More Korea - Bibimbap & Bulgogi

These were two lunch time staples in Korea and we generally ate at least one of these each day.

Bibimbap kinda varied, but the general theme was rice mixed with mushrooms, greens, onion, bean sprouts, seaweed and spicy hot sauce. In the mountains, you could order "mountain veggie bibimbap" but as far as I could tell it was pretty similar to the city!

I especially liked the dolsot bibimbap where it was served in a very hot stone pot and a raw egg was added. You immediately stir and the egg cooks in the pot. Ian is eating that type in the second picture.

Bulgogi came either pre-prepped to your table as a sweeter beef stir fry kind of dish (first pic, lots of mushrooms on top) or as a stew with beef and other assorted tasty veggies in broth (second pic).

El Fogon '08

We hadn't been out for Peruvian for a while so this weekend we hit the Peruvian strip in Toronto. (It's more commonly known as St. Clair to Toronto folk despite the two Peruvian places only blocks apart.) Of course we went to our favorite El Fogon.

To start things off I shared some Papas a la Huancaina with Janice. It was tasty as usual. Others had some Ensalada Criolla that seemed to be well liked.

Bread was fresh & light and came with some garlic hot pepper sauce.

As main courses the majority had Lomo Saltado while Janice broke from the herd and had Tacu Tacu. The Lomo Saltado was enjoyable as it had a nice flavour. My only complaint was that it was a little light on the lomo (beef). Overall though it was good with huge portions which always make me happy. The rice seemed to be reasonably peruvian so it was a nice change from the varieties we have at home. Janice seemed to like her Tacu Tacu as she devoured it (despite the large portion) and moved on to preying on the onions in my saltado.

With the big portions we had to skip dessert. Overall it was a good meal and we'll definitely be back.

North 44

Ian has finally graduated, so his parents were in town for convocation and a celebration dinner. Ian of course was riddled with indecision regarding restaurant selection but in the end he chose North 44, the location of a previous celebration dinner. It seems to be unanimously liked according to Toronto's food snobs & picky people.

Sorry about the pics about to follow - lighting was not great, but you can get the overall idea!

Appetizers included:

For Janice - cured tasmanian sea trout with potato pancakes. I had my eye on the heirloom carrot salad, but was swayed at the last moment. It was all pretty tasty, although the potato pancakes could have used some more excitement.
For parents #1 & 2 - they shared a pear watercress salad. They seemed to enjoy. The waiter was pretty on top of things - they just mentioned quickly that they would share and the salad came out split in half in 2 separate bowls!

Ian had seared tuna sashimi and he raved for quite a while on it. I was impressed by the rather large serving for $21 and the cuteness of the quail egg.
The bread basket was good with a nice variety of fruit, olive and french.

Main courses were the highlight. As per last time, everything was perfectly cooked (perhaps as you would expect for about $40 each).

I went with Indian spiced beef short rib with potato puree & wilted greens. There was even some okra floating around in the tasty indian spiced gravy! The short ribs were plentiful & no knife was required to eat this dish.


Ian went with the black cod. The fish was a hearty portion, perfectly cooked with onion dumplings & a generous amount of pre-shelled edamame. All was delicious and Ian is now convinced that all edamame should come pre-shelled. In particular, this fish was well cooked and the layers flaked right off in perfect form.

The parents has tuna with mushroom dumplings & european sea bass with crab & mussels.

Desserts were all $14 and well worth it!

The parents shared and I had my own creme caramel. It came with a surprising amount of extras including chocolate sorbet with some sponge toffee pieces and a bit of mystery sweet fruit. The caramel itself was a bit unusual with some salt on top. It was a bit more interesting than the typical creme caramel.



The happy customer below finishes off 1/3 of his chocolate sampler dessert with a shot of cumin spiced hot chocolate. This was a bit odd, but definitely tasty! Chocolate/banana mousse & a cheesecake were also included in the sampler.


Overall, we agree with the T. food snobs & this is a winner for a celebration dinner.

Calabash

Last week was a bit unusual. I was at home sitting around and Janice was at work bringing in the rent money. Oh wait, that isn't unusual. What was unusual was that Janice decided to spend a day in the Mississauga office so I ventured west for a lunch time rendezvous. I picked up Calabash. Janice has been before but this was my first time.

I had the chicken roti and I ordered Janice a veggie roti with channa and eggplant. All told it was around $15. I really feel I should get a discount for take out but we'll save those complaints for another time. I didn't have to wait long for the roti and luckily I was travelling against the Sheridan Park lunchtime rush so I was able to quickly meet Janice's with the warm rotis. I'm apparently not trustworthy enough to be given a vistor badge so we ate outside despite the brisk breeze.

