beef – Page 6 – Michael Eats

Satisfying French Tacos at Brick ‘N’ Cheese

Published on June 9, 2024 by Michael NusairLeave a comment

Location: 678 College Street, Toronto
Website: https://brickncheese.com/

Brick ‘N’ Cheese specializes in French tacos, which is basically a French burrito that’s crammed with meat and pressed flat in a panini press.

There used to be a great restaurant in the city called Mister Frenchy that served these things; alas, that place shut down. So if you’re looking for a French taco in the GTA, I think Brick ‘N’ Cheese might be the only game in town.

The menu at Brick ‘N’ Cheese is pretty customizable; you can either make your own creation by picking from an assortment of meats and sauces, or you get get one of six of what they call “premade bricks.” I went with the original premade brick: “extra lean ground beef & chicken, ketchup, cheddar, and pickles” (the menu doesn’t mention it, but there are fries in there as well).

Nothing about it particularly blew my mind, but it’s a satisfying wrap. It’s meaty, cheesy, and rich. I couldn’t help but compare it to the French taco I had at Mister Frenchy, which was greatly enhanced by a delicious, zippy sauce that helped to cut through the richness of the wrap. I wish they had something like that here (and the fries tasted like stale fries that had been dunked in oil prior to assembling the wrap, which meant that they were roughly a trillion times hotter than the other fillings), but this was otherwise a solid wrap.

Delicious Sandwiches at Bunmi

Published on June 4, 2024 by Michael NusairLeave a comment

Location: 822 The Queensway, Etobicoke
Website: http://bunmi.ca/

Bunmi is a banh mi shop where everything is available as a banh mi or a bao, and it’s absolutely fantastic. Seriously, seriously good.

They have a handful of sandwiches on the menu; I went with the signature banh mi, which comes with “BBQ lemongrass AAA tenderloin, with home-made butter, pickled carrots, cucumber, cilantro, topped with our secret BUN MI sauce.”

Everything about this just works. The beef is tender and flavourful, the creamy Bun Mi sauce complements it perfectly, and the pickled carrots cut through the richness (and add some nice crunch).

I wish it were spicier (it was barely spicy at all, though I think that’s because I wound up with only hot sauce and no hot peppers), but it was so delicious that it barely even mattered. It’s legitimately one of the tastiest banh mi that I’ve had in the GTA.

And the banh mi itself (i.e. the actual bread) was phenomenal, with a delicately crispy exterior and a fluffy interior. A lot of banh mi can be a bit of a mouth-wrecker if you don’t eat it carefully, but this one you can eat with aplomb with an uninjured mouth — without ever losing out on the crispiness that makes banh mi so delightful.

I will note that the sandwich is costs more than the norm at $11.55, but this is an absolute steal for a sandwich this delicious (and this crammed with meat). I’ve mentioned before that I think the expectation that Asian food needs to be dirt cheap is unfair; if you’re going to complain that a sandwich this good is overpriced at $11.55, you need to GTFO with that nonsense.

Quick Bites: Pizzeria Badiali, Ghadir Meat & Restaurant, Chica’s Chicken

Published on May 19, 2024May 19, 2024 by Michael NusairLeave a comment

Cacio e pepe pizza from Pizzeria Badiali

I wrote about Pizzeria Badiali a few years ago and mentioned how great it is; I’ve been back a few times since, and it consistently pumps out some of the best pizza in the city. On my latest visit, I tried the cacio e pepe (“shredded mozz, fior di latte, cacio sauce, pecorino and black pepper”), and yeah, it’s top notch. It translates the tastiness of a bowl of cacio e pepe to a pizza pretty much perfectly. It’s peppery, cheesy, and rich, and the crispy/chewy crust is as amazing as ever.

Mixed Shawarma from Ghadir Meat & Restaurant

Speaking of the best stuff in the city, the last time I wrote about the shawarma from Ghadir Meat & Restaurant, I mentioned that it’s a contender for that crown. I tried chicken last time and got the mixed this time (which comes with chicken and beef), and hey, what do you know — it’s still some of the best in the city. It didn’t quite have the amount of crispy bits on the meat that I’d like, and there was no hot sauce (I guess you have to ask), but otherwise? Basically shawarma perfection. Perfect balance of meat, veggies, and sauces. Also: look at the way they’ve toasted this thing. It has an almost pita chip level of crispiness in spots. I need literally every shawarma joint to do this, please. Thanks.

