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Tasty Fried Chicken at Brock Sandwich

Published on July 25, 2024 by Michael NusairLeave a comment

Location: 1260 Bloor Street West, Toronto
Website: https://www.instagram.com/brocksandwich/

Note: Between the time I wrote this and posted it, Brock sandwich has, sadly, shut down (I’ve got a bit of a backlog). Whoops! Well, enjoy the review of a sandwich you cannot eat.

Brock Sandwich has a whole bunch of tasty looking sandwiches on their menu, though on this particular visit, I went with the Chicken Piri Piri: “fried chicken, charred onions, coleslaw, piri piri sauce.”

It’s a very good sandwich; the fried chicken is crispy and perfectly cooked, all of the toppings are thoroughly tasty, and the slightly crusty bun works perfectly with the other components of the sandwich.

My only real complaint is that as a fried chicken sandwich, it’s a bit busier than it needs to be. Between the charred onions (which are delicious, with a sweetness that’s cut by the mild smokiness from the charred bits), the zesty piri piri sauce, and the very zippy coleslaw, the fried chicken feels like a supporting player in its own sandwich. It’s a bit overwhelmed by other stuff.

Still, that is a very, very minor complaint; regardless of whether or not the fried chicken is the star, it’s impossible to deny that it’s a delicious sandwich.

Tasty Eats at Gushi Fried Chicken

Published on June 26, 2024 by Michael NusairLeave a comment

Location: 707 Dundas Street West, Toronto
Website: https://www.eatgushi.com/

There are a bunch of great options in Market 707, a collection of street vendors that operate out of shipping containers near Kensington Market. I’ve previously tried (and loved) Marq’s Chicago Beef, and I think the fried chicken at Gushi is just as good.

I ordered the original Gushi chicken meal, which comes with a generous amount of karaage (Japanese fried chicken made from bite-sized pieces of thigh meat) on top of purple rice, topped with spicy mayo.

The fried chicken is stellar. It’s super crispy, nicely seasoned, and features perfectly cooked chicken. It’s incredibly satisfying, and works very well with the sticky purple rice.

The only thing I would change is that I’d probably ask for the spicy mayo to be on the side next time. It’s quite tasty — and its zippy flavour complements the fried chicken very well — but there’s a lot of it. It’s a bit overwhelming. The chicken is so tasty on its own that such a thorough deluge of heavy sauce is probably overkill.

Quick Bites: Union Chicken, Poke Poke, Bake Code

Published on June 16, 2024 by Michael NusairLeave a comment

Nashville Lightning Hot sandwich from Union Chicken

I had the Buffalo chicken sandwich from Union back in 2019 and found it to be absolutely delightful; well, I recently tried the Nashville hot chicken sandwich, and yeah, it’s very, very good. It’s got that same addictive combo of exterior crunchiness and interior juiciness, and it’s really tasty, with a nice zippy flavour that cuts through the richness of the chicken. The toasted bread it comes on was a bit dry/boring, and I wish the sandwich were spicier (it’s barely hotter than mild), but overall it’s a superlative fried chicken sandwich.

Poke from Poke Poke

Poke Poke is thoroughly okay. I had the O.G. bowl (“classic salmon, seaweed salad,
avocado, corn, edamame, masago”) on white rice (brown rice, cauliflower rice, greens, and noodles are also choices), and it was perfectly tasty. Nothing about it particularly blew me away (it’s a bit overstuffed with toppings and understuffed with salmon — given that it came up to just over twenty bucks with tax, a more generous helping of fish would have been nice), but I’m not mad I ate it.

Salted Egg Yolk Croissant from Bake Code

I tried the PB&J croissant from Bake Code a few years ago and enjoyed it, though I found the croissant itself to be just okay. I have very similar thoughts about the salted egg yolk croissant, which features a generous amount of tasty, custardy filling, but is otherwise nothing too mind-blowing. I’m also not convinced that a croissant is a better vehicle for this particular filling than a more traditional bun, but I can’t deny that it’s tasty.

Tasty Eats at Do West Fest

Published on June 10, 2024June 8, 2025 by Michael NusairLeave a comment

Do West Fest is a surprisingly massive street festival (it covers about 1.5 km, from Landsdown to Ossington) with a whole bunch of tasty eats. I tried a few things.

Heirloom’s Hot & Honey Big Crunch from Heirloom Food Truck

I was actually quite excited about this one. I tried the Szechuan fried chicken sandwich from this food truck a few years ago, and thought that it was basically fried chicken perfection. It was crazy good.

So when I saw the Heirloom truck, I figured another fried chicken sandwich was a safe bet. They have a few on the menu (though not the Szechuan, sadly), but the Hot & Honey Big Crunch caught my eye. “Crispy chicken breast, hot & honey sauce, creamy slaw, pickled cucumber, iceberg lettuce, chipotle aioli, brioche bun.”

It’s a solid fried chicken sandwich. It’s nice and crunchy, and features a good balance of sweetness and acidity (alas, very little spice). It’s tasty. But, in my sandwich at least, the chicken itself was pretty dry, as was the thick brioche bun. I still enjoyed it, but that was a bit of a bummer. Certainly, it wasn’t the mindblower that the Szechuan sandwich was.

Strawberry Rhubarb cake from Moonmilk

Moonmilk is a great little ice cream shop and bakery on Dundas. I’ve tried the ice cream on a previous visit, and it was quite tasty. They also sell a handful of cakes; I went with the strawberry rhubarb, and yeah, this place knows what they’re doing.

It’s a pretty simple cake — basically just strawberry and rhubarb layered with buttercream frosting and a fairly plain cake — but it’s thoroughly delicious. It’s kinda strawberry shortcake-esque, with a great balance between the slightly tart strawberry/rhubarb filling and the silky buttercream. The cake has a good amount of substance to it, but isn’t too dense. It’s very good.

Margherita pizza from Acute Pizzeria

Acute boasts that their pizzas are made from sourdough, and yeah, the crust does have a bit of that sourdough tang. It actually works quite well. It’s also clear that they know exactly how to bake it, as it has a nice crackly crust, a bit of char, and a fluffy interior.

I got the margherita, and it was really good for all the reasons that margherita pizzas tend to be really good — they nailed it. I’d say this place is only a teeny-tiny step below top-tier pizzas like Badiali and North of Brooklyn.

Crispy Coconut Shrimp Dumplings from FeasTO

FeasTO is a dumpling truck that’s been around a while (I last tried it in 2019), and given how good their dumplings are, it’s easy enough to see why.

I tried the crispy coconut shrimp dumplings, which feature a great balance between the crispy fried exterior and the perfectly cooked shrimp within. The sauce they put on top was a bit sweet for me (it’s pretty intense), but otherwise these were quite satisfying.

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.