As you can see, for Janice, it was more of a working lunch.


I did eventually pry her away from the berry and we dug in. It was pretty good. I still prefer the palace but if you're out in sticks then this is definitely a good option.

Taco Bell

Last week I tried to get back into the swing of North American eating as quickly as possible and to me that means fast food! We had our first hit with harvey's at YVR which was a walk down memory lane since I used to frequent that Harvey's/Swiss outlet back in the day. Anyway, that wasn't enough so I also went to KFC/Taco Bell last week. I had the fiesta platter with a chicken burrito for 7 bucks. For fast food, it was amazing!

The platter comes with chips, salsa, beans, rice and your item (a burrito in my case) and they're all on a nice platter - hence the name. They also gave me a cup for a drink. I'm not sure if that's normally included since the menu didn't mention it but I wasn't about to argue. Overall, it's a decent amount of food for a somewhat reasonable price but I really wish they'd throw in a KFC item to complete the meal. (Since as you know I have a longstanding relationship with the Colonel).

This was a big change from my usual habit of getting multiple Taco Bell and KFC items but I'll definitely get this platter again. Sadly though there are no KFC/Taco Bells near my new office so we'll have to get Janice to cross the border for some weekend lunches at Taco Bell.

Pho 24

In October I ate a lot of phở. Some pho was cheap, some pho was pricier but in general it was all tasty. I don't have anything against chains so I did check out one popular chain, Pho24, a few times. Checking their website they have restaurants popping up everywhere and not just in Vietnam. Apparently they're also in Australia, Cambodia, Singapore, Korea ... so check it out.

Anyway, as suggested by the name the chain focuses on Pho. I generally stuck with well done and less fatty cuts of beef. These never disappointed and the results were reasonably consistent across the different franchises I went to. I'm no phở snob though so refined palettes may disagree about the consistency.

Once when I felt like spending a lot ($5) I got a combo which included spring rolls (nem ran or some variation thereof) and a pop. Unfortunately, the spring rolls weren't spectacular.

Overall, I liked the chain and I'd go again. My only complaint as usual was the price. Street pho or even non-chain restaurant pho can be obtained for significantly less. Sure those places usually don't have AC so when you've just lost your body weight in sweat, paying a little more for hot pho that you can eat in a cool place doesn't seem like a terrible trade-off.

One partial regret is that I never tried chicken pho (phở gà) . I always planned to save it for some time when I felt the need for Vietnam's answer to dieta de pollo. While it's fortunate I didn't need this solution, I might have liked to try it to see how it stacks up.

Insider's Report - Christmas 2008

The new Insider's Report is out and there a few interesting items!

Here are some of the items that I may try:

• PC Entrees - Shrimp & Penne - This is one of these fast saute things. I'm not generally a fan of the concept as they're usually a little pricey (these are $6.99) but I'll probably give these a try.
• PC Wild Black Cod Fillets - Apparently black cod is the latest sensation. We'll find out if it's a taste sensation
• PC Dulce de Leche Cheesecake - Last year we tried out the then new PC dulce de leche and we definitely liked it. Now they've combined it with the cheesecake. I usually prefer chocolate on my cheesecake but let's face it, I really like all cheesecakes so we may give this a try. The related pocket PC Dulce de Leche Ice Cream Desserts looked tasty when we saw them on the weekend. Sadly the health police (Janice) were also around so this item didn't make it into our basket. Maybe I'll dodge the police with a mid-week trip.
• PC Salsa Peach and Mango - Janice loves the sweeter salsas so I forsee this ending up in our basket if we see it.
• PC Fair Trade Chocolate - I will likely try this for obvious reasons.
• PC Our Best Ever Meat Lasagna - I like lasagna but we'll have to see the damage this new creation will inflict on my heart before we take the plunge
• PC Soups - Asian Chicken Noodle, Tomoato & Roasted Red Pepper Bisque - We recently cracked the last of our Trader Joe's soups so we have to find a new tasty soup source

I'm Back

I haven't blogged for a while but over the next few days I have a few topics that need to be covered.

You can look forward to

• Insider's Report - Christmas Edition
• Pho 24
• Taco Bell - Fiesta Platter
• Janice's Mississauga Roti Place

Ginseng Chicken

Whole chicken stuffed with ginseng infused rice = moderately tasty chicken and gross rice!

See the small black pot in this picture.

Korea BR & DD Obsession

Baskin Robbins & Dunkin Donuts are basically on every block in major towns. These chains have taken a serious hold on the snack/dessert category in Korea.

Perhaps a cheesecake?


Donuts for the local taste...Ian thought it was OK.


Translation could use some work?


Fondue at baskin did not have the promised 31 flavors, nor was it a terribly good deal for about $12. Tastiness level was high though.



