GTA – Page 141 – Michael Eats

Consistent Excellence at Bang Bang

Published on April 5, 2018 by Michael NusairLeave a comment

Location: 93a Ossington Avenue, Toronto
Website: http://bangbangicecream.com/

After the cubano disappointment at La Cubana, I wondered: would Bang Bang pull the same thing? It’s been several months since I’ve had their ice cream. Has it gone downhill, too?

Nope. It’s still easily the best ice cream in Toronto, and some of the best ice cream I’ve ever had.

Bang Bang tends to have at least one new flavour in their rotation, and this time it was the Bad Dad Joke, which they describe as having miso pecans and butterscotch.

It was so damn good.

As usual, the ice cream itself was absolutely superlative: rich, creamy, and amazing. The flavour was just as good, with the butterscotch and the toasty nuts being a perfect match. The flavour was a bit more complex than you’d expect — whether that’s the miso or something else, I have no idea, but it was ridiculously good regardless.

It also had these white chunks in there, and I have no idea what they were (meringue, possibly?) but they added a nice crispiness to the ice cream that worked quite well.

Cubano Disappointment at La Cubana

Published on April 3, 2018June 28, 2019 by Michael NusairLeave a comment

Location: 92 Ossington Avenue, Toronto
Website: http://www.lacubana.ca/

I love the cubano sandwich at La Cubana. Or at least, I usually do.

I was going to order something else, but then I realized that I’ve never actually written about the cubano here, and I really don’t need much more of an excuse than that.

And here’s the thing: it was good. It certainly wasn’t bad, per se. That’s the problem with serving truly great food; there’s nowhere to go but down, and even something that’s quite good is going to seem like a letdown in comparison.

The cubano here is normally the perfect amalgam of gooey cheese, savoury meats, and zingy pickles. It’s astonishingly good. Usually.

This time? It was off. Though the cheese was nice and gooey, the pork had a mildly gamy, leftovery flavour, there were almost no pickles to cut the richness of the cheese and the meat, and the bread was dry and overly crunchy. I ate the sandwich as carefully as I could, and it still thoroughly mangled the roof of my mouth.

Has La Cubana gone downhill? Or was the kitchen just having a bad day? I’ll feel bad if it’s the latter — but they served me what they served me, so I don’t feel too bad about it.

Waffle Double Down at KFC

Published on March 28, 2018April 12, 2018 by Michael NusairLeave a comment

As ridiculous as the Waffle Double Down looks (and yeah, it is ridiculous), it’s basically just an oddball presentation of chicken and waffles. And everybody loves chicken and waffles. So it follows that this thing must be pretty good too, right?

Right?

Well… it’s not awful, I’ll give it that.

The Waffle Double Down is actually pretty simple: it’s two fried chicken patties encasing a Belgian waffle with maple aioli.

I sort of figured that the aioli would be subtly sweet, but I think it might actually be sweeter than just plain maple syrup. As soon as I unwrapped the sandwich (assuming that this thing even qualifies as a sandwich, which is questionable), the maple aroma hit me in the face like a ton of bricks.

And that was one of the main issues: the sandwich is way, way too sweet. I like the combo of sweet and salty, and I quite like chicken and waffles, but this is leaning way too hard in the direction of in-your-face sweetness. It’s almost dessert.

The other issue is the chicken itself. You can get it regular or spicy; I went with spicy, because if someone asks you if you want something spicy, the correct answer is always yes. And it’s not bad — the exterior was crispy and tasty, with a decent kick. But the chicken was overcooked and dry, and since there’s so much of it, that’s an issue. I had to constantly chug water between bites just to keep my mouth from completely drying out.

The waffle was exactly what you’d think it would be. If you’ve ever had prepackaged Belgian waffles, then you know what you’re getting. It’s fine.

I actually wish that they’d drop the gimmick and just make this a regular waffle sandwich. Because as it is, there’s an absurd amount dry chicken and not enough waffle. The proportion is off. It doesn’t taste right.

Oh, and this thing cost about $10.50 with tax, which is crazypants. It is absolutely not worth that much money.

Eggs Benedict (?) at Smash Kitchen

Published on March 27, 2018 by Michael NusairLeave a comment

Location: 4261 Highway 7, Unionville
Website: http://www.smashkitchen.com/

Is eggs benedict still eggs benedict if you don’t include the hollandaise sauce? Traditionally, that dish consists of an english muffin topped with meat (usually ham or bacon), a poached egg, and hollandaise.

That’s four things; the hollandaise is 25 percent of the dish. How far can you change something until it’s no longer that thing? Is it still spaghetti and meatballs if you replace the tomato sauce with alfredo? Probably not!

Which is to say that I just ordered the Smash Benedict from Smash Kitchen, and they replaced the hollandaise with gravy. To be fair, they also have a traditional eggs benedict on the menu, so that does kinda give them license to mess around with it in their other offerings.

The problem is, I missed the hollandaise. This particular benedict featured an english muffin topped with pulled pork, cheese, the standard poached egg, and the aforementioned gravy. The pulled pork was tossed in a very vinegary barbecue sauce that, while tasty, absolutely dominated the dish.

A heaping serving of creamy hollandaise might have helped to cut the vinegary sharpness of the pork, but the gravy was completely lost. It may as well have not even been there. I had to eat most of this with some hash browns to help mellow out that strong barbecue sauce flavour.

Still, it certainly wasn’t bad, and the crispy fried hash browns were a very tasty accompaniment. But if I came back, I’d probably just stick with the classic benedict (there was also a crab cake benedict that looked tasty, and yes — that one had hollandaise on it).

Felix & Norton Frozen Cookie Disappointment

Published on March 22, 2018March 22, 2018 by Michael NusairLeave a comment

I used to love Felix & Norton. Their Unionville location was in a plaza right across from where I went to high school, so cookies were a regular occurrence. I remember them being some of the best store-bought cookies around: lightly crispy and chewy, with a really great buttery flavour and high-quality chocolate chunks.

So when I saw unbaked Felix & Norton cookies in the freezer section at a local Loblaws, I couldn’t get them in my cart fast enough.

And it’s not a bad deal: nine bucks for a 500 gram bag, which works out to about 20 cookies. I got Menage a Trois, which features cookies with white, milk, and dark chocolate chunks.

Alas, these weren’t the Felix & Norton cookies I remembered. The chunks were more like tiny chocolate fragments, and barely added any chocolate flavour at all. The cookies were just blandly sweet. They were also insanely greasy, and yet had almost zero buttery flavour.

They weren’t the worst things ever, I guess — they were certainly better than something like Chips Ahoy, but they’re not even close to being in the same league as what you can get at the store.