Lantern Restaurant Review

Once or twice a year (ok - maybe four or five times a year) the need for Chinese overcomes me. Typically, we grab take-out from a place on Victoria Street in Kitchener (Lai Lai's - sorry, no review yet but the food is great) but in the interest of supporting the neighbourhood business we decided to try The Lantern (Fischer-Hallman & Ottawa, Kitchener).

We ordered sweet & sour chicken balls (I can't resist this despite the wide quality range associated with them), veggie fried rice, mixed vegetables and Chinese greens.

Let me start with my favorite 'Chinese' Food staple - the chicken ball. Now, some may mock me for my love of the low-brow chicken ball but quite frankly I don't give a damn. The problem with getting chicken balls is that the quality is often suspect - bad chicken, way too much dough, etc. I'm very happy to report that the Lantern has one of the best chicken balls I've ever had. Filled with lots of white-meat chicken with a think coating of the batter - perfect!

The rice - excellent. This is a standard dish and they did it well.

Chinese greens - this was our 'try something different thing'. Basically it is some kind of spinach or lettuce, some crunchy vegetables served up in a broth. As you can see I don't know many of the ingredients but it came together nicely and was a good complement to all the other dishes, including the similar mixed vegetables.

Mixed vegetables - a standard and the Lantern did well by them.

So overall, the food was great! Sorry for the vague details but it was about two weeks ago when we ordered it all.

That being said - I'd recommended giving the Lantern a try.