Big Mouth Kee (with alcohol)

Big Mouth Kee (280 West Beaver Creek Road, Richmond Hill)

905-881-8821

Big Mouth Kee is quickly becoming a regular place for me. Its cheap lunches and night-time dishes are great wallet savers. The restaurant is open late at night and they serve alcohol.

Nigori crème de sake ($18).

Served chilled. It had a nice sweetness to it that made it easy to drink. 

Josie made a face when she saw that the first ingredient was water.

X.O. sauce fried rice noodle rolls.

We didn't find this dish particularly spicy. (X.O. sauce is supposed to be spicy.) I actually thought that it went well with the sauce from the clam dish.

Clams

These were pretty good. They come swimming in thick sauce that would've gone very well with plain white rice.

Tsingtao beer ($4.50).

This is the first time that I've tried this Chinese beer. It was really light tasting, and reminded me of Coors. It tastes a bit like nothing.

Molson Canadian ($4.00)

I had to return to what I knew.

The name for this was really weird. It wasn't any more descriptive in Chinese than it would have been in English had there been English on the siu yeh menu.

It wasn't bad. The squid wasn't too overdone, and the taro (?) pieces had just enough bite. It was just a bit on the small side.

Would I go back? Yeah. The food is cheap enough and most of it is decent. Their alcohol might not be the cheapest, but they're open late.

Total damage: $33 for 2 beers, 1/2 sake, and my share of the food split among 3 people.

Pizzeria Libretto

Pizzeria Libretto (221 Ossington Avenue, Toronto)

416-532-8000

Hours: 

Mon - Sat 12 - 11 p.m.

Sun 4 - 11 p.m.

Wild mushroom pizza (Friday).

There are daily pizza selections and at $19, Friday's and Monday's seem to be the most expensive. The mushroom flavour is intense and the pizza is a bit on the salty side. I liked the taste that came through, but the crust was rather flimsy and a bit doughy at the edges. I'm not sure if real Neapolitan pizza is supposed to be like that, but I don't think it's my preference. Also, I had trouble keeping up with Andrew's eating speed because his food came out a good few minutes before mine (and he eats really fast).

Hot peppers, sausage, and mozzarella pizza.

I tried a bit of the meat, and it had a slight tingle on my tongue, but Andrew said that the hot peppers on the pizza made his mouth feel like burning. He enjoyed his meal, but had the same issues with the crust as I did.

Would I return? Maybe. Service is friendly. Place has good amount of people, and it is loud (during a Friday lunch around 1 p.m.). I like the ingredients that they use, but the pizza crust is a bit of a turn off.

Total damage for two: $45.

Cora's

Cora's (16 Vogell Road, Richmond Hill, Ontario)

Pear and brie crêpe-panini.

The pear and brie panini thing was pretty cool. There was a considerable amount of brie cheese in it. I wasn't too fond of the dressing-less salad. Not sure if salad dressing was an option, but our waiter didn't offer and we were in a rush so I didn't find out.

The orange juice was compliments of a previous scratch card coupon.

Total damage: free for me thanks to Casey!

Le Cafe Michi

Le Café Michi (1802 Pharmacy Avenue, Scarborough, Ontario)
416-490-9688

This restaurant was recommended by fellow food bloggers Professor Crunchy and Team Fatty so naturally I was anticipating a good experience at Le Cafe Michi. With that trust in mind, I ordered the omakase ($55). So exciting! No thinking and different dishes of the chef's selection come out one after the other. If I wanted to choose though, there's a small photo album with pictures of most of the set meals.

Green tea.

The other meals on the same page of the menu have either refillable green tea or coffee as a drink option, but the omakase comes with both. I quite like the cute little saucer that the cup sits on. The tea itself was a bit too light for me.

Dish 1.

The plate is cute and reminds me of a painter's palette. The squid on the left is cooked in such a way that it tastes raw. It's pretty cool. I like the sauces that they use for the squid and the vegetables in the centre. The middle bit tastes like Chinese choy. The beans on the right are sweet and can be the giant, tougher cousins to red beans.

Dish 2.

The nut bits are sweet and crunchy. The shrimp is full of awesome savoury flavour. Those are my two favourite parts of the salad.

Dish 3 and 4.

The steamed egg on the left has lots of stuff. There's even eel hidden near the bottom. Josie thought that it could have come in a smaller portion. The fried rectangular prism is crunchy on the outside, and really creamy on the inside. It tastes of seafood filling.

Dish 5.

The sashimi is really fresh. I'm surprised at raw shrimp and scallop. The one thing I don't like is the texture of the tuna. It's weirdly chewy, as if it was cut the wrong way.

Dish 6.

