Eating in = Not So Cheap?

Total bill for tonight's Saturday night dinner at home for 2 = $39.85. It was tasty and we splurged a bit with halibut from Mike's and a bottle of wine, but perhaps we should consider eating out more often at these prices??

Corn soup. Imagine it with a dollop of sour cream and home-made croutons (as the recipe called for but that I was really too lazy to make). Good value here with lots of tastiness, minimal ingredients and cheap corn at the supermarket.


Also a good chance to try out Ian's hand mixer that I got him for Christmas (well last week so it was kind of a late Christmas present). This is more of a summer item for when corn is in season and you can buy $6 ears for a $1.

Bottle of ok red. Possibly picked up in the US on the cheap. I gave it a value of $10 but it could be +/- $3 either way.

Main course: Spinach with bacon, red pepper flakes and garlic. Oven roasted halibut with herbed bread crumb crust with parsley olive oil sauce. PC multicolor mini potatoes - roasted.


I admit that $3.50 for a small bag of potatoes is a rip off, but I wanted to try them. Does fish have seasons? If yes, I can only presume at $27/lb, halibut is out of season. Part of my downfall is buying "fresh & wild" from Mike's. The other market places were marginally cheaper, but Mike has never let us down so I'd rather pay a bit more here.

From Future at the Market- apple-cranberry tart & caramel spice cake. Shown here are 1/3 of pretty generous slices.


At $6.00 for dessert for 2, I possibly could have made something equivalent, except less tasty, but then we would be stuck with 10x more servings than we really should be eating.

Ian of course complained about lack of chocolate, but his 2/3 x 2 pieces of cake disappeared pretty quickly!

Here's the breakdown:

$13.50 for 0.5 lb halibut from Mike's at the Market
$4.99 for 1 piece cake + 1 tart from Future at the Market
$1.00 estimated for chapmans fro yo from No Frills
$10 for bottle wine
$3.50 for PC mini-potatoes
$1.69 for bagged fresh spinach from No Frills
$0.99 for 2 slices black forest bacon from the Market
$0.50 estimated for olive oil
$1.29 for fresh parsely from no Frills
$0.59 can corn
$0.50 estimated for a couple T butter
$0.50 estimated for 1/2 cup lactose free milk
$0.50 estimated for a couple onions
$0.05 couple cloves garlic
$0.25 estimated bread crumbs

Westin Harbourfront

My company has the annual Christmas party in February and calls it a "Dinner Dance". It was at the regular venue- Westin Harbourfront on the Lakeshore. An impressive 1600 people were packed into the room.

Due to economic times, we slightly downscaled this year - only one free drink ticket, 3 bottles of wine per table vs 4 and no chocolates to take home. So still a solid year of free eating and drinking at the dinner dance overall.

Dinner started well with some creamy carrot soup. Also bread and seed crackers with red pepper hummus. Then onto salad with asparagus, portabello mushrooms and cherry tomatoes.

Main courses were so so with the same chicken as last year being the highlight due to the cute mystery bone sticking out of what seems to be a regular chicken breast.

My salmon was ok, but had some of the creamy slightly lemon sauce that I'm not a huge fan of. Rice was way overdone and salty. Veggies were yummy all around.

Dessert was my favorite - brownie, apple crumble something and lemon cheesecake. Also came with a chocolate spoon for eating!

In general, service was poor with empty water glasses for the better part of the evening. They had NO idea what the vegetarian option was describing it as vegetarian stew with cream sauce. It was obviously a veggie take on chicken pot pie. Pretty comical though overall.

Future

Back when Ian lived in the Annex, we were committed customers of future bakery on Bloor. We were in the area, so last night we shared oreo chessecake. Tasty with pieces of chocolate cake between light cheesecake layers. Not cheap at $6 for a smallish piece though. The cake card is only marginal help at buy 10, get 1 free.

The cafe was packed, as per usual!

Tacos El Asador

For tacos El Salvadorian style, this place is tasty and good value. Ian and I got 5 items with a can of coke for $15. It became a bit hard to keep track of, but I think we had a pork soft taco, beef enchilada, chicken quesidalla, pork hard taco and a beef burrito. All quite similar and it's hard to recommend one item over another.

Also on the menu were more expensive nachos, guacamole, fish plates, soups, rice and plantains.

None of the items were terribly big, but definitely good value for the money. I liked that the beef was actual pieces of steak and not ground beef as I would have expected for the money.

Fred's Not There and he doesn't like families

Ontario finally caught up with Alberta and added family day last year. We weren't able to celebrate last year though but this year with the extension of Winterlicious we thought we'd be able to celebrate the day in style.

"Fred's Not Here" appeared to have some decent offerings so we thought we'd give it a try. We tried to call for a reservation in the morning but only got the machine. That made sense, it was the morning but the message did say they're open on Mondays. We headed over at noon hoping we could get in without a reservation but, upon arrival, we only found a darkened restaurant. Fred was not there - well we didn't knock so maybe he was in the back?. This seems pretty anti-family to me to close on a holiday. Fred we gave you a chance and you blew it. We won't be back.

