Canton House

Summary: all the sounds, smells, and sights you would expect to see in China (town), for better or worse.
Food: surprisingly good flavors and prep quality. Dim sum selection was not as extensive as some restaurants, but they have the basics.
Service: predictably rude in tone, not because they’re mean, but because they’re real Chinese!
Atmosphere: loud yelling from employees and customers alike.
Price: pretty good deal. $ 27 for two full people, with leftovers.

Jan. and Feb. 2016, went there for Tea twice, the services is fine, the dum sum and other foods is good enought for return trips, I have better and worst at other places, so will be
back when convenient. RJ

I love this hole in the wall place. Love their pork hash and dimsum

Dim sum at a reasonable price? YES PLEASE! Do not expect anything fancy about this place, they just make good dim sum. English is not their main language here but the staff does understand you and you’ll understand them. Prices range from $ 2.80-$ 9 depending on what you get.
Service is eh so just go for the decent food.
Credit cards can only be used for purchases of $ 10 or more.

Wanting some dim sum on the island? The real deal is in China town and in China town it’s here. The whole experience is this place. Good food well prepared and the place is alive with culture. The hustling of the waitress and waiters, the old and young customers, the smells mixing on your table. Beautiful!
With our bellies full we slowly slipped out into the streets with hardly a dent in our wallets.
Last words… it’s another world.

Seriously this place is a no-​go-​there at all! Steer clear at all cost!

Came here for dim sum. Another mediocre dim sum place, but they barely have anything left when we went there around 1pm.

Wonderful small Restaurant that makes you feel like you are in Hong Kong!
The staff are friendly and cater to you. The food came quickly and was hot and fresh!
Reasonably priced. Full menu plus DimSum at noon.

Brunch time in Chinatown and it was horrible. It’s hidden in the corner of Chinatown by the marketplace across from the bus stop. I guess they change management with all the opening decorations. The place wasn’t really renovated. It’s really dirty and nasty. Service wasn’t all that good.
We ordered a few dim sum plates. It took a while maybe because they make it when you order or because no business so they don’t make it beforehand. Gosh, the food portion was soooo small. The ingredients of good stuff was less. The skin of dumplings were soo thick, I think I was eating flour. It was either no taste, too salty, or oily. Jeez, no wonder no business.
I heard the boss was from a previous restaurant. He does not know how to run a business. I’ve been eating dim sum my whole life, trust me… ain’t worth it.

I had a delightful lunch here about August 23^rd. Spent at least 6 hrs walking downtown and ChinaTown. I love architecture and enjoyed the contrast of old and new.
I felt like I had been invited into the owners dining room. Fresh, tasty, inexpensive-​about $ 6 I’ll be back !

Great reasonable price dim sums.
My sister and I went after lunch so there weren’t many options left. It’s understandable since it was close to closing time. We also took home noodles and pot stickers and dun jui. The pot stickers and dun jui were big and tasty too.
Clean. Small. And staff were really friendly!
Will we go back? Yes we will.
Will give a better review when we go the next time

I really like this dim sum. The shrimp look fun is so yum. Good for take out or eat in.

I met up with my mom and she decided she wanted to eat somewhere. This was the closest place.
I’ve always past this place on the bus, and this must be the first time I’ve ever been in here. Already it was loud with everyone speaking a different language which I assume is one of the Chinese languages. The waitress didn’t show us exactly were to sit. Instead she pointed and we walked over…
The menus are under the glass on the table so it was easy to see everything they had to offer.
Looking through, there wasn’t much that caught my attention. One of the workers dropped by with our plate, tea cup, saucers and chopsticks with napkin. The teapot they had looked dirty, like someone used it for their cigarettes. Gross.
It took a long time before the waiter finally came to our table to take our orders. My mom already wanted to get up and leave… I guess we should’ve!
My mom ordered the plain noodles soup and I got the char siu and pork dumplings.
The food came by quickly. The service was better after they finally noticed that we were there!
My mom and I enjoyed the pork dumplings. The char siu… I prefer the ones at Jade Dynasty, though these were bigger.
My mom gave me some of her plain noodles… Yeah it’s really plain. So’s the broth.

