cheese – Page 2 – Michael Eats

Top-Tier Gelato at Death in Venice

Published on March 21, 2026 by Michael NusairLeave a comment

Location: 1418 Dundas Street West, Toronto
Website: https://deathinvenice.ca/

It’s been a few years since I’ve been to Death in Venice, which I remembered being very good, but perhaps not up there with the best in the city.

Well, clearly I was extremely wrong about that, because the flavour I just had at Death in Venice? Some of the best gelato I’ve ever had. Crazy good.

The flavour in question: cheeseboard (“made up of all the ingredients of a classic cheeseboard, brie cheese, white wine, pears, jam, honey and berry jam. Perfect balance of sweet and savoury.”)

I’ll admit that I ordered this because it sounded like a fun novelty — the type of flavour that’s more interesting than delicious. I was 100% incorrect. Dangerous levels of deliciousness.

I thought the savoury flavour of the cheese might be overwhelming (I’ve had blue cheese ice cream that went a bit too hard on the blue cheese, making it somewhat unpleasant) but it all goes together so well. There’s a very, very mild savouriness, but it enhances rather than detracts from the sweet gelato.

I wish I had taken a photo of the gelato once I had started eating it — the photo above makes it look a bit plain, but there was actually a pretty generous amount of tasty jam swirled throughout, not to mention walnut chunks that add some nice texture.

There was a lot going on with the flavour here, but it all works so well. And the quality of the gelato itself was perfectly rich and creamy. Seriously: top five gelato of my life.

I should note that I came back a week or two later and tried the bourbon and smoked chocolate gelato (“For real chocolate lovers… We smoke our dark chocolate and cook it with bourbon. Once we add cream and milk this thick and dense gelato becomes the ultimate chocolate treat”). It was just as good, with an intense chocolatiness, and noticeable pops of flavour from the smoke and the bourbon.

You’d think those other flavours might overwhelm the chocolate, but they complement it so well. Clearly, any ranking of the best gelato in the city that doesn’t include this place is flat-out wrong.

Okay, I’m going to update this one more time, then I should really post it. I came back another couple of weeks later and tried the soft serve, which features two rotating flavours. When I went, one of the flavours was chocolate mousse, and holy moly — it was maybe the best soft serve I’ve ever had? It tasted just like a really great chocolate mousse, but in soft serve form. It had a profound chocolately flavour, and was intensely creamy and rich. Ridiculously good.

Tasty Sandwiches at Dear Grain

Published on March 20, 2026 by Michael NusairLeave a comment

Location: 48 Ossington Avenue, Toronto
Website: https://deargrain.com/

Mostly, Dear Grain is a bakery that sells some seriously tasty sourdough loaves. But they also have a variety of sandwiches and pastries, and yeah, those are quite good, too.

I had the roasted turkey sandwich (“brie, brown butter and chutney”), and it was very tasty.

They toast the sandwich until the bread is crispy and the brie is melty, and the combo of that creamy, slightly nutty cheese and the meaty turkey works very well. The chutney is cranberry-sauce-esque, which works for obvious reasons. And, of course, the bread is great. It’s a stellar sandwich.

I also tried a sesame cookie; I found the texture to be a bit cakier than I normally want in a cookie, but it’s not too sweet and has a very pronounced roasted sesame seed flavour. It’s quite good.

Hockey Hero Burger at McDonald’s

Published on March 4, 2026March 5, 2026 by Michael NusairLeave a comment

Location: 30 Courtneypark Drive East, Mississauga
Website: https://www.mcdonalds.com/ca/en-ca.html

I might have gotten a bit too excited about the Hockey Hero Burger. It’s basically the Super Hero Burger, a tie-in with Batman Forever from 1995 that, for reasons I cannot particularly explain, has really stuck with me for all these years.

We all think about that burger regularly, right? I’m just going to assume that we all do.

