downtown – Page 26 – Michael Eats

Satisfying Noodle Soup at GB Hand-Pulled Noodles

Published on August 7, 2018 by Michael NusairLeave a comment

Location: 66 Edward Street, Toronto
Website: None

I’ve mentioned before that chewy hand-pulled noodles are basically the best thing ever. That continues to be true. That’ll be true forever. Hundreds of years from now, when the robots complete their bloody uprising and have wiped out the human race, it’ll continue to be true. Even robots will enjoy hand-pulled noodles. Because they’re the best.

And if you’re craving hand-pulled noodles and don’t feel like venturing out into the ‘burbs, you could certainly do worse than GB Hand-Pulled Noodles.

They have a few things on the menu, though the main attraction here is the noodle soup. You can choose your noodle thickness from seven (!) different options, which range from “super thin” to “extremely wide.” I went with narrow thick, which is right in the middle.

The soup itself is fine, though it is a bit one-note salty (no one around me finished their broth, nor did I). The prodigious amount of tasty chili oil that they serve it with certainly helps, but it’s clear that the soup is more of a vehicle for the noodles than something anyone would particularly enjoy on its own.

Aside from the noodles, the other highlight is the thinly-sliced beef, which is tender and flavourful. The beef at noodle joints like this tends to be hit-and-miss, so I appreciated the level of quality here.

But of course, the reason you’re here is those noodles, which get expertly pulled in full view of the dining room.

The narrow thick noodles that I picked basically look like a particularly weighty spaghetti. They were chewy, toothsome, and outstanding. Even by the standards of hand-pulled noodles, these were particularly firm and substantial; I was on the fence about them at first, but they quickly won me over.

Japanese Domination Continues at Koi Koi Sake Bar

Published on July 30, 2018 by Michael NusairLeave a comment

Location: 170 Baldwin Street, Toronto
Website: https://www.koikoibar.com/

Joining places like Little Pebbles, Sakoshi Mart, and Millie Creperie, the Japanese domination of this stretch of Kensington Market continues with Koi Koi Sake Bar, which features a tasty selection of Japanese eats. I, for one, welcome our new Japanese overlords.

I tried a few things. First up was a nice little snack that every table gets by default. I meant to ask what these were and completely forgot, but they were crunchy, savoury, and a little bit sweet.

Next up was the katsu sando, which is a fried pork sandwich topped with a generous amount of mayo and tangy tonkatsu sauce, with some romaine lettuce for added crunch and freshness. It’s a solid sandwich, though the pork was overcooked (I had a hard time even biting through it in parts).

The miso nasu followed, which is a dish consisting of grilled, miso-glazed eggplant. It feels like it’s missing something (a crunchy counterpoint to the soft eggplant, perhaps?), but it’s enjoyable enough; it basically tastes like they distilled the flavour of miso soup into a glaze and then brushed it onto an eggplant.

The last dish was the bacon fried rice, which food writer David Ort called “possibly the best fried rice [he’s] ever had.” This is mostly what made me want to come here.

I’m not sure if it’s the best I’ve ever had, but it was definitely top-shelf fried rice, with a nice meatiness from the generous bacon and a satisfying level of crispiness from the fried garlic slices. The creamy mayo on top was a nice touch.

Decent Fried Chicken at Love Chix

Published on July 25, 2018 by Michael Nusair1 Comment

Location: 111 Richmond Street West, Toronto (in the Assembly Chef’s Hall)
Website: http://www.lovechix.ca/

I got nervous when, after I ordered my chicken sandwich from Love Chix, they opened a drawer filled with pre-cooked chicken pieces and then dunked one in the fryer to reheat it.

Thankfully, it certainly could have been worse, but the chicken was dry and overcooked, and it’s easy enough to see why. This might have been less of an issue if they started with dark meat, which has a bit more leeway during the cooking process before it dries out. But it was white meat, and “moist” was not a word in its vocabulary.

The sandwich was otherwise quite tasty. It’s tossed in a honey hot sauce and topped with buttermilk ranch, coleslaw, and arugula. The honey flavour was quite pronounced, but there was enough of a spicy kick and a vinegary bite to balance out the sweetness. The creamy ranch and the peppery arugula helped to round things out. It was actually quite tasty.

And while the crunch factor wasn’t quite as pronounced as it could have been, it was certainly satisfying.

I just wish the meat itself weren’t so dry. I certainly understand why they serve their chicken this way; people might get impatient to wait the almost ten minutes it would take to fry a piece of chicken from scratch. But I wish they’d give you a choice.

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.

Lousy food at the Livelihood Cafe

Published on July 6, 2018 by Michael NusairLeave a comment

Location: 254 Augusta Avenue, Toronto
Website: http://www.livelihoodproject.org/

The Livelihood Cafe is a laudable endeavor — it’s part of a non-profit organization that helps new immigrants build a career in Canada.

So maybe I’m a jerk for saying this (okay, I’m definitely a jerk for saying this), but the food was actually pretty bad.

I tried a few things. The first dish featured multigrain toast topped with some kind of pepper spread, cucumber, and cheese (I forgot to take a picture of the menu and I couldn’t find one online, so I’m a bit fuzzy on the specifics). This was the best of the three dishes I tried. The grainy bread was a little bit too rustic, overwhelming the mild pepper spread, and the whole thing had an overriding bitterness, but it wasn’t horrible.

Up next was the baba ganoush, which came with a side of over-toasted pita bread that was halfway between crunchy and chewy. Baba ganoush is a spread that’s made primarily with roasted eggplant and tahini, so how this managed to taste of neither of those things is a complete mystery. It was just kind of salty and pasty and unpleasant.

The last (and worst) dish was the mana’eesh, which is a flatbread topped with a mix of za’atar (a Middle Eastern spice mix) and olive oil. Only there barely seemed to be any olive oil; the za’atar was overly dry and grainy, and the bread was off-puttingly thick and rubbery. I could barely eat more than a couple of bites of this.

Also: it was a bagel-sized piece of bread for nine bucks, which is gallingly expensive — though if you think of it as a charitable donation, it takes some of the sting away.

This is going to sound harsh, but everything was so bad I would have rather just flat-out donated money to charity without having to eat the food.