Peoples Eatery

My friend was back in town and wanted to try out Peoples Eatery in the heart of Chinatown.

We got their tasting menu and started off with a platter

Smoked fish platter
The fish is smoked in-house and presented with sides of capers, radishes, cucumbers.
I thought the entire platter was really nicely done and the fish was delicious!

Croquettes with Indian butter sauce


Tofu with sauce
The tofu was crispy on the outside and soft and fluffy inside.


Whitefish salad with wasabi and toast and skewers of apple and ham/prosciutto
I really liked the crispy bagel toast and whitefish with wasabi.

Moroccan Eggplant
Interesting...but not the best eggplant I've eaten (I really like the Chinese version at Maple Yip or Shinobu's Japanese version)


Salad




Peking Duck

The cooked duck dish (that goes with the Peking Duck)


Dessert

Overall: An interesting eclectic fusion experience.

Website: http://www.peopleseatery.com/

Fat Bastard Burrito

My friend and I weren't hungry enough for individual burritos, so we decided to split a huge burrito: 

Baked Chicken Burrito

This was definitely huge! The two halves actually ended up being like two individual burritos. 

It was okay taste-wise; value-wise, it's a good option since they pack so much of the ingredients into the burrito. 

Tostos Quickfire Pizza Pasta

Tostos is a relatively new pizza and pasta place on Bay a little north of College.  We came here for celebratory lunch. 

Aragosta - Linguine, Lobster, Garlic olive oil, cherry tomatoes, capers and chili flakes

The concept of this sounded really good; unfortunately, it ended up being way too much olive oil, salt & pepper and it overwhelmed the dish.  They did put in a lot of lobster though, but it wasn't really a balanced dish.

Website: http://tostoquickfire.ca/

Hot-Star Large Fried Chicken

Since Hot-Star Chicken opened up in November, I've been hearing a lot of rave reviews about it.  My friends and I decided to do a movie night at Yonge & Dundas and then grab their popular Fried Chicken after.

There were line-ups but it was mostly people waiting for their food to be prepared rather than line-ups to order.  

The food came in these sturdy take-away bags for the chicken.

This was the medium spicy chicken
There was a lot of powder/spice on this one - the hotter you ordered your chicken, the more spice rub you got on it.  I thought it was too much and it dried out the top of the chicken (and the inside of your mouth).

Close up of the chicken and fries
The fries were deliciously crispy and not oily at all!

Salt and Pepper chicken
The chicken was huge, but I didn't find the meat particularly juicy - I liked the salt and pepper one better than the spiced ones. However, I still wasn't a big fan.  The chicken cutlets I had in the night markets of Taiwan were much better (and the most memorable was in Taichung)

Cafe (表哥茶餐廳)

We came here on a recommendation because this restaurant is known for being cheap and fast. 

The service was really fast - we ordered and they served us a bowl of soup almost immediately. 

 The soup came with the meals. 

Vermicelli and pork chop

The vermicelli was simply served in chicken broth and the pork chop was crispy and fried to a nice golden brown.  It was all pretty tasty. 

Baked Chicken Spaghetti

The spaghetti was okay, the sauce wasn't as flavourful as my favourite Macau Portuguese Restaurant. It might have been even better with something to offset the tangy tomato sauce. 

Tim Hortons

It feels a little strange to be doing a post about such a popular Canadian chain like Tim Hortons, but they had this Steak and Cheese Panini promotion and I thought it might be worth it to try it out. 

Steak and Cheese Panini

It was a total fail - I don't think I'd ever order this again - the bread was super hard to chew through, the cheese wasn't even melted and the steak was just clumps of beef sitting all day in the warmer/heater thing and thrown on top.  If you're at Tims, skip this sandwich. 

Jiichiro and Jucheim (Baumkuchen) - Tokyo

Dec 10, 2015

We actually got both of these baumkuchens from my mom's Japanese friend.  She made a trip back to Tokyo and picked these up at the Haneda airport.

This Jucheim baumkuchen was much better than the Hong Kong version.  However, it wasn't as good as the Nenrinya baumkuchen (despite being able to keep for longer). The cake was denser and not as flavourful and soft between layers (Nenrinya makes their baumkuchen without as many preservatives and the cakes don't last as long).

Also, we tried a new brand: Jiichiro

Looks pretty good!

