggie Ribs - a must try!