I was trudging through calf-high grass in an industrial zone just a couple of miles north of Toronto’s city limits. Having crossed through a car dealership, I sprinted across a highway and traversed a seemingly endless mall parking lot. There were now large swaths along the road where the sidewalk completely disappeared; construction was constant, and new buildings appeared to be popping up everywhere. I made a mental note to drive next time.

Why would I bother to spend time in Markham and Richmond Hill, when Toronto and its wonderful restaurants, welcoming public spaces and extraordinary cultural diversity were so nearby? Because I was looking for good — really good — Chinese food. And everyone I spoke to told me that the classic Toronto Chinatown, with the intersection of Spadina Avenue and Dundas Street West as its nucleus, while charming, had begun to decline in terms of quality. And so I was headed to the suburbs, to the corridor along Highway 7, an unscenic but pulsing artery of high quality, delicious and inexpensive regional Chinese cuisine.

Back to my trek through the weeds: I finally made it to my destination, an enormous, generic-looking strip mall called First Markham Place. I wanted dumplings, and xiao long bao were prominent in my mind. I walked into Ding Tai Fung (not Din Tai Fung, the famous Taiwanese chain) for an order of the soup dumplings, which are shaped a bit like a flattened onion and pinched together at the top, and come steaming hot in a bamboo basket. The dried scallop and pork version (8.49 Canadian dollars, or about $6.40), served with a red-tinged vinegar and slivers of ginger, were small explosions of flavor.