What’s on the menu at Dasha, Michelin-starred chef Akira Back’s flashy new Chinese restaurant with private karaoke rooms

By Renée Suen | Photography By Renée Suen | December 3, 2019

By Renée Suen | Photography By Renée Suen | 12/03/2019

Name: Dasha
Contact: 620 King St. W, 416-601-0662, dashatoronto.com, @dashatoronto
Neighbourhood: King West
Owners: Honeycomb Hospitality (Petty Cash, Baro)
Chef: Akira Back (Akira Back) and Bi “Alan” Shuang (Lebua Hotels and Resorts in Bangkok)
Accessibility: Fully accessible

The food

Unlike Back’s other spots that focus on Japanese and Korean flavours with some American influence mixed in, Dasha serves modern Chinese dishes made with traditional techniques—and plated very fancifully. As it’s Back’s first foray into the cuisine, he’s recruited Shuang to oversee the kitchen. Guests can expect dishes like sweet-and sour-chicken, Kung Pao chicken and salt-and-pepper prawns alongside traditional fried rice and a Mongolian-style steak served with a black truffle sauce. There’s also Peking duck and some familiar dim sum items, like har gow.

Steamed har gow (prawn dumplings) are served with chili and sweet topan (fermented broad bean) sauce. $14.

Dressed in teriyaki sauce, the black cod is served with asparagus and shacha, a satay-like barbecue sauce. $33.

The signature Angry Chicken is coated in chilies, sesame seeds, peanuts and Szechuan peppers, and presented with a nest of fried noodles. $16.

The black pepper beef tenderloin comes with green and yellow zucchini, spring onions and bell peppers in a black bean sauce. It’s finished with a fancy fan made of fried glass noodles. $29.

The whole Peking Duck is roasted in a hung oven…

… and basted with hot oil. It’s hand-sliced and served with thin pancakes and sliced cucumbers. $50 (half) and $99 (whole).

Available only for the karaoke room guests, The Mix Tape is an appetizer platter filled with chicken balls, The General’s Vegetable, five-spice tofu spring rolls and chicken skewers. $33.

The drinks

Wine, beer, shochu, sake and baiju. There are also signature cocktails made using ingredients like soju, genmaicha tea, wasabi, ginseng and ube. For the karaoke rooms, a cocktail cart makes the rounds, and bottle service is available, too.

The house sake is the Dassai 39. $13 a glass.

The Jade Palace is a spritz made with St. Germain, yuzu, lime and sparkling wine that changes in flavour profile as its lychee-chlorophyll ice core melts. $12.50.

The Zen Garden is made with Remy Martin VSOP, citrus, soursop, blood orange and rhubarb. It’s presented tableside on a platter with a real bonsai tree. $19.50.

Here it is again, in the glass this time.

The space

Geared to be a one-stop shop for dining and entertainment, Solid Design Creative Inc. designed the two-level space with custom murals, fancy furniture and neon accents. A large spiral staircase leads up to the second-floor private dining room and five karaoke rooms—each equipped with high-quality sound equipment and a library of 60,000 songs from classic rock to J-Pop.