Bofinger (Montreal)

I am 2/3 at Bofinger, so I thought those odds were good enough to warrant a repeat visit. See my previous post on the 1/3 day.

Today was moderately tasty, although a bit pricey. $11.50 purchased:

• 2 tasty although small-ish & fatty pork ribs. Texas bbq sauce recommended. Probably only a couple of ounces of actual edible meat on there
• 1 awesome piece of garlicky Texas toast
• large heaping of vinegary cole slaw
• small fountain pop

Aromatherapy

For lunch the other day, we headed over to Aroma on King for some delightful Indian lunch buffet. It's perhaps not the best place in town, but it does have "close to our house" going for it!

Skip the salad bar & head straight to appetizers. Try the greatly improved samosas (vs a few years ago), a pakora and a papandum. I like to make a chutney brew-ha-ha with yogurt raita, mango chutney and red mystery sauce.

Standard meaty offerings include butter chicken, tandoori chicken, goat curry and beef curry. Quality of chicken is a bit suspect with weird chewy or hard pieces swimming around in the tasty butter chicken sauce.


I generally stick with veggie - today was chana masala, eggplant curry, potato/broccoli curry and saag paneer (I think). Ian of course was not pleased by the lack of lentils, but he ate some extra butter chicken to help him get over it.
Ian goes for some dessert in the pic below - butter chicken with rice, gulab jaman and rice pudding. Generally, some iffy melon & ice cream round out the dessert offerings. Stick to the gulab and rice pudding!

Nominal price is $10.99 but for two with tax, tip and tap water total bill came out to $28.

We Eat Toronto Goes Southern US

I actually followed up on vague weekend plans and made some slow cooker pulled pork. I went to the Internet for help and ended up using a Canadian Living Recipe. But thanks to the Crockpot Lady for inspiration!

Procurement of the pork shoulder proved to be difficult in Toronto, although as the KP commented in the previous post, it seems pork shoulder procurement in Sarnia is far easier.

No luck at the No Frills, so I walked over to St. Lawrence market. Even there, I did not see anything labelled as pork shoulder. I asked a couple meat vendors and not much help. Finally, I saw a $2/lb item marked as "pork roast". I bought the smallest one I could find ($6 all together) and came home. I figured worst case scenario would be sliced bbq flavored pork roast item?

The second real dilemma proved to be dealing with the thick layer of fat surrounding the meat. The Canadian Living recipe did not provide much guidance here, so I got out a couple of knives and tried to de-fat the thing. After 5 min and 1/10 done, I packed it in and went onto the searing step. I am sure the fat would make things yummier, but I thought some incremental tastiness is probably not worth a heart attack and/or chubbiness.

Fat removal proved to be much, much easier after searing the meat. After brewing up the tomato sauce, it was crockpot time.


Cooking time was about 8 hours on low. In the end, I did appear to have actually purchased "pork shoulder" because the meat pulled apart beautifully! Note to self - all pork roasts are actually shoulders!

In the meantime, I further boiled down the sauce, adjusted the seasonings (ok I admit to dumping in most of a bottle of purchased bbq sauce and a good amount of chipotles in adobo sauce) and added the pulled pork back in.

I don't think I would go with the Canadian Living recipe next time - tomato paste & sauce was probably overkill and not enough "other" stuff to overcome tomato flavor.

We ate the pork in a sandwich with Ian's home-made whole wheat honey bread, collard greens and corn for a Southern influenced meal.




Anyone want to come over for leftovers? Seriously...we have a lot of leftovers! Pulled pork sandwiches round 2 and tacos are coming up! Awesome value for about ~$8 for pork + sauce items.

TO Star - Healthy Food Pricing Across Canada

Interesting Article.

Auberge De Pommier

For the final installment of Winterlicious we went to Auberge De Pommier for Sunday lunch out in the "country" as Ian likes to call anything north of Eglinton.

Here's the Winterlicious Menu. Auberge is certainly not the cheapest lunch out there, but $30 is a pretty good deal for one of the top restaurants in T.

I really liked the locale - an 1860's cottage in historic York Mills. Ian liked that we got seated by a window with sunshine (and a heating vent) to warm us up after a "got there too early walk around the neighborhood outing/snowball fight".

Bread (crusty french and cinnamon spiced) with artichoke tapanade was especially good.

Ian looks on with an Auberge sparkler in the foreground (fruit juice and soda). Not fantastically cheap for $4.95, but certainly tasty with a strong tangerine flavor. To bolster the Winterlicous cause and to avoid feeling really cheap, Ian went with a $10 glass of Niagara Pinot Grigio.


The salad was particularly good - fresh greens, raisins, walnuts and great dressing.

Ian went heavier with a parsnip veloute with cardamon and creme fraiche. This is definitely amongst the top soups I have ever had!

