Tung Hing Bakery

Bakery: Tung Hing Bakery
Address: 888 Dundas St E (inside Mississauga Chinatown; multiple locations across GTA)
Website: http://tunghingbakery.ca/
Style: Vietnamese, Chinese
Price: $

Tung Hing Bakery is a chain of Chinese bakeries with multiple locations around the GTA. I myself went to the one in Mississauga Chinatown and found there seems to be more of a Vietnamese presence than your usual Chinese bakery. Of course, the coconut/cream buns are also there, but I found a lot of items that you never see in a typical Chinese bakery. I'm talking about giant slabs of sponge and rice cakes, green pandan jellies and cakes, sesame balls with a variety of fillings.

One thing, however, is that I didn't find the same knock-your-socks-off prices as I have in other Chinese bakeries, especially those found in Chinatown. Nonetheless, maybe as such, their stuff actually looks, if not better, not so mass produced/commercial looking. The steam cakes, especially, have this homemade feel and look to them; the sesame seed balls were lopsided. ;)

For starters, I picked out the sesame seed balls ($0.90/each), one with lotus paste and the other with black bean filling. Nicely deep-fried and crisp on the outside, generously coated, and quite stuffed on the inside. Some liked the black bean best, others the lotus (though the other sampler was complaining it was a little too flowery), but everyone agreed that they were most definitely better than the 3/$1 variety from the last bakeries! So, in a sense, you do get what you pay for -- and here you have the different flavours (though not the traditional red bean)

Second, I picked out a giant chunk of milk steam cake (or was it steam milk cake?) ($1.49), a super moist, airy monster of a slice of, one could say, sponge cake, just a lot more fluffy. I don't know if I could necessarily taste the milk or differentiate between the various versions, but I really liked the texture. Not too heavy and a nice taste. At the bakery, they keep these warm, so I heated this up again... Yummy!

So, in the end, I did in fact rejoice to find this place not your typical Chinese bakery. Because after all, one can never go wrong with a nice giant piece of cake. ;)

Rating: ***