A savoury skewering

Chinese brochettes abound at Golden Stone

by MARK SLUTSKY

Forgive me if I keep dwelling on the subject, but more and more Chinese restaurants keep popping up in Montreal, and it’s cause for celebration in a town that’s never been particularly great for Asian food. My latest discovery (tip o’ the hat to my friend and consummate DJ Dave Shaw for this one) is Golden Stone, a Chinese BBQ joint on St-Mathieu in the increasingly dense cluster of restaurants near Concordia that’s becoming a whole secondary downtown Chinatown.

Each new place seems to offer something new. Qing Hua (which, it should be noted, has gloriously reopened at a new spot at 1676 Lincoln) makes spectacular fresh dumplings; Maison du Nord, also on St-Mathieu, serves up mean pork sandwiches and hand-pulled noodles; and Golden Stone offers an interesting twist on Northern Chinese cuisines with its grilled kebabs. Like most good Chinese restaurants, it’s in a plain, brightly lit space, though the weird touch of a safe on the wall, apparently installed there by the prior tenants, gives it some character.

Chinese BBQ is new to me. On a recent visit, I was joined by a couple of friends who’ve spent extensive time in China (and who grew up eating this stuff) and who identified Golden Stone’s kebabs as a form of Northern Chinese street food—the kind of thing you’d eat after a night out. The functional Chinese equivalent of poutine, if you will.

You order them one by one off the menu at Golden Stone; each individual brochette costs somewhere between one and two bucks. And there are plenty to choose from: standard-sounding offerings like lamb, chicken and beef, sure, but more interesting selections like lamb rib and chicken neck too. We started with the lamb and lamb rib, which were both delicious. The former was incredibly juicy, flavoured with cumin and spices, while the latter featured big, melt-in-your-mouth chunks of fat (that might be a little much for some, I have to admit).

We tried to order the chicken neck brochettes, but weren’t sure that we actually got them: the chicken brochettes we received were tasty, but a bit skimpy on the meat. The tofu satays were less successful, doused in a sweet sauce and covered in fennel seeds, and the squid was also a little too heavy on the hoisin, a trend that reached its apotheosis in the steam bun brochettes, which tasted like, in a friend’s words “Texas toast slathered in hoisin sauce.” Still, the brochettes that were good were great.

A pasta and tomato soup wasn’t exactly what I was expecting from a Chinese restaurant, but Golden Stone’s “Flour gnocchi soup” was a tasty delight ($5.99, enough for four to share). A deep orange broth in which flour dumplings bobbed, it was surprisingly mild and warming. Your eye may skip over the innocuously named “Chinese salad” ($7.99), but it was one of the best dishes of the night. A fresh-tasting mélange of coriander, potato noodles, vermicelli, cucumber and chew-shredded beef, it was savoury and addictive and just a little bit spicy—enough to stimulate the palate. And speaking of tubers, the “hot and sour potato slice” ($5.99) was a big plate heaped with hot, garlicky jullienned potatoes and spicy peppers. We also liked the shallot pancakes ($2.99), which were crispy and multi-layered, like salty baklava.

While the cuisine skews north, other items on the menu were a grab bag of different national cuisines, and while not all of them were mind-blowing, the restaurant’s specialties were terrific. With a menu consisting of eight pages or so, I wasn’t able to try everything, but the skewers (especially the lamb ones) were impressive, and the Chinese salad in particular will draw me back again soon. We weren’t sure quite what they were up to with some of the dishes, but it was easy to see why the restaurant was packed when we visited: it’s affordable and tasty fast food, and much more interesting than what you’ll find in any Americanized chain spot.

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