PANDEMIC PLATES - DINING OUT (BUT IN!): GREEN ONION CAKE MAN

GREEN ONION CAKE MAN ENTRY 3: Mu-Shu Pork & Wraps (Pancakes), Shanghai Noodles, and Green Onion Cake

Welcome to our newest series: Pandemic Plates! Since a certain Miss ‘Rona has put a damper on the dining out experience in YEG, we are on a mission to find the best dining in experience that our city has to offer. Our high-stakes investigation will focus on DIY meal kits from local restaurants that we can whip up at home! Why? For starters, take-out and delivery doesn’t always travel well - plus, it can be pretty fun to get a little hands-on with your food, while supporting a local business in these crazy times!

Each post in this series will feature a review from one of us about our experience with a take-home DIY meal kit. While researching for take-home meal kits, we came across an abundance of options for home-cooked meals from an Edmonton staple, Green Onion Cake Man! Not only does this gem of a restaurant offer up green onion cakes (fun fact: green onion cakes have been an Edmonton favorite since the 1980’s!), but it also features other Asian delicacies such as spring rolls, Shanghai noodles, Singapore noodles, Pad Thai, Wonton Soup, and Young Chow Fried Rice, amongst others!

Our third entry is Mu-Shu Pork & Wraps, Shanghai Noodles, and Green Onion Cake reviewed by B.

Location: Green Onion Cake Man - (780) 760-2115, 9132 118 Ave NW, Edmonton, AB T5B 0T9

Items on the menu: Mu-Shu Pork & Wraps (meal content: shredded pork, cabbage, wood ear mushroom, bamboo shoot; comes with 6 pancakes), shanghai noodles (meal content: big fat noodles, shredded pork, shitake mushrooms, cabbage. Seasoning: Light soya sauce, dark soya sauce, sesame oil and white pepper), and green onion cakes

Tell me more: Green Onion Cake Man is aptly named as the owner, Siu To, is the one who originally brought the green onion cake dish from Northern China to Edmonton in 1978! The green onion cake dish quickly became popular in Edmonton as it was featured in numerous festivals across the city, including Taste of Edmonton, Folk Fest, and the Fringe Festival.

Siu To owned and operated a number of restaurants, including Happy Garden and Mongolian Food Experience, before retiring. Luckily for us, however, he decided to come out of retirement in September 2018 to launch a storefront for his green onion cakes and other Asian dishes - and thus, the Green Onion Cake Man restaurant was born!

So, how was it? There are a couple of options to order meals from Green Onion Cake Man - you can place an order online or give them a call, and you can have meals delivered to you (check online for rates/areas!) or pick them up at their physical location. For this review, G placed the orders for Gracilianca’s meals on the phone around noon, and picked them up on the way home after work on the same day. G was cutting it a bit close and showed up right before closing, so G panicked just a little when the door was locked (frazzled crab G). Fortunately, someone saw G and graciously let G in! It was pretty much smooth sailing from then on, as G picked up all of our frozen orders in a nicely packaged cardboard box and paid for our meals. As an FYI, there is parking in the back!

For our rankings, we’ll be looking at a few categories: preparation, taste, presentation, and value!

PREPARATION:

4.5/5 : As G and C mentioned, there are easy-to-find instructional videos for each meal available on the Green Onion Cake Man website, which made the process pretty simple and easy. That was much appreciated.

For the mu-shu pork, you add oil to a preheated pan, the contents of the bowl (not the wraps), toss a bit, cover with a lid for 5 minutes, toss some more, and then you're done that part. Then you just heat up the wraps / pancakes in the pan (I changed to a lower heat setting for this part). Finally, assemble all the goodness together. Spread the provided sauce on the wrap (you don't need to cover the whole wrap with sauce, you will regret it), add a spoonful of the mu-shu pork, and roll it up however your heart desires.

For the shanghai noodles, you add oil to a preheated pan, the contents of the bowl, toss around, cover with a lid for 5 minutes, toss some more, add the seasoning, and cook another minute. It was very straightforward and easy to prepare. It was also super quick.

We tried the pre-cooked green onion cakes, so we just toasted them in a toaster oven.

You can probably guess the only critique from our previous posts. CONSIDER THAT YOU NEED TIME TO DEFROST THE PACKAGES. There is absolutely nothing wrong with that, it would've just been helpful if the instructions indicated an appropriate amount of time to defrost the food for.

TASTE:

4/5 - The mu-shu pork was pretty good. The flavours of the pork stir fried with veggies wrapped up in the pancake with the sauce delivered a nice burst of flavour. Also has almost all of the food groups too :) (minus chocolate...that's a food group right?!?!?). Of course, it was also fun to assemble the wrap. Overall, a good dining experience.

4/5 - The shanghai noodles were also quite good. SS was present as well and SS actually would've given it 4.5/5 :) The seasoning sauce was a good flavour and it was nice to be able to adjust how much you wanted to add.

3.75/5 - Now, to be fair, we got the pre-cooked green onion cake and reheated that so it probably doesn't do it justice.Next time we will try to get the uncooked one and then cook it ourselves at home.

PRESENTATION:

4/5 - Everything was packaged nicely and neatly.

VALUE:

3.75/5 - At $13 plus GST for the mu-shu pork and then $10 + GST for the shanghai noodles, it was okay overall. I expected each order to be enough for one person and it wasn't quite enough. Maybe 1.25 of an order would've been enough? But this will vary from person to person. The green onion cake was $8 for 4 pieces and that seemed reasonable.

FINAL THOUGHTS: Would you get this kit again?

Yup yup yup! It was quick and easy to put together this nice meal. Definitely a great option when you need to save some time but still want to eat good food. Just gotta make sure you plan ahead for the defrosting time! You can't pick up and eat right away like with some of the other ones we have tried.

Disclaimer: This review is not affiliated with or sponsored by Green Onion Cake Man - views expressed are solely our opinions!