Ian goes forth west fondue cherry tomato. In Korea, tomato is truly treated as a fruit.

Misc Funny Korea Food Stuff

Ian meets the Colonel
Ian makes friends with the Kraze Burgers guy

Korea Street Food of the Dessert Variety

This was a favorite along Insadong in Seoul- deep fried donut with cinnamon brown sugar filling! For 900 won, the price was very right!



While waiting for our Changdeok Palace tour to start, we had some baked goods with red bean paste filling. The street vendors have these fun little mechanical baking contraptions to turn these things out hot and fresh. $1000 won for 6 of these little guys.



Basically a more popular version of the above. This time in fish format. 3 for a dollar.



Not shown, but rejected as gross by Ian and Janice - walnut cakes. Dough stuffed with a weird paste for quite a lot of $$$!

Korean BBQ

This was one of Ian and I's favorite meals in Korea and we went quite a few times...enough so that our guide/sister has sworn off BBQ for at least a few months!


For anywhere between $3 to $9 per person, you get either fatty pork or fatty beef to cook on a grill. Obviously lower price = more fatty and less desirable cuts of meat.

In general, pork seemed to be plain and beef was marinated in soy sauce based sauce.

The meat comes with lettuce or sesame leaves for wrapping, hot sauce, green onion/spring mix salad with tangy soy sauce dressing, garlic, kimchee and sea salt. We typically ordered a couple of $1 rices to fill us up a bit (put a bit in each lettuce packet). Or course, the usual other side dishes were present to keep you busy while meat is grilling.

So you grill meat, kimchee and garlic and then assemble with condiments and rice all wrapped up in a cute little pocket. Mmmmmm......

Our first night in Cheonan. This joint was characterized by not enough pork (mainly Jackie ordering not accounting for Ian's big appetite) and poor building ventilation. The actual meal was good and we had Jackie's authentic Korean friend (So-Yong) tending the grill for us.

Some soju was in order, but unfortunately I disappointed with some lightweight drinking. I later found out, the stuff here was actually pretty light at only 19%. Later versions were more like 45% in Andong!




Just off the Suwon fortress wall. We originally went for Galbi ribs, but at $28/person we said no go and went with $9 beef bbq instead. These people didn't speak English and we basically spoke no Korean, so there were quite a number of awkward moments. The ajuma's didn't leave us and basically cooked the whole thing for us. They were probably thinking "stupid wayguks" the whole time!

Most comical was when I thought the meat was done, I put a couple pieces in my leaf and was going to roll up and eat. The ajuma yanked a piece off and gave me a dirty look!!! I later found out, it's bad form to go for more than one piece of meat per lettuce!!

I really liked this place because the bbq came with some seafood/pumpkin/beef/veg soup in a stone bowl. We then ordered some rice and they mixed it all together at the end. Mmm..good eating.



Ian perfects his grilling technique in Andong. This place was the best bargain. About $3.50 per person or so.



Post print museum in Chongu with sister Jackie keeping an eye on things.



Now- tips!

Janice tip #1 - cook the heck out of the meat for less fatty. Basically the trick is to melt away the fat and just stick with the meat.

Janice tip #2 - grill the kimchee - this makes it somewhat edible.

Janice tip #3 - for a higher meat to lettuce ratio - tear lettuce leaves in 2.

Janice tip #4 - don't forgo salt and hot sauce like Ian foolishly did the first couple times. This is the key to tastiness.

Janice tip #5 - if you need more lettuce leaves or salad leaves, yell "YOGIYO" and start waving your empties around.

Janice tip #6 - grill meat on one side, then, chop up with tongs and scissors for grilling on side #2.

Janice tip #7 - lettuce is not an insulator. Don't put meat direct onto lettuce unless you like burns on your hands!

Korea Dumpling Tastiness

Ian occasionally makes me crazy, but I have to admit his strategy of only eating in busy restaurants worked for us while in Seoul. The Insadong strip is pretty busy and has hundreds of restaurants and craft stores.

We went with an absolutely packed dumpling place for dinner one night. What lured us in was the veggie & seafood pancake items on the menu, but once inside we noticed that all 100 or so diners seemed to have dumpling stew. We went with the herd and it was a fantastic idea.

How's this for an amazing race challenge? Find this restaurant! I'll give you a hint, it's mid strip and off a mini plaza.


For about 25000 Won (give or take $25), we got 2 beers, dumpling stew and quite the assortment of side dishes. We ordered no spice, so it was a meaty broth kind of thing. It comes to the table uncooked with a hotplate and you tend to it and then eat about 10 minutes later once everything boils.


