The final verdict is that Canton House is a fun experience with many tasty dishes. However, not every dish is tasty. Some are delicious and some are just mediocre. I can't promise that you will have the culinary experience of a lifetime, but Canton House's dim sum is good enough and fun enough to make it worth your while. Canton House would be an especially fun place to go with a group and share the many dishes.
The first cart to roll by was the soup cart. We tried a cup of pork and rice soup. The soup was rich and comforting with nice bits of pork throughout, but ultimately it was only mediocre. However, a bite of the soup with one of the croutons was quite good. The croutons had a delicious fried, oniony, crispy taste and texture that paired well with the creaminess and meatiness of the soup.
Another dish was mushroom caps with shrimp stuffing. The mushroom cap itself was tasty. It had a meaty texture with a deep earthy taste. The shrimp stuffing was not as good. This criticism will come up again in my review of other dishes. The shrimp stuffing was a little rubbery brick of meat. There was a faint shrimp taste to it but it was otherwise impossible to distinguish from any other type of meat. It was not horrible but it was slightly questionable. I would eat it again but it wouldn't be my first choice nor do I think I will find myself daydreaming about it.
While on that note, we also had coconut shrimp balls that had the same rubbery ball of meat with slight shrimp taste inside. The balls were also entirely devoid of any coconut taste. They were served with a sweet, syrupy sauce that was tasty with the fried ball. Overall, I would not recommend the coconut shrimp balls. They were too basic when the restaurant has so many other options.
We also had an order of egg rolls. As far as eggrolls go they were pretty good. I would hope that an authentic Chinese restaurant would have good eggrolls. Nothing out of the ordinary to write about the eggrolls though. (I took a bite out of the eggroll before I remembered to photograph it.)
We also tried two different types of buns. One was filled with pork and the other with vegetables. The vegetables inside included cabbage and mushrooms. The buns are literally a bread around the filling. The bread has a slightly sweet but otherwise unremarkable taste. The bread is slightly doughy and chewy. Both buns were fairly tasty. However, the proportion of bread to stuffing placed them lower on my list of dim sum dishes. With the addition of hot sauce and soy sauce the buns were better but still did not rise to the level of amazing.
The hot sauce that I wrote of adding to the buns was one of the best parts of the whole meals. It appeared to be a simply combination of ground or diced chilies and oil. It had a nice combination of heat, fruitiness, and salt. It was spicy but not burn your mouth spicy.
We also had two different types of dumplings. The first were scallop dumplings. The dumpling wrapper was a little bland but this was improved by the addition of the hot sauce and soy sauce. The filling was like the shrimp filling but with a slight scallop taste instead of a shrimp taste. The scallop dumplings are not highly recommended.
The second dumplings we tried were the pork and taro dumplings. Taro is a root and is starchy with a sweet, nutty flavor. It paired well with the saltiness, meatiness, and chewiness of the pork. The spice of the pork tasted almost like a sausage. Unlike the scallop dumplings, these dumplings were delicious. They were a juicy explosion of flavors. I highly recommend them.
Another dish was the pork rolls. I don't know how to categorize them except as rolls. They were similar to the buns, but the buns had a doughy quality whereas the rolls were light, fluffy bread. The best way to understand the rolls is to imagine a croissant stuffed with salty, spicy pork. The bread has a sweet taste with a little bit of onion due to the green onions on top and the pork contrasts against the sweet bread with a salty, umami taste. My only complaint about the rolls would be that they were dry. The bread was a little dry and the pork was even drier. While I would prefer a little more moistness, I would still recommend the rolls.
Another dish was the tofu skin around shrimp stuffing. The shrimp stuffing was the same odd rubbery stuffing. The tofu skin wrapper was tasty. You wouldn't know that it was tofu if you weren't told. The skin was light with a sweet taste and a sweet sauce. Overall, despite the rubbery stuffing, the tofu skins around shrimp were good.
Last but not least for the savory dishes was the chicken feet. Yes, chicken feet. The whole trip was worth it just for this experience. The manager was walking around checking to make sure all of the customers were satisfied. He stopped at our table and asked if I liked the chicken feet. When I reported back that I did, he was quite surprised. He said that usually only "orientals" like the chicken feet.
Chicken feet are a unique dish. There is very little muscle in a chicken's foot. It is mostly skin, tendons, and cartilage. The composition of the foot gives it a unique gelatinous texture. The feet are prepared by frying, boiling, and then coating in a sweet, tangy sauce. The preparation technique results in a fluffy layer of meat around the little bones. The feet have to be eaten with one's hands. As you try to pull the meat off the bones the bones come apart and you have to separate the bones and meat in your mouth. It is a quite messy dish to eat. The taste is a chicken taste but slightly more gamey; it tastes more like the dark meat of the chicken rather than the white meat. (In other words, it actually has some taste. I have never understood why people prefer the white meat of a chicken over the dark meat. The white meat literally almost has no taste.) The feet are also quite oily which could be from the sauce or the meat. The sauce is both sweet and salty. While the texture is quite unique, I enjoyed both the texture and taste of the feet. However, I would recommend chicken feet for only the most adventurous of eaters.
Finally, we tried two desserts. While I go for unusual, savory foods, my wife has a sweet tooth. She ordered the chocolate mousse and the mango pudding. She enjoyed the chocolate mousse. It was good, but it was just chocolate mousse prepared out of a box with whipped cream that was purchased rather than made in-house. The mango pudding was very odd. It was a creamy pudding with mango chunks throughout. My wife did not enjoy the mango pudding at all. I ate more of the mango pudding, but I would not order it again. To my wife's chagrin, a dim sum house is probably not the place to get fantastic desserts.
The interior of the restaurant is spare but comfortable. The restaurant was clean. The staff was accommodating and helpful. Some of the servers pushing carts did not have a complete command of the English language whereas others spoke perfect, clear language. They were all more than happy to at least try to describe what they had on their cart. While the restaurant's customers were predominantly Asian, persons of all races and ethnicities were in the restaurant. The restaurant had a very open vibe, rather than a closed ethnic community.
Give Canton House a try. Avoid dishes that look overly doughy or that involve seafood stuffing. Stick with pork and chicken. The dumplings seem to be a safe bet. They also have ribs that looked good, but we did not try them, as well as many other dishes that we were unable to try. The experience is fun and the trip is worth it for that alone.
Canton House
4825 Buford Highway
Chamblee, GA
770-936-9030
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