I’ve been coming ever since this place opened years ago with the most recent visit this past week. Historically, if I can even use that term, this restaurant is always the second cheapest dim sum in Hawaii behind Golden Palace. Right now, all the dim sum is priced at $ 2.28, which includes a few of the normally higher priced items as well. The steamed look funn is the cheapest you will find at under $ 3.00, and it’s good too! Definitely something I recommend. The other items I had on this recent visit were: Chicken Feet, Deep Fried Seaweed Seafood Roll, Pork Spareribs Look Funn Casserole, Pan Fried Chives Cake, Stir Fried Taro Cake in XO Sauce with Bean Sprouts, Beef Tripe, and Baked Custard Bun. Everything was good. No complaints. The look funn casserole tasted dominantly of Hoisin sauce and wasn’t on the stove long enough for the onions to caramelize. Wasn’t bad, but it could have been a lot better with just a few more minutes on the stove.
The service is always good. It’s all women, and they are all friendly, considerate, and quick. First question is always what type of tea you want. There are three to choose from: Oolong, Pu erh (Po Lei), and Jasmine (Heung Peen). During my recent visit however, it was a guy who served us. *Mini rant coming* By my observations, he’s either related to the owners or is dating one of the daughters who just came from China because he was useless. First, he can ONLY speak Mandarin, which is useless when everyone else speaks Cantonese and the majority of the customers are Cantonese-​speaking. He can speak some English with close to correct tones because he always repeated what you ordered in English, but the problem is that he can’t listen and understand it. I spoke English when I was ordering and he had no idea what I said. He just stood there holding the pen and paper staring at me with a confused look. I repeated myself, but pointed to the pictures the second time around to get my message across. During the meal, he helped out with the cashiering, and more often than not, he was getting berated for calculating incorrectly or giving the wrong amount of change. This had to be the first time in my life that I had a server at a Dim Sum restaurant that could not speak Cantonese nor even understand English. Not a huge deal, but it was an unexpected experience. Anyway…
Overall, the quality of the steamed dim sum items are all consistently good and fresh because they steam it when you order it. The same can be said with the pan fried dim sum such as the chives cake, look funn, taro cake, turnip cake, etc. However, the cooking, or pan frying, isn’t always consistent. There were a few times that it was a little under-​cooked or a bit on the burnt side, but never on the extreme side. As for the baked and fried items that sits near the entrance, I wish they always have the lid closed. The food gets cold, and having the entrance face TheBus filled Hotel Street, I’d prefer having the lid closed when people are walking in and out. But they like to over fill the case for a nice display, so you can’t really close it. The dim sum is still decent though. As always, go for the dim sum they bring out straight from the kitchen!
Another thing I like about this place is that they aren’t skimpy on the seafood, especially the shrimp. You’ll always get big pieces of shrimp in all the fillings. Some places you only see two bits of shrimp and a morsel of scallop.
This is a really small place. It’s a little larger than Happy Garden on Maunakea. The tables are organized and spaced nicely. It’s clean and well air conditioned. I am really glad they switched back to larger dining plates and rid of those small, squared shaped ones, and especially the boat-​shaped one they used for the look funn. Those were terrible!
Thus, you can’t go wrong coming here. The prices are great, and probably the best deal overall. They have a good variety of quality dim sum, plus they have rice porridge (congee), and fried rice, stir fried rice noodle, and chow funn and chow mein to choose from, all of which are well-​portioned, better than many other restaurants, and the prices of those are low. The atmosphere and seating are comfortable, and the service is very good (besides that guy). Because the place is small, getting a table can become very hard after 11:15 or so. I recommend coming here early, or you can come later in the afternoon. They stay open later than most places.

