Salmon & Tuna poke bowl from Poke by Sushi Shop

The salmon & sushi poke bowl (“Salmon, tuna, lettuce, red cabbage, wakame, radish, orange masago, ponzu, teriyaki and poke sauces, spicy light mayo, nori”) at Poke by Sushi Shop is solid.  Did anything about it blow me away?  Not particularly (I also found the presence of a whole bunch of iceberg lettuce to be a bit off-putting).  But it featured some tasty toppings and sauces and a generous amount of fresh salmon and tuna.  For something from a food court (particularly the Sherway Gardens food court, which kinda sucks), it’s a nice option.

Ragu pasta from Eataly Ristorante in Sherway Gardens

I haven’t been particularly crazy about anything I’ve had from the Eataly location in Sherway Gardens thus far, and yeah, that’s still the case.  I got a ragu pasta (which isn’t on the menu on their website, so I’m not sure what it was called or what was in it — very helpful, I know), and it was fine.  It had some surprisingly big chunks of pork, which were fork-tender and easily the highlight.  Otherwise it was just kinda one-note salty.  Certainly not unpleasant to eat, but I think anyone with even a moderate level of skill in the kitchen could whip up a tastier pasta dish with stuff in their pantry.

Black Sesame gelato from Mizzica Gelateria & Cafe

Mizzica is generally regarded as serving the best gelato in the city.  They’ve also started to expand, with a second location around Yonge and Eglinton.  So this is about the time you might expect the quality to start going downhill.  Happily, that doesn’t seem to be the case — at least not yet.  The black sesame gelato is just as rich and creamy as everything else I’ve had here, and has a very satsifying roasty sesame flavour.  It kinda reminded me of a gelato version of Sesame Snaps, but with no crunchiness.  I find most black sesame ice cream doesn’t quite have as much sesame flavour as I’d like, but this was pretty fantastic.