My roast chicken with cornmeal polenta, mushrooms and maderia jus was fantastic, although I might be inclined to lose the chicken skin. I have to admit it did make the dish look really good and it tasted even better, but for healthful purposes, I left half behind. Polenta was a nice change from the usual potatoes etc that often frequent meaty dishes at nice restaurants.


Ian's grilled salmon with greens, potato with sauce bois boudran was perfectly cooked with lots of flavor. A pretty hearty portion too for lunch winterlicious!

Our waiter recommended the spice cake with frozen creme fraiche and cranberry orange sauce. This was certainly a good call - it was like dark fruitcake minus the fruit but tastier and better looking with a fun sugar thing on top.

And for the piece de resistance - Brioche Pudding Jiggles with extremely insightful and witty commentary.

Final bill was $96 for two including tax and tip. Well worth it and we might even come back sometime for a regular celebration dinner of some sort!

Oliver and Bonacini

The same crew that does Jump, Canoe, Biff’s Bistro and Auberge du Pommier also have a restaurant near Bayview Station - Oliver and Bonacini. A decidedly different crowd from the downtown haunts Ian and I usually go to. In O&B there were families and the occasional bunch of 60+!

The non-downtown location is reflected in the pricing - a mere $15 for a winterlicious three course lunch!

Juice specials seemed especially fresh - ginger/pear, mango something and apple-cran cider.


Shortly after ordering, a round of appetizers came out:

Greens with apple and tarragon for the healthy among us.


Shrimp pate with flaxseed lavish for the adventurous:

And...most of the crew ordered (and enjoyed) butternut squash soup with madras cream and toasted almonds. The almonds made the soup and gave it a bit of crunch.

Main courses were equally tasty and well done:

I had a smallish, but good, portion of penne pasta with olive oil, basil and wild and tame mushrooms. The fresh parmesan on top added to the dish. Others at our table were more troubled by the portion size, but am happy with almost anything at these prices!

Other enjoyed dory on couscous (huge piece of fish!) and beef goulash.


Desserts were my personal favorite - I got together with two others for a swap and sampled all three. My favorite of the lot was the apple buckle (fancy way of saying cake) with lemon sour cream ice cream. The lemon ice cream on top was fantastic!

Sticky toffee (my usual dessert favorite) was well done but could have used some ice cream to cut through the sweetness.

And bread pudding with creme anglaise and berries was great too.

Brassai

After a failed attempt to go to Bite Me (even with reservations), we headed over to Brassai on King. The place was pretty busy, but even without a reservation on Saturday night at 8:45 during Winterlicious season, they squeezed us in at the communal table (literally).

It was a tough dilemma over what was more exciting - watching the action around the kitchen, eavesdropping on the weird neighbors or talking to Ian! If the communal table chairs had backs on them, this table would be a real winner.

Dinner started well with an $11 glass of Niagara pinot noir...perhaps a touch expensive, but it seemed like decent value with the cheapest bottles on the wine list ringing in at a hefty $40 or so.

For appetizer, Ian was happy with his 4 large crispy shrimp with tartar sauce. I enjoyed the soup of the day - mushroom.


Real star of the night was the Brassai bistro steak frites in shallot jus. Steak was perfectly cooked - flavorful & tender. The sauce was especially good and made for some dipping action for the crispy fries. Judging by the entrees coming through the window, this was the most popular item on the menu tonight.

Ian had some salmon with lemon creme fraiche, green beans and roasted potatoes. No complaints, just a bit boring and not too different from what we would cook at home.


My favorite of the night (well a toss up with the steak), was creme brulee - orange and white chocolate. Perhaps my favorite creme brulee ever! Highly recommended!

Ian's flourless chocolate torte with creme anglais was enjoyable, but a touch dry.

Final verdict: Recommended - go with shrimp, steak & brulee for a fantastic meal for $35!

Cool factor: High. This joint was packed with late 20's who probably can't afford to be seen at the very high end Toronto places. Until the next big promotion, Brassai fits the bill.

Final bill: $105 for 2 including tax, tip, tap water and a glass of wine.

Here's the full winterlicious menu.

Bite Me Bites

As noted earlier, we had ambitious winterlicious plans. We didn't get in to all the places we wanted but we did get in to Bite Me. By that I mean, we made a reservation - for 8:30. Not an ideal time but a reservation nonetheless. So we showed at our appointed day and time to find a packed restaurant. That seemed great, until we found the hostess and she said they were running "behind" and hadn't even seated any of their 8:00 reservation. I asked for a time estimate and was informed that they had no idea. They made it almost seem like a stupid question because they explained they don't know when people will finish. To me that's a really bad sign, and knowing how quickly you can get people through sort of seems like basic information that they should know.

Anyway, we told the hostess we'd wait. We pushed into the restaurant a little and saw that the situation seemed bad. It almost looked like they'd have to turn all the tables to get everyone in who was already waiting. We spied a winterlicious brochure and started going through to see other places close. Once we saw their were a few options, we took off. More on where we headed to in a few days