The hypocrite that I am, I felt sickening pangs of angst, stepping over 2 dirty, homeless men, lying just a few feet of the door of this, «great bargain» dim sum house.
Most of the clientele are bus catchers or walkers but if you take a car, it’s muni parking and a lot of walking past Kekaulike Mall, feet in peril, a maze of people who could care less if they run over your feet with their old lady carts.
I was asked by my fat, non driving sister to take her there this morning to buy a few boxes of food. Don’t tell me not to call her fat. She has trouble closing the door of my SUV. I’m being kind when I say, «fat.»
The wait was 30 minutes and when finally my sister complained, I informed her that the food they were packing for her, was piping hot out of the kitchen, instead of the steaming table near the door. Ah, I would have opted for the already made stuff because it turned out, the fresh stuff was, ulk!
Small…no cramped, just a few tables crammed into a space meant for half the diners. Gritty part of town, area aroma rated A… for armpit, I would never deign to actually eat there.
The wait was agonizing because of the little entryway, people piling up without waitresses telling them to seat themselves. I wanted to inform each patron to seat themselves since they were all totally ignored but didn’t want to usurp, for fear of being asked to take their order. More experienced patrons traipsed right in and planted themselves immediately.
My fat sister refused to tell me exactly how much she saved but she said it was, «a bargain.» So we drive to Hawaii Kai with piping hot dim sum to share lunch with my niece.
My sister is not a frugal consumer. She’s cheap. She likes to tip 5−7%. What she saved on the food, she paid for in parking. Please note that I always pay for parking but I refused to this time. Teach her a lesson.
Beginning my lunch was a turnip pancake which was jiggly but very flavorful and that would be a do over for me, except I’m never ever going back there again. The shrimp hargow was good but no better than Golden Palace directly across Kekaulike Mall, going makai. My stamp of approval goes to Golden Palace and even with sky high prices, Nice Day in Liliha moreover than this dump.
I gagged on the chives potsticker because it wasn’t a chives potsticker. It was a chives and chunks of garlic potsticker. The char siu bao was tiny and ordinary. For the first time in my life, I had some kind of mochi rice wrapped and steamed in a lotus leaf. Aroma was promising but the rice was broken in tiny pieces, (which spells old stuff to me) and undercooked completely! Yes, I’m a rice snob but that wasn’t even rice. It was granulated rice bits. Yuck and yuck again.
The chicken siu mai was bleh. The pork siu mai however, was superior to most places I’ve been to but since I’m never going back there again, it’s a moot point.
I guess the excitement of saving a few pennies was over ridden by the seedy atmosphere, mediocre food, unGodly wait, human bodies waiting to be stepped over, uh at least for me.
My fat sister on the other hand wants to go back to eat there. I wonder who she’s going to get to take her?

I have to admit, this restaurant is leaning towards the sketchy area of Chinatown. I would say that this is the last decent place on Hotel Street before you start seeing the liquor stores. It’s next to Maunakea Marketplace. The reason why I came here was because of the price. The dim sum items are cheap. It’s a little restaurant and it works good if you’re going with a small group. I’d say keep it to 4 people. They have 1 big table in the back that can seat 8 – 10 people. The chances of getting that might be slim since most of the people that ate in here spoke Chinese and they big the whole family.
I’ve been here 4 – 5 times with family and the waiters will ask us what kind of tea we want. One time, I came with a friend and they didn’t bother to ask that question, they just put a pot of tea on the table. I really wanted to say something but I left it. So the food, I think it’s alright. There’s nothing fancy or crappy about it, it’s just your everyday dim sum. They make this one really cool looking dim sum. I don’t know what it’s called but it looked like carrots. I think it was a dessert dish.

Food: ³⁄₅
Price: ⁵⁄₅
Service: ⁴⁄₅
Organization: ⁴⁄₅
Layout: ³⁄₅
Atmosphere: ³⁄₅
I’m only starting this restaurant at a 3 Star because I want to go back and experience more of it and you’ll see why. I do highly recommend people going here and trying it out. But get there early otherwise you may have a line on your hands.
The food is kind of your typical dim sum food. A little greasy if you let it sit but so amazingly good fresh, which is how they give it. One of my orders had been out for a while on the shelf but rather than giving it to me, they made a fresh one. They didn’t go into the back and refry it but actually gave me a fresh dish. So yay for consideration!!!
The price is also amazing. They raised it to $ 2.08 per dim sum dish. While their selection was not the largest I’ve seen, they had the essentials that I enjoy for a day when greasy food hits the spot. The tea wasn’t the best but not going to complain. My friend and I had the pork siu mai, seafood bundle, half moon, pan fried chestnut cake, shrimp dumpling, pork mochi ball (salty jian dui [my favorite!]), and pumpkin cake all for around $ 15. Walked out stuffed and with some dessert in hand.
NOTE: CASH ONLY.
Service I would say was average. Not spectacular, wait on your every beck and call service, but if you asked for it, they would bring it to you in no time at all. And the organization and communication was all there. I still wanna go back to make sure I give a very accurate description of the place, but nothing too unsatisfactory.
The layout is simple and nothing too extravagant on the walls. The atmosphere is also average. Nothing too noisy and can sometimes feel a little cramped, but overall, I would definitely bring my friends there for some cheap and fast dim sum.
I would rate it a 4 or 5 because I feel they deserve it but I’m leaving it at a 3 for now. I say, go try ‘em for yourself and find out! Haha.

