Archive for ‘restaurant reviews’

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Going Out on the Town – Toronto Edition

by adam on January 16th, 2010
Posted In: restaurant reviews

My computer is choking to death on a video processing job right now and as a result I can’t scan anything.  It’s difficult even to internet anything.  In lieu of a comic or a drawing or an anything useful, interesting or good, here is this thing.

Every year around our anniversary (typically the week between Christmas and New Year’s, during which my office goes on what are rather euphemistically called “holiday hours” and really just means that we close it up and don’t return phone calls or emails for 7-10 days), Amy and I go away for our honeymoon trip.  This is a tradition we are carrying on from her family where her folks, both teachers, would go away around their anniversary, the 31st of December.  Each year they made that a special them-only trip, as far as I know, and we are keeping that up in our family.

This year we went and stayed at the Royal York hotel which is right on Front Street across from Union Station.  To be any more downtown one would have to wear SCUBA gear and a heated wetsuit (Lake Ontario is usually than I like to swim in at summer’s zenith so imagine it in December).  Each night we went for dinner at a different restaurant and here are mini-reviews of each of them.

Frans, 200 Victoria Street
On our first evening, we went to see what we could find up Yonge Street.  It turns out to be: Nothing.  Between Front and Dundas there were no restaurants open whatsoever, so we went to Fran’s which is sort of a 50s style diner.  I had five-cheese mac & cheese and Amy had a honey garlic chicken bowl.  This was the least value for money of any of the places we ate.  The food was pretty good but it was over-priced.  The service was so-so.  In retrospect I probably ought to have tried the all-day breakfast or similar.  Not the worst place to eat but I wouldn’t really recommend it.

Regal Beagle Pub, 335 Bloor Street
On the 28th, we walked from our hotel all the way to Honest Ed’s on Bloor Street.  We walked for about seven hours all told and felt like some pub grub at lunchtime.  Bloor Street is fairly well packed with restaurants and we just happened to hit one that wasn’t wonderful.  It once again wasn’t exactly bad but it wasn’t exactly good, either.  Amy’s French Onion soup vegetarian chili, despite being priced like a main course was sized like an appetizer and whatever I had left so little impression on me that I can’t bring it to mind now.  We should have gone to the burrito place that looked condemned.  Ah, the crystal clear vision of hindsight.

Later that same day we took ourselves along Front Street toward St. Lawrence Market and happened upon the Hot House Cafe, 35 Church Street.  It is right where Church and Front meet or diverge or whatever.  It’s sort of across from Toronto’s Flatiron Building and in the same general area as the nearly-complete Sony Centre for the Performing Arts.  This was the best place we ate the whole time we were in town and we actually went there twice, first for dinner and then the next day we returned for dessert.  I had the chicken pizza, as is my wont and there was enough for both of us to have some and then to have it for breakfast the next day.  Amy elected to have their hamburger which was juicy and really  nicely seasoned.  The waitstaff were excellent, as was the ambiance (apart from the guy at the next table who appeared to be hitting on the girl he was with so hard until she started talking about her boyfriend.  Then he started going on and on about how he was gay and how gay he was and how long he’d been gay so that was kind of weird).  There is a sort of prep kitchen right in the main part of the restaurant and a glass case full of desserts.  We saw desserts going by to other tables and decided to come back the next night, which we did.  I had chocolate cake that had icing out to here and Amy had something lighter and lemony.  We also split an appetizer (dip platter, skip the eggplant stuff as it tastes of cigarette smoke).  There was enough cake that I had it for breakfast on the morning we left.

Spring Rolls, 85 Front Street
We went back down Front Street to St. Lawrence market the next morning (when things were actually open) and stopped at Spring Rolls for lunch.  There are apparently four of them in the downtown area.  This one had a fairly large dining room and all eight couples were shoved into the front eight tables with between four and eight feet separating us (and less so when one of the couples had a friend join them, necessitating a move of our closest neighbours’ table toward us).  They do sort of an Asian-inspired thing.  My General Tso’s Chicken was labelled as spicy but I managed not to eat any of the chilis so I found it very nice.  Amy had pad thai and it was good, too.  Our waiter, Joao (who looked Italian, maybe?  I think it was an assumed name) was extremely creepy.  Our table was right beside a big column and when he did the ‘how is everything?’ thing that waiters always do, he just sort of leaned out from around the column about a foot from Amy’s head.  Decent prices, pretty good food, weird/odd/cramped service.

