Chianti (Edmonton)

When Ian and I lived in E-Town, Chianti's was our favorite restaurant. You can't beat the tastiness for the price at this place! Most pasta dishes are in the $11-$14 range (and that gets you a heaping plate with enough left over for lunch tomorrow). Pasta Monday & Tuesday is the real deal with all pasta dishes $7.99!

Last night, Ian and I went with both sets of parents. We were lucky to have made a reservation...who would really expect to need one on a Monday night...but Chianti's was packed at 6:30!!

The meal started well with delightfully warm rolls. Then came deep fried zucchini with thousand island sauce. Lighter than you might think for a deep fried item. Then bruschetta with yummy bread and so-so tomato topping you spoon on yourself.

For mains, Ian usually liked to order chicken Milanese with pasta, but with pasta Monday and all he strayed away and ordered pasta marinara. Lots of little shrimp in a garlicky tomato sauce with what tastes like fresh pasta!

I typically order the linguine primavera (highly recommended), but in the past 7 years, I've taken up with gnocci, so I thought I'd give it a try. Sauce was creamy pesto with peas. Tastiness was high, but I really should have got the primavera for nostalgic purposes!

The parents enjoyed lasagna (veggie x 2 & meat x 1). Veggie has lots of spinach, cheese, sauce, and I think I spotted some mushrooms in there too.


My dad had fettucine alfredo and he didn't have too much to say about it, but he did finish the plate!

A half lite of house wine was alright, but next time I would order a bottle of something a bit better.

A fantastic deal at this place with 6 pastas, 1/2 L wine and 2 apps to share for $91 including tax & tip....although keep in mind no PST in Alberta so an 8% discount over Ontario.

India Garden (Edmonton)

This is supposedly the best (most authentic) Indian joint in E-town, but last night, the locals speculated that the main chef was taking a break. The location is a bit odd - right in the industrial area off the Sherwood Park Freeway.

The buffet was nominally $13.95 for dinner, but with an "elephant beer" x 2 and 2 dinners, we ended up spending $41.

The salad bar was skip-able (as per most Indian buffets). Mulligatawny soup was moderately delightful with some veg floating around in there. Rice was plain, but good. Veggie pakora was a bit different - mainly cauliflower with a salty slightly spicy covering and then deep fried. Certainly less batter than normal.

Lots of veggie options including yellow lentil daal, channa masala and egglplant/pepper curry. Meat eaters enjoyed goat curry, butter chicken, fish tandoori and chicken tandoori.

Crispy light naan came in baskets to the table.

Desserts were a highlight of the night - good rice pudding, warm gulab jaman, yellow custard item, pumpkin- coconut fudge (I really don't know what this stuff was, but it was pretty tasty) and fruit salad with pomegranate seeds.

Final consensus from the Toronto people - stick with Toronto for Indian buffet!

PC Fair Trade Chocolate

As promised in Ian's 2008 insider report review, we found the Peruvian PC Fair Trade dark chocolate bar at the No Frills and brought it home to try.

Ian says "Tasty. It had a rich flavor". Janice says "kinda expensive, but overall no major complaints".

PC website says 4 stars outta 5.

Basha (Montreal)

This is the most delightful middle eastern mini chain ever! Too bad it's a Montreal thing...

The Eaton centre location is always busy and I have never gone wrong with the tabouli, falafel sandwich, veggie sandwich (basically grilled cauliflower + falafel fixings), roasted garlic potatoes or rice/lentil mix with onions. Price isn't bad either with a "trio" for under about $8.

The other location that I have been to is near Place Ville Marie on St. Catherines. This place is huge and it's a bit nicer since it's not food court-esque! I was very impressed by the selection here with about 10 salads available and about another 20-30 items. I was somewhat overwhelmed, so I went with a veggie plate. It turned out to be a jumbo plate of about 15 different items with a piece of pita bread. Really too much food for one person to possibly eat! All for about $9.00!

Falafel Burgers

Instead of the usual fish or steak dinner at home on Saturday night, we went veggie...

Chickpea/tofu burgers (that tasted a lot like falafel) from Moosewood New Classics.
Lemon tahini sauce from Moosewood New Classics.
Swiss Chard - sauteed with olive oil, garlic & red pepper flakes
Roasted Sweet potato fries & peppers


You know you have a vegetarian winner when Ian goes back for round #2, he wonders where he can get more sauce and he doesn't seem adverse to leftovers the next day!

Mr. Ma (Montreal)

This is nominally upscale szechuan in downtown Montreal with prices to suit, but the menu was a bit all over the place.

I went with the salmon tempura meal with a spring roll to start, fried rice and a side of chinese type veggies. Delicious all around! About $20 per main course.

Other enjoyed their satay meals.

