The Taste of Home

Went to this restautant in a large party of 8. To be able to try more dishes. This restaurant is focused more on northern style cuisine. It is definitely a restaurant that is even more focused as the chinese name specifically mentions its fish head soup.
We of course has to try the fish head soup which was one of its most famous features. And we ordered a batch of other dishes as well with had its combo meal with the fish head
The food was some hits and some misses. The eggplant chilie dish was a great dish to try as they do a good job at it. The noodles were also excellent.
Thr smoked fish which is a cold dish and turned out sweet is not a good dish. And the sesame beef is definetely not good as they had used wings buffalo sauce for some odd reason. Sesame beef is usually sweet and not sour. And on top honey is used for most restauarants. And not western chicken wing buffalo sauce.
The other dishes were generall not bad. And decent.
Overall service is like many chinesr restaurants. And also the décor is very old school.
The fish head soup which is there speciality they did a good job at it. And is very nice and warming perfect for a cold day.
This restaurant i would say you need to be selective of what you eat. As not everything is okay. Come here and focus on northern chinese style cuisines. I would avoid popular southern cuisines here as they are not special in making itm and their interpretations of it. Might make some dislike it
Worth a try i would say

We came here for dinner tonight. We were a table of 5 and the tables are quite small. We should have sat at a bigger table because our dishes didn’t all fit on our table. But that’s partly because 1 — we ordered too much food and 2 — they use really large plates with big rims.
We ordered a couple of cold starters, had much better at other places. This place specializes in big fish heads, we ordered half a big fish head, steamed with a sour and spicy sauce. Fish head was ok, came with a bowl of noodles on the side. You mix the noodles into the sauce from the steamed fish head. We ordered the steamed eggplant with pork and garlic. It was a nice saucy dish, best eaten with a bowl of rice. As mentioned before, by another Unilocaler, totally not worth the price (think it was $ 10.99). We got hot and sour soup, was not as good as the one 2 doors down. Braised beef noodles came in a massive tureen. The beef brisket was lovely, a bit fatty, not dry and flavourful. Also ordered lamb in cumin, nice juicy lamb.
Food is quite nice here, nothing we had was terrible. Service is ok, they changed our bowls and dishes. I would come back, if I wanted this type of cuisine again.

2.5 stars, but I’ll round up because this is their first review.
Taste of Home is a Northern Chinese restaurant specializing in fish heads. It’s an offshoot of Backyard Garden Restaurant, situated right next door. A nice perk is that you can order off both Backyard Garden’s and Taste of Home’s menus while seated at Taste of Home.
Upon entering, our first issue was that they tried to seat us at a round table next to a pillar. The pillar was blocking a good portion of our table. Almost half of our table was also blocked (seat-​wise) by diners at other tables (the seating here is very cramped and the tables are very clumped together). We asked to be moved. They acquiesced, and moved us to a rectangular table for four. It was a very narrow table. Underneath it was a very large metal table stand (akin to those used at Korean BBQ restaurants). It was slightly sticky, and left next to no leg room for diners. We actually opted to go back to the round table. They moved it out for us, slightly, so that we could get in and out with some kind of ease, but it took a while to rectify that situation.
We had:
Lao Ma Roasted Pork — so Lao Ma is the name of the restaurant (in Chinese). It also happens to be the phrase Chinese restaurants use to indicate that something is particularly tasty (similar to if one was to add, «mom’s» to any menu item). Obviously, we (and the table behind us) thought that we were in for a special treat. This roasted pork is char siu. It was dry, super thinly sliced, cold, and sauceless. It looked NOTHING like the picture (I know that pictures are a cop-​out, but McDonald’s burgers look more like their pictures than this looked like its picture). We and the table behind us talked to the waitress about it, and she shrugged us off.
Chinese Buger ($ 2.99) — Or burger. Think a Chinese-​style flattened, steamed bun pan-​fried and slit in half, then stuffed with chopped up pork and cilantro in an almost hoisin and oyster sauce. For $ 2.99, the portion was pretty good (bigger than I had hoped), and was quite tasty. This would make a good snack.
Eggplant with minced pork — The eggplant pieces were really long. We had to ask for a knife. It was presented quite well (more similar to the picture). The pork was not mixed into the eggplant. It was a part of the presentation. There was a load of minced garlic and some diced hot peppers in this dish as well (also part of the presentation). This dish tasted quite good, but for the price, I wouldn’t order it again.
Crab special ($ 9.99) — They have a crab special going on right now and it comes in a variety of cooking styles. We opted for the one with crispy bits of garlic and fried crab. For $ 9.99, this was not bad.
Fish head with tofu in soup ($ 19.99 for small) — For that price, this was a large pot of soup. The soup could have had a lot more fish flavor, but it was good, in a very subtle way. There could have been a lot more fish in a pot that size, but the fish definitely wasn’t invisible. There was a lot of tofu. Also some wood ear fungus, some bok choy, some bamboo shoot?, goji berries, star anise, white pepper, etc. I might come and get this again, but only because it’s super hot.