Michael Eats

The Reuben at Maker Pizza

Published on July 19, 2018 by Michael NusairLeave a comment

Location: 59 Cameron Street, Toronto
Website: http://www.makerpizza.com/

A Reuben pizza is one of those things that’s simultaneously ridiculous and oddly compelling. It probably shouldn’t work, and yet… as soon as I saw it, I knew I had to eat it.

Here’s how Maker’s menu describes it: “Montreal smoked meat, mustard béchamel, Swiss cheese, sauerkraut, Russian dressing, everything bagel crust.”

It sounds absurd (and amazing). It looks absurd (and amazing).

Alas, it’s just absurd — it’s not particularly amazing.

I will say that the (non-absurd) pizza at Maker is some of the best in the city. Even in this particular pie, that’s fairly apparent; the crust is outstanding. It has an amazing flavour, a good amount of char, and an absolutely irresistible crispy/chewy/bready texture. I was afraid that the everything bagel elements would overwhelm the crust, but they actually work quite well.

The crust also manages to not completely collapse under the deluge of meat, sauerkraut, cheese, and sauce, and it manages to do that without feeling overly substantial. That’s no small feat; certainly, it’s a testament to how good the crust is here.

And while the Reuben elements are all tasty (the thinly-sliced smoked meat is a little bit tough, but the Reuben flavours are otherwise perfect: it’s meaty, cheesy, salty, sweet, and vinegary, with everything balanced really well), it never quite coheres as a pizza.

It just feels like too much stuff. It needed more bread to balance out the voluminous ingredients, like… oh, I don’t know, a sandwich?? It probably would have worked better as a calzone, but then that wouldn’t have been nearly as Instagrammable, which I imagine is half of the point of this thing.

And that’s the problem — even though all of the elements are really good, it’s a food mashup that never should have been mashed up. It’s a gimmick. I would have rather eaten a Reuben sandwich or a regular pizza. This takes two great things and makes both of them less great by combining them.

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.