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Very Fair Chinese Restaurant
Category: Restaurants Chinese Dim Sum Dim Sum [Edit]
4002 Sheppard Ave EScarborough, ON M1S 4R5
Neighbourhood: Scarborough
(416) 332-1861
- Price Range:
-
$$
- Accepts Credit Cards:
- Yes
- Attire:
- Casual
- Good for Groups:
- Yes
- Good for Kids:
- Yes
- Takes Reservations:
- Yes
- Waiter Service:
- Yes
- Outdoor Seating:
- No
- Good For:
- Brunch
- Wheelchair Accessible:
- Yes
11 reviews for Very Fair Chinese Restaurant
11 reviews in English
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Review from Jen C.
10/24/2011 5 Check-ins Here
With its trappings of red and gold Chinoise decor, Very Fair is a classic restaurant from my childhood - and the well-worn look of the carpets and walls attest to the fact that little has been done to the room since that era. Located in the basement of a strip mall, they certainly don't win points on atmosphere.
They do win plenty of points, however, for the quality of their food and the low cost of their dishes.
Last night, my family ordered the Maggi lobster and wow, was it especially good. Great wok-hay, lovely fried tamale, and lots and lots of tender meat, from one giant lobster.
Also popular is the Peking duck dish - as is evidenced by the numerous lacquered fowl passing us by and the one we had on the table. The wrap was a little chewy, so this can't rank among the best. Cheap and acceptable though.
My family has come here on many occasions, and I always leave stuffed and my parents always leave happy that it didn't cost them a lot of money for good quality dishes. One of the few restaurants that this ever happens at! -
Review from Archimedes T.
Toronto, ON
Updated - 5/26/2012 7 Check-ins Here
Haven't been here for a while. Food is still good but the service today was severely worse than normal. They don't really have good English speakers I understand that but it was no excuse for the following:
Offering us a dish and poorly translating it for us so we thought we were getting something else and telling us that we cannot change it because it was already cooked.
Providing us not so warm food and only changing the ones that have not been touched, ideally they should just provide us a new freshly made set rather than something reheated and replace the whole set rather than just the ones that are untouched. What is worse is that it was the manager that did this which leads me to believe I shouldn't come here anymore.
Too bad though. The food is still good. If only they had the service of Hai Shanghai, because the food at Hai Shanghai isn't as good, but their service is better.Listed in: Places for Seafood and Tofu…
2 Previous Reviews: Show all »
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9/5/2010
Crab balls great. More expensive $3.50 for two balls. Had a whole swag of this. If you want this,… Read more »
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Review from Wendy C.
3/14/2011
Let's get this out first -- this is a dumpy looking place in the basement of a building in a strip mall with poorly designed driving/parking route. Hey, for people who are familiar with "traditional" China Towns in NYC, Boston, SF, or even Toronto/Vancouver/Calgary before recent waves of immigrants and what their taste buds and money brought to our food scene, this place is not that much worse.
Very Fair Restaurant has good-tasting food, quality and fresh ingredients, and very fair prices.
Giant lobsters (5 lbs or more) stir fried with "Maggi Sauce" seasoning is the STAR dish for us, can't resist ordering it every time we go. The lobster meat is so juicy and sweet, its natural flavour accentuated but not overpowered by a light touch of maggi sauce. Who wants to have frozen lobster tails after that?! -- Very fair price, too. If you order a minimum of $25 of something else, the lobster costs only $9.99 per pound.
There are other good dishes, too. Of course, fair-priced. Set dinner comes with free soup (Cantonese style homemade soup that takes hours and hours to make) and free dessert. My US friends chuckle that they actually give you real desserts not just fortune cookies or a piece of orange. -
Review from Rana L.
10/28/2010 2 photos
2.5 -3 Have had dinner here a few times and it's ok. I can honestly say... this place only makes an effort if ur a regular. Especially if they know u will bring in ppl...
Before they renovated i was disgusted w/ the washroom as there were literally streak marks on the bathroom floor. Yes how the hell did it get there? How can you miss? I have absolutely no clue. Anyhow...
really enjoyed the fried rice last night, soup was tasty (water fish), lobster was good and abalone was tender. No complaints. Service was prompt & they were polite.
There are def. way better Chinese restaurants out there. This place is supposedly very frugal if you want dim sum but my mom refuses to go here...hmmmListed in: Asian Eats Reviews
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Review from Elaine K.
12/15/2010 3 photos
From the ages of roughly 0-13, my family went here for dim sum every Saturday. Back then, I loved the dim sum and not much has changed.
We haven't been back here for the past few years because, to quote my dad "Your grandma doesn't like the stairs, and the elevator takes 15 MINUTES!!!"
Things that have stayed the same:
- Great food
- Food comes out in carts
- Live seafood by the hostess stand
- Chinese restaurant bathrooms
Things that have changed:
- Free WIFI?!?!
- You order from a menu (some food is still on carts)
The whole place was basically a big helping of nostalgia for me, with a side of delicious dim sum.
Note: carpool or take the ttc if you can, parking is notoriously brutal here. -
Review from Vivian W.
10/11/2011
Excellent seafood. Everything was really fresh and tasty, and these weren't your standard preparations. Huge steamed shrimp, gooey duck carpaccio on ice, gooey duck in broth with tofu goji and spinach (tastes like oyster), 5 lb lobster, spinach with liver, spinach and celery dish with pork neck, etc. Would love to come back.
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Review from Erwin M.
