Restaurant Review: Canton House

Awhile back you may recall I was interested in getting a group together to go try one new and interesting restaurant a month. The response was fantastic, and despite my delays in actually organizing anything, last night we finally had our first dinner. Since I was picking the first restaurant on my own, I wanted something that would be accessible but still a little risky and I decided that we should try one of the many dim sum restaurants on Buford Hwy. While I originally tried to schedule it for a Sunday, we quickly discovered that day was no good for practically anyone. Once we moved the dinner to a weeknight we settled on Canton House almost by default as it was the only local restaurant that I found offered dim sum on weeknights.

Do not be fooled, for Canton House does not REALLY offer dim sum on weeknights. Oh, sure, they have one steam cart and one fried cart. But as we discovered when attempting to order a few dim sum dishes and a few entrees, the selection is drastically limited. (If I recall correctly, there were 4 or 5 options in the steam cart, and 3 in the fried cart.) We had some shrimp dumplings, siu mai, taro cakes, and sesame balls...and then we moved on to ordering entrees off the main menu. The dim sum portion of the evening was tasty but disappointingly limited.

Thankfully, the entrees at Canton House are very tasty. I ordered comibination pan fried noodles, which had a ton of fresh seafood and vegetables on cantonese noodles topped with a garlic sauce. It was very good and exactly what I was expecting. I also sampled other peoples' dishes, including spicy garlic pork (good), salt and pepper squid (very good), mongolian beef (excellent) and pan fried green beans (something I had wanted to order, but was disappointed by when it arrived. The sauce was a little too glutinous.) After eating more than I should have, I went home thinking I certainly would be happy to eat there again, despite the lack of real dim sum options on a weeknight.

The ambience and service were a little lacking, mainly because the back of the restaurant suddenly filled with several large tables with screaming children. The wait staff seemed geared towards these tables primarily and it sometimes felt like we had to wave our waitress over to our table. If I were using a star system of rating, I'd deduct half a star for the service and ambience issues.

Overall, I liked Canton House and greatly enjoyed the company. I can't wait until next month's dinner. Now if only we could figure out where to try next...