A small Northern and Canadian style Chinese restaurant.

Harmony Restaurant
Harmony Restaurant
Foods from Harmony Restaurant
Comments

2015 Sep 1
I brought the family here on a Saturday evening and it wasn't very busy at all. Here's what we ordered (clockwise from top left of pic):

124. Crispy Pancake ($1.95) - a light crispy flat pastry, nice with soup!
92. Cold Noodle Mixed w/ Sesame Sauce ($8.95) - spicy and garlicky chewy noodles.
55. Lamb w/ Cumin Taste ($12.95) - crispy and tender aromatic chunks of lamb.
100. Cantonese Noodle ($8.95) - to keep the kids happy.
71. Stir Fried Green Bean ($8.95, center in pic) - one of the most popular Northern Chinese dishes, and for good reason!

We also started with 01. Assorted Seafood w/ Pastry soup (M - $7.95) - a generous amount of shrimp and imitation crab soup. The pastry referred to in the name turned out to be small and flat bits of noodle dough. It was quite similar to the Cantonese crab meat and fish maw soup that we all love so much.

Everything was delicious and worth ordering, although we probably should have had rice or something neutral with all that flavourful stuff. Next time we want to try the House Special Chicken, which we saw other people enjoying. Definitely going to keep coming back here!

2015 Jul 12
This restaurant has one menu featuring standard Canadian Chinese fare and another with authentic Northern Chinese items. I was the only diner there between 5 and 6 on a Sunday afternoon, but a few people came in to pick up takeout orders.

I'll definitely be back! I ordered three dishes plus rice, gorged heartily, and have enough left for a lunchtime feast tomorrow:

122. Green Bean Cold Noodle ($3.95)
55. Lamb w/ Cumin Taste ($12.95)
71. Stir Fried Green Bean ($8.95)

Everything was wonderful. The thick and supple noodles were pleasantly spicy and sat in an addictive cold sesame soy dressing. The lamb was spectacular... tender meat, cut relatively finely to increase surface area, fried to a very slight crisp, and tossed with a cumin-centric blend of spices. The green beans were great too—spicy and accompanied by a generous amount of savoury ground pork.

Looking forward to lunch already!

2012 Aug 6
Date of Visit: July 24, 2012

I was really looking forward to visiting this place on my trip to Ottawa back in March of this year but, unfortunately, when I arrived in town, I discovered that the place was closed while the owners were away on vacation. This time, however, it was open for business and I was able to enjoy a very long, and very pleasant lunch…

Dishes:
Chinese Chive Cake - Rating 4 out of 5
Sweet Fermented Rice Soup - Rating 4 out of 5
Sliced Pork with Garlic - Rating 2 out of 5
Ears in Hot Oil - Rating 5 out of 5
Kelp with Garlic - Rating 3 out of 5

Overall
Although the service could have been a bit quicker given the emptiness of the place during my visit, it was otherwise very good. The young lady who was working alone was very friendly and pleasant and quite helpful in answering my questions. A couple of the dishes were not absolutely to my liking but, other than that, I had a really excellent meal. I recommend giving this place a try and I will be sure to bring my wife here the next time we manage to end up in Ottawa at the same time… Rating 4 out of 5

See a full review with pictures at: sybaritica.me

2012 Aug 2
Harmony Restaurant is a big surprise to me, I’ve never found a place which is more authentic than it in town. All because I had been to China for 3 years, and I had tried different kinds of Chinese food.
I ordered their Lamb with Cumin, Stir Fried Green Bean and Yuxiang Eggplant, all of them were great, but in distinct ways. The Lamb, which is different from I had in China, but even better than the one I tried before: the lamb is tender and the cumin taste is a great complement to its texture. The Yuxiang Eggplant is juicy and spicy which made me cannot stop having it. The Green Bean is great too.
Anyway, I love that place, I couldn’t stop thinking of it after the first time of being there.

2012 Mar 20
Check out the Web site... this place will be closed from:

March 12th to April 1st

Man .... I am coming to Ottawa as part of my China town adventure (see: sybaritica.me)

Doesn't it just figure that the NUMBER 1 place on my list off places to visit will closed during my brief time in town?

Oh well ... C'est la vie. I hope I can save some one a drive for nothing!

2011 Nov 9
The first thing the waitress did after giving us tea and our menus was to point us to the Canadian Chinese section which is ironic because I went there for Northern Chinese cuisine. We chose from the authentic Chinese section of the menu ordered the hot and sour soup, shredded potatoes, lamb with cumin and beef with peppers.

