Golden Sparkle Chinese Restaurant

Last night we headed over to Golden Sparkle to indulge in their Clams with Black Bean sauce only to discover that it is no longer! We loved the food and the staff at Golden Sparkle. So sad to see it go. The new restaurant that has taken its place is called Top Island and we decided to give it a try. I will review it under the new name.

Sparkle!!!
Decent cafeteria like restaurant with quick service and hot, tasty food.
On top of that, ‘Sparkle’ was one of the things the two lovelies used to belt out during certain episodes of Absolutely Fabulous and I cannot visit or pass this place without thinking of it. I should start an entire list of my reviews in which I make reference to AbFab.
That would be… Golden.
SPARKLE!!!

* No sparkle, but solid cooking *
I didn’t sense anything golden or sparkling in this slightly run down HK hole-​in-​the-​wall. In fact the tables and washroom could both use a good sparkling deep clean!
The menu is fairly typical of what you would find in a casual restaurant in Hong Kong — everything from the pork chop rice to the noodle stir fries.
I ordered one of the lunch specials — the beef chow fun. This is a test dish for me at these types of places. The noodles were surprisingly good. They had good wok hei. The beef was very tender, and the bean sprouts were cooked the right amount of time so they didn’t become soggy. Nice dish! Solid 4 stars.
It was priced at a very reasonable $ 5.95 and included a complimentary beverage (I had HK milk tea). The milk tea was nice and strong, and had the right flavour as well.
I also got to sample the chicken knees. These were slightly doughier than I normally like, but had a nice marinade inside the breading. The diced chillies brought the spice level up to a nice heat without being overly hot. 3 stars.
Service was very friendly and efficient, now if they would only give the restaurant a deep sparkle clean I could bump things up a notch! Thankfully when checking the health ratings it seems they are ok in the kitchen at least!