Best Chinese Fine Dining: Kirin

At wily veteran Kirin (Gold) Cantonese home cooking is elevated with top-notch ingredients, preparation and presentation. Our specialist panel gave high marks to dishes of braised pea tips with preserved eggs served in a sweet clean broth, and the vegetarian hot pot—an incredible cacophony of textures and flavours brought forward with mushrooms, fungus and bamboo piths and bound with a rich fermented tofu sauce. As with Kirin, Sun Sui Wah, the Silver winner, boasts consistently excellent service with a staff that slide easily between Chinese and English. Inconsistency between the quality of dishes at Sun Sui Wah’s two locations knocked it from the top of the category this year, but our judges still took note of several standouts: perfectly scrambled eggs made luxurious with fish maw, fresh Dungeness crab and shreds of sweet dried scallops, Chinkiang vinegar-braised pork ribs that balance balsamic sour with sweet meatiness. The menu at Sea Harbour (Bronze) is the most innovative among serious Cantonese restaurants—when a dish works it is sublime. Preserved meats with gai lan elevate a kitchen staple, as does chayote squash stir-fried with minced pork and preserved Chinese olives. At Gingeri, in Richmond’s Lansdowne Centre, find an emphasis on natural clean sweetness, best seen in “Eight Treasure” braised duck and Dungeness crab with sticky rice. Our judges loved the dessert offerings, especially baked tapioca pudding with taro root. Victoria (Honourable Mention) focusses on homestyle dishes—our judges loved the oxtail hot pot, comforting and simple in its beefy savouriness, and pork cheeks stir-fried with XO sauce, a spicy and sprightly dish.

BACK TO RESTAURANT AWARDS