food – Page 97 – Michael Eats

Decent Eats at Olde Yorke Fish & Chips

Published on August 9, 2018 by Michael NusairLeave a comment

Location: 96 Laird Drive, Toronto
Website: https://oldeyorkefishandchips.com/

Everyone loves fish and chips, don’t they? It’s one of those universally appealing meals that’s hard to truly hate. I mean, it’s a big old plate of deep fried goodness.

But it’s surprisingly difficult to find a place that does it really well (without a plane ticket to the UK, at least). It’s such a simple dish, but sometimes the simplest meals are the toughest to pull off. It’s just fish and batter; if your technique isn’t perfect, there’s nowhere to hide.

I got the haddock and chips from Olde York, and while it was certainly tasty, there were a couple of things holding it back from being much better than okay.

A lot of fish and chips joints tend drop the ball with the batter itself; so many places over-apply it, resulting in a thick and crunchy shell that overwhelms the fish. And while Olde York isn’t the worst offender in this regard, the batter was definitely too substantial.

It’s also easy to overcook the fish, and alas, that was an issue here as well. It wasn’t too blatant, but it was dryer than it should have been.

I don’t want to make this a complain-a-thon, because I actually did enjoy it… but the fries could have been crispier and the tartar sauce was way too sweet.

But that’s the thing about fish and chips: even when it’s not perfect, it’s still so satisfying.

Quality Ice Cream and Waffles at Wooffles & Cream

Published on August 8, 2018August 8, 2018 by Michael NusairLeave a comment

Location: 8360 Kennedy Road, Markham (inside New Kennedy Square Food Court)
Website: https://www.facebook.com/woofflesandcream/

Every other ice cream joint in the city now serves Hong Kong-style waffles. It’s a combo that came out of nowhere and absolutely exploded. And while I don’t think that Wooffles & Cream were the first to do it in the GTA (pretty sure Bang Bang got there first), they certainly helped popularize it.

It’s still great. They have a few different flavours of waffle that you can try; I went with the sticky toffee pudding, which is a standard waffle filled with sweet cakey chunks of the aforementioned dessert.

The waffle itself was as delicious as ever, with a nice crispy exterior and a creamy interior. The bits of sticky toffee pudding were quite tasty, though they were dryer than you’d like, and not quite as sticky and sweet as you might hope from that particular dessert.

There were also a few chewy mochi bits interspersed throughout, which were an interesting addition.

The ice cream itself (I got vanilla — earl gray was also an option) was nothing special, but the quality is decent and it’s certainly an addictive combo with the waffle.

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.

Terrible Ice Cream at Baskin Robbins

Published on August 6, 2018 by Michael NusairLeave a comment

Location: 855 The Queensway, Etobicoke
Website: http://www.baskinrobbins.ca/

This probably won’t come as much of a surprise: it turns out that the ice cream at Baskin Robbins isn’t very good. I haven’t been there in several years, but I remember it being decent enough.

Either I’ve become pickier in the meantime, or it’s become worse. Probably a bit of both.

I tried the current flavour of the month, Cookies ‘n Cake: “Cake flavored ice cream, cookie pieces, and a chocolate cake batter flavored ribbon.”

The quality of the ice cream itself was pretty bad; it was slightly better than really bottom-of-the-barrel stuff like Chapman’s, but that’s really not saying much. The texture was thin and unsatisfying.

The flavour was even worse. I’ve eaten a lot of cake in my lifetime, and none of it even remotely tasted like the ice cream here. I’m normally fine with artificial, cake-flavoured junk food, but this stuff was just vile. I’m having a hard time even figuring out how to describe the flavour — it was acrid and unpleasant and weird.

The cookie chunks were good, at least — they were Oreo pieces, so no surprise there. But the “chocolate cake batter flavored ribbon” basically just tasted like a sweeter, less chocolatey version of Nesquik chocoalte syrup. It wasn’t offensive like the ice cream, but it wasn’t particularly good, either.

Kebab 49: Still Great

Published on August 3, 2018August 3, 2018 by Michael NusairLeave a comment

Location: 5308 Dundas Street West, Etobicoke
Website: http://kebab49.com/

I’ve actually already written about Kebab 49, so I’m going to keep this post brief. That was a couple of years ago, and the place is still chugging along, serving some of the best doner in the city.

Yes: Kebab 49 is still great. On this particular visit I got the durum wrap with lamb and veal (durum is a Turkish flatbread; Kebab 49 makes it in-house in their wood-burning oven, and it’s chewy and fresh and amazing).

The lamb and veal doner is outstanding. A lot of shawarama/doner tends to be a bit dry, but not here — there’s just enough fat mixed in to keep things from drying out. It’s perfectly seasoned, and the distinctive lamby flavour really shines through.

But the best part are all the crispy bits from where the rotating stack of meat has come into contact with the fire. This is how you know you’re dealing with a place that knows what’s what. Way too many restaurants start carving too soon, and you end up with sad, soggy meat. Not Kebab 49. You can’t really tell from the photo, but there were delicious crispy bits interspersed throughout the entire wrap. It was glorious.