King Street – Michael Eats

Solid Ice Cream at 00 Gelato

Published on September 16, 2019 by Michael NusairLeave a comment

Location: 370 King Street West, Toronto
Website: https://www.instagram.com/00gelato/

Not everything needs to be (or can be) a home run. Sometimes it’s fine for a dish to be solid — perfectly tasty, but nothing too mind-blowing.

That’s 00 Gelato in a nutshell. I don’t think anyone’s going to call it the best gelato in the city, but it’s quite satisfying.

The place is a bit odd. It’s in a closet-sized spot on King, and it’s basically just a gelato counter in a doorway. It seems super makeshift, but it’s been popping up for the last few summers, so it’s permanent enough.

I had a scoop of the Ferrero Rocher, and it’s good. The gelato itself is rich and creamy, and the flavour is quite nice. It’s a bit too sweet, but it otherwise does a great job of capturing the Ferrero Rocher flavour, right down to the crispy wafer bits.

A Delicious Veggie Sandwich at Forno Cultura

Published on July 4, 2019July 10, 2019 by Michael NusairLeave a comment

Location: 609 King Street West, Toronto
Website: https://fornocultura.com/

I recently had a seriously tasty meal thanks to Toronto Life’s list of the 25 best sandwiches in the city. So it seemed like a safe enough bet to try another entry from that list: the melanzana from Forno Cultura, a great Italian bakery on King Street West.

It’s a roasted eggplant and zucchini sandwich with fior di latte (AKA mozzarella), Emmental cheese, and arugula.

I was tempted by the very tasty looking meatball sandwich, but I stuck with the list, and I’m very glad that I did. The list is on a roll. It’s an amazing sandwich.

The eggplant and the zucchini are both super tasty — they’re meaty and tender, with a very herby, garlicky flavour. The two cheeses balance quite well, with a nice soft creaminess from the fresh mozzarella, and a sharper cheesy flavour from the Emmental. Add in the peppery bite from the arugula, and you’ve got a tasty sandwich.

Though as good as the various fillings are, it’s the sesame-studded focaccia that’s the real star of the show. It’s crispy, fluffy, and amazing.

The sandwich is also exceptionally oily — basically as soon as you pick it up, your hands become slick with grease. Normally this might be a bit much, but I think that oil was also a vehicle for the aforementioned herby, garlicky flavour, because the whole sandwich was tasty and amazing. It never feels overly oily.

I should have left it at that, but I made the mistake of getting the cornetto cioccolato for dessert. It looked so good!

It tastes absolutely nothing like it looks. It was barely sweet at all, and the texture was oddly crunchy and dry. It was, weirdly enough, very similar to a pretzel. Not a warm, fresh pretzel; the dry kind from a bag. I don’t know if that was intentional, but I’m guessing it wasn’t because it was blatantly unappealing. It was quite saltine-esque.

Still; it’s hard to stay mad a place that serves a sandwich that delicious.

Mediocre Tacos at Wilbur Mexicana

Published on August 28, 2018 by Michael NusairLeave a comment

Location: 552 King Street West, Toronto
Website: http://wilburmexicana.com/

Wilbur is one of those places with a perpetual line out the door, and having just tried it for the first time, I’m not sure why.

That’s not to say it was bad. I just had two tacos, and they were both fine. But in a city as suffused with taco joints as Toronto, “fine” isn’t much.

I will say that their hot sauce selection is impressive. They have a few dozen bottles to choose from, not to mention a bunch of homemade sauces as well. If you want to add some spice to your taco, I can guarantee you’ll find something that strikes your fancy.

I tried a couple of tacos: al pastor (“pork, grilled pineapple, onion, cilantro”) and bulgogi (“Korean beef, cabbage, pear, sriracha, sesame seeds”).

I was most excited to try the al pastor, which is essentially Mexico’s take on the shawarma. But there were none of the crispy bits you associate with shawarma; it was just dry, personality-free lean pork brought to dessert levels of sweetness thanks to whatever they marinated it in and the pineapple.

It came on a corn tortilla that was dry, crumbly, and stale. A note to all restaurants serving corn tortillas: cook them fresh or GTFO.

The bulgogi, surprisingly enough, was way better. It was also quite sweet, but it had some savoury complexity to round things out. The beef was a little bit dry, but it wasn’t nearly as bad as the pork.

The tacos came with a handful of tortilla chips on the side. They were a huge upgrade over store-bought; they were way better than the tacos.

Nashville Hot Chicken at Porchetta and Co.

Published on March 17, 2018March 17, 2018 by Michael NusairLeave a comment

Location: 545 King Street West, Toronto
Website: http://porchettaco.com/

I love Porchetta and Co. Their porchetta sandwich? Classic. Best porchetta in the city. Their fried chicken sandwiches? Usually delicious! Their Nashville hot chicken sandwich? Uh…

Hey, they can’t all be winners. And it wasn’t all bad. The fried chicken itself was superlative, as usual: perfectly-cooked chicken with a crispy, crunchy, tasty exterior. It’s good stuff.

Nashville hot chicken is a notoriously spicy dish that involves a post-cooking dunk into spice-infused oil to give the chicken additional flavour and heat. It’s typically sprinkled with more spices, just to kick up the heat factor. Porchetta and Co. appear to have remembered the oil — the sandwich was absolutely dripping with it — but forgotten the spices. The oily coating on the chicken was bland, and worse, it wasn’t spicy. At all. The spice level here never registered beyond a mild tingle. WTF?

The other components of the sandwich — lettuce, mayo, pickles, plain white bread — were fine, though the sugary-sweet pickles were a bit overpowering.

Sausage Perfection at Wvrst

Published on March 15, 2018 by Michael NusairLeave a comment

Location: 609 King Street West, Toronto
Website: http://www.wvrst.com/

I tried Wvrst once, around when it first opened. It was good, but nothing about it really jumped out at me, so I never felt particularly compelled to go back.

Well, I just found myself back there, and clearly I was wrong about the place, because the sausage I ate was probably one of the best that I’ve ever had.

They have an intimidatingly long list of sausages on their menu. I got the Kaas: “pork/beef/parrano cheese/light smoke.” You can either get it on a bun or as currywurst. I went with a bun, and had it topped with sauteed onions and jalapenos.

Oh man, that sausage. The texture was absolutely perfect. To me, the meat in a sausage needs to retain some of its essential meatiness; it shouldn’t have been ground into oblivion. It should still be sausagey, of course, but the texture should be more rustic than a hot dog. Wvrst absolutely nails this.

And the flavour was great: meaty and smoky, not overly salty, and with surprisingly generous pockets of gooey, melty cheese. I was actually pretty blown away by how good it was.

I got the duck fat fries on the side, and they were just as good. You could pick from a bunch of dipping sauces; I went with the Wvrst sauce (rule of thumb: if something on the menu is named after the restaurant, you should probably be ordering that thing). It was tangy and delicious, and complimented the fries perfectly.