So, there you have it.  A gustatory whirlwind tour of south-central Toronto.

such a pretty garden

Update:  Amy reminded me that she had vegetarian chili at Regal Beagle, not French Onion Soup.  It was in a french onion soup style bowl.

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Going Out on the Town – Carlos’ Cantina

by adam on October 23rd, 2009
Posted In: restaurant reviews

I’ve had the opportunity to go out for lunch with one of my imaginary friends, Mike several times over the past couple of years.  Yesterday was just such an occasion and we went, once again, to Carlos’ Cantina on St. Paul Street in St. Catharines.  We’ve been there thrice, now and Amy and I went there once together.

It is a typical-for-downtown-St.-Catharines-sized restaurant.  There are perhaps 15 tables.  Today was the first time I’d ever sat in the back area (there were five of us and things were busier than I’ve ever seen them).  The place doesn’t look like much from the outside, being a fairly modest storefront with a really ugly but memorable sombrero on the sign out front.  The kitchen takes up the entire right hand side of the front room and as far as I can tell, there are only two people who work there.  Carlos is the chef and there is also a woman who waits tables and busses (she is perhaps his wife or girlfriend.  Maybe business partner.  I couldn’t say).  The colour scheme is all reds, yellows and oranges and the chairs are serviceable, though I wouldn’t say comfortable.

The times I’ve been there, I have had the chicken chimichanga and the burrito and that’s about it.  Each meal starts with house-made tortilla chips and three kinds of salsa.  The one with the metal spoon in it is the hot one, so be aware.  The chimichanga is a big fried package of shredded chicken in a tasty sauce along with a whole bunch of cheese.  The burrito is basically the same thing but baked with cheese on top instead of being fried (note: a lot of Mexican food falls into the category of ‘meat and cheese wrapped in a tortilla and baked/fried with cheese’ so this is not a highly specific description of what I had).  Each is served with a side of spicy rice, beans and salad.  The portions are about right for a lunch.  I would perhaps go here and then get dessert someplace if I were out for dinner.  The prices are very competitive with other restaurants downtown.  The chimichanga was about $12 and I think the burrito is comparable.

They don’t have any fountain beverages at all.  Any pop or juice comes from a can or a bottle (they have the small, glass Coke bottles which may or may not be made with real sugar) and they have a pretty fair selection of beer, as far as I can tell.  I usually get either a Coke or an iced tea (Coke in this case which is why I’m still up at 1:05, writing this post instead of sleeping.  Caffeine is becoming a serious problem for me).

There was an upholstered office chair in area where we were sitting (which apparently used to have couches and a Nintendo but is now just tables) and a very small girl was pushing it around in circles while her mother and grandmother ate.  She was very quiet about it, which I appreciated.

rests his head on a pillow made of concrete

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Going Out on the Town – IKEA Etobicoke

by adam on October 4th, 2009
Posted In: restaurant reviews

Last night we went to see Chris Tomlin in concert at the Queensway Cathedral.  The show was all right and, while it was neat ot see so many people really getting into a worship time, I don’t think that kind of thing is for me.  Lesson learned!

Sidebar:  The word “cathedral” brings to my mind the idea of a huge, vaulted ceiling, probably made of wood with giant stained glass windows and maybe some intricate carving with gold leaf somewhere about the place.  What we actually got was a large, barn-like building with uncomfortable seating and very, very poor sightlines from the balcony and anywhere that wasn’t the first ten or so rows of pews on the lower level.  There are ten giant columns placed in such a way that no section of seating has unimpeded views.  The ceiling was of mid-grade acoustical ceiling tile and the whole thing looked a bit run down.  Note to self: while glass panels in railings certainly help with sight lines, they get grubby in a big hurry what with small children leaving handprints all over.

The show started at 7.30, doors opened at 6.30 and we got to the area at about 5.45 having picked up someone en route.  The Etobicoke IKEA is directly across the street and has a restaurant so we figured we’d eat there, park in their lot and walk over for the show.  On the surface, this seems like an okay plan as IKEA Burlington has decent enough food and we figured it would be roughly comparable.

