Sunny’s Chinese

Rating: 9.5/10 | yellow + yellow + even more yellow = gold 👌

Sunny’s Chinese remained a fabled whisper of the immortals for some stretch of time. For years upon years (truthfully, like a few weeks) I had heard tale after tale lauding the incredibly quality, taste, and ambiance of Sunny’s; not to mention the quirky little side quest required of players to locate the place before even settling down for a bite.

So, it naturally made sense to book a reservation for Will’s belated birthday dinner.

However, for the sake of brevity and convenience, this piece will cover both Silliam visits to Sunny’s heretofore as we ordered pretty much the same spread each time (save for one dish, but hey—nothing wrong with enjoying the classics on repeat) with largely the same satisfaction.

Our first visit to Sunny’s sees our arrival on a cold and balmy January evening. Sure, we’ve seen and heard about the marvels awaiting our palates, but we really don’t know what to expect out of a personal, intimate experience with the food itself. We started with the Husband + Wife Beef (24), one of the all-time bestsellers with almost signature-dish-levels of infamy. This dish was delightful: chilly paper-thin slices of meat slide gracefully onto the tongue and immediately lay a pleasant kick of spice and acidity down, satisfying everything you could ask for from a fine dining establishment’s take on this humble Chinese staple. Even tastier is its lovely rice-compatibility, a truly 下饭-worthy member of the Chinese hallmarks that guarantee a swiftly shrinking bowl of rice.

We then moved onto the Typhoon Shelter Squid (24), another well-loved fixture of Sunny’s that packs a punch of flavour. I personally have not eaten many fried foods that manage to concentrate such complimentary flavours in such a limited medium (if the grease is overpowering, which was not the case here), so I found myself stuck in a moment of disbelief and skepticism after having tasted the squid. Will, on the other hand, absolutely loves the shit out of this dish and insisted on its revival during our second visit. The hype is completely warranted, though. Very, very tasty all around.

Not pictured are the Silver Needle Noodles (21) from our first visit, which look unassuming but very much (more than) hold their own grounds of umami, familiarity, and iconic wok hei. In truth, we don’t have many great photos from our first visit partly due to our experience of being repeatedly blown away by one aspect of the meal after another, which is 120% applicable to feasting on the noodles. The mushrooms and scallions added a welcome textural bombshell to a flavour party already very kinesthetically pleasing thanks to the soft and chewy (presumably hand-rolled or knife-cut) noodles. This was an absolute show-stopper, though we inevitably decided to venture more into the unknown on our second visit.

Replacing the Silver Needle Noodles this time around was the Cumin Grilled Lamb (32?) that is currently out of rotation from the menu, so you’ll have to bear with my imperfect recall of its name and price. Again we found ourselves in flavourtown (population: us), but this dish fell just short of being wondrously impressive. The cumin BBQing added an intensely smoked and spiced essence to the dish, which was a slightly more unfamiliar flavour profile for Will and I to navigate. As delicious as this was, we thought that it didn’t offer a quite unique experience in the way we would’ve liked. Still a very solid choice—and a shame it had to go.

It would be remiss to evade mention of the lovely drinks we had to accompany our top-tier Chinese food experience. Not that the meal would be incomplete without the drinks, but we thought they added a nice touch to round out our dinner overall. Pictured are two Green Tea Highballs (10) from the mocktail menu. They were subtle yet complex on top of being quite pretty drinks.

Thank you for your charm and Asian familiarity, Sunny’s. We hope we’ll be back (said not ominously at all).