Nacho Surprise (with PC Salsa Original Recipe)

A bit odd, but that's the nature of cleaning out the fridge nachos. Chips, cheddar, roasted beets & butternut squash, black eyed peas and tomatoes.

Overall very tasty!

Even better with PC Texas style original recipe salsa.

Colonnade Gourmet Kitchen

At least, I think that's the name of the place in the Colonnade on Bloor St W. Longtime fans may recall the place being located on the ground floor but it now sits on the east side of the second floor.

This place has one thing going for it in my books - convenience! I certainly wouldn't call it "gourmet" though. That said I have no serious complaints. I went there twice this week and both times I had the chicken curry. It comes with rice and some bland veggies. Overall the dish is reasonably tasty for $7.35. You get an adequate amount of chicken but I think they could be a little more generous with the rice.

The place also has pasta and various other dishes. Colleagues often have the chicken parmesan and there were no complaints about it.

Their "new" (I think they've been there for years) location is a big step up from their previous location in which they were crammed into a post office. Now they have this nice atrium that might not be bad for eating in if I didn't always get to go.

I'll be back unfortunately, again and again.

Costco For Lunch?

To take cheapness to the next level, may I suggest week-end lunches at your local Costco?

A recent Saturday noon outing to the Kipling located generated the following samples:

• Orange/raspberry brioche loaf
  
• Ferrero Rocher
• Lindt Truffle (my personal favorite of the day)
  
• Yogurt x 2
• Toasted fruity bread with butter
• Cracker with an oyster
• Pizza
• Melon
• Granola bar chunks
• Mexican something that was cooking while I walked by
• Sausage appetizer item
  

Lone Star

Lunch at Lone Star in the T. tourist trap (Front Street) started off well with some fresh chips & Texas style salsa.

We were pleasantly surprised that we could order from the "lunch express" menu on a Saturday, so $10.99 lunchtime fajitas were in order - beef for me and chicken for Ian. As you can see below, they came with a hearty pile of onions and peppers, beans, rice, guacamole, sour cream, lettuce, tomatoes and cheese!


The real highlight of a trip to the lone star is the "perpetual tortilla machine" serving them up hot & fresh throughout the meal....well no tortillas in the machine right now...but you get the idea!

PC Dark Chocolate Covered Caramels with Sea Salt

Sounds a little odd...but really really really tasty!

Sweet Potato Pancakes

From Moosewood Restaurant New Classics...

Delicious albeit a little labour intensive versus regular pancakes. For breakfast, they were good with maple syrup. Leftovers for lunch were tasty with a bit of salsa.

Mysore (Montreal)

After a failed Pacu Pacu Peruvian mission up St. Laurent, Mysore jumped out like a haven of tastiness. This rather large restaurant was packed at 9 on Saturday night, so it seemed like a winner.

We went with the veggie combo DD for 2 ($39).

The meal started well with delightfully crispy and flavorful papandums with carrot chutney. Also nice, was a 1.5 L bottle of water on each table that we seemingly did not have to pay extra for. The appearance of the bottle of course caused Ian some future bill stress, but when the waiter cracked it open & started pouring without asking us, he felt a bit better.

Then came 2 tasty samosas with yogurt mint sauce and 6 mini onion bhaji cakes with tangy red mango sauce. Better than usual.



Main course was rice with veggies, yellow lentils (a trade for spinach & potatoes), dry cauliflower curry and saucy mixed veg curry. Came with naan.

Dessert was coconut square & gulab jaman.

All dishes were great and did not suffer from the usual Indian food affliction of greasiness.

Service was a little on the slow side, but food came out pretty fast. Decor was a notch up from typical Indian Toronto buffet type places.

Lola Rosas Round 2 (Montreal)

Nachos are moderately tasty with lots of black beans, salsa and avocado. Could use more cheese & less sogginess.


Brownies still tasty!

3 Amigos (Montreal)

While in Montreal, we headed over to 3 Amigos one day for lunch. We had heard good things and had previously considered going when we ended up at an Indian place on the St Denis strip. Anyway, after a full morning of touristing we headed in around 2. The place wasn't that crowded which wasn't terribly surprising given the time.

The chips and salsa were a great opener since the chips were warm. Ideal after walking around on a blustery day. Unfortunately that was the highlight.

For the main course, Janice had a the veggie and beef taco platter. A quote from her, "The beef was greasy and the veggie had no flavour and was gross.". I had the chicken "burrito". I think everyone knows I love burritos but this was no burrito I've ever had. It was chicken in a tortilla covered in cheese. All of the usual burrito stuffing items were missing. That said it was a sizable amount of chicken and it had been marinated/cooked to have a good flavour. The sides were ok but they certainly did not make up for my disappointing burrito.

All this for $22.91 all in. The verdict, we probably won't be back for quite a while.

