kothu roti – Michael Eats

Quick Bites: Jaffna Street Food, The Keg, Sheliss Bakeshop Cafe

Published on May 2, 2026 by Michael NusairLeave a comment

Chicken Kothu Roti from Jaffna Street Food

I’ll say this about the chicken kothu roti at Jaffna Street Food: it’s a great deal. If you come on a Friday, you can get that dish for a cool ten bucks, and considering the hefty portion, you can’t go wrong there. Was it the best kothu roti I’ve ever had? No, it was pretty dry and nothing about the flavour really popped. But it was perfectly okay. For the price, I absolutely can’t complain.

Steak at The Keg

Generally speaking, the quality of the food at Canadian casual chain restaurants ranges from “passable, I guess?” to “are you sure this is food?” But whenever The Keg comes up in discussions online, people tend to be pretty complimentary about it. I just checked the place out for the first time in like twenty years, and yeah, I get it. I tried the escargots, a steak, and a slice of the famous Billy Miner pie, and they were all solid. Nothing here blew my mind, but everything was well-executed and tasty. I can definitely see why people are fans of this place (especially given the competition).

Cheese tart from Sheliss Bakeshop Cafe

It’s rare that I get to try a pastry that I’ve never even heard of, but it recently happened at Sheliss Bakeshop, a delightful Mexican-influenced bakery on St. Clair. The pastry in question: the cubilete de queso, or cheese tart, which they describe as “creamy cheese filling in a buttery pastry shell.” It’s great. What I really liked about this is how restrained the level of sweetness is, with the dense but creamy filling tasting kinda like a cross between a custard and a cheesecake. And the shortbread-esque complements it well. It’s a tasty dessert.

Hearty Kothu Roti at Saffron Spice Kitchen

Published on November 29, 2025 by Michael Nusair1 Comment

Location: 459 Queen Street West, Toronto
Website: https://www.saffronspicekitchen.com/

Saffron Spice Kitchen is a delightful little restaurant on Queen Street specializing in Sri Lankan eats. And when I say little, I mean little. They’ve got a couple of counter seats, but mostly, this is a take-out place.

They have a variety of wraps and curries on the menu, but their specialty seems to be the kothu roti (basically a Sri Lankan hash, with chopped up roti, eggs, and meat), with the butter chicken version being the one they’re best known for.

It’s quite tasty and seriously hearty, with a richness from the eggs and a satisfying chewiness from the roti. It’s also delightfully flavourful, and is absolutely crammed with Sri Lankan spices.

The butter chicken on top isn’t going to knock anyone’s socks off, it’s a solid version of the dish and works well with the kothu roti.

You can choose from three levels levels of heat; I went with the hottest version, and while it could have been hotter, it was studded with sliced peppers that gave it some nice pops of heat. It’s a tasty dish.

But the portion, good lord. It costs fifteen bucks, which seems like it might be on the pricey side until they hand it to you and you realize that it must weigh like three or four pounds. It’s a good thing this is mostly a take-out joint, because this is a dish that either needs to be shared or split up into like two or three meals. I barely made a dent in it.

Descendant: Still Some of the Best Pizza in the City

Published on September 25, 2019 by Michael NusairLeave a comment

Location: 1168 Queen Street East, Toronto
Website: http://descendantdsp.com/

Though I generally like to visit places I haven’t tried when I eat out, exceptions have to be made. Especially in the case of a restaurant serving food as great as Descendant, which makes superb Detroit-style pizza. It’s a strong contender for the best pizza in the city.

And yeah, it’s still great.

I tried a couple of pizzas — the Gatt-Daddy (“house made fennel sausage, Mama Lil’s Peppers, red onion, sauce, basil aioli, fresh parsley & basil”) and the Jaffna (“kothu roti, mango chutney, cilantro cream, green onion, Calabrian chilis, fresh cilantro, coconut sambol”).

Orrdering a pizza as bizarrely topped as the Jaffna might be a dicey proposition at a lesser pizza joint — but Descendant is not a lesser pizza joint. Aside from making technically superb pizzas, Descendant does an amazing job of taking seemingly bizarre flavour combos and doing something special with them. The Jaffna is sweet, spicy, savoury, and tangy in all the best ways.

The Gatt-Daddy is more traditional, and of course, they knock it out of the park.

It helps that the pizza itself is so good — the crust is delightfully crispy on the bottom, and dense enough to hold up to the voluminous toppings while still being delightfully fluffy and amazing. It’s a balancing act, and one that Descendant pulls of beautifully.

And of course, there’s that Detroit-style pizza trademark — the ring of dark, crispy goodness around the pizza where the cheese has come into contact with the square pan. It’s so good.