Toa Toa Chinese Restaurant and Authentic Dim Sum

Dim sum dishes fill a table at Toa Toa Chinese Restaurant in Sunrise, including mustard greens, various dumplings, stuffed eggplant , egg custard tarts and barbecue pork stuffed buns.

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Toa Toa Chinese Restaurant and Authentic Dim Sum

4145 NW 88th Ave.
Sunrise, FL 33351
Phone: 954-746-8833
Hours: 11 a.m.-10 p.m. Thursday-Tuesday, closed Wednesday
Price: $, $10 and under
Cuisine: Chinese

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About

Pleasant, if a bit Spartan space in Sunrise in Pine Plaza off Pine Island Road has delectable Hong Kong-style dim sum and is worth a trip to taste the bite-size pot stickers, dumplings, bun, and other delicacies, best enjoyed with tea. This is a place for friends to share yum cha (tea) and lots of little plates and steamers filled with gossamer thin shrimp dumplings, open-faced pork, shrimp and mushroom siu mai stuffed in a wrapper and steamed, fried taro shrimp coated in thin shreds of taro root, eggplant stuffed with shrimp paste and chive dumplings. The soft, golden barbecue buns are baked and stuffed with bright red barbecue pork. There are also pan fried noodles, seafood specialties and all the Chinese standards at reasonable prices.

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Toa Toa means "good dim sum, " which is hard to find in South Florida. So it's worth a trip to Sunrise for the handmade pot stickers, buns and other morsels served all day at Toa Toa Chinese Restaurant and Authentic Dim Sum.

Most Western customers order dim sum as an appetizer followed by dinner from the main menu. Earlier in the day, the place is packed with Asians at round tables sharing dim sum and pots of jasmine tea.

Owner To Wong and his wife, Alice, are from Hong Kong, where dim sum is served for breakfast or an afternoon snack. Wong began training as a dim sum chef at age 11, and worked in many Hong Kong restaurants. The couple moved to South Florida in 1988 and opened Toa Toa a year later. They named it for an elite Hong Kong restaurant famous in the 1930s for its dumplings and bronze serving dishes, teapots and utensils.

Here the chopsticks are wooden and the plates are plastic, but the dim sum is delectable. Youll be brought two menus, both with pictures. The standard Chinese fare is fine, but that's not your focus.

To order dim sum, mark how many of each item you want on the slip of paper provided. The dishes arrive one at a time, and there is often a short wait as the dumplings are freshly steamed or fried.

The most popular item is the ha gow or steamed shrimp dumplings in fluted wheat-flour wrappers. Hot crushed chile oil and sweet soy sauce are on the table for spooning onto your plate as a dip.

Other favorites are siu mai (open-faced steamed dumplings with minced pork, shrimp and mushroom filling), ha chow fun (delicate sheets of rice noodle folded cannelloni-style around a filling of shrimp, ground beef or roast pork) and char siu bao, soft, golden, sugar-glazed buns filled with barbecued pork.

Silver pin noodles are tiny, hand-rolled noodles made from compressed, cooked rice that are stir-fried with bean sprouts, shredded pork and shrimp and topped with omelet shreds.

Phoenix talons are deep-fried chicken feet that are then boiled, marinated in black bean sauce and steamed to create tender claws. Taro shrimp brings large crustaceans coated in fine shreds of the root vegetable and deep-fried.

Turnip pudding is not dessert but savory slabs of mashed, steamed and pan-fried daikon radish. End with a warm egg custard tart that puts the yum in yum cha (to sip tea and eat dim sum).