This place got more dim sum than bananas in China town!
Stopped in to Canton house since I was starving and dim sum sounded good. On my next trip, I’ll probably troll a little deeper in to China Town for a better rated shop, but it wasn’t bad.
The «every dim sum $ 1.88» deal is easy on the wallet. They have a limited selection, but it’s compensated by having them ready made and more fresh than if they had bizarre items no one orders festering on the steamer…
I got the food to go since they were slammed on a Saturday which meant no chili oil, soy sauce, or mustard :(
The service was friendly, but the menu was greasy and sticky which made me not want to sit down anyway. Cash only, so keep that in mind and parking is the usual nightmare of Chinatown.
On to the food:
I got:
–Pork shumai: good (good pork flavor and nice texture to the wrap.
–Shrimp dumping: OK (nothing too crazy to it, it seemd like shrimp wrapped in rice paper and then steamed, only taste was shrimp)
–Steamed Pork BBQ Bun: Not good (filling tasted bitter)
–Steamed egg custard bun: AWESOME (Great filling and the bun had good consistency and fluffiness)
All in all, it’s not a bad stop for brunch dim sum, but I probably wont stop by here again given the other food options nearby.

Update:
For once I actually ate inside since it wasn’t crowded I had the Spare Ribs, Shrimp Dumplings, shrimp with Chives and the Seaweed rolls (they were out of spring rolls) I thought that everything was pretty good although I ended up getting three shrimp dishes I didn’t know the Seaweed Rolls had shrimp inside heh that’s okay I love shrimp. The only dish that made me drink a lot of tea was the Seaweed rolls as it was a bit oily as it was deep fried other than that it was pretty good.
I was almost tempted to get the Chicken Feet but changed my mind to pay for something but might have for the sake of a Unilocal review but it just isn’t appetizing enough for me to consider
.

The best place that we know of that serves above average quality dim sum for cheap prices would have to be Canton House in Chinatown. Normally, dim sum is priced by the size of the dish. Small sized dishes are $ 1-​$ 2, medium sized dishes are $ 2-​$ 3, and large sized dishes are $ 3-​$ 6. However at Canton House, all dishes are $ 1.88.
This place is rather small, so during their peak hours, you may have to wait. If you don’t like to wait, you can also order to go and within 10 minutes, the food will be ready for you to take out. It is also one of those hole-​in-​the-​wall locations, so it may be hard to find. Parking is also non-​existent, but that can be remedied with Chinatown’s municipal parking lots.
They also have very friendly and efficient customer service. As soon as you walk through the door, you are greeted by the staff and they address you as either «sister», «auntie», or «uncle». However, with the Chinese accent, «sister» sounded more like «sistah», which we found to be pretty interesting and local. In addition, they bring you your order within 5 – 10 minutes of ordering.
Their menu selection is as varied as other larger locations, but for such a small restaurant, it is decent. They have the usual classics: shrimp dumplings, baked charsiu manapua, mochi rice in lotus leaf, etc. The reason that we like this place is because they are really generous in portion size. Although there are 3 – 4 pieces per dim sum dish, each piece is LARGE. It also comes piping hot because they were able to figure out their own system. Basically, there is a main kitchen in the back room that preps the dim sum before hand and they transfer them to the front of a restaurant where a large steamer is located. It’s an effective solution for the take out orders and the dining in customers. There is also a selection of pre-​made pastries also located in the front of the restaurant.
Our order was less than $ 20; a definite bargain for such delicious dim sum. Also, this is another cash only restaurant so make sure you hit the fast cash button on your ATM before coming here.
Overall, this quaint Chinese restaurant offers cheap, decent quality dim sum. Although their dim sum may not be in the same category as Legend or Panda Cuisine, Canton House is better than most other dim sum restaurants, especially considering their cheap prices, decent taste, and portion sizes.