By this time, I'm already pretty full; however, the plate looks so exciting, I don't care. There are no cheap California roll fillers here. There's a three-piece egg and eel maki and three pieces of raw scallop maki. The raw one is more exciting. There's pink tuna belly nigri on the left, and also salmon roe and uni (sea urchin) pieces on the right. The uni is soft and kind of melts in my mouth. It's a lot less grainy than when I had it fresh out of the shell in Las Vegas. Josie said that she would've liked it to taste more like the sea. I live in Toronto, so I know that I don't want any of my food tasting like it came from Lake Ontario. The salmon roe nigri was the most exciting one for me. The little balls burst with salty flavour when I bite into them. 

Coffee.

Goes great with the cake.

Lemon cheesecake.

It's light and has a distinct lemon taste. It has a slight gelatin composition. I'd say it's pretty satisfying after the whole meal.

Total damage for my omakase: $73.

That's it for my meal. Here are what my buddies ate:

Casey's Cafe au lait chirashi.

Under all that raw fish goodness is a bed of rice, and hidden underneath that is some cooked eel.

Renée's cooked eel omelette on rice.

I'm sure that's not what it's called, but that's what it looks like. There seems to be quite a bit of eel in it.

Simon's meal.

I actually do not know what he ordered other than it was a fully cooked dish. 

Renée's green tea crème brûlée.

It sounds like it's fun to crack. The crème part is indeed very creamy. It looked a bit like Ninja Turtle ooze though.

Casey's green tea and red bean cake.

Josie's English trifle. 

Jess had something with too many blueberries on it, so I didn't take a picture.

There was also chocolate mousse sake cake, but I was pretty full. I guess I'll have to save it for next time.

Would I go back? Didn't I just indirectly say I would? The fish is fresh, everything is well presented, and I like how a slice of cake is included in the price as if everyone should always have cake after their meal. (There are à la carte options and other meal options that do not include cake, but the cakes sit tauntingly behind glass right when you walk in the restaurant.) This has been one of the more spectacular places that I've eaten at in a while. I'd definitely go back to try more cake and maybe some plum wine, and to just enjoy well-made and well-prepared food. My bank account will yell at me, but I won't care!

DELICIOUSNESS!

The Bowl

The Bowl Fine Asian Cuisine (522 Yonge Street, Toronto)
416-920-2695
Hours:
Mon - Sat 11 a.m. - 11 p.m.
Sun & holidays 3 p.m. - 10 p.m.

There are daily specials listed on a giant sign hanging on the window, and you can get 10% off your meal with a student card. Some of the specials such as Asian BBQ bowl and green thai curry sound more exciting than others like General Tao chicken (What is that?). The restaurant has a pretty casual feel when you walk in, and it's most likely catered to the students in the area.

Thai Fresh Young Coconut Juice ($3.50)

The juice is good. I wasn't expecting the slices of coconut, and I really wasn't expecting the texture of said slices. The pieces might have been soaking in something for a while because the softness was slightly harder than the white part of a hard-boiled egg. I thought coconut meat was supposed to be crunchy, but maybe I just don't eat them enough. All that being said, I liked the soft chunks in my drink.

Chicken Pad Thai

This is the Monday special. It's $1 extra as dinner. I found the noodles to be less oily than other places I've eaten at. The crispy edible bowl that it came in was pretty novel, but the bottom of the bowl was a bit weird as it became a mushy, stretchy skin that was a bit awkward to eat. There was a good amount of chicken in mine, but Renée complained that she didn't notice any in hers.

Renée also said her Pad Thai tasted like burning, and I didn't find mine to be spicy so much as having a hint of spice. I also requested that mine be spicy and she asked for hers to be without. Renée looked concerned when our server came with the two plates not knowing which one was which. I taste tested both and decided that mine was only slightly hotter than hers.

I appreciate how our server kept discreetly coming by to check on us without interrupting us.

Would I go back? Maybe. The food wasn't super amazing, but it was pretty filling and reasonably priced. I think I'd first try the location on Bayview since it looks like the classier sibling of this restaurant.

Total damage: $15.

Starbucks

Starbucks (8750 Bayview Avenue, Richmond Hill, Ontario)

Tall Tazo® Shaken Iced Green Tea Lemonade

It's slightly sour, sweet. and a bit bitter. It's a refreshing iced drink for a hot day.

Would I go back? Yeah. It's Starbucks. Where else am I going to get overpriced caffeinated beverages?

Total damage: free for me thanks to Casey and his gift card. Yay!

The Waffle Works

The Waffle Works (2451 Lakeshore Boulevard West, Toronto)
647-258-7470

I've wanted to try this place for a while because it seemed to offer something different - namely, waffles and chicken. It seemed like some fatty Southern comfort food right there.