It was okay, at least the cake was softer than the Jucheim cake.  The icing on the outside was a little thin and didn't really taste like anything (it's usually at least a little sweet).  Also, I'm not sure I'm a fan of this cloth-like packaging.

Brownstone Bistro

My coworkers and I went for an early Christmas lunch at Brownstone Bistro

A variety of appetizers: calamari rings, bruschetta, spring rolls and balsamic chicken strips

A sampling of their appetizers - I thought they did the balsamic chicken and bruschetta well. 

Pasta of the Day - Seafood Ravioli

It was okay, I've definitely had better ravioli and seafood pasta though.  I think it might have been better with a cream sauce to highlight the flavour than the heavier rose sauce (which was heavier on the tomato than the cream). 

Website: http://www.brownstonebistro.ca/

St. Louis Bar & Grill

We were meeting some friends after their movie for dinner at Fairview Mall. 

There are quite a few options for a sit down dinner at the mall and someone wanted wings - so here we were at St. Louis Bar & Grill. 

The Friday special was 1/2 pound of wings and 1/2 rack of ribs for $19.95 with the purchase of a drink. 

I got a non-alcoholic berry smoothie

Which turned out to be awful - something in this expired and warped the taste, but they took it back and didn't charge me for it - so that was nice of them. Then I ordered a root beer, and they only had Dad's root beer (which isn't your usual A&W or Barq's - so I was thrown off by that too). 

1/2 Rack of Ribs with Mississippi Honey BBQ sauce and Honey Garlic wings

At least my ribs and wings turned out okay, not the best I've ever had, but decent for the price I paid.  And I decided to get a salad instead of fries (my sad attempt to eat healthy). 

Website: http://stlouiswings.com/

Macau Portuguese Food

Update: Jan 2016 - Location has been closed 

(They were an older couple who ran the Food Court Stall and I think they retired from owning their own restaurant - they work at different places now.  I'm super sad about the fact that I won't get to eat their amazing Portuguese Chicken and Baked Chicken Spaghetti anymore since they have seriously raised the bar for Macanese cuisine for me).

November 28, 2015

I actually regularly come here for their Baked Chicken Spaghetti and Portuguese Chicken (if I were to blog every time I went - my blog would just be overwhelmed by the same pictures all the time). 

Stir Fry Noodles and Baked Chicken Spaghetti in Tomato (Ketchup) sauce

Delicious and so tasty...every time I come here, I think about whether I should ask for their secret recipe for their ketchup sauce and Portuguese sauce (which is usually curry powder and coconut milk) because they make the best sauces of both that I've ever had. 

January 8, 2012

The Menu

 

Macau Portuguese Food is located inside the mall in the Food Court area (meaning super fast service and really cheap prices!). I have no idea how they prepare so much food in such little time, but you could order - do a quick lap around the mall to check out the latest cruise deals, vacation deals, buy egg tarts at the popular bakery or just pick up groceries for your next meal - and voilà when you get back - they're waiting with your take-out order!

Portuguese Chicken in Macau Style

A little background is in order since you definitely can't find something like this in Portugal: Macau was a Portuguese trader settlement in China until they returned the city back over to China in 1999. So even though Macau is part of China, over the years, they've incorporated a lot of Portuguese influence in their culture and cuisine (called Macanese). 

Portuguese Chicken (Called Po Kok Gai in Cantonese) is a mild curry with cream sauce and Portuguese ingredients. In this case, there's chorizo sausage, olives, onions, hardboiled eggs and green & red peppers.

This was AMAZING! This take-out place is really well-known for their Portuguese chicken and it's no wonder when you actually try it! The sauce is creamy but not too heavy and in combination with the rice, it really builds up an appetite - it's like once you start eating, you can't stop! My favourite parts are the boneless chicken pieces, small-cut potatoes (wow do the potatoes ever soak up the flavour of the sauce) and the red & green peppers and onions which add a sweetness to the whole curry. 

It's fantastic together and such a good deal for only $5.25 (excl. Tax)

Tofu in African Sauce

A perfect example of fusion: Tofu + African sauce. I wasn't sure what African sauce since I've never heard of it, but I decided to start out small and try it on Tofu. (It also helps that Tofu with African Sauce was $1 compared to African Chicken Steak which was like an entire meal with rice for $5.30). 

