Michael Nusair

Good Quality Ice Cream at Chocolateria

Published on July 18, 2018 by Michael NusairLeave a comment

Location: 361 Roncesvalles Avenue, Toronto
Website: http://www.thechocolateria.ca/

Apparently chocolate shops are pretty great at making ice cream, because Soma has some of the best gelato in the city, and Chocolateria on Roncey serves some top-shelf stuff. It’s not “best in the city” good, but it’s a respectable scoop of ouce cream.

They have a handful of interesting flavours; I went with the burnt toffee chocolate, which features a tasty mix of chocolate and burnt toffee ice cream.

It’s high-quality ice cream. The chocolate is satisfyingly rich, and while the burnt toffee could have had a deeper flavour (it basically just tastes like regular caramel), it worked very well with the chocolate.

My only real issue was that the texture was a bit gummier than I’d like, but aside from that it was quite enjoyable.

Aussie BBQ & Egg Burger at McDonald’s

Published on July 17, 2018 by Michael Nusair1 Comment

Location: 5310 Dixie Road, Mississauga
Website: https://www.mcdonalds.ca

Well, here it is — Australia, the last stop on McDonald’s World Taste Tour (though there’s also the Mexican breakfast wrap, which I guess I should try at some point).

McDonald’s describes the Aussie BBQ & Egg Burger as coming topped with “a fresh cracked egg, crispy beet chips, processed cheese, leaf lettuce and a smoky BBQ sauce on a brioche-style bun.”

I’m not even going to bother complaining about the burger patty itself. It’s not good — but then it’s McDonald’s, so no one should be surprised by this. I will say that I really wish they’d use the thinner patties from the regular hamburger and the Big Mac on all of their burgers. When it comes to the beef at McDonald’s, less is more.

But then no beef patty could have saved this burger — it’s easily the worst of the World Taste Tour. It’s mostly pretty good: an egg is always welcome on a burger, the beet chips and the lettuce add a satisfying crunch, and the gooey cheese helps bring it all together. But the smoky BBQ sauce (which is mayo-based, unlike a standard BBQ sauce) completely ruins it. It’s the absolute worst. It’s cloyingly, aggressively sweet, with no smokiness at all. It’s just awful.

BBQ sauce tends to be quite sweet, but with a vinegary bite to help balance things out. No such balance here; just in-your-face sweetness.

The burger kind of reminded me of the trifle Rachel made on Friends, but in reverse. It’s got a bunch of tasty burger ingredients… and a sugary-sweet sauce that would be more at home on a slice of cake or a scoop of ice cream. It’s one of those things that’s so bad, you have to wonder if anyone even tasted it before they added it to the menu.

Delightful Soft Serve at Tom’s Dairy Freeze

Published on July 16, 2018 by Michael Nusair1 Comment

Location: 630 The Queensway, Etobicoke
Website: http://www.tomsdairyfreeze.ca/

If you’re looking for soft serve ice cream in Toronto, you can’t go wrong with Tom’s. It’s been a summertime institution since 1969 and, shockingly enough, still sells some of the best soft serve in the city.

In a city where so many old-school restaurants skate by on nostalgia alone (I’m thinking of vintage burger joints like Johnny’s and Apache), I tend to approach years-old restaurants with a healthy dose of skepticism. Toronto’s food scene has improved astronomically over the decades, and a place like Johnny’s (which routinely used to top “best burger in the city” lists despite serving awful pre-fab junk) is a palpable reminder of how far we’ve come.

Tom’s Dairy Freeze, however, is a delightful exception to this rule; the soft serve here is top-shelf stuff.

On this particular visit I went simple with vanilla ice cream and a chocolate dip. The dip is nothing special, but the ice cream is phenomenal. It’s rich, creamy, and has a really satisfying vanilla flavour. Anyone who wants to sell soft serve in the city should be forced to come here and take notes.

Beyond Meat Burger at A&W

Published on July 13, 2018July 17, 2018 by Michael NusairLeave a comment

Location: 1130 Dundas Street East, Mississauga
Website: http://www.aw.ca/

A&W recently added a Beyond Meat burger to its menu; the company that makes these things calls them “the future of protein,” and word on the street is that it tastes surprisingly close to the real deal.

Veggie burgers that try to emulate actual beef are pretty much always disgusting (case in point: Doomie’s, a restaurant that actually specializes in vegan food but still manages to serve a vegan patty that tastes like pure, distilled sadness), so I was curious, but my expectations were about as low as it gets.

Well, maybe that helped, because the Beyond Meat burger? Not terrible!

I know, “not terrible” isn’t exactly high praise, but since I was expecting this to be an all-out disaster, I’m going to chalk that up as a win.

The biggest giveaway that this isn’t an actual hamburger is the texture — though it’s vaguely meaty, it’s also off-puttingly mushy. But it wasn’t dry or rubbery, so it certainly could have been worse.

(Yeah, I completely mangled the hamburger — it turns out wooden coffee stir-sticks are an absolutely horrible implement to cut a burger in half. Lesson learned!)

The taste was a bit better than the texture. It wasn’t beefy at all — but then the actual beef at most fast food joints doesn’t have a particularly beefy flavour. The flavour is sort of generically meaty in a way that’s not great, but also not altogether unpleasant. The burger is absolutely doused in ketchup, mustard, and mayo, which helps make it more palatable.

It probably isn’t going to fool anyone other than longtime vegetarians who have forgotten what a burger tastes like, and I don’t think I’d ever order it again, but I was still impressed at how non-gross it was. I’d easily take it over the actual beef burgers at really bottom-of-the-barrel places like Hero Certified Burgers or Burger King.

Decent Pizza at Scaddabush

Published on July 12, 2018 by Michael NusairLeave a comment

Location: 1900 The Queensway, Etobicoke
Website: http://www.scaddabush.com/

I’ve mentioned before that Scaddabush is a surprisingly good casual chain restaurant; well, I just tried the pizza, and yeah, I still like the place.

I got the Mario: “prosciutto, fresh mozzarella, San Marzano tomato sauce, baby arugula.”

It’s good — it’s not mind-blowing, but I certainly enjoyed eating it a heck of a lot more than the pizza at Pizzeria Libretto.

The crust is basically Roman-style — thin and a little bit bready, with a satisfying amount of crispiness on its exterior. It’s not bad at all. And the toppings are solid. The tomato sauce is slightly garlicky and not over-applied, and the salty prosciutto and peppery arugula work quite well together.

It’s nothing that anyone’s going to get too excited over — but like everything else at Scaddabush, it’s better than you’d think, given the quality of the competition.