Sides were 3/4 in good stuff (much higher average than most Korean restaurants we encountered). We didn't eat the kimchee, but the glass noodle salad, bean sprout salad and mountain greenery were all very delightful & refills were in order!


In the pot was a whole assorted bunch of mushrooms (side note Korea really does mushrooms better than Canada), a bit of bulgogi type thin sliced beef, 4 huge dumplings stuffed with pork & green onions + other assorted tastiness, greenery, onion and and garlic. Perhaps a bit of rice cake roll too.


Service was ok, although a bit frantic was serious running around like maniacs to try and keep up with all the diners.

Dumplings are made at the front of the store so you know they are fresh! Mmm..

Bellagio (Montreal)

This place appears to be one of the more popular upscale downtown Montreal places. It's up a bit closer to what I think people call the "Plaza".

Dinner started off well with some complimentary bruschetta and rolls with olive oil & vinegar.

I skipped the appetizer, but others liked their soup and Cesar salads.

For main course, I had some pasta with sun dried tomato and spinach. It was delicious and not horrendously expensive at about $16 or so. Ian would probably call it a bit salty, but I enjoyed it!

Veal eaters in the group seemed to enjoy.

Tom & Eileen's Thanksgiving Dinner in Hardisty AB

Well not exactly Toronto, but John says I should update more, so here's an update!

There were approximately 27 people +/- 5 people or so and one of the bigger family gatherings we've had.

Things started off well with a nature walk to the lake, chips and guac and a rather large supply of wine that very few seemed to know about.

Dinner was the big star - turkey, stuffing types x 2, mashed potato, sweet potato with marshmallow, turnip, Cesar salad, green bean casserole, cranberry/raspberry jello thing, fresh rolls, coleslaw, pickled carrots and a few other assorted things I'm probably forgetting about!

Dessert was also good, pumpkin surprise trifle, pumpkin pie and apple pie for the non-pumpkin eaters.

Pizza Il Focolaio (Montreal)

Another phillips square place. The pizza menu is extensive and all are baked in what appears to be an authentic wood burning pizza oven. If there is a crowd, go for a jug of the local brew.

First time around, I had a veggie with mushrooms, zucchini etc. It was only so so. Last week, I went with broccoli rabe, tomato and mozza and whole wheat crust. The tastiness level was high and the $12.50 pizza was probably enough for two somewhat light eaters.

Le Grand Comptoir (Montreal)

I went with the co-workers on Wednesday night to this French Bistro in Phillips Square downtown.

The menu was a small, but there was a good selection of various takes on steak frites, duck, fish, pork and a pasta. Also typical french appetizers like escargot & smoked salmon salad etc.

With every entree, a deelightful soup of the day was included (leek potato). For my meal, I has the flank steak. It came with tasty frites and a side of salad. For $16, the whole lot was a great deal and I will definitely be back for a cheap, but really good dinner!

Vegas Work Eating

Here's the low-down:

- Hilton buffet by conference center for lunch - $13 I think and quite deelightful. BBQ ribs & ice cream sundae with gummi bears were highlights. Cabbage disguised as what I thought were pirogies were also quite delightful

- PF Chang upscale Asian chain was really good and reasonably priced. We had about 10 people, so we all ordered one dish and went family style. I was quite pleased with my coconut curry peanut tofu veggie...especially when they messed up and brought 2! Beef and chicken also tasty. Brown rice was not good though...stick with white!

- Steakhouse at Bally's - highly recommended! Bread was excellent and of multiple types. For appetizer, I went with the "Bally's steakhouse salad". It was a little too citrusy and the highlight, spiced cashews, tasted like bad picards seasoned cashews. Overlooking that, the beef short rib stuffed ravioli with truffle sauce was fantastic! It was a good value too since it was an appetizer. Big enough for all but big eaters. I had a bite of my coworkers humongous steak and it was very good too. We shared a few desserts among the table. The berry sundae was served in a 10 x normal cocktail glass! Creme brulee was the best I have ever eaten. Caramel without the usual burnt flavor on there. Not exactly cheap at $650 for 7 people, but the coworkers did drink quite a lot since it was out last night in Vegas, so that added maybe $200 or so to the tab.

- Voga at the Flamingo - kinda expensive, but decent food. Really could not understand waiters english though. Roasted red pepper soup really good.

- Bfast buffet at Flamingo - go with the crepes! Tasty! High marks for bacon crispiness. Was about $16 which is not bad value when you consider that I paid $11 for a crepe & small green tea the previous morning from a non-buffet venue!

Blogging from the Trenches

The burrito wars have been going in Toronto for the last month. Chipotle, Mission Burrito and others are trying to take on the incumbents like Big Fat and Burrito Boyz. I've been doing my part to survey all the options. Will blog more when the eating lets up