Friday, December 25, 2009

Ten Ren's

Ten Ren Tea (330 Highway 7 East, Richmond Hill)
905-881-8896

Waffle with bananas, peaches and green tea ice cream:
It's similar to Demetre's.

Ten Ren's is currently running a promotion. If the bill comes up to over $60, you can get a free "cha cha mug". That's the lowest tier, and a bill over $100 grants the customer a mug and a $10 coupon, I think.

I got Oolong Papa!

Collect them all!


Total damage: Free for me! Thanks, friends!

Merry Christmas and happy holidays!

Yamato Japanese Restaurant

Yamato Japanese Restaurant (24 Bellair Street, Toronto)
416-927-0077

Lunch hours
Mon - Fri: 11:30 a.m. - 3 p.m.
Sat - Sun: 12 p.m. - 3:30 p.m.

Dinner hours
Mon - Thurs: 5 p.m. - 11 p.m.
Fri - Sat: 4 p.m. - 12 a.m.
Sun: 4 p.m. - 10 p.m.

Tori Tatsuta Udon ($13):
The meat was crispy and quite enjoyable. The noodles were standard, there were a lot of bean sprouts, and the broth had a distinct taste - something makes me think it's largely soy sauce based. Overall, it was pretty good.

What is exciting about Yamato is the teppenyaki show. Berta got a teppenyaki dish, so I got to watch the show. Our teppenyaki man flipped the salt and pepper mills like he was having fun. I think the most exciting part was the flaming onion volcano.

Total damage: approximately $20 (including an overpriced glass of apple juice).

Saturday, December 19, 2009

Craft Burger (Yonge St)

416-922-8585
Hours:
Mon - Thurs: 11 A.M. - 10 P.M.
Fri: 11 A.M. - 11 P.M.
Sat: 12 P.M. - 11 P.M.
Sun: 12 P.M. - 9 P.M.

Last time I went to Craft Burger (King Street location), they totally ignored my "no ketchup" instructions. This time, I ordered the spicy burger combo, and made sure the burger didn't come with ketchup to begin with. (It comes with spicy mayonnaise.)

Andrew's spicy burger combo with onion rings:
The onion rings were very crispy, and I quite liked them. Andrew said that they could have used more salt. He noted that the burgers actually leak meat juice when he gets them during lunch time, but this particular time the burger lacked in leaky goodness. (We went on a Friday evening to avoid the huge lunch crowd.) He also lamented that the burgers have been more well done in recent visits, but they used to be medium rare and pink in the middle.

My spicy burger combo with fries:
The fries were crispy and I liked the seasoning. Andrew said that it was just salt, but it tasted like more than just salt to me - almost like potato chip seasonings. My burger had more pink colour inside than Andrew's and although it wasn't leaking meat juice, I still think it was one of the juicier burgers in the city. The tomato and lettuce weren't anything special, but at least they were present to garnish the meat. The sesame bun worked well in the package.

This location seemed to have a bit more space than its King Street sister. The burgers are pretty much the same though, and that's really all that matters.

Overall, I would have to say that this is one of my preferred burger joints in Toronto. How could anyone deny themselves a thick, juicy burger?

Total damage for the combo: $11.47.

Saturday, December 12, 2009

Ten Ren Tea

Ten Ren Tea (330 Highway 7 East, Richmond Hill)
905-881-8896

I've been told by some friends that the drinks from Ten Ren taste weird. It's probably because they use "the real stuff" to make their drinks. Taro drinks from many other bubble tea places use a powdered mix that gives it a really strong purple colour. In Mel's taro milk tea from Ten Ren, she could taste the actual taro chunks.

My red bean milk tea:
This is not something I usually order, but they were out of the warm almond drink. I think it's kind of neat that you can order your very own teapot. It's more expensive than other places, but there's novelty in having your own teapot.

This was part of Mel's meal:
I don't actually know what it is, but it's something in soup.

Ten Ren Tea is like a bubble tea shop for the slightly older, richer crowd. That being said, I didn't feel too out of place in super casual clothing (oversized hoodie and jeans).

It also has more focus on the tea. According to Mel, the noodles aren't bad either.

Total damage for my teapot: $10.

Random Food

Sheila's A&W Sirloin Baby Burger Twins:
Pillsbury crescent rolls filled with cheese - delicious melted cheese.
There was leftover food in an empty meeting room. Half a piece of steak and a cup of warm apple cider:
(I ate the ravioli, dessert and half the steak before taking the picture.)

It was free food at work day. There was also a lunch that was actually for us, but I felt too embarrassed to snap a photo of my plate in front of co-workers. We had salad, beef, potatoes, broccoli and little tarts. The small plate in the picture is from the leftovers of some meeting on my floor for higher ups. They had fancy ravioli, mini steaks, assorted cheeses, warm apple cider, mini desserts, and vegetables.