The sauce was interesting and quite good! It had peanut oil, chilli peppers (but it wasn't spicy), garlic and a lot of spices (that I couldn't identify). 

Baked Chicken Spaghetti

For the people who know my food habits well, I LOVE Chinese "Ketchup" Spaghetti! And this place does the BEST Baked Chicken Spaghetti I've ever had and it's such a good deal for $5.99! It's my favourite place to have this meal because the chicken is ABMT: abundant, boneless, moist and tender. The ketchup spaghetti is fantastic - the sauce isn't too sweet (meaning that they never over-do the ketchup) and it's still savoury like tomato sauce. There's also enough sauce in the dish to cover each part of each strand of spaghetti (a must in my book). Absolutely delicious (even if it doesn't look the most appealing)!

One of my favourite good food and cheap eats! 

Sprucewood Handmade Cookie Co. - Warkworth, ON

I felt like I discovered Sprucewood Handmade Cookie Co. last year when I went to the Season's Christmas Show.  And I was a little disappointed when I went to the Christmas show this year and didn't see them exhibiting.  So on my next trip to Kingston, we detoured to Warkworth to see if we could grab some cookies!

They have the cutest storefront and inside they had a ton of samples for us to try out all the flavours and figure out which ones to buy. 

They had the same deal as the shows: $20 for 4 boxes of cookies (here are some of the flavours we got - we actually bought 8 boxes)

Raspberry, Ginger, Chocolate Chip, Lemon Zest and Classic

First of all: their shortbread cookies are the best I've ever had! I like a nice firm and not too crumbly cookie packed with flavour and boy, do they ever deliver!  Personally, I prefer the sweet cookies over the savoury cookies like cheddar or rosemary and I'm a huge fan of the seasonal cookies like raspberry and apricot. They have this great way of combining the flavours with their delicious bite sized cookies without compromising their cookie texture (which is that perfect firmness, but crumbly when you bite into it). 

My favourites are the chocolate chip and classic, however, I wanted to mix up my cookie boxes with some other flavours.  Based on my taste test, I decided to grab the lemon zest which had a nice sweet lemon profile and ginger because it's interesting and unique. 

Overall: I would highly recommend a detour here for their delicious shortbread cookies in Warkworth, or you can catch them at a Trade Show. 

Website: http://www.sprucewoodcookies.com/

Yummy Bar-B-Q

I came here with a co-worker for lunch and I was feeling a little sick, so I decided to get the Pork Bone Soup rather than one of the specials. 

Pork bone soup

The only thing spicy about it was the fact that they added chili flakes to the soup, because other than that, it was barely spicy at all and it wasn't particularly flavourful either.  There was a lot of pork bone and a lot of soup, but I've had better in other Korean places (or even Galleria Supermarket). 

It was kind of cool that they gave us tofu as a side dish. 

Kathmandu Restaurant

My friend and I bought the $20 Groupon for the lunch buffet for two people at Kathmandu Restaurant.  It was a pretty reasonable deal for lunch and it would be our first experience with Nepalese food.

The restaurant was located in Yorkville and the buffet section was tucked inside the restaurant:

Clockwise from top left: Tandoori Chicken, saag paneer, butter chicken, goat curry, rice, vegetable curry
The butter chicken was awesome, but there wasn't as much Nepalese food offered at the buffet.

Naan

My round two with a lot more butter chicken and goat curry and also some eggplant dish
The food was good, but rather heavy.


Desserts
We were so stuffed from the curries that we could barely eat dessert. Also, Indian desserts are known to be really sweet - so we only took a bit of each.  They were interesting and not as sweet as we thought, but probably not something I would eat frequently.

Overall: Even though we didn't get as much Nepalese food as we wanted, I thought they had decent Indian food. 

Milestones @ Yorkdale Shopping Mall

I think the Yorkdale Mall Milestones is probably the best Milestones I've tried. The food is always consistently good and the service is really quick.  Also the ambiance inside is really nice. 

Burger

I'm not really sure why the centre of the bun was burnt....but the burger was juicy and it was good. 

Seafood Linguine

It was pretty good, but the dish felt a little heavy (maybe msg in the dish?).  The garlic bread was a little strange looking, but tasted okay.

Website: http://www.milestonesrestaurants.com/