Sunny’s Chinese has built its reputation on punchy, regionally rooted Chinese cooking. This summer, the Kensington Market restaurant is putting that reputation to the test by handing the reins to a rotating cast of some of the city’s most respected chefs for a four-part barbecue lunch series, presented by Dillon’s Distillery.
Each installment pairs Sunny’s kitchen with a different guest chef, reimagining Ontario’s peak-season produce and proteins through the lens of regional Chinese barbecue traditions. The series kicked off with Top Chef Canada champion Coulson Armstrong of Prime Seafood Palace, building a menu around Ontario’s summer vegetable bounty — think crudités with a Sichuan-style “strange flavour sauce,” tomatoes layered with regional spice, and Cantonese-influenced grilled proteins cooked over open flame. According to Armstrong, summer in Canada is essentially its own set of micro-seasons, and translating that produce through Chinese culinary techniques felt like a natural way to tell a story through food.
Each of the four events runs two seatings, bookable through OpenTable, with tickets ranging from $85 to $105 per person, covering all food plus a welcome cocktail crafted by Dillon’s mixologist Owen Walker and designed to complement each chef’s specific menu. The second installment, on July 19, brings Armstrong back for round two, with more collaborations expected to round out the series through the rest of the summer.
For a restaurant that’s already built a loyal following on bold, confident flavour, teaming up with rotating guest chefs adds a genuinely fresh reason to book a table more than once this season.
Craving something a little different from your usual Chinese food order? Reservations for the Sunny’s BBQ series are open now on OpenTable.