Restaurant Review – Page 79

Great Tex-Mex Tacos at Hotmess Tex Mex

Published on July 16, 2019 by Michael NusairLeave a comment

Location: 615 College Street, Toronto
Website: https://www.hotmesstexmex.com/

Hotmess was selling tacos at the recent Taste of Little Italy festival; having heard nothing but good things about their Tex-Mex grub, tying it out was a no-brainer.

They were doing beef, chicken, and corn tacos; I went with beef. It was quite good.

It’s very simple: spiced beef, diced tomato, shredded lettuce, and cheddar cheese served in a hard shell tortilla.

It’s basically Taco Bell if Taco Bell were really, really good.

The beef was nicely spiced, and unlike Taco Bell, it actually has the taste and texture of beef. How about that! The lettuce and tomato are fresh and crunchy, and the cheese adds a nice salty bite.

The shell is probably the highlight, oddly enough. It’s obviously freshly fried, and it’s glorious — the level of crunch is profound. It’s ridiculously satisfying.

Roast Beef Perfection at Donna’s

Published on July 10, 2019 by Michael NusairLeave a comment

Location: 827 Landsdowne Avenue, Toronto
Website: https://donnas.ca/

Yep, another sandwich from Toronto Life’s top 25. Another damn good one, too, so clearly this list is not to be trifled with. These sandwiches aren’t kidding around.

Donna’s serves a roast beef sandwich that’s topped with parsnip, horseradish sauce, crispy fried onions (or shallots?), and watercress. As per Toronto Life, the meat is marinated in beef fat and honey. It’s superb.

The sandwich is awash with flavour, but everything works so well together — it never feels too assertive or busy. First and foremost is the very healthy pile of thinly-sliced roast beef. It’s beefy, tender, and just a little bit sweet from the honey. It’s great.

The horseradish sauce is creamy and zingy, with a nice even burn that makes its presence known, but doesn’t overwhelm. The parsnip is kind of ingenious. It’s thinly sliced, and on first glance it looks like cheese. But it’s soft and creamy, and adds a bit of a starchy heft.

It’s all on a soft, fresh, slightly chewy roll that compliments it perfectly. Toronto Life calls it the fifth best sandwich in the city; that sounds about right to me. It’s really, really good.

Hand-Pulled Noodles at Omni Palace Noodle House

Published on July 8, 2019 by Michael NusairLeave a comment

Location: 235 Consumers Road, Toronto
Website: https://www.omnipalace.ca/

I’ve mentioned many times before that a big bowl of chewy, hand-pulled noodles is pretty much the best. That’s just a fact. If you disagree? You’re wrong, and I hate to have to tell you this, but you’re living your life like an idiot.

Sorry, but someone was going to tell you eventually. It may as well be me.

The main thing to order at Omni Palace is the Traditional Lanzhou Beef Noodles, which is a pretty basic bowl of noodle soup topped with thinly sliced beef, cilantro, scallions, and sliced radish.

The broth is actually quite tasty — it’s very salty, but it also has a nice beefy richness, and a mild tingling numbness from sichuan peppercorns. Once you add a heaping spoonful or two (or three, or four) of the smoky, flavourful chili oil, you’ve got a pretty memorable bowl of soup.

The chili oil is surprisingly mild, so you have to add a decent amount if you want a nice kick. That works out quite well, however — it’s so tasty that the bowl seems to get more and more delicious with every additional spoonful.

Then, of course, there’s the noodles, which are available in nine levels of thickness. I went with what they call classic, which is quite spaghetti-like in size and shape. The noodles have all the satisfying chewiness that you’re hoping for, and they’re the perfect thickness for this particular dish.

The only thing here I wasn’t crazy about was the beef; it was a bit tough, and the flavour was middling. But everything else is tasty enough that it really doesn’t matter.

Guava BBQ Shortrib Medianoche at La Cubana

Published on June 28, 2019July 10, 2019 by Michael NusairLeave a comment

Location: 392 Roncesvalles Avenue, Toronto
Website: http://www.lacubana.ca/

I had a bit of an iffy meal on my last visit to La Cubana, but if the sandwich I just had was any indication, that was just a blip on the radar. La Cubana is still very, very good.

Specifically, I had the Guava BBQ Shortrib Medianoche, which Toronto Life recently called the 11th best sandwich in the city. I don’t always agree with Toronto Life’s opinions on food, but in this case they’re dead on. It’s outstanding.

The sandwich features a very generous amount of shortrib topped with “red cabbage slaw, chimichurri, pickled jalapeno, crispy onion.” It’s served on a soft bun they bake in-house.

The shortrib itself is absurdly good. It manages to be melt-in-your-mouth tender while still retaining its texture. It has a nice beefy flavour that’s complemented perfectly by the guava BBQ sauce — the sandwich is saucy as hell (there was a huge pool on the plate when I was done eating), but the sauce is so good that it feels just right. It’s sweet, but it has a tangy, zippy bite that balances it out.

Everything else complements it perfectly. The crispy onions are really tasty, and you get a good amount of crunch and acidity from the slaw and the jalapenos. It’s a great mix of flavours and textures.

And the bun is soft and fluffy, with just enough substance to hold up to the saucy, generously stuffed sandwich. It’s so good.

Creamy Japanese Pancakes at Fuwa Fuwa

Published on June 27, 2019 by Michael NusairLeave a comment

Location: 408 Bloor Street West, Toronto
Website: https://www.fuwafuwapancakes.com/

Like Hanabusa Cafe in Kensington Market, Fuwa Fuwa specializes in Japanese souffle pancakes, which are basically like a cross between a pancake and a custardy souffle.

I’ve already talked about Hanabusa Cafe; you can probably just read that post to get a sense of what Fuwa Fuwa is like. They’re very, very similar.

I ordered the cookies and cream, which comes with two pancakes topped with Oreo-cookie-infused cream, a whole Oreo cookie, and a scoop of ice cream on the side.

It’s quite good — the pancakes are light, fluffy, custardy, mildly sweet, and very creamy. The only noticeable difference between this place and Hanabusa Cafe are that the pancakes here are slightly creamier. I couldn’t tell if they were slightly underbaked, or if that was intentional. Either way, they were very tasty.

The cookie-laden cream compliments them well, though the ice cream was overly sweet, with an odd flavour I couldn’t quite put my finger on.