Here’s how McDonald’s describes this one: “The Hockey Hero Burger® is back on the ice after a long break, with a fresh take. Made with three juicy 100% Canadian beef patties, shredded lettuce, crispy hickory-smoked bacon, processed cheese and mayo-style sauce on a toasted homestyle bun – one bite and you’ll know why it’s called the Hockey Hero Burger.”

It’s… fine? I guess?

One of the things I like about McDonald’s is that, generally speaking, they tacitly acknowledge that their burger patties aren’t very good by drowning them in sauce.

This one, on the other hand, has a teeny-tiny bit of mayo and… nothing else, which means that those burger patties are front and centre.

Speaking of which: there are three patties here, and the bun isn’t wide enough to properly spread them out, so you wind up with a triple layer of patties in most bites. That’s just too much McDonald’s beef.

It’s basically just a bunch of beef and a little bit of cheese and mayo. There’s also the bacon and lettuce, but neither adds all that much.

Oddly, my burger also had the little onions they put on the Big Mac, but that’s not in the description, so I’m guessing it was a mistake.

It all adds up to something that’s not unpleasant to eat, but is just aggressively boring (outside of the shape, and outside of the sweet ’90s nostalgia).

Tasty Slices at Revolver Pizza

Published on February 23, 2026 by Michael NusairLeave a comment

Location: 388 Royal York Road, Etobicoke
Website: https://revolverpizza.com/

Revolver Pizza is clearly doing quite well. They now have four locations, and when I visited on a weekday afternoon, the place was packed.

And yeah, I get it. I got the margherita (“sauce, fresh mozzarella, fior di latte, and basil”), and it was a solid slice of pizza.

I wish the slice had been a bit crispier on the bottom (or crispy at all — it had a softer texture, closer to Neapolitan than New York style), but otherwise, I quite enjoyed this.

I think the prodigious amount of cheese might have something to do with the crust’s lack of texture — I’m certainly not going to say no to a lot of cheese on a pizza, but there probably could have been a bit less here.

Still, the overall quality is pretty high, including a good amount of flavour and a nice chewiness on the crust. I don’t know if it’s up there with the best in the city, but it’s a top-shelf slice of pizza, that’s for sure (bonus: it costs about five bucks for a pretty sizable slice).

Great Pizza at King Slice

Published on February 9, 2026 by Michael NusairLeave a comment

Location: 1598 Bloor Street West, Toronto
Website: https://www.kingslice.ca/

Whenever there’s a discussion of the best pizza joints in Toronto, King Slice pretty much always comes up. They’ve been around since ’89 and predate all the trendy spots in the GTA by a few decades, so clearly they’re doing something right.

And yeah, okay. I just tried a pepperoni slice, and I get it. I don’t know if it’s my favourite slice in the GTA, but it would be in my top 10 for sure.

It’s a simple slice of pizza, but everything is just right: it’s got a good amount of cheese and pepperoni (it’s heavy on both, but doesn’t feel overloaded), the sauce has a zippy richness and definitely doesn’t taste like the canned stuff you might expect from an old-school place like this, and the crust is nicely baked (if a bit bland) with a light crispiness on its exterior.

That’s not to mention the famous garlic oil, which they can either slather on just the crust or the whole slice (I went with the former). This stuff is herby, garlicky, and delicious, and definitely brings the pizza a bunch of personality. The crust is otherwise a bit lacking in flavour, but once you add a bunch of that garlic oil, you’re in business.

The pizza doesn’t taste as fussed-over as some of the trendier joints in the GTA like Badiali or One Night Only (I’m pretty confident that there’s no sourdough or 48 hour proofs happening with the dough here), but for an old-school, no-frills pizza joint like this, it doesn’t get much better.

I liked it so much that I came back about a week later to try the margherita slice, which I thoroughly enjoyed.

I should also note that the slices are comically oversized; I don’t think I’ve had such a gigantic slice of pizza since the heyday of The Big Slice (RIP).