Mini cake from Longo's box in the fridge:

The light brown part had a texture similar to that of chocolate tart filling.

Thursday, December 10, 2009

Mad Batter Bakers

Mad Batter Bakers
416-516-4759
cookies@madbatterbakers.com

Picked up these awesome gingerbread cookies at the One of a Kind Show. Aisle C was where all the food booths were!
They come in a fancy box that closes with magnets!
Cookies!
They come ten snowflakes in a box. The cookies are soft and delicious. The mildly sweet icing sugar works well with the spiced cookie. The icing isn't really hard or stale. Soft gingerbread cookies in the shape of snowflakes... in a box printed with snowflakes... I must have more.

Cookies!

Total damage: $12.42.

Tuesday, December 8, 2009

Sea Food

My brother brought this back for me from the Dominican. I didn't realize it was food until he said it was.

The blue pieces are candies, the purple "rocks" are candy-coated chocolates (like large M&Ms) and the fish is a cookie.


I really didn't know it was food. Pretty cool-looking!

Buk Chang Dong Soon Tofu

Buk Chang Dong Soon Tofu (5445 Yonge Street, North York)
(647) 430-7458

Yet another post on this tofu soup restaurant.

Complimentary sides:
Those little beans are a bit hard to chew.

You're meant to crack the raw egg into the soup so that it cooks in there, I think.

Everything generally comes out pretty fast. Finding parking might be a bit tricky. There are a few spots behind the restaurant

DRDC Olympic Lunch

I was invited to crash Sheila's work lunch back in the summer.

Salad, onion rings, rice, and chicken:
The rice was pretty good. It was flavoured, as opposed to plain white rice.

Sprite and ice cream sandwich:

The whole meal was $5. Where else can you get a full meal for $5 flat these days?

Total damage: $5.

Monday, December 7, 2009

Chez Ashton

Chez Ashton (somewhere in the province of Quebec)

We went here because we were hungry (as always) and it was open late. That's pretty much all I remember.

A poutine with cut up sausage and a poutine with chicken and peas.
It's fast food poutine. It is what it is.

Saturday, December 5, 2009

Ap ku jung

Ap ku jung (6309 Yonge Street, North York)
(416) 229-6248

Complimentary side dishes (from top left going clockwise): bean sprouts, potatoes in a sweet sauce, kim chi, unknown (seaweed?), tofu in soy sauce.
I like them all. I especially enjoy eating the pickled greens after the spicy kim chi. I was super impressed when a server asked us if we wanted more of the side dishes when some of them were empty. The hard part was refraining from filling up too much on the side dishes before our actual orders were served.

I normally order the (delicious) ginseng chicken stew feast that this restaurant seems to be known for, but I tried for something else this time.

That something else was the pork bone soup (gamjatang).
There was actually quite a bit of meat on the pork bones. The large chunks were easy to pull away from the bones, but after that it gets a bit difficult to use chopsticks to pick at the rest. The soup was very flavourful and clear. The crumbly stuff on top (peppercorn?) added great texture and a bit of a bite to it. The pork bone soup comes with a bowl of white rice.

Sheila's stone bowl fried rice (bibimbap):
This dish is served in a sizzling stone bowl with a sunny side egg on top. The beef and vegetables are neatly placed on top of white rice. It's probably a good idea to stir it before eating. A bottle of red hot sauce is usually provided. The layer of rice that touches the bowl becomes brown and crispy. Sheila said that this particular bibimbap yielded more crispy, brown chunks of rice than usual. That's a good thing.

The prices at Ap ku jung are very wallet friendly. The portions are just right for above average eaters. Each time that I visited, the restaurant was quite warm (literally) in a comfortable way. I have the feeling that I will continue to frequent this restaurant throughout the upcoming cold winter. I suggest others do the same.

Total damage for two people: $19.93.

Cora's

905-508-1755
Hours:
Mon - Sat: 6 a.m. - 3 p.m.
Sun: 7 a.m. - 3 p.m.

Cora's (or Chez Cora for the Francophones) does breakfast and it serves it in a big way. You can get your fruits, carbs and protein in one plate.

Sheila's 1990's Harvest:
The brioche looked cool, some of the kiwi looked overripe, but Sheila seemed to enjoy the meal.

Mango banana smoothie:
It was thicker than I expected it to be and kind of sour. I think they use green mangoes.

Cora's special with added onions ($1.15) to the home fries:
It was really filling and I couldn't finish it. I just realized that I forgot to eat the pineapple. Rats. Other than that, standard breakfast fare. The yolks of my sunny side up eggs were nice and runny.

Total damage (for two of us): $32.50.

Thursday, December 3, 2009

Tiramisu

Here's a tiramisu from I don't know where:
There were layers of cake in it. The pieces that look like lady fingers are actually cake layers - that or they were super softened to taste like layers of cake, but I highly doubt it.

