Manpuku Modern Japanese Eatery

March 24, 2017

The Village by the Grange food court has a lot of really good cheap options for meals and they range from different cuisines such as Greek and Korean to different types of stalls like McDonald's to sit down restaurants like Manpuku Japanese Eatery.

Curry don and Udon
It was a nice cheap and warm meal.

October 28, 2016

Manpuku Modern Japanese Eatery is a restaurant nestled in the back corner of the Village by the Grange food court. 

Niku Udon and Shigure Don

Both were pretty good and very reasonably priced (especially compared to all the ramen places in Toronto now). 

Takoyaki

Octopus balls - these were okay, but not as good as the ones I've had in Japan. 

Cheesecake

I don't really know why I keep ordering Japanese cheesecake when I don't really like it. I think I keep hoping to find a version I like. In this case, it was at least better than Uncle Tetsu's because I liked that it was more cake-like. 

Overall: Cheap, tasty and quick service Japanese food summarizes my experience. Win!

Website: http://manpuku.ca/

Eat a Pita

I've been a fan of Xtreme Taste for a long time because they serve up huge portions of healthy Middle Eastern food for reasonable prices. Eat a Pita (next door to Xtreme Taste) is owned by the same family and they serve pitas as well as boxes. 

Chicken Shawarma platter with broccoli, fattoush salad, hummus and potatoes. 

It was a huge portion for $5 (I opted out of the rice for salad). Taste-wise - the chicken was a little bland - I could've used some sauce on it - but the white dollop was all they gave me. 

The line up was just as long as Xtreme Taste's line up. 

Website: http://xtremetaste.ca

Pie Squared

In celebration of Pi Day (3.14), a few places around Toronto were doing a Pi promotion! 

Pie Squared was selling all of their pies for $3.14. There was a line up to start and they had sold out of a lot of their pies around lunch. However, they did say that if I placed an order at lunch, I could come back and pick it up later in the day. So that's what I did! 

Cp: Chicken Pot Pie; M: Sweet Moroccan Vegetable; GS: Guinness Beef and Potato and SC: Steak and Cheese Melt

So many varieties! I was pretty excited to try them all. 

SC and CP

They had a really good pie crust - crunchy on the outside and flaky on the inside. Also, the pie crust bottoms were perfect (not soggy and not too dry). The chicken pot pie was really good with huge chunks of chicken. I wasn't as big a fan of the steak melt. 

 

Up close and personal with the pies. 

Moroccan Vegetable and Guinness, Beef and Potato pie

The Moroccan vegetable was interesting and actually pretty appetizing with all the spices and scrumptious veggies. The Guinness Beef and Potato pie was really good as well - something about how it was put together just made it much better than the steak and cheese melt. 

Overall: Really good pies and they're a good snack size so you can try a few different flavours. 

Website: https://www.piesquared.com

Malay Thai Famous Cuisine @ First Markham Place

Having been to Malaysia, I was pretty excited to try the Nasi Lemak dish here. 

Nasi Lemak

Interestingly enough, I totally forgot my nasi lemak experience from Malaysia - so I was a little surprised to see so many anchovies and peanuts in this dish. It turns out I was only able to recall fond memories of  "Chicken Rice" and not the real Nasi Lemak which has anchovies, peanuts and a boiled egg with sambal sauce. It was pretty interesting to eat this nasi lemak and it turns out that even after going to Malaysia and South Korea - my spicy tolerance has not gone up that much.