The line up was actually relatively short which we took to be a good sign.  The pre-packaged sandwiches and wraps looked much as such items usually do (like they were prepared months ago and are occasionally run through the dishwasher to clean the dust off the cellophane) so we decided to try the roasted chicken.  The portion sizes are actually kind of ridiculous.  I got what appeared to be a quarter-turkey piece while Amy’s was somewhat smaller.  For $6.99 one receives a piece of chicken and choice of side.  I got french fries and Amy had mashed potatoes.

The chicken was dry.  Very dry.  It was a Sahara of flavourless protein in a greasy and shiny skin shell.  I considered going the route of the commercial where the woman pours a jug of water onto her guests’ plates.  This chicken could have been used to sop up major oil spills and had enough left over capacity to bring sea level back down to an acceptable height and save all those people in low-lying areas (New Orleans, Holland, etc.).  The french fries seem to have been made in Sweden at some point in the past year or two and shipped, flat-packed in brown cardboard boxes to minimize waste then put back together with tiny Allen keys and thrown into the chafing dish to warm them.  Amy’s mashed potatoes were the only redeeming foodstuff ordered.  They were a significantly higher percentage of ‘good’ compared to actually good potatoes than the french fries were to good french fries.

One of the people who were with us got some coleslaw which, for some ineffable reason, had a giant piece of broccoli in it.  It was apparently the only piece of broccoli in the entire dish.  I don’t immediately associate broccoli with coleslaw so my theory is that either it fell in from some other bowl or dish or (and I find this more likely) the ‘slaw started out with a significant amount of broccoli and everybody in the line ahead of us looked at it and thought, “Oh my!  I have never tried broccoli in mayonnaise dressing before, I bet it’s wonderful,” and took a heaping helping.

There were no forks to be had when we came through the line.  I ate the first part of my chicken with a soup spoon, carving it much as an 8th century king would have done, except he would have had a knife of some kind (of which there were none, either).  I was tempted to make a sally down to the cutlery section of the IKEA Marketplace and just take some forks from their stock but I was saved from rash action by the arrival of freshly cleaned forks (still no knives, oddly.  Perhaps they’ve had people storm the serving area with cries of YOU CALL THIS CHICKEN? YOU CALL THESE FRIES? HAVE AT YOU *stab* *stab* *stab*).

Amy went to get refills on pop ($1 for a bottomless glass is actually a pretty good deal) and asked me what I wanted.  I said “Surprise me” so she brought me back a combination of lingonberry juice and Sprite or 7up or whatever.  It was remarkably tasty and she thought she was playing a prank so looks like the tables were turned!  On the whole, IKEA food is much like IKEA furniture.  Inexpensive, made of particle board and, while looking very nice, not as good as something you could make for yourself, even if you had no skills whatsoever in cookery/carpentry.

but we’re not the same

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Going Out on the Town – Cat’s Caboose

by adam on September 26th, 2009
Posted In: misc, restaurant reviews

When I got home last night we decided it was a good night to have our more-or-less weekly date night as we are going to a work-related function on Saturday night.  Amy wanted to get a haircut so we drove into St. Catharines and decided en route where we would go.  We ended up at the Cat’s Caboose on Glenridge Avenue (sidebar: they have an absolutely fantastic website that I had not previously visited).

It is a very roadhouse/bar looking sort of place (apparently the Jagermeisterrettes were going to be there sometime later Thursday than we were there, which gives you an idea of the calibre for which they aim) though there is a more traditional-restaurant-looking dining area to one side where the music is not so loud and there aren’t as many TVs.  There is a live jazz group (sometimes trio, sometimes up to a quintet) on Saturday afternoons/early evenings and live bands later on Saturdays.  The decor and ambiance would not lead one to credit the food too much but appearances are (as they often can be) deceiving.

