Xam Yu
339 Spadina Avenue
416-340-8603
Dinner for two, with all taxes, tip and beer: $70

I have just spent the better part of Sunday morning with a friend as he test-drives his dream luxury car at a showroom in Whitby. What am I doing here? It’s hot. I can’t even afford a Vespa. And I’m in Whitby. I envision myself at the seaside with a large, grilled crab and a cold beer. All of a sudden, I’m very hungry, but I know that my shallow pockets will not support my shellfish cravings.

Enter Xam Yu, giving succour to those with expensive tastes and miniscule wallets. My friend knows it well, so he takes me there as a reward for my extreme patience. Located at the northeast corner of Spadina Avenue and Baldwin Street, this gem of a restaurant is already highly respected, as it turns out from the reviews posted inside their doors. Yet, very few of my friends have actually heard of it. Amidst the glut of Chinese restaurants on Spadina, it would be easy to overlook this understated place, but what a mistake that would be.

To start, my friend orders seafood watercress soup ($8.95) from our friendly, knowledgeable host, and asks that the mixed seafood be replaced by shrimp only. We sip tea and Tsing Tao while we wait. At the far end, fish swim in a large tank behind the cashier’s desk, and lobsters await their ends desultorily. Five minutes later, the soup is at our table and the rest of the order is placed.

The soup is a hot, lightly salted chicken broth flavoured by slivers of fresh ginger that turn out to be an excellent palate cleanser between bites of steamed shrimp balls (like siu mai filling), crunchy, steamed watercress, and fresh steamed tofu. It’s a great appetite tamer too. You see, when one has eyes that are bigger than one’s stomach, it’s important to rebalance the appetite to prevent oneself from the heave-ho sick feeling that comes from over-indulgent gorging.

While we are working through the soup, our fried shrimp with “special sauce” ($8.95) arrives. It’s a beaut. Ten large tiger shrimp bigger than my palm, fresh, unshelled and lightly batter-fried, then sautéed with chopped garlic, salt, pepper, and spring onions. The coarse salt works once the shrimp is unshelled — hard work, but what a pay-off. The blandness of the shrimp is cut by the salt, then the garlic, and finally the crisp onion.

Then begins the carnage. I got to choose this dish, and it was special. A large, whole Vancouver crab steamed in a lotus leaf, and served in a closed basket ($31.95). We open the basket and unwrap the massive green leaf it is blanketed under. A large orange shell with claws folded around it nestles in a bed of fried rice filled with fish, shrimp, egg, and squid. There are no words. We silently fall to breaking open this majestic creature’s shell with both hands. The meat is sugar-sweet, and I’ve eaten enough seafood in my lifetime to know it’s fresh. An hour later, we have worked our way through an entire crab. The dish was enough for four, but the two of us did just as good a job on it.

The bill comes to the table. My level of satisfaction (10/10) is now doubled. The fried rice is more than we can handle, so we pack it to go. I get to take it home with me and eat it for two days after. And one may argue this, but I truly believe that nothing comes close to comfort food like day-old Chinese fried rice.

There’s plenty of other seafood worth trying. (I had to go back.) Snails in shells with black bean sauce ($7.95) that you eat with a toothpick, deep fried squid with spiced salt and pepper ($8.95), and their second piece de resistance — two entire scrumptious lobsters chopped up and stir-fried with their shell in fresh ginger and spring onion — for the whopping low price of $29.95. The menu features oyster, mussels, grouper, black snapper, striped bass, large mouth bass, pickerel, flounder, eel, and turbot. It also has an extensive vegetarian section, and the de rigeur chicken, pork, and duck.