Lamb Overload at Bareh Sefid

Bareh Sefid
Location
: 9325 Yonge Street, Richmond Hill
Website: https://barehsefid.net/

I was pretty excited to check out Bareh Sefid after seeing it on Suresh Doss’ great show, Locals Welcome.  They specialize in big platters of various braised lamb parts.  I feel like lamb is seriously underappreciated, so yeah, I’m all over that.

Their menu consists entirely of lamb, and if you want to try it all, you’ve gotta go with the Darbari plate: “2 Sides Lamb Head Meat, 1 Tongue, 2 Eyes, 3 Lamb Trotters, 1 Brain, 2 Bowls Of Lamb Broth, With Full Service: Pickled, Home Made Bread, Lime.”

Bareh Sefid

The lamb is all seriously well prepared and unctuously tender.  The head and tongue are probably the most straightforward — you’d never know that they’re off cuts just by tasting them.  The eyes and trotter both have a similarly squishy texture, and are also quite tasty, if a bit one-note soft.  The brain is the most interesting of the bunch, with a firm texture and a slightly liver-esque mineraly flavour.

Bareh Sefid

It’s all nicely spiced, but mostly, the preparation ensures that the lamb flavour is front and centre.  The meal comes with a side of lime wedges and zippy pickle relish, with the relish, in particular, doing a great job of cutting through the richness of the lamb.

Bareh Sefid

It’s so much lamb.  The platter consists entirely of fatty/collagen-rich lamb along with a couple of types of flatbread to eat it with, and while I was in lamb heaven for the first few bites, eventually, I kinda wanted some other flavours?  I like lamb a whole lot, but — for me, at least — this might have been too much of a good thing.

Tasty Eats at Lamb Soup Noodle House

Lamb Soup Noodle House
Location
: 4750 Yonge Street, Toronto (inside Emerald Park food court)
Website: none

The lamb soup at Lamb Soup Noodle House is pretty tasty, with a very clean lamby flavour.  I got the spicy version, which also had a very noticeable fiery kick.  Nothing about it blew my mind — but I’m a fan of lamb, and I’m never going to dislike anything that packed with lamb flavour.

Lamb Soup Noodle House

(The chunks of lamb are a bit tough and the fat noodles are overcooked, but I think the broth is the real reason to order this.)

I think the better thing to order here, oddly, isn’t the lamb soup — it’s the jian bing, an eggy Chinese crepe.

Lamb Soup Noodle House

I actually tried the jian bing here several years ago and quite enjoyed it.  It was called Gao’s Crepe back then, so I’m not sure if it’s the same place or another jian bing spot in the same location, but either way, it’s thoroughly delicious.

Lamb Soup Noodle House

Rather than going with the standard jian bing, I went with the one that comes stuffed with spicy noodles and cheese (!), and wow it was good.  The wrap itself was chewy and satisfying, it has a nice crunch, and the zippy noodles and melty processed cheese work surprisingly well together.  There’s also some kind of sausage in there, and yeah, that’s tasty too.  It’s all quite junky, but in a really satisfying way.

A Tasty Meal at Angara Indian & Hakka Cuisine

Angara Indian & Hakka Cuisine
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.

Angara Indian & Hakka Cuisine

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.

Angara Indian & Hakka Cuisine

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.

Angara Indian & Hakka Cuisine

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.

Angara Indian & Hakka Cuisine

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.

Decent Wraps at Shawarma Kingdom

Shawarma Kingdom
Location
: 377 Burnhamthorpe Road East, Mississauga
Website: https://www.shawarmakingdom.ca/

Shawarma Kingdom is totally fine.  It’s fine!  It’s shawarma.  It’s good.  You don’t need to go out of your way for it, but it’s acceptably tasty.

I mostly wanted to check this place out because they have beef and lamb on the menu.  I’m of the opinion that lamb shawarma is the best shawarma — and yet it’s almost impossible to find in the GTA.  When you do see it, it’s mixed with beef like it is here (and in most cases, the mix leans much more towards beef than lamb).  It’s a shame.

Shawarma Kingdom

You can get the wrap either in a pita or saj (for a few bucks more).  I went with saj and stuck with the default toppings, which are tahini sauce, tomato, onion, parsley and pickles (okay fine, I lied — I skipped the onion, as I tend to do).

Shawarma Kingdom

They definitely don’t skimp on the meat; the wrap is absolutely crammed.  They don’t skimp on the sauce, either, making this a bit of a mess.  The saj was over-toasted, which meant that the wrap was very brittle, with its structural integrity being extremely questionable; it basically exploded, and I had to eat most of it with a fork and knife.

Shawarma Kingdom

It’s a satisfying enough wrap, with the meat being fairly tender and flavourful, and with the generous amount of parsley giving it an interesting herby kick.  I wish the tahini sauce were a bit zippier, and I wish the meat had more of the crispy bits you’re looking from shawarma, but it’s a solid wrap (figuratively, not literally — again, it fell apart basically instantly).

Tasty Shawarma at Shelby’s

Shelby's
Location
: 1289 Marlborough Court, Oakville
Website: https://www.shelbys.ca/

I could have sworn I had already written about Shelby’s for this blog, but when I went to look for the post, I couldn’t find it.  It turns out I actually blogged about Tahini’s, not Shelby’s.

Shelby's

In my defense, the two chains are quite similar: both are chains with a similar name and logo, and both serve a similar menu of saj-wrapped shawarma topped with a pomegranate-infused sauce.

Also: both are surprisingly tasty.  Shelby’s, despite being a chain with a couple dozen locations, probably outclasses a decent amount of the independent shawarma joints in the GTA.

Shelby's

I ordered the Shelby’s Wrap: “freshly baked saj bread stuffed with lettuce mix, fries, pickles, turnips, tomatoes, sumac onions, tahini, hummus, and regular or spicy garlic.”  I got it with beef and lamb shawarma, spicy garlic, and skipped the onions.

Shelby's

It’s a great wrap, with the slightly chewy and nicely toasted saj wrap being a nice vehicle for the generous amount of tasty meat and veggies/sauces.  It’s mildly spicy, zippy and garlicky (my wrap didn’t say it came with pomegranate molasses, but I’m pretty sure I tasted its slightly tart flavour, which worked well), and the shawarma is tender, with a decent amount of crispy bits.  I didn’t get much lamb flavour, but the whole thing was tasty enough that this didn’t really matter.