They have one of the most varied menus of any restaurant I’ve ever visited.  Priced comparably to Kelsey’s or Boston Pizza (actually a bit cheaper than either), they tend toward what I think of as ‘generic restaurant’ food, not associated with any particular culture or cuisine.  They have 13 sandwiches, 5 burgers and a couple kinds of wraps but also steak, fajitas in several varieties, pasta, salads and a ridiculously full page of appetizers.  As I said, a very varied variety (that particular alliteration is a lot of fun to say) and extremely reasonable prices.  They have fajitas for between $10.99 and $12.99 and I think most places start at $14.99 and tend upward.

Amy had the Roadhouse Roadkill Cajun Chicken sandwich (though she asked for and received the substitution of a wrap for bread) with Chicken Gumbo soup as a side ($8.99) and I had a Paris Chicken sandwich (chicken, apple slices and Brie which I chose because I wasn’t feeling particularly adventurous.  I find it interesting how much my tastes have changed in that a sandwich with fancy cheese and apple slices is my “boring” option. Also it was $9.99) with a side of fries.  Both of Amy’s dishes were slightly spicy.  Not a “perspiring while eating’ kind of spicy but they had some bite.  I really enjoyed my sandwich (though it was full of what seemed to be shredded lettuce mixed with mayonnaise.  Tasty but a strange texture and appearance) and the portions were very good.  I’m sure they have their fries supplied but they are quite crisp and not particularly heavy.

Our server, Alistair (not making that up) was very attentive and quite friendly.  Overall it was a sterling example of an independent restaurant making up in quality, service and value what it lacked in national radio and television advertising campaigns.  I think we’ve now been there three or four times and I recommend it highly.

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Going out on the Town – Café Amore

by adam on August 8th, 2009
Posted In: restaurant reviews

Sick of being in the house, we decided to take a date night tonight.  This is a fairly regular occurrence around these parts and being in the Niagara area, we usually try to find a non-chain restaurant to grace with our presence.  Tonight we decided to try Café Amore on Martindale Road in St. Catharines.

It is kind of hard to find if one does not know where to look.  The signage is fairly unassuming and it’s in the middle of a generic-looking strip mall.  There was no wait at the door though most of the tables (including the one where we were seated) had Reserved signs on them.  The decor is very tasteful (though not quite as quaint as at their other location on Lake Street where we’ve been in the past) and kind of homey on the side where we ate.  Homey in the ‘stereotypically Italian living room’ sort of way.  The other main section is decorated more in the style of an old-country street, or so I assume, having only ever been in the new country.

Our waitress, Pam, was very friendly and a little bit absent-minded.  Amy asked her for a recommendation and this threw her off completely.  All of the entrées come with salad and garlic bread and there are many options.  I picked Chicken Genoese ($14) and Amy selected Garlic Shrimp Pasta ($14 as well, prices approximate).  All the pasta dishes have the option of penne, linguine or whole wheat spaghetti pasta (she chose whole wheat and I went with linguine).

The salads and garlic bread arrived first.  My garden salad was very good.  The dressing put me in mind of a very finely diced bruschetta.  Amy’s caesar had good dressing but the lettuce was wilty at best.  We both really enjoyed the garlic bread though the presentation was a bit odd:  It was served on a plastic cutting board that had pretty clearly been used (one hopes it was used for the cutting of the garlic bread but it is impossible to tell).

The pasta was pretty slow in arriving and when they did, Amy’s was penne.  The waiter took it back and brought out one on whole wheat spaghetti pretty quickly.  The shrimps were so big she had to cut them in half before eating them.  The pesto cream sauce on mine was very good but I found the chicken very dry and not very flavourful.  Pam did a pretty fair job of bringing us refills for our drinks but she was a little over-eager when it came to packing up my leftovers.  Amy was still eating when my extra food was dumped into styrofoam right there at the table.

One of the things we would like to do at some point is stay at a restaurant for dessert.  Café Amore is one of several restaurants in St. Catharines that have their desserts on display but we’ve never made it through a meal with enough space left over for that to even be an option.  I enjoyed the restaurant tonight from a subjective perspective (atmosphere, friendly service, happy to be out of the house) but more objectively it wasn’t really that good (messed up order, entrée actually not that great).  The Lake Street location has been closed for construction for a very long time and I think we might give it a try if/when it reopens.

everybody’s saying everything is alright

Additional Information (posted Aug 10, 2009):  I drove past the Lake Street location today and my hopes were abruptly sent up and then crashed down.  The under construction sign had been removed, as had the sign asking people to go to the Martindale Road restaurant (hooray! Re-opening!).  Then I noticed the small, red ‘For Sale’ sign in the window.  Crushing disappointment!  Looks as though it’s Martindale or nothing and by nothing I mean one of the other excellent Italian restaurants in St. Catharines.

