The Squid Steamed with Ginger and Scallion at Chu Shing in Ottawa was not the best I have had, but still deserved a Rating of 4 out of 5.
The Chu Shing Restaurant is one of the oldest, and largest Dim Sum establishments in Ottawa’s Chinatown, and I have enjoyed some very nice meals in their spacious dining room. Occasionally, some of their dishes have been less than top-notch but I can’t say I have been served anything inedible, or truly awful there before. The Steamed Squid dish pictured above very much fell in to the category of less than top-notch, but, for all that, I still enjoyed it well enough.
Steamed Squid is a favorite Dim Sum dish for me. I am not too keen on the ones featuring curry sauce all that much, but the simple sort, steamed with just a little ginger and scallion suits me just fine. This Chu Shing version of the classic was a little bit sloppy (more from the service rather than anything done in the kitchen, to be fair), but the seasoning was done with a light hand and the ginger just remained a subtle note in the background rather than dominating everything.
The squid itself was interesting in that it consisted of the mantle of baby squid sliced in half. There were a few tentacle sections too, although not as many as I would have liked. Unfortunately, on this occasion, I would have to say the squid were not at their peak freshness and were just slightly over-steamed. Not enough to make them lose their taste and texture, by any means, but just enough to ‘take the edge off’, as it were. That being said, though, I still enjoyed the dish quite a bit and I know, from past experience, that Chu Shing can do a very good job with this Dim Sum classic most of the time. It was still better than I have had in some other establishments.