food – Page 4 – Michael Eats

A Tasty Meal at Angara Indian & Hakka Cuisine

Published on February 12, 2026 by Michael NusairLeave a comment

Location: 5555 Eglinton Avenue West, Etobicoke
Website: https://angararestaurant.ca/

Angara is a great Indian restaurant in Etobicoke that recently opened a second location downtown. I checked out the original, and yeah, I get it — there’s clearly a reason that they’re doing well enough to expand.

I tried a couple of things. First up was the Chef Special Bombay Paneer: “Paneer prepared dry with red onion, green chilli, and curry leaves.” This was basically like a fried chicken dish, but with paneer subbing in for chicken; it’s battered and crispy, and tossed in a tangy, mildly spicy sauce.

You can also get this with chicken, which I’d imagine would be even better, but the dense, meaty paneer actually does a pretty solid job of subbing in for chicken. It’s a tasty dish.

Up next: Chef Special Lamb Angara (“Spicy yet creamy curry with homemade chef special spices served in a sizzling plate”). This was seriously good, with a generous amount of tender chunks of lamb in a rich, creamy, and ultra-savoury sauce. The sizzling plate it comes in kinda caramelizes the sauce around the edges. It’s delightful.

I also got an order of freshly-baked naan, which has the crispy bottom and chewy interior that you’re looking for. It, like everything else here, was seriously good.

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).

Frank’s RedHot Hot Honey Sauce at McDonald’s

Published on February 6, 2026 by Michael NusairLeave a comment

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

I recently tried the Frank’s RedHot Original McCrispy and found it to be pretty disappointing. It just didn’t particularly taste like Frank’s RedHot, which is odd, considering it’s right there in the name of the sandwich.

I figured I’d have a bit more luck with the Frank’s RedHot Hot Honey dipping sauce. Surely a Frank’s RedHot sauce would taste like Frank’s RedHot?

Yeah, about that.

Here’s how McDonald’s describes it: “A dipping sauce with the sweet taste of honey and the heat of Frank’s RedHot® to treat your McNuggets® to a flavour they’ve never experienced before.”

The problem here is that the sauce doesn’t really taste like honey or Frank’s RedHot. It’s just a mildly spicy sweet goo. I can’t find the ingredients online, but I’d be shocked if it wasn’t mostly corn syrup with a teeny-tiny bit of honey so they can legally put honey in its name. As for the Frank’s RedHot, the vinegary flavour of the hot sauce is almost completely wiped out by its intense sweetness.

If you like a very (very very) sweet dipping sauce, you might enjoy this — but I can’t say I did.

Tasty Noodle Soup at Kuya Don Lomi Batangas

Published on February 1, 2026 by Michael NusairLeave a comment

Location: 1482 Dundas Street East, Mississauga
Website: https://www.kdlb.ca/

Kuya Don Lomi Batangas is a Filipino restaurant that started in North York and has recently expanded to Mississauga. And judging by the crowds, it’s already a hit — I showed up not long after they opened at 11:00am on a Saturday, and the place was already pretty full. By the time I left, it was packed.

They have a variety of Filipino dishes on the menu, but the specialty is lomi batangas (it’s right there in the name, so obviously you’ve gotta order that).

I can’t say I’ve ever tried (or even heard of) this dish, but I’m always game to try something new. Here’s how the menu describes it: “freshly made miki with caldo, sliced fish ball, boiled egg, pork liver, kikiam, rebusado, bola-bola, and garnish.”

In case you’re as clueless about Filipino cuisine as I apparently am (I understood fish ball, boiled egg, pork liver, and garnish in that description), here’s how that breaks down. Miki is a Filipino egg noodle, caldo means broth, kikiam is a type of sausage, Google is saying rebusado is fried shrimp (there was something fried in the bowl, but it definitely wasn’t shrimp — pork, I think?), and bola-bola is a meatball (which I don’t think was in my bowl? There were crispy pork rinds, however).

Whatever was in here was quite tasty, particularly those fried chunks of pork (?), which were well seasoned, nicely crunchy on the outside, and tender on the inside.

The soup itself has a really deep savouriness that’s quite satisfying, particularly once you add a squeeze of the calamansi they have on the side — this does a great job of adding some brightness to the very rich bowl. The soup is thickened, but not in a way that feels overly goopy. It’s quite good.

My only real complaint is that while the noodles do a great job of soaking up the flavour of the soup, they’re pretty mushy. I’m not sure if that’s the way they’re supposed to be or if something went wrong, but either way, that’s probably my only complaint about an otherwise very tasty dish.

A Nostalgic Dessert at Alice Marie Bakery & Coffee

Published on January 31, 2026 by Michael NusairLeave a comment

Location: 807 Gerrard Street East, Toronto
Website: https://www.alicemarie.ca/

Alice Marie Bakery & Coffee serves a cake they call “Deep N’ Nostalgic,” which is their upscale take on McCain’s Deep’n Delicious chocolate cake.

It’s been many, many years, but I actually have a good amount of nostalgia for the Deep’n Delicious cake — probably because it came with a family-sized meal KFC sold back in the ’90s called the Mega Meal, which I used to regularly harass my parents about ordering until, once every few months, they’d cave and do it. It was a pretty key part of my childhood.

The version at Alice Marie definitely nails the look, right down to the plastic-domed container it comes in.

They might have fancied it up a little too much, however (it had better be fancy, for twelve bucks for a relatively small piece); their website says they use Valrhona Satilia Noire 62% chocolate, which I’m going to go out on a limb and say is slightly nicer than the chocolate McCain uses.

It’s a tasty cake, with a rich chocolatey flavour and a restrained level of sweetness. I don’t know how much it recalls an actual Deep’n Delicious cake, outside of the look, but it’s definitely a good quality dessert.

The biggest issue is the buttercream icing that it’s topped with. They serve the cake fridge-cold, and the stuff is rock hard. The smart thing to do would be to wait maybe like half an hour for the cake to come to room temperature and for the icing to soften. But I regret to inform you that I absolutely, positively do not have that kind of patience or willpower. If you want me to eat that cake at room temperature, you should serve it that way. Put a tasty chocolate cake in front of me, and tell me it will get better if I wait a few minutes? That cake is going down my gullet immediately. Sorry.