Spo Fo (Spoon & Fork Mississauga)

Once again, a whole lot of tastiness for about $16 all in for the lunch all you can eat.

Appetizers were good - pineapple salad, mango salad, cold mango rolls, hot spring rolls, calmari and beef/chicken satay.  I like that the portions are small and you can order a rather large variety of food if you have a decent crowd of people (we had 6 light eaters for lunch).

For main courses, I really liked the lemongrass fried rice and chicken red curry.  Coworkers had some sweet and sour tofu, pad thai etc and everyone seemed happy.

They seemed to have hired more waiters, so this time it was a fair bit faster and you actually have a chance of keeping lunch down to an hour or so.  Also this time, they let us pay individually, rather than have one person put on a credit card and collect cash later.

We'll be back for sure!!!

Suko Thai

This has made it into the regular Friday lunch rotation (even back to back weeks) due to excessive yummy-ness and cheapness.

We go to the Mississauga location on Winston Churchill.

For $7.95, I like to order red curry veggie tofu with a spring roll and little salad. All in with tt&tw (tax, tip and tap water) you can spend about $12.

My coworkers have ordered cashew chicken, mango chicken, pad thai etc and left happy.

My only extremely minor beef with the place is rather small portions, but for the price and quality, I suppose that something has to give. For big eaters, order an extra appetizer or soup and you should be ok.

Here's the lunch special menu.

Spoon & Fork (Etobicoke)

For a Sunday night, this place was shockingly busy and reservations are definitely required!!! This place is one of the nicer looking joints in Etobicoke.

The format was all you can eat Japanese, including sushi, and thai.

Some stuff the table got:

• Coconut shrimp was awesome (and I'm not even a shrimp fan)
• Beef & chicken skewers - good
  
• Veggie tempura was decent
• Gyoza - so so no major complaints
• Mango salad had a weird flavor
• Edamame was meh
• My avocado-cucumber roll was meh too
  

The highlight of the night for me was a veggie/tofu golden curry and pineapple fried rice. The sauce was awesome with a great assortment of veggies. The fried rice had lots of good mystery items in there - shrimp, chicken, currents (I think).

At about $30 a person for the dinner buffet, the best plan is to come hungry!!

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.

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.

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).

Green Mango Take Out Version

In the infamous summer of 2004, I couldn't get enough of Green Mango - the take-out version, not the restaurant version. Well I haven't been back in years - not due to a lack of tastiness but rather because it wasn't really convenient. Anyway last Thursday I was in the area so I couldn't resist going back. First the bad news, they've raised prices! Significantly! Previously they were the best deal around with the 6.88 (with tax) combo but alas now it was 7.40. So we'll downgrade it to an alright deal.

Anyway, the choices seem the same as always. I had pad thai with 1/2 lemongrass chicken and 1/2 curry chicken. I was quick enough on my feet to remember to say no peanuts on the salad. In the end it seems like they put them in a container on the side now and if I had known that I would have accepted the peanuts to add to my collection of McD peanut bags!

Now on to the actual meal. It was basically as tasty as I remembered. However, I remember that I used to find it a disgusting amount of food - hence me thinking it's a good deal. Sadly, while I left full, it didn't seem like that much food. So I'm not sure if I eat more now or the servings are smaller?

Green Mango

I am kinda between projects for a few days so I took the day off and got lots of errands done. While I was waiting for my oil to be changed (well not my oil - the car's oil), I wandered over to check out Green Mango. This was one of Ian's favorite places while he spent a summer working in the Yonge/Bloor area.

They had lots of yummy looking carb stuff to choose from - rice, spicy noodles, glass noddles, pad thai noddles. I went with pad thai. Kind of a bad choice, far too much noodle all around! Should have just gotten plain rice. Then the two main courses - I had veggie green curry and tomato curried tofu. Pretty tasty all around. There were about 4 kinds of chicken and 1 beef dish to choose from. Then they throw on some salad. I had "everything" on it. I had no idea what that actually means, but it was pretty good. All for $6.76. Pretty cheap and tasty eating. It really was quite packed with the take-out crowd.

Salad King

Janice has been to the Salad King a few times. Not me though, the name is scary - are they going to have real food if they are the king's of salad?

Well tonight I took a bold step forward and went to the Salad King with Janice. It was quite the trek up to a Yonge and Dundas but when we arrived we were able to get a table right away. That was good. Waiting for over ten minutes to be served though was bad

A word about the seating, instead of the crammed together tables that many of the cheap Thai/South East Asian genre are famous for, this place goes for school cafeteria style seating (or equivalently ski chalet style) with long benchs. On one side we had a pole separating us from a table for "two" which was nice. "Two" because halfway through they crammed a single in to join those two. Awkward with two a's.

Anyway on to the meal. I had a "special" of spicy combination which was chicken and seafood in a spicy sauce. It was fairly good. I ordered only one chili on a 20 chili scale luckily as it was really spicy. The scale lacks consistency as Janice's one chili dish of some peanuty tofu curry wasn't anywhere near as spicy. Now the special supposedly comes with a free drink. I look at the fine print and it says up to 1.10 value. Sounds good but then I flip the menu over and see that there is nothing available for 1.10. The cheapest item, a pop, is 1.20. I ask the waiter what's the deal - what drink can I get. He says I can get a pop so I get the champion of all pops, a coke. Tasty as I haven't had from a can in a while. Enjoyment ended come bill time when they had in fact charged me 1.20 for the pop. Not worth arguing so I let it be. In total with tax, tip, appetizer and a "free" pop it was 25 and change. Not too bad.