Double Crunch Sandwich from Chica’s Chicken

The last couple of times I’ve had Chica’s Chicken, I’ve noted that they’ve been going downhill a bit. I was afraid that this might be an inexorable march to mediocrity, but thankfully, it seems like the quality level has plateaued. It’s not all-time-great like it used to be, but it’s still very good. On this particular visit, I got the Double Crunch Sandwich (which is part of a limited-time promotion with Jarritos, and will be gone by June 14): “fried chicken, peppercorn ranch, deep-fried jalapeños, lettuce on a brioche bun.” They were out of lettuce and subbed in coleslaw instead, but otherwise everything was as described on the menu. It’s a very tasty sandwich: it’s zippy, has some mild pops of spice from the fried jalapenos, and is packed with flavour. The chicken was, mostly, crunchy and juicy, though the thinner parts were a bit dry. It’s a very tasty sandwich, even if it can’t quite reach the heights of Chica’s at their prime.

Chicken Cheeseburger at McDonald’s

Published on April 11, 2024 by Michael Nusair1 Comment

Location: 1001 Islington Avenue, Etobicoke
Website: https://www.mcdonalds.com/ca/en-ca.html

I recently wrote about the Surf ‘N Turf Burger, which features a double cheeseburger and a Filet-o-Fish patty crammed into one thing. It’s part of McDonald’s new Remix Menu, which is all about cramming things together to see what happens.

The Chicken Cheeseburger is basically a Junior Chicken and a cheeseburger crammed together. McDonald’s describes it as “a combo of two classics featuring a crispy chicken patty made with Canadian-raised seasoned chicken and a juicy 100% Canadian beef patty, all topped with a slice of melty processed cheddar cheese, a tangy pickle, onions, ketchup and mustard on a toasty bun.”

Like the Surf ‘N Turf Burger, it’s fine. It’s more of a fun novelty than something you’d likely want to go back for, but it’s okay.

The combo of fish and beef in the Surf ‘N Turf Burger was vaguely off-putting, so I guess this one is a bit better in that there’s nothing befuddling about it. The slight crispiness and peppery flavour of the chicken patty complements the cheeseburger reasonably well. But the beef and the chicken both want to be the star — they can’t decide who should be a supporting player, so the whole thing feels a bit neither here nor there.

Unique Chinese Food at Tangritah Kabab House

Published on December 17, 2023December 17, 2023 by Michael NusairLeave a comment

Location: 900 Rathburn Road West, Mississauga
Website: None

One of the things I like about living in Toronto is that not only is pretty much every country’s cuisine available to try (which I explore in another blog, 196 Plates — I think it might be about time to bring that one back), you can actually get so much more specific than that.

This place — which specializes in Uyghur cuisine — is a great example of this. “Chinese food” tends to be put under one enormous umbrella, but China is a huge country, and its food is wildly different from region to region.

I tried a few things here, and it was all extremely delicious. First up: a dish the menu only refers to as “fried meat.” I think it was beef, though it might have been lamb (if it was, it didn’t have much of a lamby flavour). Either way, it was super tasty, with a bunch of tender meat, nicely cooked onions, and a very cumin-tinged flavour that was extremely addictive.

Next up was the Tangritah Special Langmen, which is an Uyghur dish in which hand-pulled noodles are topped with stir-fried veggies and meat. The flavour here was a bit less distinctive than the fried meat, but the noodles had a really satisfying chewiness, and the veggies and meat were perfectly cooked (again, I’m not sure what the meat was, but I’m gonna say beef).

Finally, I tried the samsa, a bun filled with a mix of lamb and onions. This looks like it might have initially been crispy on its exterior, which would have been nice, but it was either steamed or microwaved to reheat and was soft throughout. Regardless, it was quite tasty.