The soup was different from what I'm used to. It was much more vinegary and quite thick. Once I got over the initial surprise, it was quite tasty.

The shredded potatoes were clearly prepared to order which might explain why they took so long to arrive. Again, they were different from what I had eaten in other restaurants (e.g. Ju Xiang Yuan), but I liked this version as well. Next time I'll either ask that it come as an appetizer or order the shredded potatoes with pepper because that is a main dish as opposed to an appetizer.

In keeping with the theme of the meal, the lamb with cumin was different from what I've ordered at other Northern Chinese restaurants. In this version, it seemed as though the lamb was quickly deep-fried as opposed to stir-fried. It made for good texture but it turned out the beef with peppers was prepared in the exact same way. The only way to differentiate the two dishes was that one had peppers whereas the lamb only had onions.

Next time I would peruse the menu a bit more carefully and ask how the dishes are prepared because I saw some very interesting dishes at the neighbouring tables.

2011 May 13
Tried some food from the "Canadian" chinese side of the menu last night. Soo Guy was really a great choice. Moist chicken breast breaded, crisp fried and chopped with a delicious brown sauce that had a wonderful sesame flavour. Also had sweet and sour shrimp, which was tasty if you are into that shiny red sauce (I am), but the shrimp were small and not breaded/fried. The taste was good, but I like a nice crispy fried coating with my red sauce. Again portions were quite large and cost was low. Soo Guy was only $7.95 and I enjoyed it more than the Golden Palace version, which was my previous favorite but is priced over $20.

2011 May 6
Interesting note - if you are looking at the menu on-line - click on the chinese character next to the EN. The chinese on-line menu seems to include all the offerings including their english translation.

2011 May 6
Sorry no pics, but was missing the Northern Han last night, so we tried Harmony and it was really good.

Very clean and pleasant environment and polite, helpful server who described some of the dishes that we weren't familiar with. The menu is divided into sections, with Harmony favorites on the first page, then authentic Chinese dishes, then Canadian style Chinese at the back. Some of the items appear in several sections. We started with a spring roll which had a nicely thin and crispy wrapper, very hot, mostly cabbage inside and quite delicious. It was served with a dipping sauce that was very sweet and looked home made. It was a little on the greasy side, but better than most of what I have had elsewhere. Tea was freshly infused and served in insulated pots that kept it hot throughout the meal. Ma po tofu was nicely done, with small cubes of tofu in a spicy meat (and chopped mushroom maybe?) sauce. Chinese hamburgers were done with chopped "meat", chopped fresh veggies and spices and served on bread rounds that were like crisp pitas. These wer fragrant with spices and the filling was quite delicious, but the crispy bread made them a bit hard to eat - same level of difficulty as an overstuffed crispy taco - but we loved these regardless of the stains on my shirt. We ordered a dish of sauteed cucumbers, black mushrooms and egg which was really an interesting combination. The mushrooms were large but paper thin (not sure if they were sliced this way or natural) and very flavorful. The scrambled egg was fresh and tender, not tough and chewy as is all too common elsewhere. The server warned us that "Harmony special fried chicken" contained bones, but we ordered it and it was also very good. A stir fry with lots of chiles, veggies and a rich spicy gravy-like sauce. The chicken pieces wer chopped into large chunks, so we did in fact have to be very careful of tiny bones, but the flavor was excellent and the chicken was very tender and moist. We noticed something called "fried yellow croakers" on the menu that intrigued us, but we were not brave enough to order. At one point we talked to the server about something called "couples fried beef in hot oil" that we had noticed on the menu. She smiled and said "It's very popular, but I don't think you'll like it. It's beef stomach and pig tongue". I am definitely going to try that one next time. The serving sizes were huge. There was enough food to serve 4 easily and we will get lunches for a couple of days out of the leftovers. There was a cook sitting at the back prepping fresh green beans that looked so nice that it made me wish we had ordered them. Total bill was $35 including taxes without tip. Service was great, food was excellent and generous, and it is such a bargain that we will definitely return.

2010 Nov 14
These guys are slowly working themselves back into my go-to books. I had some really good food from them several weeks back.

I'm not into Northern Chinese but for those that are, they have a quite extensive menu. They also execute their Cantonese dishes quite well.

I had some good salt and pepper shrimp, beef with ginger and green onions and shanghai noodles.

Reasonable prices and portions. The place is very plain but clean and the staff are very nice.

The night I was there, they appeared to be having a wedding dinner (about 20pp). They had some very interesting dishes circulating.

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