pork – Page 4 – Michael Eats

Solid Tacos at Azul

Published on April 13, 2025April 13, 2025 by Michael NusairLeave a comment

Location: 100 King Street West, Toronto
Website: https://www.instagram.com/azulmexicanto/

I think the first thing I should note about Azul is: it’s not easy to find! It’s in the food court at First Canadian Place downtown, except, oh wait, apparently there’s more than one food court in First Canadian Place? I wandered around the one on the lower level for longer than I should admit, and the whole time I’m looking at Google Maps like, it should be right here, what gives?

It turns out there’s a whole other food court on the upper floor, which is not confusing at all. Totally reasonable to have two food courts within a couple of floors of each other.

Anyway, Azul. It’s a Mexican eatery that features various tacos, tortas, and bowls. I tried a couple of the tacos: chilorio (“pork shoulder – marinated and slow cooked, pickled onions”) and Baja (“fish – battered and fried, cabbage slaw, lime mayo”). You also get a little tub of salsa on the side that can be mild, medium, or hot. I went with hot.

The tacos both come on blue corn tortillas that are reasonably fresh and have a decent amount of heft to them (both tacos were crammed with stuff, and the tortillas held up nicely).

Neither knocked my socks off, but both were quite tasty — particularly the chilorio, which features a generous amount of tender, meaty pork. The fish was a bit dry, but it’s topped with so much stuff that it barely matters. For something from a food court, you could do much worse.

Amazing Gyros at Souv Like

Published on March 22, 2025 by Michael NusairLeave a comment

Location: 708 Pape Avenue, Toronto
Website: https://souvlike.ca/

Souv Like has a reputation for serving some of the best gyros in the GTA. All it took was one bite to confirm this to be true. Heck, I knew it was probably true just by looking at it, with all those gloriously brown crispy bits.

They have a handful of things on the menu, but I think the pork or chicken gyros are where it’s at.

I went with the pork, which is a pretty no-frills wrap, coming stuffed with meat, tomatoes, onions (which I skipped), fries, and secret sauce. I should also note that the grizzled man behind the counter assembled this thing with remarkable speed; I think he shaved the meat off the spit and put the wrap together in something like thirty seconds. And yet nothing about it felt haphazard, with a good proportion of meat to toppings to sauce. The guy’s clearly been doing this a while.

It’s an amazing wrap. The pork is pretty much exactly where you want it to be, with an abundance of crispy bits, a nice tender texture, and a great flavour. It’s maybe a touch on the salty side, but that’s balanced out nicely by the slightly sweet secret sauce. The perfectly cooked fries are a good addition, and the fresh, slightly chewy pita works well.

I also like that the wrap is heavy on meat, and light on everything else. A lot wraps like this are so overloaded with veggies that the meat almost feels like an afterthought. Clearly, that’s not the case here.

Delicious Hunan Chinese Food at Chili Cabin

Published on February 3, 2025 by Michael NusairLeave a comment

Location: 1100 Dundas Street West, Mississauga
Website: None

As a fan of spice, I’ll admit that Chili Cabin mostly caught my eye because of its name. They specialize in Hunan Chinese cuisine, which, according to Wikipedia, is similar to Sichuan cuisine, but with a more pure level of spice rather than numbing heat.

I tried the Hunan style stir-fried pork and the stewed vermicelli, which both offer a customizable level of spice: mild, normal, or extra. I went with extra spice for the pork, and normal for the noodles.

Both dishes were very spicy. Not quite blow-your-face-off hot, but definitely hot enough to put some sweat on your brow and clear your sinuses.

And both were very tasty. The Sichuan comparison seems apt, as both dishes had a similar flavour profile to Sichuan dishes that I’ve had (but without the numbing heat). I liked both quite a lot, though the pork was my favourite of the two. The pork was nice and tender, and it comes absolutely doused in a flavour-packed oil that was intensely delicious. It’s one of those dishes that’s almost too flavourful on its own, but once you have it with rice it really comes alive.

I liked the noodles a bit less, but they were still very tasty, with a nice chewy texture, satisfying spicing, and savoury ground pork interspersed throughout. It’s a winner. They have a million things on the menu here, and I’m quite keen to come back and try some more stuff.

Tasty Noodle Soup at Wonton Hut Noodle Bar

Published on January 26, 2025 by Michael Nusair2 Comments

Location: 671 Queen Street West, Toronto
Website: https://wontonhut.ca/

There are a bunch of great wonton noodle soup restaurants in the GTA — at least in places like Markham and Mississauga. In Toronto itself, it’s a bit harder to find. Enter: Wonton Hut Noodle Bar, which is on Queen Street and serves a very tasty bowl of the stuff.

They actually have a decent variety on the menu (including a handful of Vietnamese dishes, oddly enough) but of course, the place has “wonton” and “noodle” in its name, so you’ve gotta get the wonton noodle soup.

It’s good. The wontons themselves are seriously tasty, with big chunks of perfectly cooked shrimp and a very satisfying flavour. And the noodles are satisfyingly springy.

The flavour of the soup itself is a bit on the subtle side, but is nicely amped up by a couple of spoonfuls of the legitimately fiery chili oil they have on the table.

Great Ramen at Kaminari Ramen Bar

Published on January 19, 2025 by Michael NusairLeave a comment

Location: 1330 Queen Street West, Toronto
Website: https://www.bykaminari.com/

Kaminari Ramen Bar actually has a few types of ramen on the menu: clear Tokyo-style, creamy, “duck umami,” vegan, and a soupless yuzu ramen. The waiter said they don’t really have a specialty, so I went with the clear Tokyo-style.

The ramen, as per the menu: “Clear chicken broth, pork cha-shu, chicken cha-shu, wonton, Tokyo Negi, bamboo shoot, and nori seaweed.” You can get it either shio (salt) or shoyu (soy sauce); I went with the latter.

It’s a very good bowl of ramen. This style of ramen isn’t quite as common in the GTA as the more omnipresent creamy tonkotsu or tori paitan, but done well, it’s just as delicious.

The soup has a very rich and savoury soy-sauce-infused flavour. It’s the type of broth that never feels one-note or overly salty, no matter how much of it you have.

And everything else here was quite tasty, from the chewy, thin noodles to the tender chicken and pork. It’s a top-notch bowl of ramen.