• 5
• Excellent, surprisingly family-friendly Chinese fare!

Rolling into PEI around evening with a couple of hungry young children who had been cooped up in car/ferry all day, we weren't sure what to expect. Luckily, Splendid Essence was a wonderful surprise! There's an extensive dim sum menu, much of which was veganizable, so we decided to go with the "throw everything at a wall and see what sticks" method of feeding picky kids new foods, and were pleasantly surprised when they loved the veg dumplings and veggie ham with the house special dry tofu (a dish nothing like I'd ever had tofu made before, in which it was basically shredded into a sort of delicious warm soy-slaw). Meanwhile, we could entertain the kids while we waited with the children's books they had. My kids loved eating with the children's chopsticks. The rest of us also loved the taro cakes, peppery fried soy nuggets, jicama sticks, and my husband thought his (nonveganizable) stuffed portobello was delicious. Everything was wonderful, they were so friendly, I would go back.