A website is apparently coming in December.

Blue Mango

This is Janice, back in Toronto. Ian and I went out to Blue Mango in San Jose. Pretty tasty stuff with the two person combo....4 appetizer platter, pad thai, curry tofu and mango samosa ice cream with choice of tea, all for $30. Brown or white rice included. Now, if we could just find a place like this in Toronto....

Salad King

I went for dinner last night and had the golden tofu curry. Rice was included, all for the low - low price of $6.45 (no tax/tip). This place was PACKED and appeared to be mostly ryerson students on the way home or on the way to night class.

Ian and I generally forget about this place, we'll have to go more when he comes home!

A "very tasty" rating with 1.5 thumbs up in the value department.

Red Thai

I was in Montreal this week and for dinner one night we went to Red Thai on St. Laurent.

The decor was cute with a very cool budha in the middle of the place and all the dishes came out on all sorts of cute dishes with lids and the like.

Overall, food was not all that great. I had veggies and tofu with peanut sauce. Tofu was good, assortment of veggies great, but the peanut sauce was oddly quite pasty.

The others had more meaty type things and didn't comment either way on the tastiness, so I'm assuming it wasn't that great. So that's the story!

Oh yeah, it cost us like $250 for 4, so kind of a rip-off too. Ian and I have gone to cheap thai in TO and had better food, for under $30 for 2.

Washington DC

Trip was pretty good, a bit short on time so will keep it short.

Ian pretty much ran a tight ship and has us up at 6:30 AM and going strong till 6:30 PM seeing numerous attractions/day.

For dinner, we ate at Ethiopian once. They pretty much seem to be on every block, sorta like the TO sushi joints. Pretty similar price and taste to our usual TO ethiopian place.


Other than that, some OK Thai, pub food and Ian really liked the Peruvian he went to.

Ben and Jerry's was tasty as usual.

Thai Kitchen Pad Thai Sauce

With my curling winnings, I bought some "Thai Kitchen Pad Thai Sauce". I made a big batch last night and it turned out ok. The sauce wasn't that great and I actually prefer my homemade variety with ketchup, lime, soy, brown sugar, garlic and ginger.

Salad King

I went here the other day for lunch and it was PACKED! It's right beside Ryerson and close to yonge street shopping. The look is chic cafeteria and the food is standard thai fare served quickly and cheaply. I had green curry tofu and veggie with tax and tip for about $8 which is a pretty decent deal.

I looked, and there only appeared to be one mango salad on the menu, hence the name was a bit odd. For anyone who has been to Flip Toss Thai on Harbord Street, the owners used to work at Salad King and took some of the recipes with them.

2 thumbs up in the cheapness department and a "very tasty" rating.

Young Thailand

Went with some friends for dinner to Young Thailand on Church. This may be the first thai restaurant in Canada, but it certainly is not the tastiest.

To start with, the waiter seemed quite preturbed by the people requesting separate bills and he refused to do it so we decided to split into two groups. Then when I tried to pay my share with a $20 he said he did not have change, nor would he let me bill less than $25 on my credit card. All very inconvenient and un-cool.

I had sweet and sour tofu and it was the hardest tofu I have ever eaten. Not sure if the tofu was old and/or just sadly overfried. The other veggie eaters red curry tofu, glass noodle salad and fried rice....dishes were ok but a bit overpriced. Most veggie dishes 8-11 with meat 10-13. Not really worth it in my opinion. Also upsetting, I ordered sticky rice with peanut sauce which they did not have so they brought me steamed rice. Then they charged my 2.50 for the steamed when it should have been 1.90. Very upsetting and a major ripoff to have to pay that much for rice, when most decent places include steamed rice for free.

The final verdict, not very tasty and a thumb down for value :(

Tasty Thai

Went out with the work crew to Tasty Thai for a birthday lunch. As before, it was ok tastiness and value for my $. I had the tofu green curry with 2 spring rolls, rice and some cole-slaw type salad.

Ian had some swiss chalet for lunch so our vast readership now has something to look forward to! I had swiss a few times when I used to work in a plant in Sudbury and we would order OT meals. They have a decent veggie stir-fry (although it's 80% corn) as well as a somewhat dry veggie burger. Basically don't go here except for chicken related items. Fried mushrooms and fries are somewhat tasty for the un-healthful vegetarian.

On an unrelated note, I cooked some potatoe-squash curry with brown rice and all sorts of cilantro, raisins, chutney and cashew sides. Ian has a large piece of salmon and added some cottage cheese to the mix. I had a medium size plate, but Ian kept eating and eating, it was quite the site to see. I don't understand how he is soo skinny. Then he made a mix of raisin bran, chocolate chips and yogurt a mere hour later. Then he wanted to make popcorn but I nixed it.