Ajax, ON
11/20/2011 1 Check-in Here
Good dim sum for the price. Nothing special. Just your run of the mill dim sum. Warning: if you come after 10 am on a weekend, expect to wait a bit. It can get pretty packed. The language barrier is pretty evident too. Service is hit and miss. There's this one server who's the biggest snob if you can't speak Chinese. Other than that, it's average.
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Review from caitlin p.
Markham, ON
10/23/2011
very good deal for lobster. especially if you order 2nd course of lobster roe fried rice. The shark fin special is also a great deal. Lots of fin for everyone for $40. Also like that the soup comes very very hot.
All the set dinners are great value. Whether the dinner for 6 or the dinner for 10.
Like that they give you the fragrant flower jelly for dessert.
Overall, good food and great value. But service can be poor when busy. -
Review from Katrina L.
Richmond Hill, ON
11/10/2009
Dump in the ground! Literally. This restaurant is located in the basement of a multi level "L" shaped plaza. It's probably the worst designed place for a car to enter, coupled with the uselessness of Asian drivers. Tightest lanes to get through with parked cars on either which are always occupied because half of them are wheel chair spots and no one (actually in a wheelchair) occupies them. But fret not there is also a poorly designed parking structure to park in, with even more narrow lanes to pass and random one way signs that mean nothing.
Entering this plaza, you feel grimy, it's a really old building that has not been renovated. When going down the stairs to the entrance of the restaurant, you are greeted with a carpeted staircase, yes the same carpet that I remember when I was just a wee lad and this location housed a different restaurant. THE SAME CARPET! I'm not even going to mention the death trap going down the stairs and the poor wheelchaired old folk that won't be able to attend your dinner party. To the left of the staircase between the stairs and the glass wall there's a useless aquarium with fake frogs in it and stones.
Getting into the heart of the restaurant is no better. The same stairwell carpet lines the entire restaurant. At least the chairs are new. I don't get how people can eat in a basement, there's no light and the ceiling is low, not exactly the atmosphere I prefer.
Now to the good stuff, the food. Pretty standard, nothing spectacular but I must say that the chef's specialty is the sweet and sour pork. YUM. It's actually really good. The crispiness is perfect and the sauce is not neon orange. This dish was by far on the must eat list and it was so good we ended up ordering 2 of them.
All the other food was good, better than what you would find in a Chinatown basement restaurant. But I do have very high standard for Chinese food as I have an in-house chef who's cooking is superior to any. Realistically the food at this establishment should be more of a 3/5 than a 2 but just the atmosphere, the location and the parking nightmare is enough to scare me off, and let's not forget the potential for more rodents in the basement!Listed in: Asian Sensation
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Review from Joyees Y.
Scarborough, ON
12/21/2009
Very Fair is very poor.
It is the below standard Chinese food that gave this great cuisine it's bad reputation. I've had really good Chinese food and this, is jar a very very poor imitation.
First of all the decor is terrible but given it's a standard Chinese restaurant you pretty much throw decor and atmosphere out of the window. But this place is below average mainly due to the creepy staircase you have to walk down.
We had the set dinner and right off the bat I dislike how they present it. Maybe I'm too used to western food (although I have been to quite a few Chinese places that did this too) but they presented it out of order and they brought the food regardless we were done the last course or not. Now sometimes that's a good thing so you don't have to wait for others to finish or something but this place just kept bringing the dishes regardless whether there's even space left! And then they just expect US to move things out of the way.
Anyways on to the food: first was the appetizer platter. Jellyfish tentacles, barbecue pork, soy sauce chicken, and preserved meat. This was...adequate. It tasted like it was supposed to I guess. Then there was the soup, crab with fish stomach. One note and plain, really boring, I could not finish it.
Then the Peking duck, I freaking LOVE Peking duck, in any shape or form. But this fell below expectations. The duck seemed to have been a runt, it was the size or a chicken and not nearly as plump. The skin was not crispy NOT crispy at all!!! There was slot of meat clinging after they done cutting it. It was not cooked properly. For some reason we had to pay extra for a second course of the duck, they're supposed to come with the skin. Anyways we had the lettuce wrap duck meat thing and it was...not good, just did not taste like it was supposed to.
We also have steamed fish that was devoid of any flavor. It did not even taste like fish. There was also a scallop and fish dish. It was supposed to be "sauté" but it was not browned and covered in a sauce...like water thickened with corn starch it was tasteless. There was also deep fried shrimp and small fish. This was comparatively better, some flavor but too oily. The last seafood course was the lobster, it was horrible. Covered in some goopy, salt sauce that covered up what lobster flavour it should've had. Also they wag thy cut it in pieces made it hard to eat.
The chicken suffered the same fate as most of the other dishes, it had no flavor. What a waste of free rage chicken. It was plain and the texture was too soggy.
I didn't have the fried rice but it looked bad and I didn't have the pork either but I hate sweet pork. It was a bit spicy and my boyfriend said it was "good".
Finally we had the dessert. The sweet tofu in sweetened water. They expected us to share half a bowl of syrup amongst five bowls of tofu. The syrup tasted like syrup? Just white sugar and water and the tou was bit too firm for my liking. They ran out so the other people had this lychee and something under the sea (sorry not well knowledged with English translation regarding Chinese ingredients but in cantonese it sounds like "snow ear") that was better, more flavors than just sweet.
So that was a but tl;dr so here's the short version: just don't. Run away RUN AWAY!!!!!! -
Review from Mike C.
Brampton, ON
2/18/2010 2 Check-ins Here
Came here for Chinese New Year dinner. Fortunately I didn't experience quite as disastrous experience as the other reviewers (but can definitely agree on majority of their points), the service was excellent, the food came out fast and the duck was actually pretty good. But ... there are better chinese restaurants out there!