The restaurant didn't make it easy for me find it though. The website is pretty shoddy (under construction and no menu or hours) and manually entering the address into Google Maps leads me to a completely different place in Toronto. Andrew said that it works better if I just Google "Waffle Works" and click on the picture of the map that comes up. When we drove to the location, we actually passed by it at first because it's tucked away into the back of some obscure plaza. But anyway...

We walk in to an empty restaurant: no customers, no servers, no one behind the counter. Awkward... Awkward. What is also awkward is the red tint on all the front-facing windows. It gives the place a slightly creepy red glow. I think a minute or two passes before someone behind the kitchen doors notices us wandering  around like lost children.

A friendly server tells us to sit wherever and brings us another menu as we had already taken one when nobody was around.

Andrew and I both decide on Chicken and Waffles, as it seems to be a popular dish that I've never tried before. Our server kindly notes that it will be about 20 minutes.

Chicken and waffles.

The plate looks a little too simple. The blob is salted butter (probably margarine).

The first bite of my chicken was kind of dry, but that was because it was an edge piece. The rest of the chicken was okay enough. The skin looked more flavourful than it actually was, but at least it was crispy. I found that the syrup tasted like nothing. It seemed watered down, and the butter/margarine overpowered it. I was expecting one of those giant Belgian waffles, but it turned out to be a flatter and denser variation. Both Andrew and I thought it could have been crispier. 

Dessert menu

We didn't end up ordering any dessert.

Would I go back? Probably not. The food didn't wow me and the place is kind of out of the way of everything. Also, they need a those jangly ornaments on the door or something so that customers don't walk in to a completely empty restaurant.

Total damage: $15.

Caffé Demetré

Caffé Demetré (100 York Boulevard, Richmond Hill, Ontario)
905-881-8406

Caffé Demetré can get pretty crowded at times, and sometimes you can be forced to sit near the entrance like we were. This isn't a huge problem unless it's cold outside. All the cold air prompted me to order a hot drink.

Service was friendly, even if I wasn't particularly polite when I ordered without looking at the server. (I had an iPhone in my hand, and I didn't know how to pause the game so I blindly motioned toward some general area of the menu as I ordered.)

Some chocolatey coffee drink.

It was chocolatey coffee. The chocolate chunks on top were a bit less than I was expecting. The drink tasted okay.

Total damage: $5-ish.

Turtle Jack's

Turtle Jack's (10 Vogell Road, Richmond Hill, Ontario)
Tel: 905-770-1729
Sun - Wed: 11am- 12am
Thurs - Sat: 11am- 2am

We kept seeing the Turtle Jack's sign when we went to eat at Cora's in the same plaza. Why not try something new?

First thing I noted was that the wait staff seemed really attentive. The restaurant was somewhat empty, so I guess it was easy for our server to come by to check on us several times.

I also noticed that the lights dimmed and undimmed randomly. It was kind of weird.

There are two pictures of food and one picture of random kid leaning over water on the menu.

Josie's mojito and my top shelf margarita ($5.99).

I was thankful that my drink wasn't sobering like the Kelsey's drink that I've recently had to experience. Turns out the 1.5 oz in my Turtle Jack's drink was properly measured. *claps*

Josie and Casey's nachos.

Tortillas are crisp, and the salsa and guacamole taste good. I'm usually pretty skeptical about ordering nachos, but these weren't half bad.

My bison meatloaf with onion crisps.

I ate half my meatloaf before I realized there were vegetables on my plate. The meatloaf is soft and meaty, but not gamey. The fried onion bits were great, as was the dish in general.

Josie's burger.

The meat on Josie's burger tasted more like steak meat than it did burger, if that makes any sense at all.

Deep-fried cheesecake.

It was sitting in berry sauce, so I didn't touch it, but the other seemed to like it.

Would I go back? Sure! I'd go back with my full appetite, though.

Total damage: $32.79 for my drink and bison meatloaf.

Random Food Post!

Cheesecake Factory


I can't remember which location this is, but I like Cheesecake Factory food in general. Most of the time, it's pretty good.

Some of the cheesecakes are better than others. It helps to have tried a few to know what to pick.

This smiley face formed by itself during a lunch at a Chinese restaurant. Having mealtime is always happy.

Suite 88 (3957, rue Saint-Denis, Montréal)

I bought a set of these chocolate shooters and took pictures of the ones on display so I could remember what were in them.

Fun if you like alcohol and chocolate!

A guy makes fresh noodles at the Pacific Mall upstairs food court. It's quite a show and pretty loud when he bangs the noodles on the metal surface. Also, the noodles are pretty tasty.