maple syrup – Michael Eats

Tasty Cake Doughnuts at Maverick’s Donut Company

Published on August 28, 2024 by Michael NusairLeave a comment

Location: 1618 Queen Street West, Toronto
Website: https://mavericksdonuts.com/

Maverick’s is an Ottawa-based doughnut chain that opened their first location in Toronto last year. You might be thinking that we have enough doughnut joints in the city, but you’re wrong and here’s why: Maverick’s specializes in cake-based doughnuts. Most doughnut places will have a cake doughnut or two on the menu, but here it’s pretty much all of them.

I tried six: cherry glazed, pecan pie, maple bacon, double chocolate, lemon ricotta, and chocolate coconut.

They were all quite delightful. The cake is dense but not too dense, they’re not overly sweet (aside from maybe the maple bacon, which I still quite enjoyed), and they have a light crispiness on their exterior. They’re top quality doughnuts.

And the flavours were all great, though if I had to pick a favourite, it might be the nutty pecan pie. Or the double chocolate, which had a really satisfying chocolate flavour. Or the cherry glazed, which tasted like a doughnut and a maraschino cherry had a baby. Or the lemon ricotta, which had a nice tartness and a satisfying creaminess. Or the maple bacon, which had satisfying pops of saltiness from the bacon to offset the sweetness of the maple. Or the chocolate coconut, which is always a tasty combo.

Oh, I just named all the doughnuts, didn’t I. Well you know what? I liked all of them. They’re all my favourite. Deal with it.

Maple & Cheddar Chicken at McDonald’s

Published on January 13, 2020 by Michael NusairLeave a comment

Location: 796 Burnhamthorpe Road West, Mississauga
Website: https://www.mcdonalds.com/ca/en-ca.html

The Maple & Cheddar Chicken was a pleasant surprise. “Maple” being so prominent in the name of the sandwich, I sort of figured it would be way too sweet. And yeah, it was sweet. But the sweetness feels relatively well tuned.

The Maple & Cheddar Chicken comes topped with maple mustard sauce, “mayo-style sauce,” cheddar cheese, crispy onions, tomato, and lettuce.

It pretty tasty, though the maple mustard sauce is basically all maple with a tiny bit of mustard. It’s a glaze. It’s incredibly mapley, and hardly mustardy at all.

But the salty chicken, cheddar, and crispy onions all do a pretty decent job of balancing out the sweetness. It works.

Also: put crispy onions on everything, please. They’re delicious and enhance basically everything they’re on. Well, maybe not on dessert, but hey –who knows? Crispy onions on a sundae? Might work. I can’t rule it out.

Bacon Maple Chicken Sandwich at Wendy’s

Published on November 22, 2018 by Michael NusairLeave a comment

Location: 1569 The Queensway, Etobicoke
Website: https://www.wendys.com/en-ca/home

I actually quite like Wendy’s. I mean, it’s still a fast food chain, so it’s not great — but it’s one of the better ones.

Well, usually, at least.

The Bacon Maple Chicken Sandwich definitely isn’t their finest hour. It’s a fried chicken sandwich served on a croissant bun and topped with Swiss cheese, maple glaze, and bacon.

It’s super sweet and super dry, and I just did not enjoy eating it at all.

The “maple glaze” is basically just thick, sludgy maple syrup. It’s intensely sweet and far too overwhelming for a sandwich like this. The mildly spicy chicken patty (you can get spicy or original) helps to balance out the sweetness a little bit, but it’s not nearly enough to overcome the sugar overload.

Everything else is dry. The fried chicken patty is dry, the “croissant” bun is dry (and aside from the cosmetic, it has zero croissant-like properties), the completely unmelted cheese is dry — even the bacon is dry. I like crispy bacon as much as the next guy, but the glass-like strips in this sandwich were taking it a bit too far.

It really needed additional sauce to give it moisture, but adding more of the maple glaze would pretty much be instant diabetes. The whole thing is head-scratchingly misguided.

Exceptional Pancakes at Mildred’s Temple Kitchen

Published on July 5, 2018 by Michael NusairLeave a comment

Location: 85 Hanna Avenue, Toronto
Website: http://www.templekitchen.com/

I don’t want to get too hyperbolic here, but I’m fairly certain that I’ve seen the pancakes from Mildred’s Temple Kitchen about four billion times on Instagram. They pop up on my feed at least once a week. It’s hard to get a big group of people to agree on anything, but everyone is quite unanimous regarding the greatness of the pancakes here.

They’re not wrong.

The pancakes (dubbed Mrs. Biederhof’s Blueberry Buttermilk Pancakes) have a really appealing balance of fluffiness and substance, with a lightly crispy exterior that’s unlike any pancake I’ve had before. The texture is almost like an incredibly light and fluffy biscuit.

It’s possible that something had gone a bit wrong, because I suspect they’re not supposed to be this crispy on their exterior (the bottom pancake in the pile was downright crunchy). And yet somehow it totally works.

The flavour is great, too — the pancakes are slightly tart from the buttermilk, with the perfect amount of sweetness from the blueberries and the maple syrup. The whipped cream adds a nice little punch of additional richness, and helps to bring all of the flavours together.

My only complaint? It’s an excessive amount of food. I wish there were a one or two pancake option, because these things are substantial, and they sit in your stomach like a ton of bricks. It’s great while you’re eating them, and unpleasant for the rest of the day.

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.