In luck at the Lucky Inn

You drive by a place like Lucky Inn, and you’re reminded of Chinese-Canadian restaurants just like it from one end of Canada to the other. A partially renovated house with signage that often has a font meant to evoke the region.

As a kid, I enjoyed visiting the local Chinese take-away, and my parents discovered that it was a cost-effective way to feed the family as it provided plenty of leftovers. However, I found that the chicken balls were always best when consumed right away.

This hybrid cuisine grew out of both Chinese tradition and what was available in season in the new country. 

Nowadays, the immigrant influence on how we eat is radically different from even 20 years ago and diners have more sophisticated palates. As a result many seek out more “authentic” expressions of various cuisines and you’d think that Chinese takeaways would be folding due to changing demands. 

Yet, I can’t reach that conclusion because two things remain true: there’s a nostalgia factor and many of these eateries offer large portions for the money, so you still end up with leftovers, and nowadays that’s an important consideration.

Once in a blue moon, you also stumble upon a takeaway that makes more of an effort, relying less on frozen food service products and making things from scratch.

Such as the pork dumplings in the wonton soup. They were light in both texture and flavour and they bobbed about in a tasty but delicate chicken broth laced with napa cabbage and scallions.

In Ottawa-Gatineau, you can make a sport of tracking down the best open-ended egg rolls, invariably comparing them to the standard-bearer Golden Palace rolls. 

While a little smaller, the Lucky Inn rolls can easily hold their own against the legend. They were properly filled, moist and still steaming with the first bite.

I can also strongly recommend the pork spring roll, which is a longer and thinner affair reminiscent of a panatella cigar. The seasoning is different and reminded me of a Vietnamese roll. It was delicious and notable also was the fact that the oil used for frying tasted very clean.

One of my childhood Golden Palace favourites was the almond guy ding. This is a true Chinese-Canadian masterwork involving velvetized chicken, whole blanched almonds and tons of green celery all enrobed in a clear sauce thickened with corn starch. 

At Lucky Inn, I ordered the next best thing: chicken chop suey. I honestly can’t remember when I last ordered this dish but it hit all the right notes and satisfied this rare craving. 

The bean sprouts still had a little crunch to them and the chicken was moist and tender.  It was better than I had expected and I found that, in general, the base ingredients in all the dishes were fresh and flavourful.

I also liked that the vegetables had a uniform chop to them. Thinly sliced bell peppers, julienned carrots, not rough irregularly cut roughage here, just the work of an experienced cook.

I’m not generally enthusiastic about bell peppers as they are often of the mottled sort with a splotch of red or orange against a variegated green background. It’s the grade of pepper that is always the cheapest at food distribution terminals and they’re terrible.

In my Imperial pork, they were impossible to ignore, but at least they were entirely green. They were also thinly sliced so that they softened easily and were easy to consume.

The pork appeared to be an in-house-made char siu (BBQ pork) and was further cooked in a savoury sauce that had wilted the veggies. The sauce was distinct with a little heat and consisted of sweet bean paste, sesame oil, chili pepper, ginger, garlic, soy etc. All this to say that it tasted like it had been assembled from separate elements and not ladled out of just one jar.

I thought I’d test my luck with the Singapore noodles and that’s twice in a row fortune smiled on me with a very good version. Just weeks ago, it was Hong Kong Chinese Food on Hunt Club and now here on a river road stretch in Gatineau.

As with the other dishes, all ingredients were fresh and so well-cooked that nothing was overdone. The piquant curry powder was fruity and bright and the noodles were well stocked with pork, chicken and sweet shrimp.

This is a family-run business with mom and pop in the kitchen and son Ken working the counter. Lucky Inn has proper standards backed by decades of experience in the kitchen, and their portions are very generous for the money. 

If you find yourself out that way, this is takeaway worth exploring.