Taste of the Kingsway

Lots of good treats here!

Green mango - $6 for pad thai (kinda boring) + green mango curry chicken (very good & lots of chicken) + 1 spring roll (large and sufficiently crispy).

Kingsway Fish & Chip - $6 for two mini pieces of battered fried fish + a hearty serving of chips & tartar sauce. This place is always good, although not exactly good for the arteries!

Chutneys Indian - $5 for a rather small portion of butter chicken and plain rice. Definitely not worth the money and probably the worst butter chicken I have ever eaten. The chicken was pretty tomato-y and lacked flavor. Where's the creamy goodness??? Ian and I both felt happy that we haven't wasted our money and eaten at this restaurant. The head booth lady was also rather mean and rude to her assistant. Kinda awkward all around.

Cafe Demetre - $3.50 for a decent sized waffle cone with lots of premium ice cream choices. Cookeo for me and Tira Misu for Ian.

Momiji

I have now discovered another Momiji location in Mississauga, but this post refers to the one in the Kingsway on Bloor.

Ian and I went for a birthday dinner and ordered some old favorites. The grilled eggplant was ok, but not grilled enough and was missing the addictive salty carrot-ginger topping that we love so much! Far less tasty than normal.

Then another appetizer - deep fried tofu (age-dash tofu I think is the official name). Very good and a hearty portion.

Main course was a beef bento. Tempura was good as usual and Ian was impressed by 3 large shrimp and I liked the veggies. Teriyaki beef with rice & veggies was a disappointment this time. Beef was extremely raw, chewy and the teriyaki flavor was rather sparse. In the past we have loved this dish so I'm not sure what went wrong in the kitchen tonight! Soup & salad also included.

Salmon roll & avocado roll were both very good.

My Thai Kitchen

This place is definitely a sit-down kinda joint, but they also seem to do take-out pretty well. Call on the way over and you will arrive to nicely packaged thai food a mere 10 min later! Here's the website with full menu & prices.

It defies logic that they seemingly don't have their phone number on the website, but with a little i-net research it can be located.

Fat Bastards Burrito Update

Fat Bastards in Etobicoke is now known as "Fat B's". I naively think it's because they have come around and thought that their original name was mildly offensive. Ian points out that some low end restaurants continually change names once they run amok with the health inspectors.

Regardless, we've been back and actually enjoyed the pork burritos. I can't quite put a finger on what they've changed since the first time when it wasn't so great. Maybe the beans?

Artisan

For a quick meal, we head to Artisan bakery on Islington. It's not extremely cheap, but still a decent deal for hopefully moderately healthy food (ie there are vegetables). For about $20, we get 1 large chicken-pesto panini, an apple, pickle x 2, a piece of french bread, a half grilled veggie & cheese panini and an arugula salad topped with good stuff like roasted veggies, candied pecans and cheese.

Also good are the turkey, bacon, avocado sandwich and the bbq chicken-mushroom pizza. Forget the regular panini bread and go with multi-grain or molasses.

La Veranda Osteria

In the Kingsway area (Bloor & Royal York), this is one of the more upscale places. Surprisingly, it doesn't have prices to match.

For dinner on a Tuesday night, Ian had chicken parmesan for $14.95 (came with roast potatoes and grilled veggies) and I had taghiatelle veranda - basically noodles with some veggies, olive oil and tomatoes for $12.95. Both dishes were good and of course, Ian liked the plentiful bread that came around.

We unfortunately ordered the grilled veggie appetizer for $8.95. If we had known it was going to be the exact same veggies that Ian got with his chicken, we would have saved our $8.95.

The main beef with this place is the ridiculous number of rules blatantly displayed. They have some complex "seating" scheme whereby if you book for 5 and clear your table by 7 you get 10% off, then there is the 7-9 seating and a 9 seating. Walk ins are welcome space permitting. They also make allowances for the dessert/coffee crowd! All of this is conveniently displayed on a board outside the restaurant. I know a lot of the top end places do this, but they don't make it that obvious!

Immediately afterward, the adjectives that came to our minds were "snobby" and "hoity-toity". We won't be back anytime soon. There are lots of good Italian places in the neighborhood that don't take themselves quite so seriously!!

Here's the website link.

Momiji Sushi

Now that we live in the Kingsway, Momiji is part of our regular dinner spots.

It unfortunately comes with expensive Kingsway-esque prices, but I guess that comes with the neighborhood.

Ian and I usually share the tofu teriyaki or beef teriyaki dinner. Both exceedingly tasty and enough meat/tofu for two to share. Also comes with soup, salad, tempura and the like. The beef is about $17 and the tofu about $12 I think.

Also good is the grilled eggplant with magic orange/ginger stuff (hard to explain). Chicken yakisoba is decent although a little salty for Ian. We usually opt for a cheaper roll or two - avocado for me and salmon for Ian ($4 each).

For a higher end food place, the service is surprisingly bad with the hosts/table seaters particularly rude and un-responsive.

We generally end up spending about $35 for dinner, so certainly not in the same cheapness range as New Gen for example.

My Thai Kitchen

Should you happen to be in the Kingsway area of Toronto, get yourself to the My Thai Kitchen asap. The rest of the neighborhood agrees and it's consistently busy throughout the week for dinner.

Start with a mango salad ($6.75 - enough for 2). For main courses - red curry vegetables with rice is generally good ($8.95) and Ian likes their version of pad thai (10.95).

Mama Martino's

This popular Etobicoke placed was packed at 5:45 on a Saturday night with a line-up outside the door!!

Once we got in, it was eggplant parmesan with pasta ($9.95) for me and veal parmesan with pasta for Ian ($8.95) plus a double of garlic bread (free).

The eggplant was about 10 layers covered with tomato sauce and lots of cheese. Ian liked his veal. The entire dish was so big that I took most of the pasta home for lunch the next day.

The rather large restaurant appeared to be equally split between lasagna, pasta, sandwiches and pizza. At this price and tastiness level, we'll definitely be back!