I've had many a tiramisu, but I still don't know what marscapone cheese tastes like.

Wednesday, December 2, 2009

Go Spring Rolls

Go (693 Yonge Street, Toronto)

It's basically the take-out/cafeteria version of Spring Rolls. I don't remember what I ordered, but it definitely wasn't on the vegetarian menu.
It took a little while for our food to be ready, but the soup base had decent flavour. It was a bit spicy, as I remember needing tissue paper to blow my nose.

Swiss Chalet

Swiss Chalet

I had this quarter chicken dinner with a side of poutine a while ago.
I remember that the poutine needed more cheese. And squeaky cheese curds. I suppose if one is really desperate for a poutine, then Swiss Chalet is an option. There would just be better options in Quebec.

Tuesday, December 1, 2009

Taco Bell

Taco Bell
It's the volcano crunchwrap.

It actually has a bit of a kick to it. I think I like it better than the KFC Wrapstar. It's cheaper too.

Damage:

Monday, November 30, 2009

Burger Shoppe Quality Meats


The Ossington ($9): portobello mushroom, mayonnaise, mozzerella, lettuce, tomato, and balsamic reduction.
It tasted healthy, but not in a bad way. I don't think it was as juicy as the one from Craft burger. I liked the sourness of the balsamic reduction on the meat. Overall, it wasn't bad.

Sunday, November 29, 2009

Keung's Delight

Keung's Delight (7030 Warden Avenue, Markham)
905-948-9000

This place gets packed during the weekends. The three of us were left holding a piece of paper with a number for a short while.

Right when I sat down, I noticed a piece of rice sticking to my cup. That indicated that this is the type of place where one might want to wipe down all the utensils, bowls and plates before eating. That being said, the food is really cheap.

The wonton noodles and plain rice noodle rolls I ordered came out pretty quickly.
Everything else came a good ten to fifteen (or more) minutes later.

The wonton noodles were normal enough. The plain rice noodle rolls could've used more (thick) sauce. It was a bit weird to find a small pool of sauce-coloured water at the bottom of the bowl.

The Malaysian chicken wings that Chris ordered were pretty crispy. He thought that the sauce tasted weird, but I thought it was fine.

Andrew thought that they must have run out of bean sprouts because there were bits of cabbage instead in his Shanghai style fried noodles with beef.

Total damage: $10.

Happy Cafe & Steak House

Happy Cafe & Steak House (8392 Kennedy Road unit 6, Markham)

In the large plaza on Kennedy just south of Highway 7, there are Chinese restaurants abound. We decided to go for the one with the pleasant name.

The servers were surprisingly friendly. They even helped us with the daily specials that were only written in Chinese when they saw us struggling to read them. The specials come with soup, salad, main entree, drink, and dessert. I was delighted to find that the "extras" that came with the meal weren't half-assed like at some other establishments that offer similar deals.

Three soup choices were available: tomato vegetable, cream, and Chinese (vegetable, I think). I opted for the cream soup.
I have no idea as to what was actually in it, but I really liked it. It wasn't heavy, and it had an ever so slight sweetness to it. It was also really smooth.

The salad was a fruit salad, and we all seemed excited at the presence of dragon fruit. It's pretty much like tasteless kiwi, but I like it nonetheless.
Half a chicken in soy sauce with green onions and ginger. Served with rice.
I found this style of cooking the chicken to be pretty interesting and quite tasty. It's basically the same fixings normally served with Chinese steamed fish.

Ying yang tea:

The dessert was a type of sweet bean soup. It was sort of like red bean soup, but not really. I believe there were some potatoes in it too.

Overall, I thought it was a pretty good deal for what you get. Also, I'm not sure if I'd be able to find servers that nice in another restaurant that serves similar food.

Total damage: $14.

Friday, November 27, 2009

Summer's

Summer's (101 Yorkville Avenue, Toronto)
(416) 944-2637
Off-season hours: 3 p.m. - 9 p.m. daily (unless "the weather is frightful", according to their twitter)

I'm glad they decided to update their website since last time I visited. Though the new site has been "coming soon" for a while.

Toronto pothole:
I think I still prefer the chocolate chip cookie dough the best.

On one visit, they were out of waffle cones, and I had to settle for a sugar cone. Needless to say, I was disappointed. I wondered how they ran out of waffle cones when they make them.

Thursday, November 26, 2009

Sushi Day

The filling options were cooked eel, egg, cucumber, fake crab meat, and orange caviar. Miso soup was also made.

Most of us just ate them like burritos because cutting them would require too much effort or make them look all messed up.

Jon, however, seems to have rolled and cut sushi before:

This was my first time:
Good times! Food is sometimes more satisfying when you make it yourself.