Restaurant Review – Page 81

Rich, Chickeny Ramen at Touhenboku Ramen

Published on December 20, 2018 by Michael NusairLeave a comment

Location: 2459 Yonge Street, Toronto
Website: http://www.touhenboku.ca/

The ramen at Touhenboku is a little bit different than the norm. Most of the ramen shops in Toronto serve tonkotsu-style ramen, in which pork bones are boiled for hours and hours until you wind up with a very rich, porky broth.

Touhenboku, on the other hand, subs out the pork for chicken, and yet still manages to retain that intense richness that you associate with tonkotsu.

If your average bowl of chicken soup is the soup equivalent of white meat (lighter, with a more restrained flavour) then what they’re serving at Touhenboku is more like dark meat, with a really intense flavour and a fattier texture.

In fact, the soup might be a bit too fatty, with a heavy oiliness that’s borderline too much. I’m certainly not going to complain about a very rich bowl of ramen, but this one was slightly too greasy.

I ordered the sea salt ramen (a.k.a. shio ramen) from the “Tomo’s favourite” section of the menu. It’s a pretty standard bowl, with the usual assortment of veggies, an egg, and chasu.

It’s (mostly) quite good. The noodles were a bit too thin (thick is also an option, however — I think that’s the one to go with), and the flavour was slightly one-note in its rich chickeniness (chickeniness… that’s a word, right?), but it was a satisfying bowl of soup.

Most notably, the very intense chicken flavour is pretty remarkable, and the thinly sliced chasu was ultra-tender and perfectly seasoned, with a great porky flavour. The egg was also perfectly cooked, with a great gooey yolk, so there’s definitely more good here than bad.

Tasty Chinese Dessert at Sweet Turtle Desserts

Published on December 19, 2018December 19, 2018 by Michael NusairLeave a comment

Location: 550 Highway 7, Richmond Hill
Website: None

Sometimes, Asian desserts can be a bit of an acquired taste. With their emphasis on ingredients you don’t necessarily associate with sweets (like beans or tofu), unusual spices, and a very restrained level of sweetness, they can seem a bit odd if you’re not used to them.

If you are used to them, however? They’re delicious.

Sweet Turtle Desserts in the Times Square plaza in Richmond Hill is an absolute cornucopia of various Chinese puddings and sweet drinks (there are easily over a hundred items on the menu). I ordered the soya bean jelly with sesame, which is a creamy tofu-based pudding topped with a black sesame sauce.

The tofu itself is completely unsweetened, with a luxuriously silky texture but very little flavour. It doesn’t seem like much, but that silkiness is surprisingly addictive.

The black sesame topping suits it very well, with a nice hit of sesame and just enough sweetness to keep things interesting. It’s quite good.

Tasty Peanut Sauce at Nimman Thai

Published on December 18, 2018 by Michael NusairLeave a comment

Location: 1060 Eglinton Avenue West, Toronto
Website: https://nimman.ca/

I think a really good peanut sauce is one of those things that can make pretty much anything taste delicious. It really doesn’t matter what it is; slather enough peanut sauce on it, and hey, what do you know, it’s delicious now. How about that.

Case in point: the Nimman long song at Nimman Thai, which features some kind of saucy chicken on top of rice, with a side of Chinese broccoli and, of course, the aforementioned delicious peanut sauce.

The chicken was tough and its sauce was pretty bland, but once you dip it into the intensely flavourful peanut sauce, you’re off to the races. That peanut sauce! I would have dipped anything into that.

I got the dish as part of their lunch special, which is actually a really great deal — for twelve bucks, you also get a bowl of soup, a salad, and a spring roll. The soup was pleasantly zingy, and the salad had a really interesting dressing that tasted strongly of fish sauce.

The spring roll, on the other hand, had a funky flavour and an overly thick wrapper. It wasn’t great, and since the peanut sauce wasn’t on the table yet, I couldn’t even dip it into that to save it.

A Very Memorable Meal at Cava

Published on December 14, 2018 by Michael NusairLeave a comment

Location: 1560 Yonge Street, Toronto
Website: http://www.cavarestaurant.ca/

I tend to focus mostly on places that offer prices on the cheaper end of the spectrum; aside from the obvious (they’re cheap!), I generally find them more satisfying. There aren’t many things in the world that I love more than a really great bowl of noodles from a hole in the wall.

Still, it’s nice to venture out to pricier restaurants every now and then. There’s a level of craft and a quality of ingredients that you just can’t get without shelling out some cash.

Cava is a great example of this. It certainly isn’t cheap, but holy moly the food was good.

They focus on Spanish-inspired tapas, so I got to try a handful of things.

The chicken liver and foie gras mousse was deeply flavourful and luxuriously creamy. It’s served with a little bowl of grainy mustard on the side, which does a great job of cutting the richness of the mineraly pate.

The “Supergilda” features a deliciously fishy sardine on tomato-spread toast, speared with olives and anchovy. It’s simple, but immensely satisfying.

Next up was the jamon croquetta, which was a crunchy fried tube of creamy goodness. It was a bit light on the jamon, but was otherwise really tasty.

The beef salpicon was one of my favourites of the evening. It had a seriously intense beefy flavour, a tasty combo of high quality olive oil and acidity, and a fantastic contrast between the tender beef and the crispy bits on top.

My absolute favourite dish of the night was the eggplant with queso fresco, bonito, and tomatillo sauce. Holy crap, this dish. The contrast in textures here was insane — the deep fried exterior was shatteringly crisp, and the eggplant within was absurdly creamy. The combo of those two textures was bonkers, and the gooey cheese, smoky/funky bonito flakes, and zingy tomatillo sauce complimented it perfectly. So damn good.

The last savoury dish was the roasted pork belly and morcilla in a kidney bean stew. This was basically an upscale version of pork and beans. It was almost absurdly rich, with the blood sausage really amping up the luxurious flavour of the beans.

We had the churros for dessert, which was probably the only real disappointment of the night. The cinnamon- and sugar-dusted churros were certainly tasty, but nothing about them stood out from the churros you can get at any number of places throughout the GTA.

It did, however, come with a small cup of drinking chocolate that had an amazingly intense flavour. Just give me a big mug of that and I’ll be a happy man.

Quality Korean Shaved Ice at The Cups

Published on December 13, 2018 by Michael NusairLeave a comment

Location: 3235 Highway 7, Markham
Website: None

The Cups is a little dessert shop in the First Markham plaza that specializes in bingsu, a tasty Korean shaved ice dessert.

I generally liked shaved ice, though sometimes, it’s a bit watery. The Cups has a fairly ingenious solution for this issue: they use milk instead of water for their ice, which gives the dessert a much richer, creamier consistency.

I ordered the mango bingsu, which features mango chunks, cheesecake chunks, condensed milk, mango sauce, and whipped cream.

It’s quite good. The mango pieces are ripe and sweet, and the ice-to-stuff ratio is pretty much right on point. Plus, the aforementioned milk ice ensures that the whole thing has a satisfyingly creamy consistency.

On another visit, I tried the red bean, which features soybean powder, mochi cubes, almond flakes, red bean, and a scoop of vanilla ice cream. I think I might have liked it even better than the mango, though the ice-to-stuff ratio was a bit off. It needed a bit more red bean (I don’t think there was any in the middle).