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Calypso Gardens
Categories: Restaurants Caribbean Restaurants Chinese Caribbean, Chinese [Edit]
83 Kennedy Rd SUnit 29
Brampton, ON L6W 3P3
(905) 454-4477
- Hours:
Tue-Thu 11 am - 9 pm
Fri-Sun 11 am - 10 pm
- Attire:
- Casual
- Accepts Credit Cards:
- Yes
- Price Range:
-
$
- Good for Groups:
- No
- Good for Kids:
- Yes
- Takes Reservations:
- No
- Delivery:
- No
- Take Away:
- Yes
- Waiter Service:
- Yes
- Outdoor Seating:
- No
- Alcohol:
- No
One review for Calypso Gardens
1 review in English
-
Review from Janelle W.
10/2/2009 4 photos
I was the kid you hated in university. The kid who sat in the front row at lectures, took pristine notes, went to office hours, and beat the living hell out of the curve on the exams. But there was one class--fluid mechanics--that turned the tables on me, and mercilessly beat my GPA into oblivion. Despite my front-row seat, my flawless note-taking, and making myself a permanent fixture at office hours, I left every lecture even more confused than before.
When confronted with a new cuisine, I approach it the same way I did my college curriculum--study the literature, learn from examples (or *samples*, in the case of food), and eat my way into understanding. Caribbean Chinese food, though, is like fluid mechanics. It puzzles me, and after trying the cuisine for the first time at Calypso Gardens, I'm even more confused than before.
Caribbean Chinese restaurants are a dime a dozen throughout Toronto's suburbs, often called "West Indian Chinese". Calypso Gardens was the Caribbean Chinese restaurant I chose, as it was one of the few of them I found open on a Sunday morning.
Calypso Gardens' menu features "Caribbean-style" fried rices, chow meins, and lo meins, each with a long list of possible proteins--beef, barbecue pork, chicken, shrimp, prawns, Chinese sausage, or Cantonese beef, pork, or chicken. There are chop sueys, won ton soups, "special" dishes like ginger chicken and beef broccoli, sweet & sour prawns, and barbecue duck. Sounds like a typical Americanized Chinese takeout. And after sampling a fried rice and a lo mein, it still wasn't clear to me how these dishes were different than regular Chinese food... the only exception being "chicken in the rough", which I recognized as a uniquely Caribbean Chinese dish.
It's not that I was expecting pineapple in everything, or piña colada won tons, or a little tiki to pop out from my pile of noodles... like many of my fellow Detroiters would so ignorantly expect. But it seemed like the differences between Caribbean Chinese and mainland Chinese were subtle. Thinner sauces, made with less oil, less hoisin; flavors based on Caribbean dry spices; simpler noodles, without the distracting baby corn. Or, maybe I still don't understand Caribbean Chinese food.
But what I *DO* understand is that Calypso Gardens' chicken lo mein, with its hefty chunks of juicy, tender, barbecued chicken, has been in my dreams every night since Sunday. I wake up with a pillow soaked in drool and a terrible craving for that sweet but savory chicken skin, ever so slightly crisp; the soft white meat so rich in flavor that it melts on your tongue; the lightly-seasoned lo mein noodles, al dente; and the intensely tart, fruity, fiery habañero sauce that I drizzled generously over the noodles.
Lo mein will never be the same again!
Maybe that's it... Maybe I just figured out Caribbean Chinese food... The Caribbean is so magical that it ruins you on the rest of the world--nowhere else you'll ever visit will compare. So maybe that's what the Caribbean brings to Chinese food--flavors so magically spectacular that you'll never be able to enjoy regular Chinese food ever again.
*** Cash or Canadian Debit Only ***
