Michael Eats

Tasty Slices at Gram’s Pizza

Published on December 21, 2024 by Michael NusairLeave a comment

Location: 1640 Dupont Street, Toronto
Website: https://www.instagram.com/grams.pizza/

Pizza! It’s good!

(Why yes, writing the opening paragraph of these blog posts is always the hardest part, why do you ask?)

Gram’s Pizza is a new pizza joint near the Junction that serves a variety of slices, along with whole pies. I went with the cheese (“tomato sauce + mozz + grana padano”), because a plain cheese pizza is the best way to suss out the quality of a pizza joint (also cheese pizza is delicious).

It’s a solid slice of pizza. The crust has a nice crispy exterior and is slightly thicker than the norm for this style of pizza, but it works. And they’re clearly not shy with the grana padano, with its nice salty sharpness really shining through.

It didn’t exactly rock my world, but it’s a very good slice of pizza. I’d come back.

Porky Goodness at C-Block Taiwanese Bento

Published on December 17, 2024 by Michael NusairLeave a comment

Location: 690 Bloor Street West, Toronto
Website: https://www.instagram.com/cblock.to/

C-Block Taiwanese Bento is a delightful little take-out counter (they have a couple of seats, but mostly, it’s take-out only) serving up a whole bunch of Taiwanese classics.

Their specialty are bento boxes that come with rice, one meat dish, and three veggie sides. I went with the braised minced pork, green beans, eggplant, and tomato scrambled egg.

This actually turned out to be not quite what I was expecting; the dish I thought this was going to be features braised pork belly and is thoroughly delicious. But then this was quite tasty too, so I can’t complain.

It’s really satisfying, with a spice-packed flavour that reminded a bit of Sichuan cuisine.

The sides were solid as well, with the highlight being the tomato scrambled egg; the contrast between the tender chunks of tomato and the firm, meaty egg was actually quite delightful.

Tasty Cookies at Felix & Norton

Published on December 15, 2024 by Michael NusairLeave a comment

Location: 8601 Warden Avenue, Unionville
Website: https://www.fncookies.com/

I should note that I cannot possibly be objective about Felix & Norton. My high school was right across the street from this cookie shop. I was a fat kid. Cookies were a very, very regular occurrence.

So I don’t know if these cookies are actually delicious or if it’s just the nostalgia talking, but either way I like them a whole lot.

On this visit, I had two of my favourites from back in the day, Menage a Trois (which features white, milk, and dark chocolate) and Caramelt (milk chocolate and caramel).

They have that slightly cakey texture you get from cookies that are designed to be perpetually chewy; I’m normally not crazy about that, but it works here. Again, it might be the nostalgia.

The quality of the chocolate is pretty decent, and the cookies themselves are sweet, but not overly so. They’re quite good. They also have a flavour I can’t quite put my finger on, other than to say that it is unmistakably Felix & Norton. That flavour is thoroughly ingrained in my brain, and has remained unchanged over the years. I don’t know what it is, but it makes these cookies taste noticeably different from anything else I’ve had in the GTA.

Stellar Ramen at Ramen x Remix

Published on December 14, 2024 by Michael NusairLeave a comment

Location: 424 Queen Street West, Toronto
Website: https://ramenxremix.com/

I feel like Ramen x Remix really deserves to be more popular. I’m going to assume (and hope) that they do better in the evenings, because I showed up for lunch on a Saturday, and the place was a complete ghost town. Based on the quality of ramen I was served, this is a crime. The place should be packed with a line out the door.

I ordered the Signature Yuzu Scallop Shio Consommé (“signature slow cooked clear chicken broth, pork and chicken chashu, clam meat, yuzu, lemon, sashimi grade torched scallop, pork shrimp wonton, menma, onions”) and it was absolutely fantastic.

It reminded me a lot of the ramen from Afuri. I liked that quite a lot, but I think this was even better.

The soup itself had such a clean chicken/seafoody flavour, with a subtle bright sweetness from the yuzu. A lot of ramen can be a real face-punch of flavour — and I love that, don’t get me wrong — but I really enjoyed how subtle this was. But it’s still complex enough that I wasn’t even close to sick of it by the time I got to the bottom of the bowl.

And everything else was great, from the super-tender pork and chicken to the sweet, fresh scallop and the noodles, which were nice and chewy. It’s a very tasty bowl of ramen.

Cheesy Noodles at Garden Hong Kong Cafe

Published on December 8, 2024 by Michael NusairLeave a comment

Location: 28 South Unionville Avenue, Markham
Website: None

I’ve mentioned before that I make it a general policy on this blog to not compare dishes to the real deal in whatever country they’re from. I just don’t think it’s particularly useful or fair, for a number of reasons.

But sometimes I’ve gotta do it. In this case, I pretty much fell in love with the cheese noodles I had in Hong Kong, and was very excited when I saw that they had them on the menu at Garden Hong Kong Cafe in Markham.

It’s a really simple dish; it’s basically just instant noodles with cheese sauce. In Hong Kong, it was served with braised pork cheek on the side; here, it was chicken wings.

I will say that the version at Garden Hong Kong Cafe was tasty enough, especially when you top it with a generous spoonful (or two, or three) of the garlicky, sweet chili oil they have on the table. That chili oil is doing about 95 percent of the heavy lifting in making this as good as it is, but hey — tasty is tasty. I’m not complaining.

Sadly, the cheese sauce here is pretty bland, and is applied very sparingly to the noodles (as opposed to Hong Kong, where the sauce completely smothered the dish and had a delightfully sharp cheesy flavour).

Still, that aforementioned chili oil is delicious enough to smooth over any of the dish’s faults, and at $8.50 (!) — which includes a mug of delicious milk tea — it’s hard to deny that it’s an absolute steal.

I should note that this place is very small and very busy (it was already packed and had a waiting list when I showed up a few minutes after they opened on a recent Saturday), so keep that in mind.