Made in Japan A Teriyaki Experience

When it's cold, we head over to the Cumberland food court where I hit up the Made in Japan A Teriyaki Experience place. The special every day is steak and chicken teriyaki for $6.44 all in. The first time I went, like a fool I just got chicken even though it's the same price as the special. Since then I've never made that mistake again.

The food is reasonably tasty. I stick to one small scoop of sauce to ensure I'm having a stir fry with rice not a soup as other people do. My main complain is the small serving. The meat serving is actually reasonably generous for the price (Although I still fondly remember Edo's Sukyiyaki beef for 3.99 that allowed you to double the beef for only 99 cents more). The rice however is a little stingy. I'm left hungry by 4 and I have to dip into my reserve of chips.

And with the lack of choice in that food court, I'll definitely be back.

PC Roasted Red Pepper Tapenade

Moderately tasty and contrary to most PC appetizer products, not very detrimental to your health.

Internet people don't have a heck of a lot to say, but so far 2 reviewers on the PC website give it 5/5. I would rate is more like a 4.

Here's Ian enjoying on a crostini (whole wheat sour dough baguette toasted with some olive oil).

5th Elementt Christmas Party

Ian thought of a brilliant opening line for this blog, but on further wikipedia research by me, the line seems to have fallen apart.

Here it is:

"The 5th elementt supplements the usual 4 elements - earth, water, wind and fire with mediocrity"

But it does appear that people besides the classic greeks (namely Asian people), consider additional elements for a total of 5.

Regardless, we will ignore fact and stick with the mediocrity theme.

Ian finally has a job and with any job, this means Christmas Party! The company has enough people and guests to rent the restaurant out & require supplemental plastic chairs.

Drinks started somewhat poorly, with $7 a hit for a rum and coke and $3 for my cranberry juice. If we had known juice was not free, Ian could have hooked me up with free beverage from work.

Appetizers were yummy with plentiful chicken korma chunks on toothpicks. Ian had about 5 of these and at one time remarked "it's looks like a whole chicken per appetizer platter". Too bad chicken korma at local Indian buffets does not have chicken chunks this big floating around in the sauce. A+

Then came bruschetta with chicken. The chicken did not add anything and in fact detracted from an otherwise decent appetizer. Wikipedia does not recommend chicken and we all know this website is an authority on food... C+

In short supply were decent, although greasy, spring rolls, veggie/sun dried tomato pinwheel pasty and a goat cheese pasty. B

Then came the wait...from sitting down to bread & wine we waited about 40 minutes. Clearly this party overwhelmed the kitchen & wait staff. But I guess what restaurant owner in their right mind would turn down a packed house and lots of liquor sales on a weeknight.

When bread finally arrived, it was a nice herb bread with olive oil & balsamic. Perhaps not enough for our table of 8 though. No refills arrived.

House wine was poured - Jackson Triggs cabernet sauvignon. Our table were non-drinkers, so Ian and I enjoyed for the rest of the table.

Plated appetizers were the star of the night. Ian enjoyed some pan sauteed black cod with white beet. This was an incredibly large appetizer with a whole large fillet of fish on the plate. A bit bland, but pleasant overall. My salad of lettuce, Asian pear and mango was delightful & light. Others as the table enjoyed pork something...again a dinner sized portion. B-.

Main courses started a sharp decline. Huge chunks of pesto coated Chilean sea bass suffered from a rubbery texture and lack of flavor. The luke-warm (at best) temperature of the meal really was a detriment to the fish & sides (mashed potato & spinach). I could not stomach about more than 1/3 of the fish. D+.

Not very many positive comments on lamb. Chicken with rice seemed to be the best choice of the night.

Dessert was a bit of a fiasco. We were unfortunately one of the last tables served, so this meant no chocolate mousse for Ian. It seems as though the waiters let people change their mind at the event thus resulting in not enough mousse by the time they got to us. If they were that tight on dessert, why let people switch from their original order they made a few weeks in advance?

In the end, we both ended up with gateaux mango & lychee. Fairly pleasent, but Ian was still a bit grouchy about the whole experience. C+.

Head to Head Market Showdown. Jean Talon vs St. Lawrence

The best of the Toronto & Montreal markets compared....

Location

Let's face it, as down-towners, St. Lawrence is rather convenient for us on all but the laziest or coldest of days. Door to door in less than 30 minutes.

Marche Jean Talon is not quite so handy. It is in Montreal where I occasionally live. But even from my place in Montreal it's still a solid hour to get there and is not exactly downtown.

Public transit options about equal to both markets.

Edge St. Lawrence

Layout/Size

St. Lawrence is probably physically bigger, but Jean-Talon felt a lot more spaced out and not so overwhelmingly busy. I liked the mix of indoor & outdoor at Jean-Talon vs the two buildings at St. Lawrence.

