Markham Archives - Global Toronto Eats

Macanese cafe with solid cooking

Macau is a minor oddity of China. It was a Portuguese colony for over 400 years and was only reunified with China in 1999. As such, there are some influences from Portugal and its other colonies, but the feel is unmistakably Southern Chinese.

The most famous specialty is pastéis de nata (egg tarts). As for the next most famous dish, it’s likely unknown to the rest of the world. My vote goes to galinha à Africana (African chicken): roasted and covered with a piri piri and peanut butter sauce. It’s not actually African but an amalgamation of Central and Southern African ingredients.

Woodstone Eatery is one of the few Macanese restaurants in the Toronto region. It feels like a Hong Kong cha chan teng (茶餐廳; Westernized Chinese cafe) with Macanese items. Still, it’s a splendid choice with good cooking and down-to-earth prices.

Exterior of Woodstone Eatery — Woodstone Eatery

Discover the starchy delights of spätzle, knedlíky, halušky, and nokedli in Toronto (and finding the best)

The iconic Central European food is undoubtedly the schnitzel, a thin, breaded slab of meat. It’s filling and easy to make, which explains its popularity outside the region. Witness cotoletta (Italy) and milanesa (Argentina and Brazil).

But we are not here to talk about something that is famous enough already. Today, we go on a tour of the second-most iconic food of Central Europe: dumplings. These are the underappreciated workhorses that give the cuisine a reputation for being heavy and starchy. Not to be confused with Asian dumplings, these dumplings are bite-sized lumps of flour, potato, or egg. They are also universally bland, so the skill comes in the texture and shape.

Toronto is blessed to have full representation of the dumplings of Central Europe: Germany/Austria/Switzerland, Czechia, Slovakia, and Hungary. (I left out Poland because their most famous dumpling, pierogi, is too divergent from the others. But if you are interested in Polish kopytka, Café Polonez is a good bet.)

One can easily go on a taste test around the city and debate which is the better variant. And that is exactly what I did.

Continue reading “The Central European dumplings of Toronto”