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Going Out on the Town – Real Sushi

by adam on June 19th, 2009
Posted In: restaurant reviews

Today was our co-op student’s last day in the office but since he left at 11:30, my boss took him and the rest of us out for lunch yesterday.  We went to Real Sushi (or Real Shusi, if you’d prefer the name on the back of the waitstaff’s t-shirts).

Amy and I have been going to Real Sushi about once every couple of months for a few years.  We do long-weekend supervision of the dormitories at the school where she teaches and our program is made up of students from overseas who haven’t anywhere else to go during breaks.  We have them over Canadian Thanksgiving, American Thanksgiving (a holdover holiday from the time when the school had a much higher US contingent than it has now), inter-semester break weekend, Family Day (mid-February), Easter and Victoria Day.  We typically go out for dinner or lunch once per weekend and Real Sushi is our most commonly repeated restaurant.

It’s a fairly small place on Carlisle Street in St. Catharines.  One of the entrances is off St. Paul Street and is via the lobby of the extremely sketchy Leonard Hotel (primarily low-income housing but it looks like a really seedy flop-house).  There are perhaps 20 tables with seating for around 75 in what looks like it may once have been an Indian or Middle-Eastern restaurant.  The decor is not very upscale (though they did replace the crushed velour upholstery on the bench seats at some point in the last year or so which was a very wise move).  Currently lunch is $11.99 and dinner $14.99 for all-you-can-eat.

The menu is very varied (a phrase that looks much better than it sounds) and has much more than just raw fish.  I was sceptical the first time we went as my prior experience with sushi was limited to a bit of salmon and some octopus in my grade five unit on Japan (a unit that included the creation of kimonos from surplus boot fabric in several surprising colours of green and orange).  A couple of the students with us had eaten sushi many times before (apparently Japanese food is very popular in Korea) and so one of them ordered for the table and we were spared the awkwardness of 10 minutes of “so um… what is this, exactly?”

At Real Sushi the best idea is to order small amounts of food at regular intervals if you’ve got time for a couple hours of eating.  The waitstaff are very friendly but are not particularly good at remembering orders though they be written down.  As an example, about a minute after we sat down yesterday, somebody came and dropped off a plate of salmon rolls.  Our drinks order had not yet been taken.

I recommend the General Tao Chicken, teriyaki chicken, chicken skewers and, if you can manage it, the plates of noodles, all from the “Kitchen” side of the menu.  In all the times I’ve been there, I have been successful once in trying to order the plate of soba noodles.  All of the noodle dishes are available as either a plate or soup and I keep getting soup despite asking for not-soup.  I’m not entirely sure how to rectify this.  The soup is good (though not as good as that at Noodle House) but it is not what I asked for.  On the “Sushi” side of the menu, the salmon and red snapper nigiri (slices of raw fish on rice) are really tasty and the tuna nigiri is a good one to try if you’ve never had sushi before because it doesn’t taste at all fishy.  They prepare the rice with some kind of vinegar, apparently.  It is sticky and slightly sweet (I think there is also sugar in the preparation at some point).  The sashimi (large lumps of raw fish) is good, too.  It is only available on the supper menu.  I am not a big fan of most rolls (seaweed is not really for me) but the Real Sushi rolls are really good.  They are (going from memory here) salmon, mango, mayo (pretty sure on this and yes it does sound odd) and a couple other things rolled up and then deep-fried.

Yesterday one of my co-workers ordered deep-fried squid tentacles.  I have tried calamari before and found it acceptable but it’s a bit like eating rubbery onion rings.  These are very clearly tentacles that have been wrenched from a squid and thrown into boiling oil.  The suckers are still quite clearly present.  I was very hesitant to insert one of these into my mouth (because man do they ever look weird) but it turned out to be very tasty albeit very tricky to bite through.  I think my chopstick technique is getting stronger every time I’m there.

for whom it is reserved

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