Edge: Jean Talon

Fish & Seafood

Definite edge to St. Lawrence. Not a heck of a lot of seafood at Jean-Talon.

St Lawrence

St. Lawrence

Fresh fish on the way to St Lawrence

Edge: St. Lawrence

Meat

St. Lawrence - lots of regular steaks, ribs & poultry.

Jean-Talon - smoked meat and charcuterie in general seemed superior.

Jean Talon

St Lawrence
St Lawrence

Edge: Equal

Quebecois Specialty Food

Toronto really doesn't have a distinct food genre, instead we seem to have stolen good stuff from other cultures. The only moderately good thing in Toronto is the peameal bacon sandwich.

Jean Talon - good stuff like crepes, smoked meat, meat pies, sugar pies, maple syrup etc available.

Jean Talon

St Lawrence

Edge: Jean Talon

Produce

Perhaps about the same variety & pricing, but Jean-Talon had lots of nice looking displays and vendors seemed to spend more time on presentation.

Jean Talon

Edge: Jean-Talon

Flowers

Are there flowers at St. Lawrence? Only a meager amount as part of a produce store.

Jean Talon

St. Lawrence

Edge: Jean-Talon

Dry Goods

St Lawrence has a super cool store downstairs with lots of bulk & specialty dry goods downstairs. Add in a rice & bean store and it's an easy choice.

Edge: St Lawrence
Criminal Element

St Lawrence has cops for helping people cross the street, Jean-Talon had cruisers driving through presumably looking for criminals.

Jean Talon

Edge: St Lawrence.

Pasta

Whole stores dedicated to the making of fresh pasta at Jean-Talon. At St. Lawrence, merely a small table.

Jean Talon

St Lawrence

Edge: Jean-Talon

Cheese

Surprisingly, St Lawrence appears to be superior with a couple huge cheese shops. Nothing too major at Jean Talon.

St. Lawrence

Edge: St. Lawrence

Bakery

Future Bakery vs sugar pies. Who can really make a call between these two.

St Lawrence

Edge: neutral

Housewares

One extremely cramped store at St. Lawrence and a few other little guys. Jean-Talon has a few places, just as well equipped but a lot nicer & spaced out.

Jean Talon

St Lawrence

Beer

St. Lawrence has the LCBO down the street, Jean-Talon has specialty wine shops & local beer by the bottle.

Edge: Jean-Talon

Final Count - 2 up Jean Talon, but really they are about equal.

Chez Cora

Ian and I have partaken in the T., but this was the first time going authentic to the home of Cora.

Ian wanted to stick with the familiar and got what I got last time, the cinnamon brioche roll with an egg, bacon and fruit salad on top. With a bit of syrup, the tastiness level was high.

My breakfast came with a scrambled egg, about 6 strips of bacon, two blueberry pancakes and some fruit. Overall very delightful.

Perhaps not a good deal for 2 meals + an OJ for $27.46 including tax and tip.

The Host

With American thanksgiving last week, a calm settled over the office on Thursday and Friday so there was enough time to head over to the Host for their Indian buffet on Friday. I'd been years ago a la carte but I hadn't ever had their lunch buffet (available Thursday through Sunday).

The buffet is in a back little room which is sort of a step up from the normal restaurant set up where the buffet dominates the whole room. I picked up my plate and immediately bypassed the salads. (For the interested, there seemed to be a number of them. They looked alright and were generally green in colour.) The first items that I picked up were some papadum and a pakora. Both were good but offered no real surprises. They also had spring rolls whose presence I did find surprising so I skipped them.

I moved on to the rice which was tasty. They had 3 or so vegetarian dishes but I was very displeased that there was no daal. I tried to make do with the chana masala but nothing can compete with good daal. I don't have the same love for butter chicken that most people harbour but I did find their butter chicken reasonably tasty with decent sized chunks of meat. You certainly didn't have to dig around the dish to get the meat as you sometimes have to on Queen St. I also had the beef and some tandoor chicken. The beef was reasonably tender and the tandoor I quite liked as again the chicken pieces were large.

I ate and then repeated the process again placing the most emphasis on the butter chicken.

I went onto dessert after that. They had a fruit salad (with pineapple!), kheer/rice pudding, carrot cake and gulab jamon. I of course tried them all more than once. The gulab which is usually my favorite were only alright. The balls looked terrific. They were slightly smaller than the typical gulab I've encountered. However, I really prefer the gulab warm so it was disappointing when they weren't. Other than that the taste was great. Janice would have loved the carrot cake with its delightfully sweet icing. I had no problems with the rice pudding and as noted previously the pineapple in the fruit salad made my day (well it made the fruit salad if not my day).

As with every sit down place in Yorkville, nothing comes cheap. It was 15 dollars all in although if you're willing to wait for awkward amounts of change you could get by with 14.25 problem.